Word order variation in Khoekhoe

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DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21248/hpsg.2013.3

Abstract

Khoekhoe, a Central Khoisan language, has been claimed to have a clause-second position and topological fields similar to German and Dutch. The position in front of the clause-second position can be occupied by either the matrix verb or a dependent. We argue that monomoraic words are exempt from the general head-final order of Khoekhoe and suggest that this can give rise to discontinuous constituents, where second-position clitics intervene within the VP. We show that this idea provides a simple account of Khoekhoe word order variation and formalize it within a linearization-based HPSG analysis that has a wider scope than the previous Minimalist analyses of Khoekhoe and that is compatible with evidence from tonology.

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Published

2013-10-15

How to Cite

Hahn, Michael. 2013. Word order variation in Khoekhoe. Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar 48–68. (doi:10.21248/hpsg.2013.3) (https://proceedings.hpsg.xyz/article/view/797) (Accessed March 29, 2024.)