The Morphology and Syntax of Topic and Focus

Minimalist inquiries in the Quechua periphery

Author

Liliana Sánchez | Rutgers University

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027255525 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027287526 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00

This book presents an innovative analysis that relates informational structure, syntax and morphology in Quechua. It provides a minimalist account of the relationship between focus, topic, evidentiality and other left-peripheral features and sentence-internal constituents marked with suffixes that have been previously considered of a pragmatic nature. Intervention effects show that these relationships are also of a syntactic nature. The analysis is extended to morphological markers that appear on polarity sensitive items and wh-words. The book also provides a brief overview of the main characteristics of Quechua syntax as well as additional bibliographical information.

[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 169] 2010. xiii, 242 pp.

Publishing status: Available

https://doi.org/10.1075/la.169

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements | pp. xi–xii

Abbreviations | pp. xiii–xiv

Chapter 1. Introduction: Peripheral domains and agreement in Southern Quechua | pp. 1–8

Chapter 2. An overview of Southern Quechua morphology and syntax | pp. 9–28

Chapter 3. Morphology, syntax, and informational structure in Quechua | pp. 29–52

Chapter 4. Agree, morphological syncretism, and peripheral constituents | pp. 53–98

Chapter 5. Clausal analyses and the left and right peripheries of DPs | pp. 99–132

Chapter 6. The limits of agree in the left-periphery: wh-words, polarity items, and intervention effects | pp. 133–152

Chapter 7. The limits of syncretism: wh-movement | pp. 153–174

Chapter 8. The left and the right periphery in narrative discourse | pp. 175–228

Chapter 9. Concluding remarks | pp. 229–240

Index | pp. 241–242

“It is an exciting prospect that now pragmatic features of the syntax and morphology of Quechua, a language family so far mostly studied in terms of its historical roots and formal properties, are coming to the fore. Liliana Sánchez, who pairs formal analytic skills with a deep knowledge of the language family, is the ideal person to undertake this. I am sure the book will be a source of inspiration for comparative linguists but also for people working in Andean language studies in a wider sense, including language processing and acquisition, bilingualism and sociolinguistics.”

Pieter Muysken, Radboud University Nijmegen

“Liliana Sanchez’s book, on the morphology and syntax of focus and topic in Quechua, presents an analysis of a wealth of fascinating data, which provides deep insight on how discourse-based notions (such as topic, focus, and evidentiality) are grammaticalized in natural language, and on how focus interacts with focus-sensitive operators such as Question-makers and Negation. This book should be of interest to scholars working on the interface between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and comparative grammar.”

María Luisa Zubizarreta, University of Southern California

Cited by

Cited by 16 other publications

Order by:

Assmann, Muriel, Daniel Büring, Izabela Jordanoska & Max Prüller

2023. Towards a theory of morphosyntactic focus marking. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 41:4 ► pp. 1349 ff.

Barchas-Lichtenstein, Jena, Cansada Martin, Pamela Munro & Jos Tellings

2017. Quantification in Imbabura Quichua. In Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language: Volume II [Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, 97], ► pp. 751 ff.

Bendezú-Araujo, Raúl

2023. Verum, focus and evidentiality in Conchucos Quechua. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 42:3 ► pp. 611 ff.

Faller, Martina

2024. The interrogative flip with illocutionary evidentials. Folia Linguistica 0:0

Juanatey, Mayra

2022. Cláusulas dependientes y organización discursiva en quichua santiagueño. Lenguaje 50:2 ► pp. 269 ff.

Lipski, John M.

2016. On the tenacity of Andean Spanish. In Spanish Language and Sociolinguistic Analysis [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 8], ► pp. 109 ff.

LIPSKI, JOHN M.

2017. Language switching constraints: more than syntax? Data from Media Lengua. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 20:4 ► pp. 722 ff.

Martínez Vera, Gabriel

2024. Direct evidentiality and discourse in Southern Aymara. Natural Language Semantics 32:1 ► pp. 1 ff.

Masia, Viviana

2022. Remarks on information structure marking asymmetries. In When Data Challenges Theory [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 273], ► pp. 58 ff.

MATIĆ, DEJAN & DANIEL WEDGWOOD

2013. The meanings of focus: The significance of an interpretation-based category in cross-linguistic analysis. Journal of Linguistics 49:1 ► pp. 127 ff.

MUNTENDAM, ANTJE G.

2013. On the nature of cross-linguistic transfer: A case study of Andean Spanish. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 16:1 ► pp. 111 ff.

Myler, Neil

2017. Cliticization feeds agreement: a view from Quechua. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 35:3 ► pp. 751 ff.

Pineda-Bernuy, Edith

2014. The development of standard negation in Quechua. In The Diachrony of Negation [Studies in Language Companion Series, 160], ► pp. 83 ff.

Sánchez, Liliana

2015. Crosslinguistic influences in the mapping of functional features in Quechua-Spanish Bilingualism. In The Acquisition of Spanish in Understudied Language Pairings [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 3], ► pp. 21 ff.

van der Wal, Jenneke

2016. Diagnosing focus. Studies in Language 40:2 ► pp. 259 ff.

van Rijswijk, Remy & Antje Muntendam

2014. The prosody of focus in the Spanish of Quechua-Spanish bilinguals: A case study on noun phrases. International Journal of Bilingualism 18:6 ► pp. 614 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 16 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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