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In:Topicality and the Shaping of Grammar: New perspectives from lesser-studied languages
Edited by Enrique L. Palancar, Claudine Chamoreau and Anaïd Donabédian
[Typological Studies in Language 137] 2026
► pp. 132–168

Chapter 4
Information structure and optional case marking in Pesh (Chibchan)

 | CNRS, SeDyL
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
In Pesh (ISO 639-3 pay; Honduras, Chibchan), arguments show interesting patterns of differential case marking. While arguments are expressed more frequently without a case marker (87%), in this paper my goal is to explore the conditions under which an argument is flagged with case marking. The absence or presence of case marking cannot be explained by morphological or syntactic environments. Based on a corpus annotated according to Givón’s method (1983, 1994), which focuses on accessibility and topic continuity, I show that the majority of arguments that are case-marked have given and persistent referents, contrary to what certain authors write about the lighter encoding of a given referent (Chafe 1976, Givón 1983, Krifka 2008). The motivation for this heavier expression is the contrastiveness of the referent. I show how the unexpected combination of givenness and contrastiveness constitute in Pesh given referents which may indicate an alternative, exclude other alternatives, or highlight surprising information. At information structure level, they consist of a topic that contains a focus, which is doing what focus always does, namely indicating an alternative. Case marking in Pesh is motivated by contrastiveness, whether the referent is given (62.3%) or new (32.8%). The characteristic that distinguishes given and new referents is the degree of continuity of the referent in relation to the following context of the discourse. Most often, given referents are marked by the ergative case or the absolutive case when they are persistent, while new referents are case-marked when they are used to introduce unexpected or surprising information involved in an important event at some specific moment. These contrastive referents are almost all non-persistent in the clauses following their mention. The other occurrences of case marking (4.9%) are motivated by the discriminative function, to avoid a possible ambiguity between A and other participants of an event.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology
  • 3.Basic features of Pesh
  • 4.Obligatory case marking in Pesh
  • 5.Quantitative results
    • 5.1Referential distance
    • 5.2Topic persistence
  • 6.Contrastive given referents
    • 6.1Contrastive given referents with high topic persistence
      • 6.1.1The ergative case marker
      • 6.1.2The absolutive case marker for O
    • 6.2Contrastive given referents with low topic persistence
      • 6.2.1The ergative case marker
      • 6.2.2The absolutive case marker
  • 7.New referents
    • 7.1The ergative case marker
    • 7.2The absolutive case marker
  • 8.Discriminative function
  • 9.Final remarks
  • Author queries
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
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