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Subjects: Grammatical Relations, Grammatical Functions And Functional Categories, Ileana Paul
Subjects: Grammatical Relations, Grammatical Functions And Functional Categories, Ileana Paul
Ileana Paul
This paper presents an overview of how the notion of “subject” has been defined in linguistic theory. Although the term developed out of Artistotelian logic, the use has been narrowed to refer to the grammatical relation (or function). Over the past fifty years, the definition of subject and its universality has been the source of much debate. Broadly Chomskian approaches claim that grammatical relations such as subject are not primitives of the grammar and can be derived from phrase structure. As such, testing for the subject involves constituency tests. Other approaches (Relational Grammar, Lexical-Function Grammar) posit grammatical relations as primitives …
Specification And Inversion: Evidence From Malagasy, Ileana Paul
Specification And Inversion: Evidence From Malagasy, Ileana Paul
Ileana Paul
This paper analyzes specificational sentences in Malagasy and shows that such sentences involve obligatory inversion, marked by the topic particle dia. I argue that the topicalized element is a small clause predicate that inverts with its subject. Two competing analyses of this inversion are compared and contrasted. I conclude with a brief comparison of Malagasy and Tagalog.