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- Title
Malagasy clefts from a Western Malayo-Polynesian perspective: Commentary on the paper by Hans-Martin Gärtner.
- Authors
Kroeger, Paul
- Abstract
This commentary primarily addresses Gärtner’s critique of the “pseudo-cleft” analysis for Malagasy. First, it is shown that this analysis is almost certainly correct for focus constructions in three other Western Malayo-Polynesian languages. Next, it is shown that certain unexpected semantic patterns observed in Malagasy (including the potential for strong quantifiers to occur within the focused predicate phrase, and the non-entailment of exhaustivity) hold in these other languages as well. Thus, the semantic arguments against the pseudo-cleft analysis for Malagasy are not conclusive. Finally, on the basis of comparative evidence from Tagalog, it is suggested that the structure of adjunct-focus in Malagasy may actually be quite different from that of subject-focus, even though both constructions must satisfy the same morphological constraints.
- Subjects
FOREIGN language education; MALAGASY language; POLYNESIAN languages; TAGALOG language; SEMANTICS; VERB phrases
- Publication
Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 2009, Vol 27, Issue 4, p817
- ISSN
0167-806X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s11049-009-9082-4