Cover not available
Article published In:
Studies in Language
Vol. 47:2 (2023) ► pp.422–462

Universal quantifiers, focus, and grammatical relations in Besemah

ORCID logo | University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

This article describes adverbial universal quantification in Besemah, a little-described Malayic language of southwest Sumatra, and how the syntactic position of the quantifier relates to grammatical relations and information structure. Given previous descriptions of the relationship between quantifiers and grammatical relations, especially in western Austronesian languages (e.g., Kroeger 1993; Musgrave 2001), Besemah presents a unique system of universal quantification wherein adverbial universal quantifiers place severe restrictions on which arguments can be quantified. I argue that these restrictions are fundamentally different than those described as ‘quantifier float’ in other languages, but they are not incidental. Instead, these restrictions can be explained by the fact that the adverbial universal quantifier also marks focus in Besemah.

Keywords: symmetrical voice, universal quantifiers, grammatical relations, information structure, Austronesian
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Quantifier float as an argument selector
  • 3.Data
  • 4.Voice and grammatical relations
  • 5.Universal quantification
  • 6.Restrictions on adverbial universal quantifiers
    • 6.1Explaining the APV restriction on universal quantification
  • 7.Universal quantifiers as focus markers in Besemah
    • 7.1Information structure
    • 7.2Focus-marking functions of the adverbial universal quantifier
    • 7.3Exhaustive interpretations as argument-focus
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Abbreviations
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 September 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.20060.mcd
References
Arka, I Wayan
2003 Balinese morphosyntax: A lexical-functional approach (Pacific Linguistics 547). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.Google Scholar
2005 The core-oblique distinction and core index in some Austronesian languages of Indonesia. In Keynote Paper presented at the International Association of Linguistic Typology (ALT) VI Conference, Padang, Indonesia.
2008 Voice and the syntax of =a/ a verbs in Balinese. In Peter K. Austin & Simon Musgrave (eds.), Voice and grammatical relations in Austronesian languages, 70–89. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language.Google Scholar
Arka, I Wayan & Christopher D. Manning
2008 Voice and grammatical relations in Indonesian: A New Perspective. In Simon Musgrave & Peter K. Austin (eds.), Voice and grammatical relations in Austronesian languages, 45–69. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language.Google Scholar
Arka, I Wayan & Jane Simpson
2008 Objective voice and control into subject clauses in Balinese. In Peter K. Austin & Simon Musgrave (eds.), Voice and grammatical relations in Austronesian languages, 90–127. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language.Google Scholar
Beaver, David & Brady Clark
2003 Always and only: Why not all focus-sensitive operators are alike. Natural Language Semantics 11(4). 323–362. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bickel, Balthasar
2010 Grammatical relations typology. In Jae Jung Song (ed.), The Oxford handbook of language typology, 399–444. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bickel, Balthasar, Taras Zakharko, Lennart Bierkandt & Alena Witzlack-Makarevich
2014 Semantic role clustering: An empirical assessment of semantic role types in non-default case assignment. Studies in Language 38(3). 485–511. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chafe, Wallace L.
1976 Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, and point of view. In Charles N. Li (ed.), Subject and topic, 25–55. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
1994 Discourse, consciousness, and time: The flow and displacement of conscious experience in speaking and writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Chen, Victoria & Bradley McDonnell
2019 Western Austronesian voice. Annual Review of Linguistics 5(1). 173–195. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Comrie, Bernard
1978 Ergativity. In Winfred P. Lehmann (ed.), Syntactic typology: Studies in the phenomenology of language, 329–394. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
1989 Language universals and linguistic typology: Syntax and morphology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2nd edn.Google Scholar
Conners, Thomas J., John Bowden & David Gil
2015 Jakarta Indonesian Valency Patterns. In Andrej Malchukov & Bernard Comrie (eds.), Valency classes: A comparative handbook. Vol. 21 (Comparative Handbooks of Linguistics), 941–986. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.Google Scholar
Croft, William
2001 Radical construction grammar: Syntactic theory in typological perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Donohue, Mark
2004 Floating quantifiers and universal grammar. In Christo Moskowsky (ed.), Proceedings of the 2003 Conference of the Australian Linguistics Society. Newcastle: University of Newcastle.Google Scholar
Dryer, Matthew S.
1997 Are grammatical relations universal? In Joan L. Bybee, John Haiman & Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), Essays on language function and language type: Dedicated to Talmy Givón, 115–143. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Du Bois, John W., Stephan Schuetze-Coburn, Susanna Cumming & Danae Paolino
1993 Outline of discourse transcription. In Jane Anne Edwards & Martin D. Lampert (eds.), Talking data: Transcription and coding in discourse research, 45–89. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Ewing, Michael C.
2005 Colloquial Indonesian. In K Alexander Adelaar & Nikolaus P. Himmelmann (eds.), The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar (Routledge Family Language Series), 227–258. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy
1983 Topic continuity in discourse: A quantitative cross-language study. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grundel, Jeanette K. & Fretheim Thorstein
2004 Topic and Focus. In Laurence R. Horn & Gregory Ward (eds.), The handbook of pragmatics, 175–196. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Himmelmann, Nikolaus P.
2018 Some preliminary observations on prosody and information structure in Austronesian languages of Indonesia and East Timor. In Sonja Riesberg, Asako Shiohara & Atsuko Utsumi (eds.), Perspectives on information structure in Austronesian languages, 347–374. Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Iemmolo, Giorgio
2010 Topicality and differential object marking: Evidence from Romance and beyond. Studies in Language 34(2). 239–272. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jelinek, Eloise
1993 Languages without determiner quantification. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Vol. 191, 404–422. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kayne, Richard S.
1969 The transformational cycle in French. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology PhD dissertation.
1975 French syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Keenan, Edward L. & Bernard Comrie
1977 Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 8(1). 63–99.Google Scholar
Kroeger, Paul
1993 Phrase structure and grammatical relations in Tagalog. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language.Google Scholar
Lambrecht, Knud
1994 Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus, and the mental representations of discourse referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
LaPolla, Randy J.
1993 Arguments against ‘subject’ and ‘direct object’ as viable concepts in Chinese. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology 63(4). 759–813.Google Scholar
Legate, Julie Anne
2012 Subjects in Acehnese and the nature of the passive. Language 88(3). 495–525. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McDonnell, Bradley
(collector, depositor) 2008 Besemah (BJM01). PARADISEC. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 Symmetrical voice constructions in Besemah: A usage-based approach. Santa Barbara: University of California, Santa Barbara PhD dissertation.
2020 The pragmatics of ‘light nouns’ in Besemah. In Tsuyoshi Ono & Sandra A. Thompson (eds.), The ‘noun phrase’ across languages: An emergent unit in interaction (Typological Studies in Language 128), 237–270. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McDonnell, Bradley & Rory Turnbull
2018 Neural network modeling of prosodic prominence in Besemah (Malayic, Indonesia). In 9th International Conference on Speech Prosody 2018, 759–763. ISCA. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Musgrave, Simon
2000 Pronouns and morphology: Undergoer subject clauses in Indonesian. In Geert Booij & Jaap Van Marle (eds.), Yearbook of morphology 2000 (Yearbook of Morphology), 155–186. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
2001 Non-subject arguments in Indonesian. Melbourne: University of Melbourne PhD dissertation.
Riesberg, Sonja
2014 Symmetrical voice and linking in western Austronesian languages (Pacific Linguistics 646). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schachter, Paul
1976 The subject in Philippine languages: Topic, actor, actor-topic, or none of the above actor, actor-topic, or none of the above. In Charles N. LI (ed.), Subject and topic, 491–518. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
1977 Reference-related and role-related properties of subjects. In Peter Cole & Jerry M. Sadock (eds.), Grammatical relations (Syntax and Semantics 8), 279–306. New York: Academic Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sportiche, Dominique
1988 A theory of floating quantifiers and its corollaries for constituent structure. Linguistic Inquiry 19(3). 425–449.Google Scholar
Thompson, Sandra A.
1997 Discourse motivations for the core-oblique distinction as a language universal. In Akio Kamio (ed.), Directions in functional linguistics (Studies in Language Companion Series 36), 59–82. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Valin, Robert D. & Randy J. LaPolla
1997 Syntax, structure, meaning and function. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Whaley, Lindsay
2001 A cross-linguistic examination of quantifier float constructions. Paper presented at the Fourth Meeting of the Association for Linguistic Typology , Santa Barbara, CA.
Witzlack-Makarevich, Alena
2010 Typological variation in grammatical relations. Leipzig: Universität Leipzig PhD dissertation.
2019 Argument selectors: A new perspective on grammatical relations. An introduction. In Alena Witzlack-Makarevich & Balthasar Bickel (eds.), Argument Selectors: A new perspective on grammatical relations (Typological Studies in Language 123), 1–38. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zúñiga, Fernando
2018 The diachrony of morphosyntactic alignment: Diachrony of morphosyntactic alignment. Language and Linguistics Compass 12(9). e12300. DOI logoGoogle Scholar