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Part of
Reconnecting Form and Meaning: In honour of Kristin Davidse
Edited by Caroline Gentens, Lobke Ghesquière, William B. McGregor and An Van linden
[Studies in Language Companion Series 230] 2023
► pp. 71–95

Chapter 3
Atopicality as the unmarked logical structure in Scottish Gaelic

| University of Glasgow
In this paper I argue that the canonical clause structure in Scottish Gaelic does not select an element as topical, but that marked structures are available to do so under specific discursive conditions. As such, Scottish Gaelic represents a previously unrecognised typological category in terms of text-organisational preferences. To make this argument I draw on discussions concerning the structure of marked atopical utterances crosslinguistically and compare these with the unmarked Gaelic structure. I draw a distinction, however, between the unmarked atopical clause in Gaelic, which I analyse as event-scoped, and the marked atopical clauses discussed in the literature, which are analysed as sentence-focused. I then demonstrate that Gaelic employs marked structures for the purposes of both topicalisation and sentence focus.
Keywords: Scottish Gaelic, topicality, theticity, textuality
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theticity and atopicality
  • 3.Detopicalisation and unmarked structures in Gaelic
    • 3.1Subject accentuation
    • 3.2Subject inversion
    • 3.3Split structures
    • 3.4Incorporation
    • 3.5Verb nominalisation
    • 3.6Subject-object neutralisation
    • 3.7Interim conclusion
  • 4.Marked categorical and thetic structures
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 10 February 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.230.03bar
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