Peranakan Javanese (PNJ) is a relatively undescribed variety of Javanese spoken primarily by ethnic Chinese native speakers of Javanese in the city of Semarang in Central Java (Indonesia). PNJ makes a structural distinction between auxiliaries and main verbs. Auxiliaries are unique in that they undergo optional head movement to C. Not only do single auxiliaries move to C, as in familiar languages, but sequences of two or three auxiliaries can move to C as well. Significantly, the order of the moved auxiliaries is always the same as the order in their unmoved position. The distribution of auxiliaries in PNJ is predicted if a ‘tucking in’ (Richards 1997) analysis of head movement similar to that of Collins (2002) is adopted. The PNJ facts are of special interest not only because they are an example of an additional language/construction that shows the distribution expected on the basis of ‘tucking in’, but also because PNJ provides evidence that helps to distinguish between a head movement analysis and the ‘standard’ version of the remnant movement analysis, in which adverbs occupy fixed positions in the clause. It is quite difficult to distinguish between these approaches empirically, so the PNJ auxiliary facts are important in this regard.
ASYMMETRY There exists a cross-linguistic asymmetry in availability of discourse items among adjunct clauses between because-clauses on one hand, and temporal clauses and if-clauses on the other (see examples (1) for English obviously , (2) for German ja and (3) for Japanese wa; see Hooper and Thompson 1973, Tenny 2002, Sawada and Larson 2004 among others for the same type of asymmetry with other constructions in other languages). (1) a. Mary is upset because obviously John doesn't love her. (unambiguous; cf. (4)) b. * Mary got upset when obviously she failed the exam. (English) (2) a. Maria Maria ist isä rgerlich, angry, weil because John John ja JA sie her nicht not liebt love 'Maria is angry, because John JA doesn't love her.' b. *
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