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Article published In: Studies in Language
Vol. 44:3 (2020) ► pp.700–721

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Discontinuous noun phrases in Ngkolmpu

ORCiD logo with link | Australian National University
Published online: 24 August 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.19015.car
Abstract
It has been claimed that Ngkolmpu (Yam, Papuan) displays discontinuous noun phrases (. 2011. Case and configurationality: Scrambling or mapping? Morphology 211. 499–513. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). However, careful textual analysis of a corpus of naturalistic language reveals that, in practice, this is highly restricted. The data shows two relatively rare constructions which give rise to limited discontinuous structures. The first is an afterthought construction involving a full co-referential nominal constituent adjacent to the clause. This co-referential constituent is both syntactically and phonetically distinct from the main utterance. The other involves a topic marking demonstrative encliticised to verbs at the right edge of the clause interacting with general information-structural conditions on word order. This is the only true discontinuity found in the corpus and is restricted to demonstratives only. This paper clarifies a claim in the literature about the empirical facts of a specific language, Ngkolmpu, and adds a nuanced discussion of nominal discontinuity in a language of New Guinea.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1The Ngkolmpu language
  • 2.Basic nominal syntax
    • 2.1Demonstrative/Determiner phrases
    • 2.2Noun phrases
    • 2.3Discontinuity in Donohue (2011)
  • 3.Discontinuity in the corpus
    • 3.1Afterthought construction
    • 3.2Split DPs
      • 4.2.1The topic clitic
      • 3.2.2The noun phrase
  • 4.Reconciling Donohue (2011)
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
References (11)
References
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Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Louagie, Dana & Uta Reinöhl
2022. Typologizing nominal expressions: the noun phrase and beyond. Linguistics 60:3 ► pp. 659 ff. DOI logo
Olsson, Bruno
2022. Noun phrase complexity and contiguity in a Papuan language. Linguistics 60:3 ► pp. 829 ff. DOI logo

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