I propose a comprehensive analysis of what has been commonly referred in the literature to as split, discontinuous noun phrases or split topicalization. Based on data from Basaá, a Narrow Bantu language spoken in Cameroon, I partly capitalize on previous authors such as Mathieu (2004), Mathieu & Sitaridou (2005) and Ott (2015a), who propose that this morphosyntactic phenomenon involves two syntactically unrelated constituents which are only linked semantically in a predication relation in a small clause (Moro 1997, 2000; Den Dikken 1998). According to these analyses, split noun phrases are obtained as a result of predicate inversion across the subject of the small clause. Contrary to/but not against these views, I suggest that what raises in the same context in Basaá is rather the subject of the small clause as a consequence of feature-checking under closest c-command (Chomsky 2000, 2001), and for the purpose of labelling and asymmetrizing an originally symmetric syntactic structure on the surface (Ott 2015a and related work). The fact that the target of movement is the subject and not the predicate of the small clause follows from agreement and ellipsis factors. Given that the subject of predication is a full DP while the predicate is a reduced DP with a null head modifier, the surface word order is attributed to the fact that noun/noun phrase ellipsis is possible if the elided noun is given in the discourse and is recoverable from the morphology of the stranded modifier. This paper offers a theoretical contribution from an understudied language to our understanding of this puzzling nominal construction.

中文翻译：

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名词不匹配和小从句假设

我建议对文献中通常所说的分裂、不连续的名词短语或分裂主题化进行全面分析。根据来自喀麦隆使用的窄班图语 Basaá 的数据，我部分利用了以前的作者，如 Mathieu (2004)、Mathieu & Sitaridou (2005) 和 Ott (2015a)，他们提出这种形态句法现象涉及两个句法上不相关的成分它们仅在小句中的谓词关系中在语义上链接（Moro 1997, 2000; Den Dikken 1998）。根据这些分析，拆分名词短语是跨小从句主语的谓词倒置的结果。反对/但不反对这些观点，我建议在 Basaá 的相同上下文中提出的内容是小子句的主题，这是在最接近的 c 命令下进行特征检查的结果（Chomsky 2000, 2001），并且为了标记和不对称化最初的对称句法表面结构（Ott 2015a 和相关工作）。移动的目标是小句的主语而不是谓语，这一事实来自一致和省略因素。假定谓词的主语是一个完整的主语，而谓语是带有空头修饰语的简化主语，表面词序归因于这样一个事实，即如果在话语中给出了省略的名词，则名词/名词短语省略是可能的，并且可从链状改性剂的形态中恢复。