Chlouvānem: Difference between revisions

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* ''lili lunāyu tatedaru'' "I'm preparing tea" answers ''yavita lunāyu tatedarē?'' "who is preparing tea?", with the meaning of "no one but me is preparing tea".

* With a question like ''yananū sąi darē?'' "what are you doing?", both become synonyms as they introduce the new topic ''lili'' (due to the previous one being ''yananū?'' because of patient-trigger voice); the same question in agent-trigger voice, ''sāmi yananūyu darite?'', would be answered with the non-topicalized form.

====Definiteness====

A topicalized argument, whether explicitely marked (i.e. with ''mæn'') or not, is always understood to be definite. On the contrary, this is not the case for non-topic arguments, whose definiteness, in most cases, has to be understood by context (obviously, this does not apply to words that are semantically definite - e.g. pronouns or proper names).<br/>

Common strategies to mark definiteness are:

* Simply adding information to the word (e.g. ''luvai'' "(a) market" → ''saṃryojyami lātimi ubgire ṣarivāṃluvai'' "the state department store on the approach to central Saṃryojyam"). Again, some ambiguity may still remain;

* Using a determiner - distal ''nanā'' "that" is perhaps the most common definiteness marker to resolve ambiguity;

* Explicitely topicalizing the ambiguous argument (not always possible);

* A different solution is to mark indefiniteness: this is commonly done by using either ''leila'' "one" or, in colloquial speech, ''sorasmā'' "some kind of".

===Noun phrase===

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 * ''lili lunāyu tatedaru'' "I'm preparing tea" answers ''yavita lunāyu tatedarē?'' "who is preparing tea?", with the meaning of "no one but me is preparing tea".
 * With a question like ''yananū sąi darē?'' "what are you doing?", both become synonyms as they introduce the new topic ''lili'' (due to the previous one being ''yananū?'' because of patient-trigger voice); the same question in agent-trigger voice, ''sāmi yananūyu darite?'', would be answered with the non-topicalized form.
+====Definiteness====
+A topicalized argument, whether explicitely marked (i.e. with ''mæn'') or not, is always understood to be definite. On the contrary, this is not the case for non-topic arguments, whose definiteness, in most cases, has to be understood by context (obviously, this does not apply to words that are semantically definite - e.g. pronouns or proper names).<br/>
+Common strategies to mark definiteness are:
+* Simply adding information to the word (e.g. ''luvai'' "(a) market" → ''saṃryojyami lātimi ubgire ṣarivāṃluvai'' "the state department store on the approach to central Saṃryojyam"). Again, some ambiguity may still remain;
+* Using a determiner - distal ''nanā'' "that" is perhaps the most common definiteness marker to resolve ambiguity;
+* Explicitely topicalizing the ambiguous argument (not always possible);
+* A different solution is to mark indefiniteness: this is commonly done by using either ''leila'' "one" or, in colloquial speech, ''sorasmā'' "some kind of".
 ===Noun phrase===