S-O-V-X Constituent Order and Constituent Order Alternations in West African Languages

Creissels, Denis

doi:10.3765/bls.v31i2.3189

Cited by 9 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…The opposite direction of change is, however, proposed in Heine and Reh (1984), Claudi (1993Claudi ( , 1994, Heine and Claudi (2001); the evidence presented in Creissels (2005) suggests, in its turn, that the SOVX word order pattern has to be reconstructed to Proto-Mande. I cannot discuss here the implications of the present analysis for the reconstruction of word order in Proto-Mande; see Nikitina (in preparation).…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 78%

“…Mande languages are famous for their typologically unusual SOVX word order pattern, which is not commonly found outside of West Africa (Creissels 2005;Creissels et al 2008: 129). In Mande, this pattern is very rigid: verbs are preceded by their subject and object (if there is one), while all other arguments must follow the verb, together with adjuncts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

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The syntax of postpositional phrases in Wan, an “SOVX” language

Nikitina

2009

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In the study of word order typology, the SOVX word order pattern of Mande is often viewed as exceptional and explained diachronically as a "type in transition". This paper argues against that view based on analysis of the sentence structure of Wan (Southeastern Mande). I show that the SOVX word order of Wan is a consequence of an unusual syntactic behavior of postpositional arguments, which do not form a syntactic constituent with their verb but instead appear in a fixed position outside of the VP. The analysis has typological implications, suggesting that the SOVX pattern of this kind should be treated separately from types where PP arguments are syntactically dependent on their verb.

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Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 78%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

The syntax of postpositional phrases in Wan, an “SOVX” language

Nikitina

2009

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“…Bambara is a language the HDP setting and TDP micro settings of which make it resemble a mirror image of Mandarin. According to Koopman (1992) and Creissels (2005), its word order is rigid and has the pattern depicted in (62) and (63):…”

Section: Bambaramentioning

confidence: 99%

Parameter Preservation at the Syntax-PF Interface: The Ba Construction Revisited

Shu

2018

Studies in Chinese Linguistics

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In this paper, I argue for an analysis that treats the ba construction in Chinese as a case of shape preservation-induced movement structure. Specifically, the robust preverbal adverbial and PP expressions and the mandatory ba-DP movement in ditransitive structures are both derived from a violable head directionality macroparameter under the Symmetrical Syntax Hypothesis, which allows directionality parameters to examine word order throughout the derivation. In addition to being able to capture the parallel syntactic properties of Scandinavian object shift, this account receives further empirical support from word order facts of Archaic Chinese and Bambara.

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“…These properties include strict SAuxOVX word order (Dryer and Gensler 2005;Creissels 2005;Nikitina 2009), clause-external postpositional phrases (Nikitina 2008), formally identical transitive and possessive constructions (Innes 1967), and the absence of double-object constructions (Creissels 2005). I would like to focus on the first two properties which are crucial for my analysis of tone in GK.…”

Section: Some Syntactic Properties Of Mande Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%