Reversed ang -inversion and narrow focus marking in Tagalog

Bibliographic Data

ID20381065
AuthorsPatrick Nuhn (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume43
Issue2
Pages469-497
Publication date2019-11-13
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueStudies in Language (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0378-4177 • E-ISSN: 1569-9978
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/sl.18034.nuh
OpenAlexW2980375205
LanguageEN
References cited10

In Tagalog, an argument that is in narrow focus can be fronted to the clause initial position, deviating from the default verb-initial word order. This so-called ang -inversion has been claimed to be obligatory ( Nagaya, 2007 ) or at least the go-to strategy ( Kaufman, 2005 ) of encoding narrow focus. There is, however, an alternative that has so far received little attention in the literature: reversed ang- inversion. Structurally, this construction can be understood as the result of combining two inversion constructions: ang -inversion and ay -inversion. As a consequence, the focal constituent appears at the end of the sentence rather than at the beginning. This article presents spoken data elicited during field work as well as written data on reversed ang -inversion. Comparing the use of regular and reversed ang- inversion indicates that discourse-structural considerations play an important role in construction choice between the two

Linguistics · Sentence · Structural basin · Tagalog · Verb · Word order · Computer Science · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Multilingual Education and Policy · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation · Geology · Paleontology

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