Part of
Austronesian and Theoretical LinguisticsEdited by Raphael Mercado, Eric Potsdam and Lisa deMena Travis
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 167] 2010
► pp. 213–230
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.