This article examines the effects of direct object definiteness in Austronesian (AN) and relates these effects to marking for transitivity. Definite objects often correlate with a high degree of transitive marking in the verb phrase, while indefinite objects correlate with or trigger intransitive marking, even in transitive sentences. The primacy of goal/object orientation over actor/subject orientation is another widespread tendency in AN languages. In some languages, a definite goal/object must be marked as the focus of the clause, either overtly or via the obligatory indefiniteness of other arguments, or by making it the syntactic subject, or in other ways. The article thus shows how definiteness restrictions on various arguments in AN languages can be explained against the background of historical focus systems. Data come primarily from Muna (Celebes), in which, it is argued, the historical object focus function is continued in verb forms marked explicitly for definite objects.