Marking focus in Chatino

Abstract

Abstract. This paper presents and analyzes new data from the officially endangered language Chatino. We investigate the behavior of a Chatino preposition, jj?j, which is sometimes found preceding direct objects. Its patterning, with respect to when it will and when it will not precede a direct object, has so far eluded characterization. Using both natural discourse and elicited data, we examine and reject hypotheses ofjj?j's occurrence based on various properties of the direct object: animacy, specificity, thematic role, 3 ~ 2 advancement (i.e., the marked direct objects are underlyingly indirect objects). We propose an analysis in whichjj?j marks the discourse focus. We argue that the Chatino data support Lambrecht's ( 1994) position that focus is nonidentical with "new information", and that the Chatino data necessitate an expansion of the definition of focus beyond the propositional level. Our analysis incorporates a disambiguating function of jj?j to separate the subject and object when they are potentially parsed as a single NP.

Objects and Information Structure

“…In Chatino (Zapotecan), described in Waksler (2000, 2002), nonpronominal objects are optionally preceded by the preposition jįPį. Carleton and Waksler (2002) argue in detail that the use of the preposition is determined by the information structure role of the object. They claim that jįPį marks an object as focused, perhaps on the basis of the (in our view, incorrect) assumption that a clause cannot contain more than one topic; however, they observe that their analysis necessitates a wholesale recasting of the notion of focus in order to account for the fact that the relevant referent is already present in the previous discourse.…”

“…As mentioned above, nonreferential (nonspecific) NPs are impossible as topics, and the postposition is impossible on such objects. As for specific objects, Carleton and Waksler (2002) further argue that the function of jįPį is to "zoom in one character", that is, to bring the object referent to the addressee's attention. They observe that the preposition signals to the addressee how to identify "a location in the discourse model where the speaker wants to bring the centre of the addressee's attention".…”

“…This indicates that this fruit is under discussion when (37b) is produced and corresponds to the secondary topic. Carleton and Waksler (2002) also discuss example (38), which appears in a context in which both the subject and the object are under discussion; in this example, the object receives topic marking. 'Hence they fear (those) bad things/creatures.'…”

“…Carleton and Waksler (2002) also note that objects may be marked when disambiguation is needed between a complex subject consisting of two words, on the one hand, and the subject and the object, on the other hand. We do not address such cases here.…”

Differential Object Marking (DOM) (forthcoming)

“…Dalrymple and Nikolaeva analyse the correlation between DOM and the secondary topic role in Zenzontepec Chatino (Carleton and Waksler 2002). Chatino is an Oto-Manguean language with a VSO basic word order.…”