Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Verb phrase external arguments in Mande

New evidence for obligatory extraposition

  • Published:
Natural Language & Linguistic Theory Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Mande languages are well-known for their rigid SOVX word order: verb phrases cannot accommodate postpositional phrases, and all oblique arguments must appear after the main verb. This study explores, based on data from Wan (Southeastern Mande), new evidence for syntactic constituency that is essential for developing a formal account of this typologically unusual pattern. First, I show that previously unexplored tonal evidence rules out argument raising accounts. Tone is sensitive in Wan to prosodic phrasing, which is in turn closely related to syntactic constituency; the way postpositional arguments are prosodically integrated into the clause points to their unusually high, clause-level attachment. Second, I argue against a base-generation analysis, which would require a serious modification of the Projection Principle and locality of selection. Third, an analysis based on obligatory extraposition is discussed as the remaining option in transformational frameworks.

While accounting for both semantic and tonal evidence, the extraposition account has to rely on a highly unusual kind of filter to rule out all structures where a PP argument appears clause-internally. Accounts postulating such idiosyncratic filters can hardly be considered satisfying, as they merely model constraints on surface structure, without deriving them from underlying structural properties. The obligatory argument extraposition of Mande languages receives a more elegant explanation in constraint-based, surface-oriented theories, which do not need to introduce special devices to handle the basic word order of Mande languages. I illustrate this with a sketch of an account coached in the framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Cf. Greenberg’s (1963:109) dubious classification of Mande languages as VO, repeated in Hawkins (1983:332).

  2. In Mande studies, the auxiliary-like elements are traditionally referred to as predicative markers. Unlike prototypical auxiliaries, they do not share any properties with verbs, and usually do not derive from verbs.

  3. I use the notion “main verb” to refer both to finite verbs (in the languages that have them) and to verbs that appear with auxiliary-like elements in S-Aux-O-V structures. The two types of verb behave identically with respect to word order.

  4. Here and elsewhere I retain the original orthography of the primary sources.

  5. In generative frameworks, subcategorization frames are used to specify the number and types of a word’s argument.

  6. I cannot discuss here whether argument raising accounts work well for Germanic verb clusters (for alternative approaches and further discussion, see Bresnan et al. 1982; Zaenen and Kaplan 1995; Evers 2003, inter alia).

  7. This is the first time the relation between tone and syntax is described for Wan, and I do not adopt any particular theory of the correspondence between syntactic and prosodic constituency (for a recent theoretical overview, see (Selkirk 2011); for a recent analysis of mismatches between syntactic and prosodic constituency, based on Irish, see Bennett et al. 2016).

  8. For an influential treatment of OCP-related effects in another Mande language, Mende, see Leben (1978), and Singler (1980), Conteh et al. (1983) for alternative accounts.

  9. The structure of prosodic words also plays a role in tonal realization; in particular, it is relevant to dissimilation (rule iii). I cannot go into the details, as they are orthogonal to the purposes of this study.

  10. The phonological phrasing indicated by brackets is not important in these examples (since rule i is not restricted to phonological phrases), but it will be very important later.

  11. I leave open the question of whether rule (i) should actually be viewed as two separate rules; my unified treatment is based on the assumption that intonational phrases end in a phrasal tone that produces an effect similar to L and M.

  12. I do not have evidence that would distinguish this formulation of the rule from one that would assign M to lexically toneless TBUs. On the current version of the account, [M] is a realization associated both with M and with the absence of tone. Absence of lexical tone is distinguished from M by its variable realization in some syntactic environments, where either H or L is assigned to the toneless TBU by rule (i) or rule (ii). M is realized as [M] in all contexts.

  13. Most property-denoting words behave syntactically as nouns, and appear in constructions that can be literally translated as, for example, “red of lizard” = ‘red lizard.’

  14. The compounds differ from the possessive construction both semantically and morphosyntactically (indefinite possessors are marked by lengthening, and pronominal possessors are encoded by a specialized set of “alienable” pronouns).

  15. I am only concerned here with natural-sounding examples of reasonable length. It is likely that extra-long constituents will be systematically split into several prosodic phrases.

  16. This suggests the possibility of associating right edges of intonational phrases with a structural M tone. This effect is independent of utterance type, making it difficult to account for it in terms of intonational tone along the lines suggested by Hyman and Monaka (2011) or Gussenhoven (2000).

  17. As expected of prosodic units, tonal realization interacts with pauses. Pauses indicate the end of an intonational phrase, and prevent rules (ii) and (iii) from applying.

  18. I leave open the question of the type of adjunction involved in productive compounding and cliticization; what is crucial for the analysis is that it allows words to be joined at a level lower than XP, i.e. within the X’ domain.

  19. Among recent work on phrase level tonology, Harry and Hyman (2014) discuss tonal schemas assigned by specific constructions in Kalabari; for illustrations of the intimate relationship between tone and syntactic constituency, see also Cole-Beuchat (1961), Leben and Ahoua (1997), McPherson (2013), Heath and McPherson (2013), Downing (2013), Konoshenko (2014), McPherson and Heath (2016). For a recent discussion of prosodic factors in shaping constituent order, see Bennett et al. (2016).

  20. The Projection Principle as formulated by Chomsky (1981:29) states that “[r]epresentations at each syntactic level (i.e., LF, and D- and S-structure) are projected from the lexicon, in that they observe the subcategorization properties of lexical items.” Various versions of locality of selection go back to Chomsky’s (1965) “strict locality” and require subcategorized elements to appear within a local projection, cf. Sportiche et al. (2013): “elements entering selectional relations with a head H, H’ or HP must be sisters to H, to H’ or to HP.”

  21. Note that the tonal realization of the lexically toneless argument of the postposition is predicted by the separate prosodic phrasing of the PP: the lexically toneless word is not assigned a L.

  22. I assume here that oblique arguments are generated in a position preceding the verb, like objects, but nothing hinges on this, and they could also be generated in a position following the verb.

  23. Another problem this type of account would have to address is the difference in the behavior of postpositional arguments (which must be extraposed to the right) and adjuncts (which can be alternatively extraposed to the left). Additional constraints would have to be imposed to distinguish between the ways in which arguments and adjunct “flee” from the same government domains.

  24. As already mentioned, lexically toneless words are not very frequent in Wan, so special examples usually need to be constructed to explore the interaction of tone and syntax more efficiently.

  25. If neither verb selected for an oblique argument, the spatial PP would be interpreted as an adjunct. I do not discuss PP adjuncts in this study, but they are licensed in Wan by a simple adjustment to the functional annotations in (77), allowing the PP to function as an adjunct rather than an oblique argument (Nikitina 2008a).

References

  • Bearth, Thomas. 1971. L’Énoncé toura (Côte d’Ivoire). In Summer Institute of Linguistics Publications in Linguistics and Related Fields, vol. 30. Norman: Summer Institute of Linguistics of the University of Oklahoma.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bearth, Thomas. 1986. L’articulation du temps et de l’aspect dans le discours toura. Berne: Peter Lang.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bennett, Ryan, Emily Elfner, and James McCloskey. 2016. Lightest to the right: An apparently anomalous displacement in Irish. Linguistic Inquiry 47(2): 169–234.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bouma, Gosse. 2003. Verb clusters and the scope of adjuncts in Dutch. In Verb constructions in German and Dutch, eds. Pieter A. M. Seuren and Gerard Kempen, 5–42. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Bresnan, Joan. 1982. Control and complementation. In The mental representation of grammatical relations, ed. Joan Bresnan, 282–390. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bresnan, Joan. 2001. Lexical-functional syntax. Malden: Blackwell

    Google Scholar 

  • Bresnan, Joan, Ronald M. Kaplan, Stanley Peters, and Annie Zaenen. 1982. Cross-serial dependencies in Dutch. Linguistic Inquiry 13(4): 613–635.

    Google Scholar 

  • Büring, Daniel, and Katharina Hartmann. 1995. All right! In On extraction and extraposition in German, eds. Uli Lutz and Jürgen Pafel, 179–211. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carlson, Robert. 1994. A grammar of Supyire. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cole-Beuchat, P.-D. 1961. The qualificative and the pronoun in Tsonga. African Studies 20(3): 175–193.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Conteh, Patrick, Elizabeth Cowper, Deborah James, Keren Rice, and Michael Szamosi. 1983. A reanalysis of tone in Mende. In Current approaches to African linguistics, vol. 2, eds. Jonathan Kaye et al., 127–137. Dordrecht: Foris Publication.

    Google Scholar 

  • Creissels, Denis. 1988. Le système tonale du bambara standard. Grenoble: Centre de linguistique africaine de l’Université des langues et lettres de Grenoble.

    Google Scholar 

  • Creissels, Denis. 2005. S-O-V-X constituent order and constituent order alternations in West African languages. Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 31(2): 37–52.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dalrymple, Mary. 2001. Syntax and semantics 34: Lexical Functional Grammar. San Diego: Academic Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Downing, Laura J. 2013. Issues in the phonology-syntax interface in African languages. In Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL) 43, eds. Olanike Ola Orie and Karen W. Sanders, 26–38. Somerville: Cascadilla.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dumestre, Gérard. 1989. A propos de l’ordre des compléments en bambara. Mandenkan 18: 31–42.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dumestre, Gérard. 2003. Grammaire fondamentale du bambara. Paris: Karthala.

    Google Scholar 

  • Evers, Arnold. 2003. Verbal clusters and cluster creepers. In Verb constructions in German and Dutch, eds. Pieter A. M. Seuren and Gerard Kempen, 43–89. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Goldsmith, John. 1984. Meeussen’s rule. In Language sound structure, eds. Mark Aronoff and Richard T. Oehrle, 245–259. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Green, Christopher R. 2013. Formalizing the prosodic word domain in Bambara tonology. Journal of West African Languages 40: 3–20.

    Google Scholar 

  • Green, Christopher R. 2015. The foot domain in Bambara. Language 91(1): 3–26.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Greenberg, Joseph H. 1963. Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. In Universals of language, ed. Joseph H. Greenberg, 73–113. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gussenhoven, Carlos. 2000. The lexical tone contrast of Roermond Dutch in optimality theory. In Prosody: Theory and experiment. Studies presented to Gösts Bruce, ed. Merle Horne, 129–167. Amsterdam: Kluwer Academic.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Harry, Otelemate, and Larry M. Hyman. 2014. Phrasal construction tonology: The case of Kalabari. Studies in Language 38(4): 649–689.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hawkins, John A. 1983. Word order universals. New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heath, Jeffrey, and Laura McPherson. 2013. Tonosyntax and reference restriction in Dogon NPs. Language 89(2): 265–296.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hinrichs, Erhard W., and Tsuneko Nakazawa. 1989. Flipped out: AUX in German. Chicago Linguistic Society 25(1): 193–202.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hinrichs, Erhard W., and Tsuneko Nakazawa. 1994. Linearizing AUXs in German verbal complexes. In German in head-driven phrase structure grammar, eds. John Nerbonne, Klaus Netter, and Karl Pollard, 11–37. Stanford: CSLI.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hyman, Larry M. 1987. Prosodic domains in Kikuya. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 5: 311–333.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hyman, Larry M., and Kemmonye C. Monaka. 2011. Tonal and non-tonal intonation in Shekgalagari. In Prosodic categories: Production, perception and comprehension, eds. Sónia Frota, Gorka Elordieta, and Pilar Prieto, 267–290. Dordrecht: Springer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Kaplan, Ronald M., and Joan Bresnan. 1982. Lexical-Functional Grammar: A formal system for grammatical representation. In The mental representation of grammatical relations, ed. Joan Bresnan, 173–281. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kayne, Richard. 1994. The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Khachaturyan, Maria. 2015. Grammaire du mano. Mandenkan 54: 1–252.

    Google Scholar 

  • Konoshenko, Maria. 2014. The syntax of tone in Guinean Kpelle. Berkeley Linguistics Society 40: 233–252.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Koopman, Hilda. 1984. The syntax of verbs: From verb movement rules in the Kru languages to universal grammar. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koopman, Hilda. 1992. The absence of case chains in Bambara. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 10: 555–594.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Koopman, Hilda Judith, and Anna Szabolcsi. 2000. Verbal complexes. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Leben, William. 1978. The representation of tone. In Tone: A linguistic survey, ed. Victoria Fromkin, 177–219. New York: Academic Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Leben, William R., and Firmin Ahoua. 1997. Prosodic domains in Baule. Phonology 14: 113–132.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McPherson, Laura. 2013. The structural origins of tonal overlays in Tommo So (Dogon) compounds. Journal of West African Languages 40(1).

  • McPherson, Laura, and Jeffrey Heath. 2016. Phrasal grammatical tone in the Dogon languages: The role of constraint interaction. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 34: 593–639.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Myers, Scott. 1997. OCP effects in Optimality Theory. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 15: 847–892.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nikitina, Tatiana. 2008a. The mixing of syntactic properties and language change. PhD diss., Stanford University.

  • Nikitina, Tatiana. 2008b. Locative terms and spatial frames of reference in Wan. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 29: 29–47.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nikitina, Tatiana. 2009a. The syntax of postpositional phrases in Wan, an “SOVX” language. Studies in Language 33: 907–930.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nikitina, Tatiana. 2009b. Subcategorization pattern and lexical meaning of motion verbs: A study of the source/goal ambiguity. Linguistics 47(5): 1113–1141.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nikitina, Tatiana. 2011a. Categorial reanalysis and the origin of the S-O-V-X word order in Mande. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 32(2): 251–273.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nikitina, Tatiana. 2011b. On lexical and syntactic licensing of category mixing. In Syntax and morphology multidimensional, eds. Oliver Teuber and Andreas Nolda, 217–238. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nikitina, Tatiana. 2012. Clause-internal correlatives in Southeastern Mande: A case for the propagation of typological rara. Lingua 122: 319–334.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nikitina, Tatiana. to appear. Diminutives derived from terms for children: Comparative evidence from Southeastern Mande. Linguistics.

  • Nordlinger, Rachel. 1998. Constructive case: Evidence from Australian languages. Stanford: CSLI Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  • Perekhvalskaya, Elena, and Moïse Yegbé. 2008. Dictionnaire mwan–français. Version préliminaire, 6/10/2008. Available at http://docplayer.fr/28424140-Dictionnaire-mwan-francais.html. Accessed in December 2009.

  • Prost, André. 1967. La langue Lɔghɔma: Esquisse grammaticale suivie de textes et d’un glossaire. Documents linguistiques 13. Dakar: Université de Dakar.

  • Prost, André. 1983. Essai de description grammaticale du dialecte bobo de Tansila, Haute Volta. Paris: INALCO.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sauvant, Emile, and Paul Marie Molin. 1956. Grammaire bambara. Issy-Les Moulineaux: Les Presses missionnaires.

    Google Scholar 

  • Selkirk, Elisabeth. 2011. The syntax–phonology interface. In The handbook of phonological theory, 2nd edn., eds. John Goldsmith, Jason Riggle, and Alan C. L. Yu, 435–483. Malden: Blackwell Sci.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Seuren, Pieter A. M., and Gerard Kempen, eds. 2003. Verb constructions in German and Dutch. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Singler, John. 1980. The status of lexical associations and the obligatory contour principle in the analysis of tone languages. Berkeley Linguistics Society (BLS) 6: 442–456.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sportiche, Dominique, Hilda Koopman, and Edward Stabler. 2013. An introduction to syntactic analysis and theory. Hoboken: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Travis, Lisa. 1989. Parameters of phrase structure. In Alternative conceptions of phrase structure, eds. Mark R. Baltin and Anthony S. Kroch, 263–279. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vydrin, Valentin. 2016. Tonal inflection in Mande languages: The cases of Bamana and Dan-Gweetaa. In Tone and inflection: New facts and new perspectives, eds. Enrique L. Palancar and Jean Léo Léonard, 83–105. Berlin: de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zaenen, Annie, and Ronald M. Kaplan. 1995. Formal devices for linguistic generalizations: West Germanic word order in LFG. In Formal issues in Lexical–Functional Grammar, eds. Mary Dalrymple, Ronald M. Kaplan, and John T. Maxwell, III and Annie Zaenen, 215–239. Stanford: CSLI.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zwart, Jan-Wouter. 1996. Verb clusters in continental West Germanic dialects. In Microparametric syntax and dialect variation, eds. James R. Black and Virginia Motapanyane, 229–258. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

I am sincerely grateful to the editors and reviewers whose feedback on earlier versions has helped me tremendously to improve the paper. I am also grateful to Will Leben for his constructive criticism of the earlier versions of the tonal analysis, to audiences at ACAL 47 at UC Berkeley and at the research seminar at LLACAN, and to all my language consultants. Special thanks go to Bomisso Tchémon Christophe Kingston. No one but me is to blame for any remaining errors and misinterpretations. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 758232). The funding was used at the final stages of the project to collect additional data.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CNRS (LLACAN), CNRS, LLACAN, 7, rue Guy Môquet, BP 8, 94801, Villejuif, France

    Tatiana Nikitina

Authors
  1. Tatiana Nikitina
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tatiana Nikitina.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Nikitina, T. Verb phrase external arguments in Mande. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 37, 693–734 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-018-9417-0

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-018-9417-0

Keywords

Search

Navigation