The (non)canonical status of the <i>ka</i> - passive in Balinese

Abstract In Balinese, a noncanonical passive construction exists alongside the canonical passive. This noncanonical form shares some properties with the canonical passive but differs in key ways, particularly in expressing an unintentional agent. This study explores this construction, similar to the English get passive, by compiling a corpus of Balinese passives from storybooks and conducting grammaticality judgment tests. Results reveal that the ka- passive is incompatible with agent-oriented adverbials and purposive clauses, and contrasts semantically with the -a passive, which marks accomplishments. The ka- passive, associated with achieved states in Austronesian languages, often appears as a high-register or polite form, suggesting its (non)canonical status is gradient due to language change.