This thesis is primarily concerned with the nature and behaviour of actor agreement clitics in the Indonesian language Bimanese (Central Malaya-Polynesian; Sumbawa). In addition to qualifying these morphemes as both 'agreement' and 'clitics', this study seeks to account for what determines whether they are realized before the predicate as proclitics, or after the predicate, as enclitics.
This thesis also examines the status of grammatical relations in Bimanese, and in particular the notion of a surface subject. A number of Austronesian languages have been variously ascribed not to hold this grammatical status. Amidst the tests for subjecthood, it is all the while contended that Bimanese distinguishes a grammatical relation of 'actor' at a lower level of (syntacticized) argument-structure; it is this grammatical relation which is singled out by the primary agreement relation. In addition, this study also draws on some of the distinctions made at an entirely different level: that of pragmatics, or information structure. The distinctions made at this level are believed to be pertinent and necessary for the purpose of aptly describing the grammatical character of Bimanese
