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Malagasy clefts from a Western Malayo-Polynesian perspective: Commentary on the paper by Hans-Martin Gärtner

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Abstract

This commentary primarily addresses Gärtner’s critique of the “pseudo-cleft” analysis for Malagasy. First, it is shown that this analysis is almost certainly correct for focus constructions in three other Western Malayo-Polynesian languages. Next, it is shown that certain unexpected semantic patterns observed in Malagasy (including the potential for strong quantifiers to occur within the focused predicate phrase, and the non-entailment of exhaustivity) hold in these other languages as well. Thus, the semantic arguments against the pseudo-cleft analysis for Malagasy are not conclusive. Finally, on the basis of comparative evidence from Tagalog, it is suggested that the structure of adjunct-focus in Malagasy may actually be quite different from that of subject-focus, even though both constructions must satisfy the same morphological constraints.

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  1. Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics, 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX, 75236, USA

    Paul Kroeger

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  1. Paul Kroeger
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Correspondence to Paul Kroeger.

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I would like to thank the following people for helpful input into this paper: Sandra Chung, Donna Evans, Daniel Kaufman, Edward Keenan, Ileana Paul, Maria Polinsky, Roger Stone, Yunita Susanto, Cecille Van Zante, Bruce Van Zante.

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Kroeger, P. Malagasy clefts from a Western Malayo-Polynesian perspective: Commentary on the paper by Hans-Martin Gärtner. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 27, 817–838 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-009-9082-4

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