Affiliation:
1. National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics
Abstract
Abstract
The present work attempts to examine the relationship between grammar and discourse. (i) First, it compares
Warrongo (an ergative language that has antipassives and an S/O pivot) and English (an accusative language that has passives and
an S/A pivot). Despite these polar opposite morphosyntactic characteristics, Warrongo and English behave almost in the same way in
discourse – in terms of new mentions, lexical mentions and topic continuity. There are, however, two differences in discourse.
First, Warrongo antipassives and S/O pivot have much higher functional loads than English passives and S/A pivot. Second, Warrongo
antipassives have a use that English passives do not have. (ii) Then, the present work shows that grammar and discourse are not
independent of each other and that they share one principle. The hierarchy of “O > S > A” is attested in grammar and
discourse crosslinguistically and irrespective of the morphosyntactic types of the languages concerned.
Publisher
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Subject
Linguistics and Language,Communication,Language and Linguistics