Object left-dislocation, topicalization and the
syntax-phonology mapping of intonation phrases in
Bàsàá
1
Fatima Hamlaoui1 & Emmanuel-Moselly Makasso2
ZAS, Berlin; 2 Centre National d’Education-MINRESI, Yaoundé
Talk given the 06/13/2013
Introduction
Over the past few decades, a number of studies have argued that the speech flow
is organized into a finite set of hierarchically organized phonological domains more
or less reflecting the syntactic constituency (a.o. Selkirk, 1978, 1984; Nespor and
Vogel, 1982, 1986). Above the word level, two prosodic levels are assumed : the
phonological phrase and the intonation phrase. If it is rather widely accepted that
the phonological phrase is formed in relation to syntactic domains, that is lexical
XPs (a.o. Truckenbrodt, 1999, 2007; Selkirk, 2011; Ito and Mester, 2011) or spellout domains (a.o. Dobashi, 2003; Ishihara, 2007; Kratzer and Selkirk, 2007), defining (identifying the basis for) the intonation phrase has been a more problematic
entreprise. Not only syntactic but semantic and pragmatic factors have been argued
to play a role (e.g. Sense-Unit-Condition (Selkirk, 1984) and speech acts/commamarked constituents (Selkirk, 2005)). The notion of ‘syntactic clause’ has long
been taken to be the basis of Intonation Phrases (a.o. Downing, 1970; Emonds,
1970, 1976). It has been brought back to the forefront in the recent literature,
with Optimal Theoretic constraints (Prince and Smolensky, 2004) requiring Alignment/Wrapping of ‘vPs/IPs, TPs’/‘CPs’/‘ForcePs’ with intonation phrases (a.o.
Truckenbrodt, 2005, 2007; Zerbian, 2007a; Cheng and Downing, 2009). The notion of clause is also central in the recent Match Theory (Selkirk, 2011), where
M ATCH C LAUSE is defined as follows :
(1)
M ATCH C LAUSE
A clause in syntactic constituent structure must be matched by a corresponding prosodic constituent, call it ι, in phonological representation.
The main aim of this talk is to address what is ‘a central question for [...] any
theory of the syntactic-prosodic constituency relation’ : ‘the choice of the constituents that figure in the correpondence constraints’ and particularly how to best
1
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Prosody/Syntax Bàsàa LD
characterize the notion of ‘clause’ in A LIGN /M ATCH constraints related to the intonation phrase, as the one given in (1) (Selkirk, 2011, 17).
In order to address this issue, we discuss a special type of left-dislocation (LD),
the ‘pseudo-passive’ found in a number of Bantu and Nilo-Saharan languages.
Bàsàa (Bantu A43 in Guthrie’s classification), the object of this talk, is one of
them. 1 First, we show that in Bàsàa, this type of LD displays the type of prosody
observed in a number of Romance, Germanic and Bantu languages : an intonation break separates the left-dislocated NP from the remainder of clause. Second
we discuss a number of syntactic properties of this type of LD and general properties of the languges that attribute them a ‘pseudo-passive’ value. We argue that
pseudo-passive LD is different from the oft-discussed ‘aboutness’ LD (also called
‘hanging topics’) found in Romance, in German and in many Bantu languages.
[This is not yet explicitly shown here, but the idea is that analyses in terms of
adjunction to the root-clause, location of the topic under a functinal projection in
the C-domain or movement and ellipsis analyses of dislocation fail to capture the
basic properties of pseudo-passive left-dislocation]. Finally, if the alternative syntactic analysis we propose is on the right-track, we need more flexibility than in
the recent syntax/prosody mapping approaches to account for the phrasing found
in Bàsàa. We argue that the needed flexibility is found in the approach offered by
Szendrői (2001), where the size of the intonation phrase basically depends on the
largest overt extended projection of the verb.
1
Part 1 : The prosody of Bàsàa left-dislocation
Bàsàa is an SVO language. Like most Bantu languages, it is a tonal language
which contrasts two level tones, H(igh) and L(ow) on lexical stems. 2 On the surface, Bàsàa displays five pitch levels. H, L, ŤH (downstepped High), HL and LH.
Vowel length is phonemic. According to Hyman (2003), there are two major tone
rules in this language :
– High Tone Spread (HTS), by which a H - L sequence becomes H - H
– Falling Tone Simplification (FTS), by which a HL - H sequence becomes H
- ŤH
In ongoing work with Gjersoe and Makasso, we argue that the domain of application of HTS is the phonological phrase (= lexical XPs). Under this view, HTS
shows that in a simple SVO sentence, Bàsàa displays the following phonological
phrasing : (S)φ (V O)φ . This is briefly illustrated in (2) (see Gjersoe, Hamlaoui,
Makasso, forth).
1. The second author of this talk is a native speaker of Bàsàá and all the statements made here
reflect his judgments. Bàsàá is not exempt of dialectal variation and other Bàsàá speakers might have
different judgements. From Hyman (2003, footnote 37) it seems that in some dialects of Bàsàá it is
acceptable to demote an agent and express it by means of the preposition ni in our ‘neutro-passive’
case. Here, this alternative is marginally acceptable with instruments.
2. We consider noun class prefixes to be underlyingly toneless here.
2
Bantu 5 Paris
(2)
Talk given the 06/13/2013
ǹ-tÉhÉ áÓÓNgÉ
áÓ-áá-sô.
sóGól
à
1-grand-father SM1 pst1-see 2-children 2pro-2conn-all
‘The grand father saw all the children.’
Typically, a high tone on the last mora of the subject does not spread onto the
first mora of the verb complex (the agreement marker) (sóGól à → *sóGól á). In
contrast, HTS applies between the verb and the phrase that immediately follows it,
here /áOONgÉ/ (→ [áÓÓNgÉ]).
HTS fails to apply between the two objects of a ditransitive verb, indicating
that Bàsàa does not wrap the VP into one phonological phrase. The following phonological phrasing is observed in (3) : (S)φ (V OI)φ (OD)φ .
(3)
sóGól
à ǹ-sÓmb mááNgÉ Bìtámb.
grand-father sm1 pst1-buy child shoes
‘The grand-father bought the child shoes.’ (→ *mááNgÉ Bítámb)
The domain of application of FTS is more important to the present study. As shown
in (4) the domain of application of this rule is larger than the phonological phrase.
(4)
máNgòlò.
áÒÒNgÉ
áÓ-áá-só
Ťáá ḿ-áára
2-children 2pro-2conn-all sm2 pst1-pick.up 6-mangoes
‘All the children picked up the mangoes.’
HTS applies within the phrase /áÒÒNgÉ áÓ-áá-só/ creating a falling tone on the
last mora of this phrase [áÒÒNgÉ áÓ-áá-sô]. This is visible in (2). Whenever this
phrase is in subject position, FTS applies (áÒÒNgÉ áÓ-áá-sô áá → áÒÒNgÉ áÓ-áá-só
Ťáá). In the prosodic hierarchy adopted in the present work (Intonation phrase (ι)
> Phonological Phrase (φ) > Prosodic Word (ω)), the domain of application of
FTS is taken to be the intonation phrase : [(S)φ (V O)φ ]ι . FTS also applies between
the two objects of a ditransitive verb, as illustrated in (5), indicative of the phrasing
[(S)φ (V OI)φ (OD)φ ]ι .
(5)
sóGól
à
ǹ-tí
áÓÓNgÉ
áÓ-áá-só
Ťndáp.
grand-father SM1 pst1-give 2-children 2pro-2conn-all 9-house
‘The grand-father gave all the children a house.’
Let us now turn to the prosody of LD. Left-dislocation of XPs is a common syntactic process by which a syntactic phrase is located – in purely descriptive sense
– in the ‘left-periphery’ of the clause. More or less obligatorily, depending on
the language and the LD-XP, the left-dislocated phrase can be resumed by a pronoun/marker within the clause (either in its canonical position or attached to the
verb, depending on the language). It has often been observed that the left-dislocated
phrase forms a separate prosodic unit from the rest of the clause. By way of illustration, this is the case in Romance languages (a.o., Frascarelli, 2000; Frascarelli
and Hinterhölzl, 2007; de Cat, 2007; Feldhausen, 2008), in Germanic (a.o., Frey,
2004, 2005), as well as in many Bantu languages (see a.o. Downing, 2011, and re3
Hamlaoui & Makasso
Prosody/Syntax Bàsàa LD
ferences therein). As illustrated in (6), Bàsàa also displays the pattern : additionally
from forming its own phonological phrase (displayed by the absense of HTS between the LD-XP and the subject), it is separated from the subject by an intonation
break preventing FTS to apply.
(6)
áÒÒNgÉ
áÓ-áá-sô
sóGól
à ǹ-tÉhÉ áÓ.
2-children 2pro-2conn-all 1-grand-father sm1 pst1-see 2them
Lit : ‘All the children, the grand-father saw them.’
We take this evidence to indicate the following phrasing of simple clauses with
a left-dislocated object : [ (LD-XP)φ [(S)φ (V O)φ ]ι ]ι . It is worth noting that the
intonation break separating the fronted-object from the verb is not obligatorily realized by a pause (statistics to come).
Let us now turn to the syntax of LD in Bàsàa.
2
Part 2 : The syntax of Bàsàa LD
In terms of basic word order, Bàsàa is no different from the common SVO pattern of Bantu languages, with recipient preceding patient in double object constructions. We will show here that it differs from many well-discussed (Eastern/Southern)
Bantu languages in that it shows a connection between LD and passive voice.
Many Bantu languages display passive morphology, as illustrated in the example
(7) from Swahili :
(7)
barua hii
i-li-andik-w-a
na Juma
9-letter dem-9 sm9-pst-write-pass-fv by 1-Juma
‘This letter was written by Juma.’ Swahili (‘full’) passive
As illustrated in (8)b, Bàsàa has a passive affix too. The passive morpheme however reduces the valency of the verb (suppression of the agent), as shown by the
ungrammaticality of (8)c.
(8)
a.
síNgá ì
n-ÃÉ tólò
9-cat SM9 pst1-eat 1-mouse
‘The cat ate the mouse.’ Active
b. tòlò
à
n-ÃéBâ.
1-mouse SM1 pst1-eat-pass.
‘The mouse was eaten.’ Neutro-Passive
c. *tòlò
à
n-ÃéBâ
nì síNá.
1-mouse SM1 pst1-eat-pass by cat.
‘The mouse was eaten by the cat.’ ‘full’-Passive
The grammatical alternative to (8)c is given in (9). It consists in ‘foregrounding’
the patient by left-dislocating it.
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Bantu 5 Paris
(9)
Talk given the 06/13/2013
tòlò
síNgá ì
n-ÃÉ ñÉ
1-mouse 9-cat SM9 pst1-eat it
‘The mouse was eaten by the cat.’ Pseudo-Passive
Let us have a look again at the example (6) repeated below for convenience.
LD is actually ambiguous between a passive-like reading and a contrastive reading.
(6)
áÒÒNgÉ
áÓ-áá-sô
sóGól
à ǹ-tÉhÉ áÓ.
2-children 2pro-2conn-all 1-grand-father sm1 pst1-see 2them
Lit : ‘All the children, the grand-father saw them.’
Equi : ‘All the children were seen by the grand-father.’ or ‘All the children,
the grand-father saw (not all the adults).’
In order to disambiguate this sentence, a pronoun can be added between the LD-XP
and the subject. This is illustrated in (10). In this configuration, only the contrastive
reading is available :
(10)
áÒÒNgÉ
áÓ-áá-sô
áÓ sóGól
à ǹ-tÉhÉ áÓ.
2-children 2pro-2conn-all them 1-grand-father sm1 pst1-see 2them
Lit : ‘All the children them, the grand-father saw them.’
Equi : ‘All the children, the grand-father saw (not all the adults).’
This pseudo-passive strategy is not available with pronouns referring to speechact participants (1rst and 2nd person) : they can be the subject of a neutro-passive,
but if they are left-dislocated in an active sentence, then only the contrastive reading
obtains. The latter pattern is illustrated in (11).
(11)
mÈ mama à ǹlémbél
mÉ ǹlámb (wÈ à lémbél
wÉ tSÒBí).
I mother sm1 pst-cook-appl me meat (you sm1 cook-appl you fish)
Equi : ‘For me, Mom cooked meat (while for you, she cooked fish).’ / * ‘I
was cooked meat by Mom (and you were cooked fish (by her)).’
The pseudo-passive use of LD is not specific to Bàsàa. A recent study by Bostoen and Mundeke (2011) shows that the Bantu language Mbuun (Bantu B87) also
distinguishes two types of LDs, one of them being a pseudo-passive. Resumption
is optional in pseudo-passive LD (except for speech act participant, for which it is
obligatory), and obligatory in the other type of [contrastive ?] LD.
(12)
ba-án taar o-á-(bá-)bol
2-child father sm1-pres-(om2-)beat
‘The children are beaten by father.’ Mbuun passive OSV
(13)
a.
b.
taar o-á-pa
nkáb i-kOOn.
father sm1-pres-give beggar 5-banana
‘Father gives the beggar a banana.’
nkáb i-kOOn taar o-á-(lá-)mó-pa
beggar 5-banana father sm1-pres-(om5-)om1-give
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Hamlaoui & Makasso
c.
Prosody/Syntax Bàsàa LD
‘Father gives the beggar a banana.’
i-kOOn nkáb taar o-á-lá-(mó-)pa
5-banana beggar father sm1-pres-om5-(om1-)give
‘The banana, the beggar is given it by father.’ Mbuun non-pseudopassive LD
From what we know so far, it seems that resumption is more obligatory in
the Bàsàa pseudo-passive than in its Mbuun counterpart but more investigations,
probably corpus-based, are needed.
From a more general perspective, ‘pseudo-passives’ (= a passive meaning without actual passive morphology) seem to be a common phenomenon in Bantu
languages. The other types of transitive pseudo-passives that have been reported –
the impersonal passive and the subject-object reversal – are respectively illustrated
in (14) from Kula and Marten (2010) and in (16) from Kimenyi (1980). To the
best of our knowledge, the impersonal pseudo-passives have also been reported for
Lunda by Kawasha (2007), who mentions that the same construction has been reported for Luvale, KiKaonde, Luchazi and Kimbundu (see references in Kawasha’s
paper). The subject-object reversal is often discussed in connection to Dzamba, Kinande and Kirundi (which is part of the same language as Kinyarwanda) see e.g.
Ura (1999) for references).
(14)
a.
b.
bá-alí-ly-a
ífy-ákulya (ku mu-mbúlu)
sm2-pst-eat-fv 7-food
by 3-wild.dog.
‘The food was eaten by the wild dog.’
Ify-ákulya bá-alí-ly-a
(ku mu-mbúlu)
7-food
sm2-pst-eat-fv by 3-wild.dog.
‘The food was eaten by the wild dog. Bemba ba-(‘impersonal’-)
passive
In the impersonal pseudo-passive, the agent is demoted and appears as an oblique.
The verb displays a default subject agreement in class 2 (somehow agentive compared to default/expletive agreement in locative classes found in a number of other
impersonal sentences in some Bantu languages). The patient is realized as an object, either in situ or fronted (with or without object resumption depending on its
class/on the language). In passing, Mbuun also has an impersonal passive, but a
major difference with Bemba is that the agent is disallowed from being introduced
as an oblique :
(15)
a.
b.
mo-íb o-á-pic
í-lÓN O-ma-in
1-child sm1-pres-throw 5-dish loc-6-ground
‘The child throws the dish on the ground.’
i-lON ba-á-lá-pic
O-ma-in
5-dish sm2-pres-om5-throw loc-6-ground
‘The dish is thrown on the ground (by someone).’ Mbuun ba-(‘impersonal’)
passive
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Bantu 5 Paris
Talk given the 06/13/2013
In the subject-object reversal, the patient appears preverbally and subject-agrees
with the verb, while the agent follows the verb, but is not marked as an oblique.
(16)
Igitabo ki-som-a
umuhuûngu
7-book sm7-read-asp 1-boy
‘The book is being read by the boy.’ Kinyarwanda OVS
Going back to Bàsàa, several questions arise :
– Considering that Bàsàa has passive morphology, how come LD of the object
is used to express a passive meaning instead of demoting the agent (making it
an oblique) and realizing the object of the active as the subject of the passive
verb (as seen in Swahili, French or English for instance) ?
– Is the pseudo-passive left dislocation underlyingly the same structure as the
aboutness LD (‘hanging-topic’ in Frey (2005)’s terminology) reported in Romance/Germanic languages ?
The answer to these questions is, in our view, crucial in reaching a better understanding of the dimensions along which Bantu languages vary.
2.1
LD and Passive, some contextual syntax
In our view, the neutro-passive and the pseudo-passive left-dislcation observed
in Bàsàa are consitent with a general requirement of the grammar of this language
that the grammatical subject encode the highest argument available on the thematic hierarchy. As discussed in Hamlaoui & Makasso (2012/forth) , Bàsàa displays
little, if none, inversion structures as the ones often discussed for Bantu languages
outside of the Northwest area.
– General lack of inversion structures (no post-verbal logical subject, even
right-dislocated)
– No locative subject markers/no dummy subjects
– Subject focusing in situ
– Reverse clefts (i.e. Focus Copula Background / *Copula Focus Background)
Verbs that tend to take an expletive pronoun/subject-marker in other languages
display some sort of dummy (thematic-like) lexical subject. This is illustrated with
the data in (17) to (20) from Hamlaoui & Makasso (2012/forth) :
(17)
nǑp à-ńŤnÓ.
1-rain SM1-PRES-rain
Lit : ‘The rain rains.’ (= ‘It is raining’)
(18)
(yǑm) í-ńŤnÉnÉ
lÉ (...)
(7-thing) SM7-PRES-show that
Lit : ‘The thing shows that (...)’ (= ‘It seems that’)
(19)
(yǑm) í-ńŤléNá
lÉ (...)
(7-thing) SM7-PRES-make that
Lit : ‘The thing makes that (...)’ (=‘It happens that’)
7
Hamlaoui & Makasso
(20)
Prosody/Syntax Bàsàa LD
(yǑm) í-ńŤtàGáÉ
lÉ (...)
(7-thing) SM7-PRES-make that
Lit : ‘The thing makes that (...)’ (= ‘It happens that’)
From what we know so far, Bàsàa is a rigid SVO language, with an even stricter
syntax/semantics linking/mapping than configurational languages like English. In
this sense, it is very similar to Lango, a Nilo-Saharan language spoken in Uganda
described by Noonan (1977, 1992) as an ‘indirect role marking language’. Both
languages use ‘grammatical roles as subject and direct object as part of [a] strategy for indicating semantic roles, such as agent and patient (...) Word order, which
is fairly rigid, is the primary device used to indicate grammatical roles in simple
sentences’ (Noonan, 1992, 119). Lango has no morphological passive and it happens that it also displays a functional-passive LD. This structure, called a ‘passiveanalog’ in the literature on Lango, is illustrated in (21) to (23). Resumption is only
obligatory for first and second person pronouns (like in Mbuun) and complement
of prepositions, as visible from (21) and (22). In contrast, non-human direct objects
never display a resumptive pronoun, as illustrated in (23)
(21)
yín dákô òmìyí
dyÈl.
you woman 3s-give-perf-2s goat
‘you were given a goat by the woman.’ Lango pseudo-passive
(22)
án rwòt òmìrò
dyàN bòt´@.
I king 3s-give-perf cow to-1s
‘I was given the cow by the king.’
(23)
àpwô àtîn ònÈnÒ.
hare child 3s-see-perf
‘The hare was seen by the child.’
We propose that the strong requirement for the grammatical subject to encode
the highest item on the thematic hierarchy is central in distinguishing Bàsàa from
many other Bantu languages and understanding the very essence of the pseudopassive LD. This strategy encodes the lesser topical status of the agent compared
to the patient while leaving the preferred semantics/syntax mapping untouched :
the agent is encoded as the grammatical subject and the patient is encoded as the
grammatical object. In this sense, this type of LD is a non-demotional, foregrounding pseudo-passive, in the sense of Foley and van Valin (1985); Keenan and Dryer
(2007). We propose the mini-typology given in Table 1 to account for how the passive LD compares to the types of transitive (pseudo-)passives we have considered
so far.
Contrary to the pseudo-passive LD of Bàsàa and Mbuun, the types of (pseudo-)passive displayed by Swahili/English/French and Bemba involve a grammatical
demotion of the agent (from subject of the verb to oblique). Bemba differs from
8
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Talk given the 06/13/2013
F IGURE 1 – Mini-typology Transitive Passive
Swahili in that it seems to disallow actual grammatical promotion of the patient. It
optionaly foregrounds it and an expletive (agentive-like) subject-marking is found
on the verb (these observations are made by Kula and Marten (2010)). If we are
right in thinking that semantics/syntax mapping is not totally random, our account
makes the prediction that in Bemba, it should be rare to find (if they exist at all)
structures in which the subject of a transitive verb corresponds to a semantic role
lower on the semantic/thematic hierarchy than the agent, while the agent is present
and realizes a non-subject grammatical function. So far, this is corroborated by the
data available in Kula and Marten (2010).
[As suggested by the grammaticality of intransitive formal locative inversions
like the one given below, even if we are on the right track, the picture is much more
complex and more investigations are needed to make sense of the ban observed
in the Bemba transitive passives, in which a theme cannot (simply) realize the
grammatical subject.
(24)
a.
mu-n-gânda mu-alí-sńdam-a
umu-mbúulu.
18-9-house sm18-past-sleep-fv 3-wild.dog
‘In the house slept the dog.’ Bemba LI
b. *mu-n-gânda mu-alí-séndam-w-a
(na/ku umu-mbúulu)
18-9-house sm18-past-sleep-pass-fv by
3-wild.dog
‘In the house was slept (by the dog).’]
As seen in the table, we propose that the famous Kinyarwanda OVS structures display the reverse pattern : they grammaticaly promote the patient without demoting
the agent. We will come back to the case of Kinyarwanda after having discussed
the syntactic structure of Bàsàa pseudo-passive LD in more detail.
2.2
One form and two different uses ? Nope...
The question we wish to address in this part is whether the pseudo-passive
LD is structurally similar to the very common ‘aboutness’ LD we know a.o. from
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Prosody/Syntax Bàsàa LD
French (a.o. de Cat (2007) and references therein) and that seems to be attested
in many languages (see a.o. Bresnan and Mchombo (1987) for Chichewa, Zeller (2009) for Zulu, Frey (2004, 2005) for ‘hanging-topics’ in German or Frascarelli (2000); Frascarelli and Hinterhölzl (2007) for Italian and references therein).
Typically, the relation of the LD-XPs to the rest of the clause is so ‘loose’ that
they have often been considered to be ‘free-floating’ discourse topics (Bresnan and
Mchombo, 1987, 746), with the LD-XP being linked with the clitic/pronoun/object
marker through anaphoric binding. Under such an approach, hanging-topics and
pseudo-passive LD would be one form, with two different functions. It seems to us
though, that several arguments speak against this view.
Referentiality The most striking difference between the two types of LD is related to the referential status of the LD-XP. Here is a quote from de Cat (2007), which
is consistent with what we know about LD in French and in many other languages
(even, probably, some Bantu languages) : ‘Topics per se do not have quantificational properties (Rizzi, 1997). There is nonetheless the possibility that a topic might
act as an operator due to the inherent properties of the type of XP that instantiates
it. However, as is well known, quantifiers, non-generic indefinites and wh-elements
(which are standardly regarded as operators) cannot be topics (and hence cannot
be dislocated) : they do not meet the requirement that topic referents be readily
identifiable in the context. This requirement is illustrated in (25) (examples from
de Cat (2007)).’
(25)
a. *Tout
homme, il est mortel.
any/every man
he is mortal
b. *Chaque potager, il a son robinet.
each allotment it has its tap
The pseudo-passive is similar to more prototypical passives (where the most topical
item = the grammatical subject) in that non-referential expressions can be fronted.
Bostoen and Mundeke (2011) show that in Mbuun, quantificational, indefinite NPs
and even wh-phrases do not resist pseudo-passive LD :
(25)
a.
b.
(26)
a.
b.
ntaam ká-dzú-í
ndaam a-nsa
lion sm1-kill-perf some 2-antelope
‘The lion has killed some antelopes.’
ndaam a-nsa
ntaam ká-(bá-)dzú-í
some 2-antelope lion sm1-kill-perf
‘Some antelopes have been killed by the lion.’ Mbuun passive OSV
mpfúm o-á-sóól
á-swéta á-mÉs o-á-tén
á-saa
president sm1-pres-choose 2-soldier 2-one sm1-pres-refuse 2-other
‘The president chooses certain soldiers, he refuses others.’
á-swéta á-mÉs mpfúm o-á-(bá-)sóól
á-saa
2-soldier 2-one president sm1-pres-(om2)-choose 2-other
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Bantu 5 Paris
Talk given the 06/13/2013
o-á-(bá-)tén
sm1-pres-(om2-)refuse
‘Certain soldiers are chosen by the president, others are refused.’
(27)
a.
b.
mvám kábá-ker O-nkEr.
merchant neg1-do 3-thing
‘The merchant does nothing.’
O-nkÉr mvám kábá-ker.
3-thing merchant neg1-do
‘Nothing is done by the merchant.’ Mbuun passive OSV
The following examples also show that non-specific indefinite expressions can
be fronted in Bàsàa :
(28)
híŤGí ǹ-tómbá nÃèé ì
ǹnÓl
jÓ.
each 3-sheep 9-lion sm9 pst1-kill 3-it
Lit : ‘Each sheep, the lion killed it.’ / ‘Each sheep was killed by the lion.’
(29)
tÒ ǹ-tómbá wárá nÃèé ì
ǹnÓl
Ťáéé.
even 3-sheep one 9-lion sm9 pst1-kill neg
Lit : ‘no sheep, the lion killed.’ / ‘No sheep was killed by the lion.’ (more
acurately : even a sheep, the lion didn’t kill)
The French counterpart of both the above examples is ungrammatical :
(30)
*Chaque mouton, le lion l’a tué.
each sheep the lion it-has killed.
‘The lion killed each sheep.’
(31)
*Même un mouton, le lion n’a
pas tué/ne
l’a pas tué.
Even one sheep the lion neg-has not killed/neg it-has not killed
‘The lion has not even killed one sheep.’
(32)
*Aucun mouton, le lion a tué/l’a
tué.
no
sheep the lion has killed/it-has killed
‘The lion killed no sheep.’
In Mbuun, even wh-phrases can be fronted in with a pseudo-passive reading :
(33)
a.
b.
O-káár
nké ká-wó-kon ?
1-woman what sm1-pst-plant
‘What did the woman plant ?’
ńké O-káár
ká-wó-kon ?
what 1-woman sm1-pst-plant
‘What was planted by the woman ?’ Mbuun passive OSV
A unified analysis of Romance/Germanic aboutness LD and pseudo-passive
LD would have to account for this major difference between the two types. In
passing : the fact that non-referential quantificational expressions can be the subject
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Prosody/Syntax Bàsàa LD
of passive verbs and can be fronted in some Bantu and Nilo-Saharan languages
seems to question the ‘well-known’ assumption that these expressions are ‘antitopic’ or that topicality is involved in diathesis...
Anaphoricity In her paper on French LD, De Cat (p88) mentions that ‘even in
instances where the dislocated element has quantifier-like properties, the resumptive pronoun is attributed a fixed reference. The relation between the resumptive
and its antecedent is merely anaphoric and is no different to what it would be if
the antecedent was omitted’. It is not yet clear to us how to best account for this
fact, but in Bàsàa, the omission of the fronted NP does change the interpretation :
no passive reading obtains if the object of a transitive verb is only expressed as a
pronoun : the pronoun simply has an anaphoric value. Also, obviously, in the type
of LD illustrated in (28), the pronoun has a non-referential quantified expression
as an antecedent. There is thus no anaphoricity/coreference but quantifier-binding
(the pronoun covaries with the quantifier).
Discourse givenness Whereas the left-dislocated NP is in some sense normally
discourse-given or ‘already established in the discourse’ in French [although it does
not have to be for LDed-subjects], Bàsàa’s pseudo-passive LD-XP is part of an allfocus sentence. Pseudo-passive LDs can be used to answer all focus questions. This
is illustrated in (34).
(34)
A : íñùúŤkíí áÒÒNgÉ
áá jé màséé ?
why
2-children sm2 be happy
‘Why are the children happy ?’
B : rìnùní rí
NÓN
múŤmbúl màláám í pùmá.
13-birds sm13 pst1-build 6-nests 6-beautiful loc orange.tree
‘The birds have built beautiful nests on the orange tree.’
0
B : mùmbúl màláám rìnùní rí
NÓN
mÓ
í
6-nests 6-beautiful 13-birds sm13 pst1-build 6-them loc
pùmá.
orange.tree
Equi : ‘Beautiful nests have been built by the birds on the orange
tree.’
Comparing again with [colloquial] French, it seems possible to have a leftdislocated subject in an answer to an all-focus question, but clearly not an object.
This fact, in our view, also participates in bringing Bàsàa’s LD closer to genuine
passive voice in the sense that it primarily involves a change in ‘view-point’ compared the active voice. Additionally, the fact that the expression of the LD-XP is
considered optional in languages like French goes together with the idea that LD
very often targets given/non-focused XPs.
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Iterativity Another difference between Germanic/Romance LD is related to the
number of (non-contrastive) LD-XPs a sentence can contain. Typically, in Germanic/Romance LD, a sentence can contain several aboutness topics. This is illustrated for French in (35).
(35)
tu comprends Jacqueline, sa mère, la bonne,
elle la lui
you understand Jacqueline her mother the housekeeper she her to-her
refile.
gives(familiar)
Approx Equi : ‘you understand, Jacqueline’s mother gives her housekeeper to her.’ (Gadet 1989 :171)
In Rizzi (1997, 295–297)’s cartographic approach of the C-domain, TopP projections are assumed to be iterative : ‘there can be an indefinite number of topics
[...] topic phrases can undergo free recursion. From what we know so far (at least
for Bàsàa and Lango), pseudo-passive LD only allows one phrase to be fronted.
Typically, in ditransitives, either object can be left-dislocated but only one at a
time.
(36)
a.
Paul à ǹlÓŤná
Makasso ǹlámb.
Paul sm1 pst1-bring(come.with) Makasso 3-meat
‘Paul brought meat to Makasso.’
b. ǹlámb Paul à ǹlÓŤná
wÓ Makasso
meat Paul sm1 pst1-bring(come.with) 3-it Makasso
Equi : ‘The meat was brought to Makasso by Paul.’
c. Makasso Paul à ǹlÓŤná
ñÉ
ǹlámb.
Makasso Paul sm1 pst1-bring(come.with) 1-him 3-meat
Equi : ‘Makasso was brought meat by Paul.’
d. *Makasso ǹlámb Paul à ǹlÓŤná
ñÉ
ŤwÓ.
Makasso meat Paul sm1 pst1-bring(come.with) 1-him 3-it
Litt : ‘Makasso, the meat, Paul brought it to him.’
In passing : there is no mirror-image to the Bàsàa LD on the form of rightdislocation. Right-dislocation of a subject is ungrammatical in Bàsàa and rightdislocation of an object results in a sort of ‘intensive’ meaning.
(37)
síNgá ì
n-ÃÉ ñNÉ tòlò
9-cat SM9 pst1-eat it 1-mouse
Litt : ‘The cat ate it, the mouse.’
‘The cat ate some especially big mouse’ (In colloquial French : ‘Il a mangé
une de ces souris !’)
The evidence gathered so far suggests that, just like in the analyses offered for
Lango by Noonan and Bavin Woock (1978); Noonan (1992) and Woolford (1991),
and more recently by Bostoen and Mundeke (2011) for Mbuun, the Bàsàa pseudopassive LD fronts an object within the clause, still (somehow) treating it as a core13
Hamlaoui & Makasso
Prosody/Syntax Bàsàa LD
F IGURE 2 – ‘Pseudo-Passive’ OSV
argument of the verb. Our proposal is that this position is a ‘Topic’ position within
the inflectional domain, above the position hosting the grammatical subject (here
Spec,TP). 3 The structure proposed is given in Figure 2. This particular topic position is a reflex of the strong semantics/syntax restriction preventing the demotion
of the agent and forcing a ‘divorce’ (Noonan, 1992) between grammatical subject
and topic. As can be seen, for the time-being we remain agnostic as to whether the
pseudo-passive involves movement or base-generation of the fronted-XP as well as
to whether the resumptive-pronoun is a genuine pronoun or the spell out of a trace
(a variable). More investigations are needed to provide an answer to these issues.
Before turning to the syntax-phonology mapping of intonation phrases, let us
say a word about the Kinyarwanda/Kirundi OVS pseudo-passive (more to come on
this topic in a separate note. See FH’s website).
Choose your own adventure. If you are interested in comparative Bantu and
want to know more about pseudo-passives, read the next sub-section. If you are
interested in prosody and in the syntax/phonology mapping of intonation phrases,
jump directly to Section 4, the 3rd and last part of this transcript.
2.3
Connecting OSV to OVS
As stated by Bostoen and Mundeke (2011), it is worth drawing a parallel between the OSV pseudo-passive and the OVS pseudo-passive found, among other
languages, in Kinyarwanda (Kimenyi, 1980, 1988), Kirundi (Ndayiragije, 1999).
OVS sentences have several properties that show that (i) the only subject property
3. The label ‘Topic’ is really used for convenience. The label ‘pivot’ might be more appropriate,
as wh-phrases seem to be able to occupy this position too in Mbuun and it might be considered
problematic that a wh-phrase topicalizes. In some sense, what we have is a (German-like) ‘prefield’
below C, within the inflectional domain, as shown by the fact that the Bantu languages discussed
here are not V2 and that the verb can subject-agree with what’s in this particular prefield, as in
Kinyarwanda.
14
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of the preverbal object lies in its agreeing with the verb and (ii) the postverbal subject is not an object and retains subject properties. As can be seen from the Kanyok
example given in (38) (from Bostoen & Mundeke’s paper, reported to them by Timothee Mukash-Kalel), in the OVS pseudo-passive, the postverbal agent is not an
oblique-NP.
(38)
a.
b.
ba-tùw
bà-dyààdy mi-saany
2-fisherwoman sm2-eat 4-fish
‘The fisherwomen eat the fish.’
mi-saany yì-dyààdy ba-tùw
4-fish
sm4-eat 2-fisherwoman
‘The fish is eaten by the fisherwomen.’ Kanyok passive OVS
The postverbal agent can neither be left-out, nor substituted by an object marker
on the verb. As for the preverbal object, it cannot be represented only by a subject
marker on the verb. ‘NPs advanced to subject by the [S-O] reversal rule do not acquire the properties of basic subjects, such as raising, deletion under identity, and
ha-insertion ; the only subject property they acquire is verb agreement’ (Kimenyi
(1980, 145) from Morimoto (2006, 166)). Morimoto (2006) also argues that the
postverbal agent can only be seen as a postverbal grammatical subject. In her analysis, subject-object reversal is a case of topic-agreement construction, instead of
subject-agreement. From that perspective, and as stated by Bostoen & Mundeke,
the OVS pseudo-passive is ‘quite the opposite’ of the pseudo-passive LD-XP in
that, in the former the verb agrees with the topic whereas in the latter, it agrees
with the subject.
Our view of OVS is slightly different though. As already shown in Table 1, both
pseudo-passives have in common that they do not demote the agent and that they
foreground the patient (by making it clause-initial). Bàsàá and Kinyarwanda have
(at least) two things in common here : (i) SpecTP attracts the highest thematic role
rather than the most topical phrase and (ii) agreement with the verb strongly needs
a surface Spec-Head configuration. The Kinyarwanda promotion of the patient, that
is, the fact that it agrees with the verb, is a mere consequence of a strong application
of the surface Spec-Head requirement in verb agreement [if we are on the right
track, we generally expect no/very limited agreeing inversion in Kinyarwanda, just
like in Bàsàá]. 4 The main difference between the two languages here resides in
how high the verb moves. The fact that the verb moves to Topic0 in Kinyarwanda
is what leads it to agree with the topic rather than with the grammatical subject
(Configuration-based agreement wins over Role-based agreement). There is thus
a split between subjecthood (being in SpecTP) and agreement with the verb. In
other words, from what we know so far, we would not distinguish Salience-based
4. Languages with agreeing inversion (cf. Jenneke van der Val’s Bantu5 poster) would thus potentially be cases in which agreement is maintained with the item with the highest thematic role
despite the fact that on the surface it is not in a Spec-Head relation with the verb. In case of conflict,
Role-based agreement would then take priority over Configuration-based agreement in these languagues.
15
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Prosody/Syntax Bàsàa LD
F IGURE 3 – ‘Pseudo-Passive’ OVS
agreement languages (= agreement with the topic) from Role-based agreement
languages (= agreement with the highest thematic role), as proposed by Morimoto
(2006). For us, a determining argument in favor of the existence of Salience-based
agreement in Bantu would be a language in which the phrase that ‘subject’-agrees
with the verb is (i) not the highest thematic role available and (ii) topical and
(iii) has at no point in the derivation been in a Spec-Head configuration with the
verb [this could be an SVO pattern with ‘inverted’-verb-agreement with a genuine
topical non-subject or agreement with left-dislocated non-subject]. From what we
know, no such Bantu language has been reported so far.
The structure we assume for the Kinyarwanda/Kirundi OVS is shown in Figure
3 [again, for the time-being we stay agnostic as to the details of the derivation of
the OVS (movement/base-generation etc, which are important but not central to the
present discussion].
Presently, we can only speculate as to the motivation of the verb movement
to Topic. As will be discussed in more detail somewhere else, we suspect that
Kinyarwanda displays a strong affinity between focus and the right-edge of the
clause (similar to colloquial French (Hamlaoui, 2009), and to Sotho/Tswana (Zerbian, 2007b)). OVS has indeed been discussed in connection to focus on the agent
(a.o. Ndayiragije (1999)). The verb movement could be seen as a sort of altruistic
movement ensuring the alignment of the agent with the right-edge of the clause [a
frequent phenomenon in Bantu/Romance dislocation, see a.o. Cheng and Downing
(2009) on this topic), ultimately making the pseudo-passive OVS optimal to satisfy
interface requirements related to the expression of focus. As kindly reminded to
us by Denis Creissels, the passive is known for being a strategy to focus agents
in Sotho/Tswana. OVS would fullfil a similar function, without the notion of focus being directly encoded in its syntactic structure. Bàsàá (and we suspect Mbuun
too) do not display an affinity between focus and the right-edge of the clause (see
Hamlaoui & Makasso, forth, on focusing in Bàsàá).
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Informally, here is a brief list of a few simple constraints we have considered so far, that, ranked in different ways yield several of the different word order/agreement patterns discussed in the Bantu literature :
– Subject-Verb agreement : surface Spec-Head (Configuration-based) and/or
Role-based (with the Highest Thematic Role available) [≈ Baker (2008)]
– Choice of Grammatical Subject (i.e. phrase that goes to Spec,TP, agreement
with the verb is not a diagnostic) : Role-based (The Highest Thematic Role
available) and/or Salience-based (the most Topical item)
– Expressing focus : rejection-based (i.e. avoid focused-subjects) and/or attractionbased (i.e. align focus to the right of VP/TP)
– Expressing topic : topic first ?
– Availability of expletives : yes or no (e.g. Bàsàá has no expletive)
This section ends here for now. To be continued.
3
Part 3 : The syntax-phonology mapping of intonation
phrases
So far, we have discussed the prosody of left-dislocation in Bàsàá and we have
shown that the LD-XP is phrased separately from the rest of the clause. We have
then turned to the syntax of left-dislocation in Bàsàá and argued that its pseudopassive value is related to a type of dislocation that is different from the one extensively discussed in Romance/Germanic languages. We have proposed that the
fronted-XP occupies a Topic position within the inflectional domain, above TP, accounting for its intermediate status between a left-dislocated topic and the topical
subject of a passive verb.
As mentioned in our introduction, the syntactic clause is taken to be the basis
of intonation phrase formation. What syntactic projection corresponds to the root
clause is thus not a trivial issue. Although people usually seem to intuitively know
what a clause is, what is inside or outside of it, there is little consensus over how
to define a clause. Within the generative framework, a widespread view is that a
clause is a CP (Complementizer Phrase) or one of its Cartographic avatars, even
a root clause. According to this view, items that have been argued to adjoin to
the the root clause – typically left and right-dislocated phrases in Romance and
German – are considered to adjoin to CP. If there is evidence for this approach in
V2 languages like German, there is little empirical evidence for that in English,
French or in many Bantu languages. 5
In the Bantu syntax/phonology interface literature, this issue is often acknowledged by a.o. Zerbian, who assumes that the highest projection in the Bantu languages she discusses is IP (Inflection Phrase). We share Zerbian’s view on this
5. By way of illustration, French allows left-dislocation in embedded clauses. The LD-XP can
only follow the complementizer, indicating that the target position of the LD-XP is actually below C
rather than above it. Considering that a root-clause is a CP forces a non-uniform syntactic analysis
of LD-XP in declarative clauses.
17
Hamlaoui & Makasso
Prosody/Syntax Bàsàa LD
F IGURE 4 – Match Syntax/Prosody Mapping
matter. In the trees provided here, the CP level is only represented to indicate that
the type of clause we discuss can potentially be embedded.
Recent approaches to the syntax/prosody mapping of intonation phrases have
however integrated the CP projection into their mapping algorithm of intonation
phrases. As can be seen in (39), in Selkirk (2011)’s approach, the lowest intonation
phrase in a sentence corresponds to the egdes of the complement of C. On the
assumption that LD-XPs are either located in the CP domain or adjoined to the root
clause/CP, this approach does account for the fact that left-dislocated items can be
separated from the ‘standard clause’ by an intonation break. This is illustrated in
Figure 4. [We refer the interested reader to Rizzi (1997) and Selkirk (2011) for
details related to the ‘illocutionary clause’]
(39)
‘Standard clause’ vs. ‘Illocutionary clause’
1.‘The complement of the functional head Complementizer0 ’
→ CP [Comp0 [Standard clause]]CP
2.‘The higest syntactic projection of the sentence’
→ ForceP [illocutionary clause]ForceP
Cheng and Downing (2009) and Downing (2011) also base intonation phrases on
CPs. In their approach, non-selected (i.e. root, parantheticals, non-restrictive relative clauses) CPs introduce an intonation phrase break. The lack of prosodic integration of LD-XPs is related to Phase (here CP) adjunction. As illustrated in the
Figure 5, the intonation phrase is expected to embody everything that is contained
within CP. [We here ignore the break introduced by vP (the other phase) in that, in
most Bantu languages, such a break would make both the grammatical subject and
a topic be (intonation-)phrased separately from what follows, i.e. the verb]
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F IGURE 5 – Phase-based Syntax/Prosody Mapping
In both approaches, the presence of an intonation break within the inflectional
domain, as found in the Bàsàá pseudo-passive, is unexpected. Interestingly, this is
independent of ones prefered (purely theoretical) view of whether a root clause is
a CP or an IP.
On the assumption that information structure can influence prosodic phrasing,
it has been proprosed that Topics introduce intonation phrase breaks. Combined
with the above-approaches, a constraint such as the one offered by Frascarelli
(2000, 23) in (40) or more recently Feldhausen (2008) in (41), would indeed capture the correct phrasing for both LDs.
(40)
Topic Domain Hypothesis for Italian :
A Topic is mapped into its own I.
(41)
Align-Topic, Right
Align the right edge of a topic constituent to the right edge of a prosodic
[FH : intonation] phrase.
This approach is however problematic in that in all the languages discussed in this
paper, there are topical items for which the high ranking of this constraint would
wrongly predict the presence of an intonation phrase break. To give only a few
examples, this constraint would predict the presence of an intonation break :
Between a subject in SpecTP and the verb in Romance, Bantu and in English :
–In SVO sentences, in which the subject is typically topical
–In a number of inversion structures in Bantu languages that seem to allow
topical non-agents to occupy Spec,TP
–In ‘standard’ promotional/demotional passives
–In English wh-questions containing a contrastive topic (e.g. ‘I know why
19
Hamlaoui & Makasso
Prosody/Syntax Bàsàa LD
you came by, but what is John doing here ?’)
Between the phrase in SpecCP (‘the prefield’) and the verb in German root
clauses :
–In root clauses in which a non-subject immediately precedes the verb (that
is, located in SpecCP) and probably in any SVO clauses in which the subject is assumed to be in Spec,CP and the verb in C
Being aligned with an intonation phrase break does not seem to be a gereral
property of topics. Rather, it seems to be a common property of certain types of
‘fronted’, outside of their canonical position, dislocated phrases. 6 It is thus related
to the syntactic structure rather than the information structure.
A flexible approach to the syntax-prosody mapping of intonation phases that
offers the chance to capture the difference between the topics that normally phrase
separately from the ones that do not is the one offered by Szendrői (2001). In a
nutshell, in this approach, the basis for intonation phrase formation is the largest
overt extended projection of the verb [the discussion is for the time-being limited
to root clauses]. According to Grimshaw (1997, 376) : ‘An extended projection
is a unit consisting of a lexical head and its projections plus all the functional
projections erected over the lexical projection. The smallest verbal projection is VP,
but IP and CP are both extended projections of V.’ Typically, left-dislocated phrases
do not belong to the largest overt extended projection of the verb, be they within or
outside the inflectional domain, adjoined or in a specifier position. On the contrary,
the above-cited types of topics that tend not to be aligned with an intonation phrase
break sit in the Specifier position of the largest overt extented projection of the verb
(TP in English, French and many Bantu languages declaratives, standardly CP in
German declaratives) or lower in the structure. As shown in Figure 6, this approach
captures the prosody of Bàsàa pseudo-passive LD. Figure 7 shows that the same
proposal captures the intonation phrasing of a basic declarative/interrogative clause
in German. Finally, this approach makes the prediction that in OVS languages,
there should normally be no intonation break betwen O and V as shown in 8.
Acknowledgment
This research was initiated in the ANR/DFG Bantu Psyn project of Annie Rialland and Laura Downing. We are very grateful to them and to the audience at the
Bantupsyn 2012 workshop on dislocation and metatony.
Our heartful thanks go to Corneille Marius Bias, Seunghun Lee, Prof. Jacob
Mabé, Yukiko Morimoto, Juvénal Ndayiragije, Laurent Roussarie, Hubert Truckenbrodt and Robert van Valin.
Both authors were generously funded by the Alexander von Humboldt foundation.
6. This is somehow acknowledged by Feldhausen, who states : ‘A LIGN -T OP ( IC ), R, a constraint
which accounts for the obligatory right boundary of dislocations (i.e. topics)’.
20
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F IGURE 6 – Bàsàá (declarative) TP = ι
F IGURE 7 – German (declarative) CP = ι
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