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Extraction in Edo

Beermann, D. Lars Hellan and Ota Ogie (2001)Extraction in Edo.

Manuscript NTNU,Trondheim

Edo, a Niger-Congo language related to the Kwa languages of West Africa, allows two distinct strategy of marking an ‘extraction site’, used in wh-constituent questions, under relativization, and for focus dislocation. These strategies are:

  • A pronominal item in the form of a 3rd person sg. pronoun, marks the ‘extraction-site’.
  • A monosyllabic transitive verb (or preposition) subcategorizing for an extracted direct object, adopts the tonal (morphological) signature of an intransitive predicate.

TypeCraft contains data that shows the use of the pronominal site-holder in different extraction context. The example below illustrates the use of the 3sg pronominal place-holder marking the 'base-position' of a focus left dislocated 3pl pronoun.

íràn(ò̠ré) Òtà dé èbé vbè òbó̠ (è̠)ré
“It is them that Ota bought a book from”
íràn
íràn
3PL
PN
(ò̠ré)
(ò̠ré)
FOC
 
Òtà
òtà
otaSBJAGT
Np
buyIVH
Vtr
èbé
èbé
bookDOTH
CN
vbè
vbè
in
PREP
òbó̠
òbó̠
handSRC
CN
(è̠)ré
(è̠)ré
3SGACC
PN

More examples illustrating the pronominal marking of extraction sites, and more about the difference between extraction types and the function of the pronominal place holder can be found in the manuscript. The manuscript discusses the grammatical nature of the pronominal place holder which occurs in the canonical position of an extracted argument, where it seems to function as a ‘spelled-out trace’, but pronominal 'place-holders' may also occur under extraction of non-arguments, such as inherent complements, corresponding to semantically but not syntactically incorporated nouns, and under adjunct-extraction.