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

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Summary

Introduction

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.

Results
Conclusion

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