Re: Referent Tracking

The Chafe & Nichols book on Evidentials has a chapter on the Quechua
languages by Weber.
These languages have both topic-marking and focus-marking.
They also have grammatical relations of subject and object, independent
of topic and focus.
In some of these languages, the verb, as well as one of the
participants, may be marked with a focus-mark; in others, only one of
the participants may be so marked.
In some of these languages, the focus-marked participant may also be
topic-marked; in others, the focus-marked participant may not be topic-
marked.
Different Quechua "languages" or "dialects" have different rules about
how many participants may be topic-marked and what order they may come
in; that is, how many may come before the verb, how many before the
focus-marked participant, how many before the subject, how many before
the object, etc.
--
M.H. Klaiman, in his Grammatical Voice book, discussed some Mayan
languages which had both Topic marking and Focus marking.  If I both
remember correctly, and understood correctly in the first place, the
verbs in these languages were marked for Voice, in order to specify the
semantic roles played by the Topic- and Focus- marked participants.
I suppose that may not have been all there was to that system; just as
that isn't all there is to the Focus system in Tagalog, and the Trigger
system in Tagalog is, according to Chris, not only about Focus; and, as
Klaiman says, in the Philippine languages with Information-Salience
Voice, "the closest thing to a 'Subject' is a focussed agent".
--
As for pivots -- is it not the case that, in some ergative natlangs,
the pivot is indeed the patient (the absolutive argument)?
---

Tom H.C. in MI

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