Abstract
Eastern Cham (Austronesian: Vietnam) exhibits apparent optional wh-movement, which shares properties with apparent topicalization. This paper demonstrates that it is not true wh-movement, but discourse connected-, or DC-movement. DC requires a phrase to have an antecedent in a prior sentence and for the antecedent's sentence and the anaphor's sentence to be in a particular discourse structural configuration. Data from complex DP's, specifically partitives, inventory forms, and close appositives demonstrate that DC is a property of referential indices that bind DP's. The incompatibility of wh-phrases and topicality is then explained as the inability of wh-phrases to supply referential indices on their own.
Highlights
Ā-movement operations to the left periphery seem to exhibit variation as to whether they are optional or obligatory
The movement operations in (2a–b) are due not to topicality, but discourse connectedness (DC), a property defined in terms of discourse structure
What seems to be optional wh-movement in Eastern Cham is discourse connected, or DC-movement
Summary
Ā-movement operations to the left periphery seem to exhibit variation as to whether they are optional or obligatory. In some languages, such as Eastern Cham (Austronesian: Vietnam), whphrases appear to be optionally Ā-moved.1 Wh-phrases can be moved to the left periphery (2a), much like topicalization (2b), with only a discourse-related effect. The movement operations in (2a–b) are due not to topicality, but discourse connectedness (DC), a property defined in terms of discourse structure.
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