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Subject, Topic, or None of the Above

Do all languages have subjects? Austronesian languages pose fundamental problems for identifying subjects and objects.

Schachter, Paul. 1976. The subject in Philippine languages: Topic, actor, actor-topic, or none of the above. In Subject and Topic, ed. by Charles N. Li, 491-518. New York: Academic Press.

Kroeger, Paul. 1994. Phrase Structure and Grammatical Relations in Tagalog. Chapters 2, 3, 4. Stanford: CSLI Publications.

Dukes, Michael. 1998. Evidence for grammatical functions in Tongan. Proceedings of the LFG-98 Conference, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, ed. by Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King, 144-161. [The hardcopy conference version of 30 June - 2 July 1998.] Available on-line, University of Sydney: http://www.sultry.arts.usyd.edu.au/LFG98/austro/download/download.htm.



Joan Bresnan
Sun Jan 10 13:15:19 PST 1999