Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T20:52:33.228Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Mismatching nominals and the small clause hypothesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2021

PAUL ROGER BASSONG
PAUL ROGER BASSONG*
Affiliation:
Department of Bilingual Studies, Faculty of Arts, Letters and Social Sciences, University of Yaounde I, Rue Joseph Tchoungui Akoa, Yaounde, P.O. Box 755 Yaounde, Cameroonprbassong@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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.

Keywords

BantuBasaámismatching nominalspredicationsmall clause
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 57 , Issue 4 , November 2021 , pp. 737 - 782
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Early versions of this work were presented at the 7th Southern African Microlinguistic Workshop (SAMWOP7), held at the University of Venda in 2018 and at the Research Seminar of the Department of Linguistics and Language Practice of the University of the Free State in 2019. I am grateful to the audience for their feeback. I am particularly indebted to Kristina Riedel for discussing various aspects of the paper. My gratitude goes to the three Journal of Linguistics referees for their insightful comments and suggestions. Lastly, I am indebted to Dieudonné Tonye, Moise Ntogue, Grégoire Konde and Cécile Ngo Bassong for their native speaker judgements.

Arabic numerals in glosses of Basaá examples designate noun class. The following abbreviations are used in the glosses: 2.sg = second person singular; acc = accusative; assocm = associative marker; aux = auxiliary; ben = benefactive; def = definiteness marker; erg = ergative; foc/f = focus marker; fv = final vowel; link = linker; loc = locative; nom = nominative; non past = non past tense; pass = passive; perf = perfective; prs = present; pst1 = past tense one; pst2 = past tense two; poss = possessive; refl = reflexive; rel= relative marker; s = subject agreement; sm = subject marker; subj = subjunctive; top = topic. The abbreviations nl and st are not explained in the source examples cited in examples (1c) and (2a) of this paper.

References

REFERENCES

Akmajian, Adian. 1975. More evidence for an NP cycle. Linguistic Inquiry 6, 115–127.Google Scholar
Androutsopoulou, Antonia. 1997. Split DPs, focus and scrambling in Modern Greek In Emily Curtis, Lyle, James & Webster, Gabriel (eds.), Proceedings of the 16th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 16), 1–16. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information.Google Scholar
Badan, Linda & Gobbo, Francesca Del. 2010. On the position of topic and focus in Chinese. In Benincà, Paola & Munaro, Nicola (eds.), Mapping the left periphery: The cartography of syntactic structures 5, 63–90. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bassong, Paul Roger. 2010. The structure of the left periphery in Basàá. MA dissertation, University of Yaounde I.Google Scholar
Bassong, Paul Roger. 2014. Information structure and the Basaá left peripheral syntax. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Yaounde I.Google Scholar
Bassong, Paul Roger. 2019. Regular and copular fragments in Basàá. Linguistics 57.5, 915–966.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Belletti, Adriana. 2009. Answering strategies: New information subjects and the nature of clefts. In Belletti, Adriana (eds.), Structures and strategies, 242–265. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Benincà, Paola.1988. Costruzioni con ordine marcato degli elementi. In Renzi, Lorenzo (ed.), Grande grammatica italiana di consultazione, vol. I, 129–145. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Benincà, Paola. 2001. The position of topic and focus in the left periphery. In Cinque, Guglielmo & Salvi, Giampaolo (eds.), Current studies in Italian syntax, 39–64. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Benincà, Paola & Poletto, Cecilia. 2004. Topic, focus, and V2: Defining the CP sublayers. In Rizzi, Luigi (ed.), The structure of CP and IP: The cartography of syntactic structures , 52–75. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Brugè, Laura. 2002. The positions of demonstratives in the extended nominal projection. In Cinque, Guglielmo (eds.), Functional structure in DP and IP: The cartography of syntactic structures, vol.I, 15–53. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Brunetti, Lisa. 2003. Information focus movement in Italian and contextual constraints on ellipsis. In Garding, Gina & Tsujimura, Mimu (eds.), Proceedings of the 22nd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 22), 95–108. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Büring, Daniel. 1997. The great scope inversion conspiracy. Linguistics & Philosophy 20, 175–194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Büring, Daniel. 2003. On D-trees, beans, and B-accents. Linguistics & Philosophy 26.5, 511–545.Google Scholar
Butler, Alastair & Mathieu, Éric. 2004. The syntax and semantics of split constructions: A comprative study. Houndmills & New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cable, Seth. 2004. Predicate clefts and base-generation: Evidence from Yiddish and Brazilian Portuguese. Ms., MIT.Google Scholar
Cardoso, Adriana. 2018. Discontinuous noun phrases and remnant-internal relativization in the diachrony of Portuguese. In Martins, Ana Maria & Cardoso, Adriana (eds.), Word order change, 45–67. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Barriers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2000. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. In Martin, Roger, Michaels, David & Uriagereka, Juan (eds.), Step by step: Essays on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik, 89–155.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by phase. In Kenstowicz, Michael (eds.), Ken Hale: A life in language, 1–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2013. Problems of projection. Lingua 130, 33–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo. 1977. The movement nature of left dislocation. Linguistic Inquiry 8.2, 397–412.Google Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo. 1983. Topic constructions in some European languages and ‘connectedness’. In Ehlich, Konrad & van Riemsdijk, Henk [C.] (eds.), Connectedness in sentence, discourse and text, 7–41. Tilburg: KUB.Google Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo 1990. Types of A-bar dependencies. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo. 1994. On the evidence for partial N-movement in the Romance DP. In Cinque, Guglielmo, Koster, Jan, Pollock, Jean-Yves, Rizzi, Luigi & Zanuttini, Raffaella (eds.), Paths towards Universal Grammar: Studies in honor of Richard S. Kayne, 85–110. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
de Swart, Henriette. 1992. Intervention effects, monotonicity and scope, Proceedings of SALT, vol. II, 387–406. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press.Google Scholar
Devine, Andrew & Stephens, Laurence D.. 2000. Discontinuous syntax: Hyperbaton in Greek. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Diesing, Molly. 1992. Indefinites. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Dikken, Marcel den.1998. Predicate inversion in DP. In Alexiadou, Artemis & Wilder, Chris (eds.), Possessors, predicates and movement in the determiner phrase, 177–214. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katalin, É. Kiss. 1998. Identificational focus versus information focus. Language 74, 245–273.Google Scholar
Engel, Ulrich. 1973. Regeln zur Satzgliedfolge. Sprache der Gegenwart 19 (Schriften des Instituts fuþr deutsche Sprache). 17–75. Düsseldorf: Schwann.Google Scholar
Fanselow, Gisbert. 1988. Aufspaltung von NPn und das Problem der ‘freien Wortstellung’. Linguistische Berichte 115, 91–113.Google Scholar
Fanselow, Gisbert & Ćavar, Damir. 2002. Distributed deletion. In Alexiadou, Artemis (eds.), Theoretical approaches to universals, 65–107. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fanselow, Gisbert & Féry, Caroline. 2006. Prosodic and morphosyntactic aspects of discontinuous noun phrases: A comparative perspective. Ms., University of Potsdam.Google Scholar
Féry, Caroline. 2007. The prosody of topicalization. In Schwabe, Kerstin & Winkler, Susanne (eds.), On information structure, meaning and form, 69–86. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Féry, Caroline, Fanselow, Gisbert & Paslawska, Alla. 2007. Nominal split constructions in Ukrainian. Journal of Slavic Linguistics 15.1, 3–48.Google Scholar
Franks, Steven & Progovac, Iliyana. 1994. On the placement of Serbo-Croatian clitics. In Fowler, George, Cooper, Henry R. Jr. & Ludwig, Jonathan Z. (eds.), Indiana Slavic Studies 7, 1–10, Bloomington, IN: Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Indiana University.Google Scholar
Frey, Werner. 2004. Notes on the syntax and the pragmatics of German left-dislocation. In Lohnstein, Horst & Trissler, Susanne (eds.), The syntax and semantics of the left periphery, 203–233. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Haider, Hubert. 1985. Über seinoder nicht sein: zur Grammatik des Pronomens sich . In Abraham, Werner (eds.), Erklärende Syntax des Deutschen (Studien zur deutschen Grammatik 25), 223–254. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Hale, Ken. 1983. Warlpiri and the grammar of non-configurational languages. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 1, 5–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamlaoui, Fatima & Makasso, Emmanuel-Moseley. 2015. Focus marking and the unavailability of inversion structures in the Bantu language Bàsàá (A43). Lingua 154, 35–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyman, Larry M. 2003. Basaá (A43). In Nurse, Derek & Philippson, Gérard. (eds.), The Bantu languages, 257–282. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hyman, Larry M., Jenks, Peter & Makasso, Emmanuel-Moselly. 2013. Adjectives as nominal heads in Basaá. In Orie, Olanike Ola & Sanders, Karen W. (eds.), Selected proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference on African Linguistics, 151–162. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Jelinek, Eloise. 1984. Empty categories, case, and configurationality. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 2, 39–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jenks, Peter, Makasso, Emmanuel-Mosely & Hyman, Larry M.. 2017. Accessibility and demonstrative operators in Basaá relative clauses. In Atindogbé, Gratien Gualbert & Grollemund, Rebecca (eds.), Relative clauses in Cameroonian languages: Structure, function and semantism, 17–46. Berlin & Boston, MA: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard S. 1994. The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kester, Ellen-Petra. 1996. The nature of adjectival inflection. Utrecht: OTS.Google Scholar
Kirkwood, Henry William. 1970. On the thematic function and syntactic meanings of the grammatical subject in English. Linguistische Berichte 9, 35–46.Google Scholar
Kirkwood, Henry William. 1977. Discontinuous noun phrases in existential sentences in English and German. Journal of Linguistics 13, 53–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kniffka, Gabriele. 1996. NP-Aufspaltung im Deutschen. Hþrth: Gabel.Google Scholar
Laenzlinger, Christopher. 2005a. Some notes on DP-internal movement. Generative Grammar in Geneva 4, 227–260.Google Scholar
Laenzlinger, Christopher. 2005b. French adjective ordering: Perspectives on DP-internal movement types. Lingua 115, 645–689.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landau, Idan. 2006. Chain resolution in Hebrew V(P)-fronting. Syntax 9, 32–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, M. Paul, Simons, Gary F. & Fennig, Charles D. (eds.). 2018. Ethnologue: Languages of the world, 19th edn. Dallas, TX: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com (accessed 13 December 2018).Google Scholar
Lobeck, Anne. 1995. Ellipsis: Functional heads, licensing, and identification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
López, Luis. 2009. A derivational syntax for information structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Makasso, Emmanuel-Moselly. 2010. Processus de relativisation en basàá: de la syntaxe à la prosodie. ZAS Papers in Linguistics 53, 145–158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mathieu, Éric. 2004. Split-DPs and complex predication. Ms., University College London.Google Scholar
Mathieu, Éric & Sitaridou, Ionna. 2005. Split wh-constructions in classical and Modern Greek: A diachronic perspective. In Batllori, Montserrat, Hernanz, Maria-Lluïsa, Picallo, Carme & Roca, Francesc (eds.), Grammaticalization and parametric variation, 236–250. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mchombo, Sam. 2006. Linear order constraints on split NPS in Chichewa. ZAS Papers in Linguistics 43,143–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mchombo, Sam, Morimoto, Yukiko & Féry, Caroline. 2005. Partitioning discourse information: A case of Chichewa split constituents. In Butt, Miriam & King, Tracy Holloway (eds.), Proceedings of the LFG ’05 Conference, 271–293. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Merchant, Jason. 1998. Pseudosluicing: Elliptical clefts in Japanese and English. In Alexiadou, Artemis, Fuhrhop, Nanna, Law, Paul & Kleinhenz, Ursula (eds.), ZAS Working Papers in Linguistics 10, 88–112. Berlin: Zentrum fur Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft.Google Scholar
Merchant, Jason. 2001. The syntax of silence: Sluicing, islands and the theory of ellipsis . New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Merchant, Jason. 2004. Fragments and ellipsis. Linguistics & Phylosophy 27, 661–738.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moro, Andrea. 1997. The raising of predicates: Predicative noun phrases and the theory of clause structure. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moro, Andrea. 2000. Dynamic antisymmetry. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Nolda, Andreas. 2007. Die Thema-Integration: Syntax und Semantik der “gespaltenen Topikalisierung” im Deutschen. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.Google Scholar
Obenauer, Hans-Georg. 1976. Etudes de la syntaxe interrogative du frangais. Tübingen: Niemeyer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Obenauer, Hans-Georg. 1983. Une quantification non-canonique: La quantification à distance. Langue Française 58, 66–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ott, Dennis. 2011. Local instability: The syntax of split topics. Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Ott, Dennis. 2012. Local instability: Split topicalization and quantifier float in German. Berlin: De Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ott, Dennis. 2015a. Symmetric merge and local instability: Evidence from split topics. Syntax 18, 157–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ott, Dennis. 2015b. Connectivity in left-dislocation and the composition of the left periphery. Linguistic Variation 15.2, 225–290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pafel, Jürgen. 1996. Kinds of extraction from noun phrases. In Lutz, Uli & Pafel, Jürgen (eds.), On extraction and extraposition in German, 145–177. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pittner, Karin. 1995. Alles Extraktion oder was? Zur Distanzstellung von Quantoren im Deutschen. Papiere zur Linguistik 1, 27–41.Google Scholar
Puig Waldmüller, Estela. 2006. Wörteri stehen da einigei : On nominal split topicalization in non-standard Viennese German. MA thesis, Pompeu Fabra University.Google Scholar
Reinhart, Tanya. 1981. Pragmatics and linguistics: An analysis of sentence topics. Philosophica 27, 53–94.Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. In Haegeman, Liliane (eds.), Elements of grammar, 289–330. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 2004. The structure of CP and IP: The cartography of syntactic structures . Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ross, John Robert. 1967. Constraints on variables in syntax. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Ross, John Robert. 1969. Guess who? In Binnick, Robert I., Davison, Alice, Green, Georgia M., & Morgan, Jerry L. (eds.), Papers from the Fifth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 252–286. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Sekerina, A. Irina. 1997. The syntax and processing of scrambling constructions in Russian. Ph.D. dissertation, The City Univerity of New York.Google Scholar
Tamioka, Satoshi. 2010. Contrastive topics operate on speech acts. In Zimmermann, Malte & Féry, Caroline (eds.), Information structure: Theoretical, typological and experimental perspectives, 115–138. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tappe, Hans-Thilo. 1989. A note on split topicalization in German. In Bhatt, Christa, Löbel, Elisabeth, & Schmidt, Claudia Maria (eds.), Syntactic phrase-structure phenomena in noun phrases and sentences, 159–179. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Hoof, Hanneke. 2006. Split topicalization. In Everaert, Martin & van Riemsdijk, Henk C. (eds.), The Blackwell companion to syntax, vol. 4, 408–462. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
van Riemsdijk, Henk [C.] 1989. Movement and regeneration. In Benincà, Paola (ed.), Dialect variation and the theory of grammar, 105–136. Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar