Marked constituent order: Preposed constituents

3.1.3 The default position of adjuncts

Adjuncts are not among the core constituents of a clause. Rather, they indicate the spatial, temporal, and other circumstances of the event talked about in the clause. In clauses without a verb brace, the default position of adjuncts in Godié is at the end of the clause, as shown in example 58. 58 a. gokpüü mʋ - wʋ - zɩkä boat: PL : XNEG go: ICP CNT 2 today ‘There are no boats going today.’ [greve 67] b. -n titonöɛ -yä -n mëë - lɩɩ kɔɔkɔ 2 S go_alongside: APL : NH 2 ADD 2 in spread_out thing: PL : DEF always ‘… walk alongside it =ocean and spread out the things all the time’ [creation 49–50] c. nä -n ni wäl ɩɩ -l ɩɩ - ɩ - ŋënöö lä SP 1 2 S find matter: GEN DPF : PL NHP : REL arrive: APL :1 SO LOP ‘So these are the kind of things that happened to me - mɔɔ -blɔ kʋ zëplüünöö nä LOC way on morning: DEM : OBL SP 1 there on my way this morning.’ [greve 91–92] In clauses with a verb brace the default position of adjuncts seems to be different for noun phrases and adverbs, possibly because of word length. Noun phrases, which are usually postpositional phrases, stay in the clause-final position outside the verb brace, as in examples 59a and 59b. Adverbial adjuncts, on the other hand, occur within the verb brace, as in 59c. This last example also shows that if there is an object, the adverbial adjunct precedes that object. 59 a. wa kä zlü tää Glɩsɩsɩɛɛ -za 3 P XPOT fish: PL look_for Christmas: GEN because_of ‘… in order to look for fish because of Christmas.’ [neyo 5.3] b. nɩ n yi lä nyie tɔɔ -zëplünöö ADD 1 1 S XFUT LOP lagoon cross morning: DEM : OBL ‘… and I crossed the lagoon this morning.’ [greve 85] c. a kä lä - zɩkä gwɛ yi ni 2 P XCND LOP today chimpanzee VPC see ‘Whenever you see a chimpanzee today …’ [gwebhutu 6]

3.2 Marked constituent order: Preposed constituents

The only choice for marked constituent order in Godié consists in preposing a nominal constituent. A constituent is preposed if it occupies a position earlier in the clause than in the default clause structure. Preposed constituents are frequent in Godié clauses. Indeed, any nominal constituent after the verb can be preposed. Postposing of clause constituents in the sense that a constituent occurs later in the clause than in the default clause structure does not seem to exist in Godié and has not been found to occur in the data for this study. As for afterthoughts and self-corrections, which may come to mind, they will be treated as right-dislocated constituents in §3.3.2. A preposed core constituent can be an object, as in example 60a, a locative complement, as in 60b, or a noun complement, as in 60c. Preposed indirect objects are certainly possible but seem rare and have not been found in the corpus. Note that the preposed noun complement in 60c occurs in a conditional or subordinate clause. 5 60 a. -sikaaye ʋ ŋʋʋ- lä -bl ɩɩ gold: SNG NH 3 put: CP LOP neck: OBL ‘He had put something golden around his neck lit. it was something golden that he had put around his neck.’ [kokoleko 7] b. MPutoo n ghlä lä MPuto: OBL 1 S pass: ICP LOP ‘I pass through MPuto.’ [greve 3] c. n yɩkpa sɔ a kä bhä -bhlü nä people two 2 P XCND PST 1 BE 4 SP 1 ‘… in case you were two people…’ [kazo 12] Adjuncts can be preposed in two ways. One way is to prepose them in clause-initial position. The information of the adjunct is then salient and often, but not necessarily, conveys non-established information. In this case the constituent order violates the principle of natural information flow from established to non-established information see the introduction to chapter 4. This is shown in example 61 with adverbs, as in 61a and 61b, and with a noun phrase, as in 61c. 6 61 a. kpokposä ɔ nɩ bhɛ -nʋ deliberately 3 S XNEG : NHP PST 4 do: CP ‘…it wasn’t deliberately that she had done it’ [lueuzi 127] b. Nä ɩɩ ŋnö mnö nä -zɩkä waa - wʋ lebhe nʋ SP 1 NHP : GEN name inside SP 1 today 3 P : XNEG CNT 2 work do ‘So, because of that, it is today they did not work.’ [greve 48–49] c. - Glɩsɩsɩɛɛ -za -a -mö bhlä Christmas: OBL because:of 1 P go: CP PST 1: LOP ‘It was because of Christmas that we had gone.’ [neyo 2] The other way to prepose an adjunct is to move it before the object, as in 62a, and even within the verb brace, as in 62b, where the verb brace extends from the main verb gëë- ‘light’ to the verbal particle yi at the end of the clause. This happens in order to observe the principle of natural information flow, according to which established information is presented before non-established information. In examples 62a and 62b the context reveals that the information conveyed by the adjuncts is established information. 62 a. n nʋ kɔɔkɔ ɔɔ lebhe 1 S do always 3 S : GEN work ‘… and I always worked for him …’ [filsprod 215] 5 As the most salient information in a clause is marked by high pitch in English, italics reflect this fact in the free translation, rather than preposing, which has contrastive function in English. 6 Compare example 61b with examples 58a and 59c above, where -z ɩkä ‘today’ occurs in final and medial position respectively. Compare also example 61c with example 59a above, where Gl ɩsɩsɩɛɛ -za ‘because of Christmas’ is in final position. b. wa gëë- - mɔɔ -bhutuu -kadlükpɔ taa yi 3 P light: CP LOC house: OBL piece_of_wood three VPC ‘There in the house three pieces of wood had been lit lit. they had lit.’ [devinet 28]

3.3 Dislocated constituents