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Part of
Perspectives on Historical Syntax
Edited by Carlotta Viti
[Studies in Language Companion Series 169] 2015
► pp. 203–232

Traces of discourse configurationality in older Indo-European languages?

| Humboldt-University of Berlin
In old Indo-European languages such as Old Indian, Ancient Greek and Hittite, sentences are documented that indicate the discourse-configurational word order topic – focus – verb. There are, however, many deviations. To show to what extent the above mentioned languages are on the continuum between information structure and syntax, the kind of topic and focus, verb placement and the nature of subject, as well as the relation between topic and subject, are here scrutinized.
Keywords: Centering Theory, complex left periphery, discourse-configurationality, focus, subject, topic
Published online: 29 April 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.169.08luh
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