Where's the topic in Zulu?

Abstract

This article provides a detailed investigation of the prosody and syntax of dislocation in Durban Zulu, an Nguni Bantu language spoken in South Africa. With focus elements obligatorily appearing in an immediately after the verb position, non-focused elements within a verb phrase have to be right-or leftdislocated. We discuss the asymmetries between right-and left-dislocation, showing that only left-dislocated elements can be topics. We argue that aside from a pre-subject Topic position, there is also a Topic position between the subject and the verb phrase. The prosodic phrasing cues in Zulu show that both the CP and the νP phases play a crucial role in determining the alignment with Intonational Phrases.

(In)variability in the Samoan syntax/prosody interface and consequences for syntactic parsing

“…If it turns out that 'information structure' determines the placement of some H-tones in Samoan, then if these principles are encoded in syntactic structure (e.g., Cheng & Downing, 2009;Kavari et al, 2012), it would require assessing how it could be implemented. Given a precise syntactic account of the view of information structure described in Calhoun (2017), and assuming that the generalizations stated there fit the data, we would assess if we could encode her proposed generalization: That H-tones occur at the edges of incomplete information units because phonological phrases map onto theme and rheme units.…”

3. Locating the Bantu conjoint/disjoint alternation in a typology of focus marking

“…(Downing and Pompino-Marshall 2013: 661) Since Chichewa, unlike other Bantu languages, also does not have a syntactic IAV position or conjoint/disjoint verb forms, focus is not marked in this example. Furthermore, Cheng and Downing (2009) argue that even in Bantu languages which exhibit a focus-related word order change -such as the use of the IAV position in Zulu -underlyingly, word order change is not directly related to prosodic prominence, although the focused constituent may attract prosodic marking by virtue of being phrase-final. In (10), the focused phrase is VP-final, and the following NP ínkukhu 'chicken' is right-dislocated, as indicated by the co-referential object marker on the verb form.…”

The syntax-phonology mapping of intonational phrases in complex sentences: A flexible approach

“…Downing's principles require alignment in only one direction, namely, his formulation is in the direction of syntax-to-prosody, rather than prosody-to-syntax. It is customary to separate syntax-to-prosody and prosody-to-syntax mapping constraints (Cheng & Downing 2009;Selkirk 2009Selkirk , 2011Myrberg 2010Myrberg , 2013, but these proposals do not actually treat them differently. In (6) below, we propose that while root-clauses have a privileged status from the perspective of syntax-to-prosody mapping, all clauses are equal in prosody-to-syntax mapping.…”