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

Nikitina, Tatiana

doi:10.1075/sl.33.4.04nik

Cited by 40 publications

(11 citation statements)

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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%

“…Here I follow Nikitina (2009Nikitina ( , 2011, who argues on the bases of Wan, a Southeastern Mande language, that in Mande, while direct objects always appear inside the verb phrase, oblique arguments always following the verb never form a syntactic constituent with it. Instead, they appear outside the verb phrase.…”

Section: Clause-external Postpositional Phrasesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…My syntactic approach to GK is largely based on Nikitina's (2009Nikitina's ( , 2011 analysis of the Wan language. In this paper I focus on surface changes of tone in GK (the hɔ ̰ ɔ ̰ kwɛ̀lɛ̌ dialect).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Syntax of Tone in Guinean Kpelle

Konoshenko¹

2014

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Section: Some Syntactic Properties Of Mande Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Clause-external Postpositional Phrasesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Syntax of Tone in Guinean Kpelle

Konoshenko¹

2014

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“…Mande languages are famous for their typologically unusual word order (Creissels 2005;Nikitina 2009aNikitina , 2012. Subjects and objects precede their verb, but postpositional arguments and adjuncts follow it.…”

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confidence: 99%

Verb phrase external arguments in Mande

Nikitina

2018

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

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Mande languages are well-known for their rigid SOVX word order: verb phrases cannot accommodate postpositional phrases, and all oblique arguments must appear after the main verb. This study explores, based on data from Wan (Southeastern Mande), new evidence for syntactic constituency that is essential for developing a formal account of this typologically unusual pattern. First, I show that previously unexplored tonal evidence rules out argument raising accounts. Tone is sensitive in Wan to prosodic phrasing, which is in turn closely related to syntactic constituency; the way postpositional arguments are prosodically integrated into the clause points to their unusually high, clause-level attachment. Second, I argue against a base-generation analysis, which would require a serious modification of the Projection Principle and locality of selection. Third, an analysis based on obligatory extraposition is discussed as the remaining option in transformational frameworks. While accounting for both semantic and tonal evidence, the extraposition account has to rely on a highly unusual kind of filter to rule out all structures where a PP argument appears clause-internally. Accounts postulating such idiosyncratic filters can hardly be considered satisfying, as they merely model constraints on surface structure, without deriving them from underlying structural properties. The obligatory argument extraposition of Mande languages receives a more elegant explanation in constraint-based, surface-oriented theories, which do not need to introduce special devices to handle the basic word order of Mande languages. I illustrate this with a sketch of an account coached in the framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar.

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“…X stands for "oblique", which is any constituent (an argument or an adjunct) other than S, A and O (cf Creissels 2005, Nikitina 2009…”

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Person–number agreement on clause linking markers in Mande

Idiatov¹

2010

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Several Mande languages, viz. Jula of Samatiguila, Ko Mende, Jowulu, Yaba Southern San, and Tura, have person–number agreement on clause linking markers whose primary function, etymologically and often also synchronically, is to introduce reported discourse. Interestingly, in some of these languages the controller is not necessarily the subject of the main clause. This kind of agreement, which as such is already typologically unusual, is even more remarkable in Mande, since Mande languages have very little morphosyntactic agreement of any kind. I argue that agreement on clause linking markers in Mande is due to the fusion of originally predicative quotatives with their pronominal subjects. The agreement with non-subject controllers is semantic in origin in that a non-subject controller is necessarily also the source of the reported discourse.

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

Cited by 40 publications

References 8 publications

The Syntax of Tone in Guinean Kpelle

The Syntax of Tone in Guinean Kpelle

Verb phrase external arguments in Mande

Person–number agreement on clause linking markers in Mande

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