Contrastive topic in Eastern Cham

منو

" Contrastive topic in Eastern Cham "
Baclawski, Kenneth

Document Type	:	AL
Record Number	:	940905
Doc. No	:	LA3hp0s863
Language of Document	:	English
Main Entry	:	Baclawski, Kenneth
Title & Author	:	Contrastive topic in Eastern Cham [Article]\ Baclawski, Kenneth
Title of Periodical	:	Berkeley Papers in Formal Linguistics
Volume/ Issue Number	:	1/1
Date	:	2018
Abstract	:	This paper claims that the form hu marks contrastive topic in Eastern Cham (Austronesian: Vietnam) by means of its other uses as an existential closure and verum focus marker. The existential closure use closely tracks with the form described in Bura (Chadic: Nigeria) by Zimmermann (2007). The verum focus use is largely parallel to the form có in Vietnamese (e.g. Tran 2016). It is proposed that an extension of verum focus semantics adapted to the syntactic distribution of the existential marker gives rise to contrastive topic marking. Finally, it is noted that contrastive topics remain in situ, unlike non-contrastive topics, which undergo topicalization to the left periphery.