Edited by Caroline Gentens, Lobke Ghesquière, William B. McGregor and An Van linden
[Studies in Language Companion Series 230] 2023
► pp. 71–95
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.