Topic and Discourse Structure in West Greenlandic Agreement Constructions

The ergative-antipassive alternation in Inuktitut: Analyzed in a case of new-dialect formation

“…From another perspective, Dorais (1988: 29) proposes that the absolutive argument in each of these constructions represents the topic of the sentence, that is, the agent in the antipassive and the patient in the ergative. Similarly, Berge (2011: 273–274) claims that one key difference between the ergative and the antipassive is that the patient is a topic in the first (since it is case-marked with the absolutive) but a non-topic in the second (since it is case-marked with the instrumental). If the absolutive argument is the topic of the sentence, we could expect this argument to have the tendency to be appear again in the following sentence and to again be case-marked with the absolutive (assuming that a topic is discussed across numerous sentences).…”

Diagnosing Object Agreement vs. Clitic Doubling: An Inuit Case Study

“…The Inuit languages are a continuum of dialects from the Eskimo-Aleut language family, spoken across the North American Arctic and Greenland. The data in this article represent Kalaallisut (Greenland), based on previous work by Fortescue (1984), Bittner (1994), Berge (2011), and others, and Inuktitut (Nunavut), based on work by Beach (2011) and on my own fieldwork. 6 The Inuit languages are polysynthetic, and the order of morphemes within a word generally adheres to the Mirror Principle.…”

“…Other authors have described this distinction in terms of definiteness(Fortescue 1984, Hallman 2008, topicality(Berge 1997, Johns and Ku?erová 2017, and specificity(Manga 1996, Wharram 2003, Beach 2011.13 In contrast,Wharram (2003) presents data indicating that these arguments take widest matrix scope, for example, scope out of embedded clauses and even islands. As movement cannot occur out of islands, Wharram argues that an account based on syntactic scope is insufficient, opting instead for a choice function analysis, building on work byReinhart (1997),Kratzer (1998),Matthewson (1999), and others, though he also assumes movement of the object to Spec,TP, for reasons of case.…”

Clause dependency relations in East Greenlandic Inuit

“…However, in the structures of narratives, this dichotomy is not always so clear-cut, as shown by discourse analyses (Berge 1997, Fortescue 1984 and one concomitant, all of which depend on a clause situated much earlier in the paragraph, which is in the indicative.…”

“…Furthermore, the chaining of subordinate clauses is possible and frequent, whereas there is no such chaining of possessive noun phrases (Woodbury 1985). Moreover, word order in the possessive phrase is set, while it is flexible in the subordinate clauses, subject only to semantic or pragmatic criteria (Berge 1997).…”