Predicate Fronting and Constituent Order in Malagasy*
Matt Pearson
Reed College
July 2007 draft version – comments welcome
Abstract
This paper discusses how predicate-initial (VOS) order in Malagasy is derived, and the implications of this derivation for general theories of word order. Malagasy clauses are comprised of a predicate phrase followed by a constituent here called the TRIGGER, which occupies the specifier of an A’-position (provisionally labelled TopP). I argue
against an analysis where TopP projects its specifier to the right, and in favor of an analysis where the predicate
phrase undergoes leftward movement over the trigger to adjoin to TopP. In this respect, Malagasy is compatible withtheories of phrase structure such as Kayne (1994), which reject the existence of directionality parameters. Evidence
for predicate fronting comes from particle placement and word order in non-root clauses. Regarding the motivation
for fronting, I suggest that this operation is the phrasal movement analogue of T-to-C raising in verb-second languages. In both cases the Top head attracts a tense feature, but in verb-second languages the tense feature pied-pipes ahead, which adjoins to Top0, while in Malagasy the tense feature pied-pipes an entire XP, which adjoins to TopP. I
show that successsive phrasal adjunction (paralleling V-raising in other languages) is a general property of Malagasy
derivations, which produces inverted orders within the predicate phrase as well as trigger-final order.

1. Introduction
The Austronesian language Malagasy is well known for its typologically unusual basic word order, typically characterized as VOS. Malagasy clauses have a bipartite structure, comprised of a verb-initial PREDICATE PHRASE followed by a definite DP denoting the argument of predication. Following earlier work,
I refer to this DP as the TRIGGER (Pearson 2005a; cf. Schachter 1987 on Tagalog). Example sentences are
given below with the trigger underlined. These show that the predicate phrase may consist of a barenominal phrase (1a), a weak quantifier (1b), an adjectival phrase (1c), a PP (1d), or a verb together with
its non-trigger dependents (1e). For convenience I will refer to the Malagasy order as PREDICATE-FIRST,
abbreviated Pred1 (on analogy with V2 for VERB-SECOND).1
(1)

*

a.

Mpianatra ny
rahalahikostudent
Det brother=1s‘My brother is a student’b.

Roa ny zana-dRasoa
two Det child=Rasoa‘Rasoa has two children’ (lit. ‘Rasoa’s children are two’)

For commenting on earlier versions of this work, thanks to Tim Stowell, Ed Keenan, Richard Kayne, Hilda Koopman, and audiences at UCLA, the University of Wisconsin (Madison), the 2000 Workshop on Antisymmetry(Cortona, Italy), the 2005 Societas Linguistica Europaea, and the LSA 2006 Annual Meeting. Many thanks to Noro
Ramahatafandry for providing much of the Malagasy data for this paper, and to Hantavololona Rakotoarivony for
additional judgements. Thanks also to Ileana Paul, Eric Potsdam, and Lisa Travis for checking some of these sentences with additional consultants. All errors of fact and interpretation are my own.
1
The following abbreviations are used in the examples: 1s = first person singular pronoun/clitic, 2s/p = second person singular/plural pronoun/clitic, 3 = third person (singular or plural) pronoun/clitic, Acc = accusative, AT = ActorTopic (‘active’) voice, CT = Circumstantial-Topic voice, Det = determiner, Foc = focus particle, Gen = genitive, Irr= irrealis/future, Neg = negative particle, Nom = nominative, Obl = oblique case marker, Part = particle, Pl = plural
marker, Pst = past tense, Qu = yes/no question particle, TT = Theme-Topic (‘passive’) voice.

2

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasyc.

Feno rano ny tavoahangy
fullwater Det bottle‘The bottle is full of water’d.

Ary anatin’ ny ala
ny gidrothere inside Det forest Det lemur‘The lemur is in the forest’e.

Nividyronono ho an’ ny ankizy ny vehivavy
Pst.AT.buy milk for Obl Det children Det woman‘The woman bought milk for the children’

Guilfoyle, Hung, and Travis (1992) assume that the trigger occupies a specifier position to the right of thehead which projects it. A slightly updated version of their structure is shown in (2) for the sentence in(1e). Here the predicate phrase is identified as T’ (with V-to-T raising, yielding verb-initial order), and thetrigger occupies the specifier of TP. Guilfoyle et al. attribute the position of the trigger to a Malagasyspecific parameter setting, whereby lexical categories like V project specifiers on the left while functional
categories like T project specifiers on the right. I will refer to this as the RIGHT-SPECIFIER ANALYSIS.
(2)

TP
T'
T
nividy

DP i
VP

ei

ny vehivavy
V'

tV

XP
ronono ho an'ny ankizy

In this paper, I argue against the right-specifier analysis and in favor of an approach where Pred1 is derived through leftward movement of the predicate phrase over the trigger. Specifically, I argue that thepredicate phrase raises to adjoin to some functional projection FP containing the trigger as its specifier, asin (3) (here the predicate phrase is labeled TP; this structure is revised and further articulated in sections 2
and 3 below). I will refer to this approach as the PREDICATE FRONTING ANALYSIS.2

2

Kayne (1994:36) proposes deriving VOS order by fronting a constituent containing VO, but without mentioning
Malagasy specifically. To the best of my knowledge, a predicate raising analysis for Malagasy was first suggested
by MacLaughlin (1995), and explored in detail by Pensalfini (1995) and Pearson (1995, 1997, 1998b, 2001). This
paper modifies and extends the analysis in Pearson (2001).
On deriving verb-initial order through predicate fronting in other languages, see Massam (2000) on Niuean, Lee(2000) on Zapotec, Aldridge (2004) on Seediq, and Cole and Hermon (2006) on Toba Batak. For more on VP fronting and remnant movement, see Den Besten and Webelhuth (1987) and various papers in Alexiadou, et al. (2002).

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

3

(3)

FP
TP
T
nividy

FP
VP

ei

DP i
V'

tV

ny vehivavy

F'
F

tTP

XP
ronono ho an'ny ankizy

The predicate fronting analysis is more abstract than the right-specifier analysis, in that it involves additional movement which needs to be motivated. But in other respects it is arguably simpler than the rightspecifier analysis, since it does not require positing directionality parameters in the syntax (see below). As
I discuss below, the predicate fronting analysis is also empirically superior, since it is consistent with certain facts about particle placement and word order in embedded clauses which remain mysterious under
the right-specifier analysis.
The treatment of Pred1 in Malagasy has clear relevance for theories of linearization in syntax. Within
the Government-Binding framework, cross-linguistic word order variation was captured through a combination of parameters governing the order of heads and complements in the base, the direction of θ- andCase-assignment (e.g., Travis 1989, Koopman and Sportiche 1991), and the application of verb raisingand other movement transformations (Pollock 1989, and many others). Recently, however, alternatives tothis view have been put forward which posit a direct, universal mapping between hierarchical relations in
the phrase structure and precedence relations in the morpho-syntax. These approaches, which might betermed LINEARIZATION ALGORITHM theories, seek to impose strict constraints on the phrase structurecomponent while eliminating directionality parameters from the syntax. Word order variation, both acrossand within languages, is attributed exclusively to differences in movement (which may in turn reduce todifferences in how morphological requirements of functional heads are satisfied, as in the feature checking theory of Chomsky 1995). Approaches in this spirit include Brody (1997, 2000), Fukui and Takano(1998), Haider (2000a,b), Frank and Kuminiak (2000), and Frank and Vijay-Shanker (2001), among
others. The best known of these approaches is that of Kayne (1994), who posits the LINEAR CORRESPONDENCE AXIOM (LCA) paraphrased in (4). From the LCA, together with a minimum of additional assumptions, Kayne derives a restrictive theory of phrase structure which includes the features in (5).3
(4)

(5)

3

Linear Correspondence Axiom
For all {X, Y, a, b}, where X and Y are phrase structure terms, a and b are PF elements, anda maps to a terminal dominated by X while b maps to a terminal dominated by Y, if X asymmetrically c-commands Y, then a precedes b (linearization must be total: if a ≠ b, then eithera precedes b or b precedes a).
a.

Complements universally follow the heads that select them. Thus head-to-head movement(where a head attracts the head of its complement) is always to the left.

Chomsky (1995) adopts the LCA as part of his Bare Phrase Structure proposals, though his underlying assumptions and model of grammar are rather different from Kayne’s. For other extensions and modifications of Kayne’s
theory, see Barbiers (1995), Epstein et al. (1998), Moro (2000), Koopman and Szabolcsi (2000), and Nunes (2000).
Arguments and evidence for an LCA-based approach to word order in various languages can be found in Cinque(1996), Nkemnji (1996), Zwart (1997), Haegeman (2000), Hinterhölzl (2000), and Carstens (2002), among others.

4

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasyb.

Specifiers and adjuncts4 universally precede heads and complements. Consequently phrasal
movement (which targets specifier and XP-adjunct positions) is always to the left.

Kayne’s conclusion that heads uniformly precede their complements (5a) is controversial, given the prevalence of apparent counterexamples from languages with head-final orders.5 However, all of the linearization algorithm theories mentioned above agree on (5b)—largely without comment, given the overwhelming preference for left-specifiers and leftward phrasal movement in both head-initial and head-final
languages. Of course, (5b) is not entirely unproblematic. In a small but robust minority of languages, such
as Malagasy, the subject (and/or topic) of the clause appears at the right periphery rather than the left periphery, suggesting that right-specifiers are in fact allowed in certain cases. If we can demonstrate that
Pred1 is instead the result of fronting, such that clause-final subjects/topics can be taken to occupy leftspecifiers, this would count as significant evidence for linearization algorithm approaches in general (regardless of how the issue of head-complement order is resolved).
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 gives some relevant background on
Malagasy clause structure, while section 3 lays out the specifics of the predicate fronting analysis and addresses some of its consequences for the treatment of word order and extraction. I suggest that predicate
fronting is formally analogous to T-to-C movement in V2 languages like German and Icelandic: In bothcases, a tense feature is attracted into the left periphery of the clause. The difference is that in V2 constructions, feature attraction (or AGREE, in the sense of Chomsky 2000) pied-pipes an X0 constituent,which adjoins to the highest head in the clause; while in Pred1 constructions, an entire XP containing thetense head is pied-piped, and adjoins to the highest maximal projection in the clause. Sections 4 and 5
present empirical support for predicate fronting from two domains: question particle placement, and word
order in certain kinds of embedded clauses. Section 6 touches on the treatment of extraposed clauses.
Finally, I summarize the paper in section 7, and conclude by speculating on why Malagasy should resort
to predicate raising in place of T-to-C movement. There I briefly discuss evidence for ROLL-UP structures
within the Malagasy predicate phrase, suggesting that predicate raising reflects a general preference inthis language for phrasal adjunction over head adjunction.
2. Background: More on the predicate phrase and trigger
Malagasy is an Austronesian language belonging to the Western Malayo-Polynesian subgroup and spoken
in Madagascar. It shares many core structural features with Philippine languages like Tagalog, but has arather more configurational word order, especially as concerns the position of the trigger. For general
information on the structure of Malagasy, see Keenan (1976, 1995), Randriamasimanana (1986), Pearson
4

Kayne (1994), who defines asymmetric c-command in terms of categories rather than segments/nodes, does notdistinguish specifiers from phrasal adjuncts. Here I follow Chomsky (1995) in retaining the specifier/adjunct distinction. It is possible to adopt the LCA and still allow a phrase to host a specifier and an adjunct (or multiple specifiers,
or multiple adjuncts), if c-command is defined derivationally rather than representationally, as in Epstein et al.
(1998). See Pearson (2001) for discussion of this point.
5
Some authors (Zwart 1993, Haegeman 2000, Carstens 2002) maintain that in at least some OV languages, surface
order is derived by fronting the object (or a remnant containing the object) over the verb. Others (Fukui and Takano
1998, Haider 2000a,b) argue that OV order is basic, with VO derived by raising the verb over the object. Still others(Epstein, et al. 1998) propose that the choice between OV and VO is subject to a parameter, as in earlier theories.
As an aside, it is worth noting that specifier-head-complement order does not entail VO order in the base, assome critics of Kayne have inferred. VO is more ‘basic’ only if direct objects merge as (or within) the complementof the verb, an assumption which is neither inevitable nor universal. Ever since Larson (1988), various authors haveargued that at least some direct objects originate in the specifier of VP (Bowers 1993 and others claim that direct objects are always generated in this position). What is more, within the Minimalist framework of Chomsky (1995)—
where phrase structures are constructed in bottom-up fashion, and applications of Merge and Move are interspersed
throughout the derivation, eliminating the distinction between D-structure and S-structure—the very notion of aBASE, and the question of how elements are ordered in the base, essentially disappears from the theory. Precedence
is syntactically relevant only at the interface between phrase structure and morphology.

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

5

and Paul (1996), Keenan and Polinsky (1998), Paul (1998, 1999), Pearson (2001), and the many references cited therein.
Clauses in Malagasy typically consist of a verb-initial predicate phrase followed by the trigger (thetrigger is generally clause-final, though certain types of constituents can follow it; see sections 3.4 and 6).
When the clause contains a verb with two or more definite DP dependents, any of the DPs may be mapped to the trigger function. As in other Philippine-type languages, the form of the trigger is invariant, andits grammatical role within the clause is indicated by VOICE morphology on the verb. Consider theexamples below: In (6a), the trigger is the participant bearing the external argument relation (here theagent), and the verb stem an-sorat- ‘write’ appears in the Actor-Topic (AT) form. When the trigger is aninternal argument of the verb (here the patient), the verb takes Theme-Topic (TT) morphology (6b).
Lastly, when an oblique participant (here an instrument) functions as the trigger, the Circumstantial-Topic(CT) form is used (6c).6(6)a.

Manoratra ny taratasy amin’ ny penina
AT.write
Det letterwith Det pen‘The student is writing the letter with the pen’

ny mpianatra
Det studentb.

Soratan’ ny mpianatra amin’ ny penina ny taratasy
TT.write Det studentwith Det pen
Det letter‘The letter is being written by the student with the pen’or ‘The letter, the student is writing (it) with the pen’c.

Anoratan’ ny mpianatra ny taratasy ny penina
CT.write Det student
Det letter
Det pen‘The pen is being used by the student to write the letter’or ‘The pen, the student is writing the letter (with it)’

Broadly speaking, the trigger picks out the argument to which the speaker wishes to assign greatest
referential prominence, the participant about which the rest of the clause provides information. In Prague
School terms, the trigger presents the THEME of the clause while the predicate phrase presents the RHEME.
Hence, the sentences in (6) are truth-conditionally equivalent but differ in their information structure: (6a)makes an assertion about the student, namely that s/he is writing the letter with the pen; likewise (6b)makes an assertion about the letter, and (6c) makes an assertion about the pen.
The boundary between the predicate phrase and the trigger may be marked by the placement of certain
speech act particles, such as the yes/no question marker ve. This is illustrated by the examples in (7),which give the interrogative counterparts of the sentences in (6). Altering the position of ve renders thesentence ungrammatical, as demonstrated in (8) (I return to the placement of ve in section 4):
(7)

6

a.

Manoratra ny taratasy amin’ ny penina ve ny mpianatra?
AT.write
Det letterwith Det pen
Qu Det student‘Is the student writing the letter with the pen?’b.

Soratan’ ny mpianatra amin’ ny penina ve ny taratasy?
TT.write Det studentwith Det pen
Qu Det letter‘Is the student writing the letter with the pen?’

The AT and TT forms are commonly referred to as the ACTIVE and PASSIVE, respectively (on my reasons foravoiding these terms, see Pearson 2001). Note that certain transitive verbs have more than one TT form, while others
lack a TT form and instead use an uninflected root when the internal argument is the trigger. For detailed discussions of verbal morphology and voice in Malagasy, see Keenan and Polinsky (1998), Rabenilaina (1998), Paul(1999), and Pearson (2005a,b).

6

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasyc.

(8)Anoratan’ ny mpianatra ny taratasy ve ny penina?
CT.write Det student
Det letter
Qu Det pen‘Is the student writing the letter with the pen?’a. * Manoratra ve ny taratasy amin’ ny penina ny mpianatra?
b. * Manoratra ny taratasy ve amin’ ny penina ny mpianatra?
c. * Manoratra ny taratasy amin’ ny penina ny mpianatra ve?

(cf. (7a))

Evidence that the predicate phrase forms a single syntactic constituent to the exclusion of the trigger isgiven in (9), which shows that two predicate phrases sharing the same trigger may be conjoined using theconnective sy ‘and’. Note that sy is used exclusively for conjoining non-clausal constituents (nominals,
PPs, etc.), while a separate connective ary is used for sentential coordination. This is illustrated in (10).
The fact that the sentences in (9) take sy shows that we are dealing with conjoined predicate phrases—
rather than, say, conjoined clauses where the trigger of the first clause has been elided under coreferencewith the trigger of the second clause.
(9)a.

Misotro toaka sy
mihinam-bary Rakoto
AT.drink liquor and AT.eat-rice
Rakoto‘Rajaona drinks liquor and eats rice’b.

Henon’ ny vehivavy sy nojeren’ny lehilahy ny mpihira gasy
TT.hear Det woman
and Pst.TT.watch Det man
Det folk singer‘The folk singer was heard by the woman and watched by the man’or ‘The folk singer, the woman heard (him) and the man watched (him)’(10) a.

b.

(Keenan 1976)

Misotro toaka Rajaona { ary / *sy } mihinam-bary Rakoto
AT.drink liquor Rajaona
AT.eat-rice
Rakoto‘Rajaona drinks liquor and Rakoto eats rice’
Misotro toaka Rajaona { sy / ?? ary } Rakoto
AT.drink liquor Rajaona
Rakoto‘Rajaona and Rakoto drink liquor’Within the predicate phrase itself, the order of constituents is fairly fixed. When not functioning as thetrigger, the external argument (or ACTOR PHRASE) is right-adjacent to the verb, and is in turn followed byany internal arguments and obliques. Indefinite objects immediately follow the verb (in AT clauses), or
the actor phrase, if any (in non-AT clauses). Nominal arguments generally precede PPs and other obliqueelements, although rightward object shift over adverbs is attested (see section 7), and limited scrambling
also seems to be allowed.
Turning to properties of the trigger position: Generally the trigger has been identified as the structuralsubject of the clause (Keenan 1976, 1995, Dahl 1996, and many others). A variant of this analysis isfound in Guilfoyle et al. (1992), who argue that the trigger and the actor phrase are both subjects, theformer occupying the nominative Case position (SpecIP), and the latter the VP-internal subject position(SpecVP). However, the trigger also shares properties with topics in other languages. For example, thereferent of the trigger is existentially presupposed, and hence non-specific indefinites may not function as
triggers. This is illustrated in (11) (definite noun phrases in Malagasy are introduced by an overt determiner such as ny, while indefinite noun phrases lack a determiner):(11) a.

Manoratra ny taratasy ny mpianatra
AT.write
Det letter
Det student‘The student is writing the letter(s)’Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasyb.

Manoratra taratasy ny mpianatra
AT.write
letterDet student‘The student is writing { letters / a letter }’c.

Soratan’ ny mpianatra ny
taratasy
TT.write Det student
Det letter‘The student is writing the letter(s)’7d. * Soratan’ ny mpianatra taratasy
TT.write Det student
letter‘The student is writing { letters / a letter }’In Pearson (2005a) I argue that the trigger occupies an A’-position rather than a subject Case position (cf.
Richards 2000 on triggers in Tagalog). I propose that the trigger originates in the left periphery of theclause, in the specifier of a projection provisionally labelled TOPIC PHRASE (TopP). It is licensed in thisposition through coindexation with a null operator which raises out of TP to the specifier of a WH-OPERATOR PHRASE (WhP), selected by TopP. This is schematized in (12) (abstracting away from movement):
(12)

TopP
TRIGGER i

Top'
Top

WhP
Opi

Wh'
Wh

TP
... ti ...

As evidence for this structure, note that triggers exhibit the binding properties commonly associated withdislocated topics, including reconstruction/connectivity effects combined with weakest crossover (Lasnik
and Stowell 1991). Reconstruction/connectivity is illustrated below: In (13a) the external argument acts as
the trigger, as shown by the AT morphology on the verb, and binds a pronominal within the internalargument (the third person possessive clitic -ny in ny rainy ‘his father’). In the corresponding TT clause in(13b), the internal argument has been promoted over the external argument to become the trigger, yetbinding of the pronominal is still possible.7

7

As evidence that the internal argument originates within the A-binding domain of the external argument, consider
the sentences in (i), where the verb is in the CT form and the trigger denotes a goal. These show that when both arguments are inside the predicate phrase, the external argument can bind a pronominal within the internal argument,
but not vice versa:(i)a.

Nampisehoan’ ny lehilahy tsirairayi ny rahalahinyi ny ankizy
Pst.CT.show
Det maneach
Det brother=3 Det children‘Each mani showed hisi brother to the children’b. ?? Nampisehoan’ ny rahalahinyi ny lehilahy tsirairayi
Pst.CT.show
Det brother=3
Det maneach‘Hisi brother showed each mani to the children’

ny ankizy
Det children

8Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy(13) a.

b.

ny mpianatra tsirairayi
Namangyny
rainyi
Pst.AT.visit Det father=3 Det student
each‘Each studenti visited hisi father’Novangian’ ny mpianatra tsirairayi
Pst.TT.visit Det student
each‘Hisi father, each studenti visited’

ny rainyi
Det father=3

That triggers exhibit weakest crossover effects is shown in (14), where the internal argument is a quantifier phrase and the external argument contains a pronominal. In (14a), where the external argument is thetrigger, a bound variable reading of the pronoun is disallowed for all speakers. However, when the internal argument is promoted to the trigger function over the external argument, as in (14b), most speakers
report that a bound variable reading becomes available.
(14) a. * Namangy
ny mpianatra tsirairayi
Pst.AT.visit Det student
each‘Hisi father visited each studenti’ny rainyi
Det father=3

b. % Novangian’ ny
rainyiny mpianatra tsirairayi
Pst.TT.visit Det father=3 Det student
each‘Each studenti, hisi father visited’
Lasnik and Stowell (1991) observe that an A’-chain fails to show robust weak crossover effects when it isheaded by an operator that is in turn bound by a higher antecedent. Hence, we can explain the combination of reconstruction/connectivity in (13) and weakest crossover in (14) if we assume that Malagasy
triggers are base-generated in an A’-position and bind an empty operator, as in (12). For additional evidence that Malagasy triggers occupy an A’-position, see Pearson (2005a).
3. Predicate fronting in Malagasy
How do we account for the fact that the trigger is spelled out to the right of the predicate phrase in Malagasy? Suppose we assumed, following Guilfoyle et al. (1992), that functional categories in Malagasy havetheir specifiers on the right. Modifying the structure in (12) accordingly would yield the tree in (15) where
Wh and Top (which are presumably functional categories) project right-specifiers:
(15)

TopP
Top'
Top

TRIGGER i
WhP

Wh'
Wh

Opi
TP
... ti ...

As mentioned above, such structures are incompatible with theories of linearization like Kayne (1994),
which require that heads uniformly project their specifiers/adjuncts on the left. Rather than relying on
directionality parameters in the base, I will instead argue that Pred1 order is derived via movement—specifically, successive XP-adjunction, culminating in the raising of the predicate phrase over the (left-)spe-

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

9cifier containing the trigger. Empirical evidence for this claim is presented in sections 4 and 5. Before
turning to this evidence, I briefly lay out the specifics of my analysis, and consider some of its consequences for the treatment of word order and extraction.
3.1. Predicate fronting as phrasal adjunction: Pred1 meets V2
What would motivate the predicate phrase to raise over the trigger? Although I cannot provide a complete
answer to this question here, I will present a tentative proposal in the interests of making the predicate
raising analysis more concrete. In particular, I suggest that predicate raising in Malagasy is derivationallyanalogous to T-to-C movement in verb-second languages. Predicate raising and T-to-C movement are
triggered by the same Agree operation, differing only in the amount of phonological material which ispied-piped by that operation: predicate raising involves XP-adjunction while T-to-C involves X0-adjunction. In effect, Pred1 order in Malagasy is the phrasal movement analogue of V2.
In Pearson (2005a) I argued that the Malagasy trigger occupies an A’-position high in the clause. This
position is comparable in many respects to the initial position (Vorfeld) in V2 languages. Compare theMalagasy sentences in (16) with their German and Icelandic counterparts in (17) and (18), respectively: I
assume that the underlined constituents in these sentences all occupy essentially the same phrase structure
position.8(16) a.

b.

(17) a.

b.

(18) a.

b.

8

Tsy namaky
ny boky ny
Neg Pst.AT.read Det book Det‘The man did not read the book’lehilahyman

Tsy novakin’
ny lehilahy ny boky
Neg Pst.TT.read Det man
Det book‘The book, the man did not read (it)’Der
Mann hat das
Buchthe.Nom man
has the.Acc book
‘The man did not read the book’

nicht gelesen
not
read

Das
Buch hat derMann nicht gelesenthe.Acc book has the.Nom man
notread‘The book, the man didn’t read (it)’Maðurinnhafði ekki lesið
man.the.Nom had not read
‘The man had not read the book’bókinabook.the.Acc

Bókinahafði maðurinn
ekki lesið
book.the.Acc had man.the.Nom not read
‘The book, the man had not read (it)’Clearly there are differences between Malagasy and Germanic: In German and Icelandic the grammatical functionof the trigger/topic is indicated by nominal case inflection, whereas in Malagasy the form of the trigger/topic isinvariant and its grammatical function is instead identified by the voice morphology on the verb. However, if thetheory of voice developed in Pearson (2001, 2005a,b) is correct, these differences are essentially morphological:
Voice inflection, like wh-agreement in Chamorro (Chung 1998), indirectly indicates the abstract Case features of thetrigger/topic. Voice can thus be thought of as the ‘head-marking’ counterpart of morphological case (cf. Rackowski
2002 for a very different implementation of this idea in Tagalog).

10

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

Recall from section 2 (examples (13) and (14)) that promotion to trigger exhibits a combination of reconstruction/connectivity and weakest crossover effects, which I take as evidence that the trigger is generated
in a non-Case position from which it binds an empty operator. As I discuss in Pearson (2005a), topic
fronting in German shows comparable binding effects. In (19a), a quantified subject binds a possessive
pronoun inside the object. Binding is preserved when the object is topicalized (19b), showing that topics
in German reconstruct (exhibit connectivity). However, German topicalization also shows weakest crossover effects: a quantified topic can bind a pronoun from its surface position, even when the trace of the
topic does not c-command the pronoun. This is shown in (20). In (20a) a non-topic object fails to bind apronoun within the subject; however, the bound reading becomes available when the object is topicalized
over the subject (20b). It is therefore plausible that clause-initial topics in V2 languages, like Malagasy
triggers, are generated in the specifier of TopP, which forms a chain with an operator in the specifier of
WhP (see the tree in (12) above).
(19) a.

Jeder
Studenti hat seineni Vater besucht
every.Nom student has his.Acc father visited‘Every studenti visited hisi father’b.

Seineni Vater hat jederStudenti besucht
his.Acc father has every.Nom student visited‘Hisi father, every studenti visited’(20) a. * Seini
Vater hat jeden
Studenteni
besucht
his.Nom father has every.Acc student.Acc visited‘Hisi father visited every studenti’
b.

Jeden
Studenteni hat seini
Vater besucht
every.Acc student.Acc has his.Nom father visited‘Every studenti, hisi father visited’

It is widely assumed that verb-second order results from head raising of T0, containing the finite verb or
auxiliary, into the left periphery of the clause. Various theories have been proposed to explain why thismovement takes place.9 I will not take a stand on this issue here, but merely stipulate the formal mechanisms triggering T-raising (cf. Pesetsky and Torrego 2001): (a) the Wh and Top heads include an uninterpretable tense feature, which attracts (Agrees with) the interpretable tense feature of the T head; (b) inverb-second clauses, this Agree relation triggers pied-piping (displacement) of PF material. This results insuccessive head adjunction: After the Wh head in (12) merges with its TP complement, the tense headraises to adjoin to Wh. The null operator then raises to become the specifier of WhP, and WhP merges as
the complement of the Top head. Finally, T+Wh raises and adjoins to Top, which takes the trigger/topic
as its specifier. This yields the structure in (21). In accordance with the LCA, the tense head (containing
the finite verb or auxiliary) will be spelled out in second position, immediately following the trigger/topic.

9

The literature on V2 is too vast to be adequated surveyed here. See Vikner (1995) for an overview, as well as
Zwart (1997, 2001, 2005) and Branigan (2005) for some recent analyses.

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

11

(21)

TopP
TRIGGERi

Top'
Top

WhP

Wh
T

Top

Opi

Wh

Wh'
tWh

TP
... tT ... ti ...

Predicate fronting in Malagasy, I suggest, involves essentially the same derivation from the perspective offeature checking: as in V2 clauses, the establishment of an Agree relation between the uninterpretabletense features of Top and Wh and the interpretable tense feature of T is accompanied by PF pied-piping.
However, in Malagasy head movement is blocked, and so pied-piping takes the form of successive XPadjunction instead: After Wh merges with TP and attracts the null operator into its specifier, the TP
remnant raises over the operator to adjoin to WhP. WhP then merges with the Top head, which takes thetrigger as its specifier. Finally, WhP raises over the trigger to adjoin to TopP, yielding the structure in(22). It is this final step which, in accordance with the LCA, results in predicate-initial surface order.10
(22)

TopP
WhP
TP
... ti ...

TopP
WhP

Opi

TRIGGER i
Wh'

Wh

Top'
Top

tW hP

tTP

10

Pensalfini (1995) considers an alternative to the predicate fronting analysis which is also compatible with Kayne(1994), namely the cascade structure in (i) below: Here, arguments and adjuncts are generated in VP. Whicheverconstituent is selected as the trigger raises to the specifier of TopP, located immediately above VP, while other elements raise higher up into Case-checking positions (SpecTP for external arguments, SpecAgrOP for internal arguments, etc.). Meanwhile the verb undergoes head-to-head raising and is spelled out in the head of AgrSP. The
question particle ve is located in the specifier of a MOOD PHRASE (MoodP) projection dominating TopP.
(i)[AgrSP V [TP (Actor) tV [AgrOP (Theme) tV [MoodP ve tV [TopP Trigger tV [VP … tV … ] ] ] ] ] ]The primary motivation for (i) is that it handles extraposition of clauses and adverbials (cf. sections 3.4 and 6) in astraightforward way: lacking features to check, these elements would remain in situ and be spelled out inside VP,
following the trigger. However, this result is outweighed by some serious empirical and conceptual problems. For
example, (i) runs counter to the cross-linguistic generalization that topics and question particles are located high inthe clause, above the A-positions in which Case features are checked. More critically, in a cascade structure like (i)the verb and its non-trigger dependents fail to form a constituent to the exclusion of the trigger. This is contradictedby the coordination evidence in (10) above. Finally, (i) is hard to reconcile with the evidence for predicate fronting
in sections 4 and 5.

12Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

Why Malagasy should exhibit XP-adjunction where other languages show X0-adjunction is unclear. For
reasons of space I will set this conceptual issue aside and concentrate instead on empirical arguments forpredicate fronting. However, I return to XP- versus X0-adjunction briefly in the final section of the paper,
where I note that predicate fronting appears to reflect a general preference for phrasal movement overhead movement in Malagasy derivations.
Before turning to the evidence for predicate fronting, let us briefly consider some consequences of—and extensions to—this particular approach to Pred1 order, with respect to word order and extraction.
3.2. Predicate fronting and constituent focus
The predicate fronting analysis accounts straightforwardly for the position of contrastively focused constituents in Malagasy. Contrastive focus involves the construction in (23b), where the focused phrase appears at the beginning of the clause, followed by the particle no:(23) a.

b.

Mihinana ny voasary ny gidro
AT.eatDet orange Det lemur‘The lemur is eating the orange’
Ny gidro no mihinana ny voasary
Det lemur Foc AT.eat
Det orange‘It’s the lemur who is eating the orange’

Paul (1999, 2001b) argues convincingly that (23b) has a structure reminiscent of clefts and pseudo-clefts
in other languages: the focused constituent (perhaps selected by a null copula) functions as the matrix
predicate of the clause, while the constituent introduced by no is a free relative construction occupying
the trigger position. For example, she shows that focused noun phrases behave like predicate nominals inthat they can be negated with tsy ‘not’ (24). As (25) shows, verbal predicates in non-focus clauses may
also be negated, but argument noun phrases may not. (See Paul 2001b for additional discussion.)(24) a.

Tsy mpianatra ny
rahalahiko
Neg student
Det brother=1s‘My brother is not a student’b.

Tsy mpianatra no nanoratra
ny taratasy
Net student
Foc Pst.AT.write Det letter‘It wasn’t a student who wrote the letter’(25) a.

Tsy nanoratra
ny taratasy ny mpianatra
Neg Pst.AT.write Det letter
Det student‘The student didn’t write the letter’b. * Nanoratra
ny taratasy tsy ny mpianatra
Pst.AT.write Det letter
Neg Det student‘Not the student wrote the letter’c. * Nanoratra
tsy taratasy ny mpianatra
Pst.AT.write Neg letter
Det student‘The student wrote not a letter’ or ‘The student wrote no letter(s)’Adopting the predicate fronting analysis, a sentence like (23b) would have the structure in (26): The
focused phrase is contained within TP, while the free relative is generated in the specifier of TopP (it isPearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

13

unclear what the syntactic category of the free relative is, so I label it simply XP). TP raises and adjoins to
WhP, which adjoins to TopP, yielding a sentence where the focused constituent is clause-initial.
(26)

TopP
WhP
TP
ny gidro

TopP
WhP

Opi

XP i
Wh'

Wh

Top'

no mihinana ny laisoa

Top

tWhP

tTP

3.3. The position of the operator
According to the analysis in (22), predicate fronting involves a two-step derivation: TP adjoins to WhP,
which adjoins to TopP. As a result, the operator with which the trigger is coindexed ends up between the
TP and the trigger. Although the operator itself is phonologically null, there are arguably cases in which it
pied-pipes overt material when it raises to the specifier of WhP. As predicted, this pied-piped material isspelled out at the right edge of the predicate phrase, immediately preceding the trigger.
For example, the quantificational adverbial daholo ‘all’ occurs at the right edge of the predicate
phrase (27). Note that daholo always quantifies over the set denoted by the trigger; hence it is at leastplausible that daholo is contained in SpecWhP, in a local configuration with the operator bound by thetrigger, as in (29):11(27) a.

11

Manoratra taratasy amin’ ny penina daholo ny mpianatra
AT.write
letterwith Det pen
all
Det student‘The students are all writing letters with pens’b.

Soratan’ ny mpianatra amin’ ny penina daholo
TT.write Det studentwith Det pen
all‘All the letters are being written by students with pens’

ny taratasy
Det letterc.

Anoratan’ ny mpianatra taratasy daholo ny penina
CT.write Det student
letterall
Det pen‘All the pens are being used by students to write letters’

Note that the yes/no question particle ve, discussed in section 4, occurs in between daholo and the trigger, showing that daholo does not form a constituent with the trigger (e.g., Manoratra taratasy amin’ny penina daholo ve ny
mpianatra? ‘Are the students all writing letters with pens?’).

14

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

(28)

TopP
WhP

TopP

TP

WhP

manoratra taratasy

DP

XP

Wh'

Opi daholo

Wh

Top'

ny mpianatrai

Top

tWhP

tTP

In addition, I argue in Pearson (2005a) that when the operator bound by the matrix trigger originates inside an embedded clause, that operator pied-pipes the embedded clause into the matrix SpecWhP (due toa requirement that operators be clause-bound). An example of such a sentence is given in (29), where theposition of the particle ve shows that ny mofo ‘the bread’ is the matrix trigger (ve being confined to matrix
clauses). Notice that the embedded clause containing the operator appears between the matrix verb andthe trigger. My tree for this sentence is given, in abbreviated form, in (30) (see Pearson 2005a for arguments that the embedded clause has been pied-piped here):(29)

Heverin’ ny zaza [ didian’ ny vehivavy amin’ ny antsy ] (ve) ny mofo
TT.think Det child TT.cut Det woman with Det knife
Det bread‘The bread, the child thinks [ that the woman is cutting (it) with the knife ]’

(30)

TopP
WhP

TopP

TP
heverin'ny zaza tCP

WhP

DP

CP
Opi didian' ...

Wh'Whny mofoi

Top'
Top

tWhP

tTP

3.4. Post-trigger constituents
Although the trigger constituent is generally clause-final, there are certain classes of elements which canappear after it. For example, embedded clauses are frequently extraposed to the end of the sentence, a fact
to which I return in section 6. In addition, various types of adverbials, including temporal adverbs likeomaly ‘yesterday’ and modal/temporal adverbs like matetika ‘generally’, routinely appear after the trigger, as in (31) (the position of the question particle ve, demarcating the right edge of the predicate phrase,is shown in parentheses). It is generally assumed that adverbs like ‘yesterday’ and ‘generally’ are introduced rather high in the structure (Cinque 1999, et al.).
(31) a.

b.

Nanoratra
taratasy (ve) ny mpianatra omaly
Pst.AT.write letter
Det student
yesterday‘Yesterday the student wrote a letter’
Mandamina ny trano (ve) Rakoto matetika
AT.arrange Det house
Rakoto generally‘Generally Rakoto puts the house in order’(cf. Rackowski 1998)

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

15

In addition, some speakers allow locative PPs, which generally occur within the predicate phrase (32a), tocome after the trigger (32b). For speakers which allow PP extraposition, the position of the PP is determined by its information status: In (32a) the location of the writing event is new information, part of what
the speaker is asserting, while in (32b) the location is presupposed, part of the background to the main
assertion ((32a) might be paraphrased ‘What the student is doing is writing a letter in the garden’, while(32b) would be paraphrased ‘What the student is doing in the garden is writing a letter’).
(32) a.

Manoratra taratasy any an-tokotany (ve)AT.write
letterthere Obl=garden‘The student is writing a letter in the garden’

ny mpianatra
Det student

b. % Manoratra taratasy (ve) ny mpianatra any an-tokotany
AT.write
letterDet student
there Obl=garden‘The student is writing a letter in the garden’
Presuppositional PPs like any an-tokotany in (32b) are similar to temporal adverbs like omaly in (31a), inthat they provide information about the spatio-temporal context of the event denoted by the predicate.
Languages routinely place such elements at the periphery of the clause, in the same kinds of positions
where topics go. Here I tentatively assume that post-trigger adverbials and PPs are licensed by the Top
head—specifically, as a second specifier of TopP (I remain agnostic on whether they are generated in thisposition, or scramble into it prior to predicate fronting). Thus (31a) would have the structure in (33):
(33)

TopP
WhP

TopP

TP
nanoratra taratasy

WhP
Opi

DP i
Wh'

Wh

ny mpianatra
tTP

Top'
AdvP
omaly

Top'
Top

tW hP

In support of treating ny mpianatra and omaly in (33) as stacked specifiers, note that these elements canappear in either order (at least for some speakers). This is illustrated in (34a,b), where the placement of ve
shows that omaly is outside the predicate phrase in both sentences:12(34) a.

b.

12Nanoratra
taratasy (ve) ny
mpianatra omaly
Pst.AT.write letter
Det student
yesterday‘Yesterday the student wrote a letter’
Nanoratra
taratasy (ve) omaly
Pst.AT.write letter
yesterday‘Yesterday the student wrote a letter’

ny mpianatra
Det student

An alternative to the multiple-specifier approach would be to assume that TopP is recursive in Malagasy (cf. Rizzi
1997), in which case omaly and ny mpianatra are separated by a second, higher Top head. However, this alternative
presents problems for the roll-up analysis of predicate fronting argued for here. See Pearson (2001) for discussion.

16

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

3.5. Predicate raising and extraction
As Pensalfini (1995) and Potsdam (to appear) mention, the predicate fronting analysis has potential consequences for extraction. Under the right-specifier analysis, the predicate phrase is a complement (cf. thetrees in (2) and (15)), whereas according to the analysis argued for here, the predicate phrase surfaces as
an adjunct. Hence, given the usual assumption that adjuncts are islands for extraction, the predicate fronting analysis predicts that movement out of the predicate phrase into a higher position should be prohibitedin Malagasy, whereas the right-specifier analysis makes no such prediction.
Testing this prediction is not a straightforward matter, however. Consider wh-extraction: As Paul
(2003), Potsdam (to appear) and others show, wh-phrases in Malagasy always remain in situ, either properly contained within a larger predicate phrase (35b), or acting as the predicate in a cleft construction(35c) (cf. (23b) above). Moreover, wh-phrases are banned from occurring in the trigger position (36). It
seems, then, that wh-phrases are confined to TP. But whether this is because predicate phrases are islands
for extraction, or for some other reason, is difficult to determine (wh-in-situ is certainly not confined tolanguages with predicate-initial order).
(35) a.

Mihinana ny voasary ny gidro
AT.eatDet orange Det lemur‘The lemur is eating the orange’b.

Mihinana inona ny gidro?
AT.eatwhat Det lemur‘What is the lemur eating?’c.

Inona no hanin’ ny gidro?
what
Foc TT.eat Det lemur‘What is the lemur eating?’(36) a. * Mihinana ny voasary iza?
AT.eatDet orange who‘Who is eating the orange?’b.

Iza no mihinana ny voasary?
who Foc AT.eat
Det orange‘Who is eating the orange?’

In the absence of wh-extraction, perhaps the best candidate for an A’-extraction operation in Malagasy is
discourse topicalization. Discourse topics occur at the left edge of the clause, separated from the predicate
by the particle dia. Example (37b) shows fronting of an adverbial, while (37c) shows fronting of the trigger; limited multiple fronting is allowed, as in (37d) (examples adapted from Paul 1999; see also Keenan
1976 for discussion of this construction).
(37) a.

b.

Nanapaka bozaka omalyiBakolyPst.AT.cut grassyesterday Det Bakoly‘Bakoly cut the grass yesterday’
Omaly
dia nanapaka bozaka i
Bakolyyesterday Dia Pst.AT.cut grass Det Bakoly‘Yesterday, Bakoly cut the grass’Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasyc.

eiIBakolyi dia nanapaka bozaka omaly
Det Bakoly Dia Pst.AT.cut grassyesterday‘As for Bakoly, (she) cut the grass yesterday’

d.

Omaly
i
Bakolyi dia nanapaka bozaka ei
yesterday Det Bakoly Dia Pst.AT.cut grass‘Yesterday, as for Bakoly, (she) cut the grass’

17

Despite some superficial similarity, the dia-fronting construction has very different properties from thecleft construction, as Paul (1999, 2001b) discusses. In (24) I showed that clefted constituents pattern aspredicates in that they can be negated. By contrast, dia-fronted constituents cannot be negated; instead,negation must follow dia:(38) a. * Tsy i
Bakolyi dia nanapaka bozaka
Neg Det Bakoly Dia Pst.AT.cut grass‘Not Bakoly, (she) cut the grass yesterday’
b.

omaly
ei
yesterday

I
Bakolyi dia tsy nanapaka bozaka omalyei
Det Bakoly Dia Neg Pst.AT.cut grassyesterday‘Bakoly, (she) didn’t cut the grass yesterday’

Consider also the distribution of the emphatic particle tena ‘really, indeed’. Potsdam (to appear) showsthat this element can precede a verbal predicate phrase (39a) or a clefted constituent (39b), but cannot precede a fronted element (39c). Instead, it must occur between dia and the verb (39d). Here again, clefted
constituents pattern as predicates, but dia-fronted constituents do not.
(39) a.

b.

Tena hovidin’
ny zaza ny fiaramanidina
indeed Irr.TT.buy Det child Det airplane‘The child will indeed buy the airplane’
Tena Rabe no mahandro vary
indeed Rabe Foc AT.cook rice
‘It is indeed Rabe who cooks rice’c. * Tena ny fiaramanidinai dia hovidin’ ny zaza ei
indeed Det airplane
Dia Irr.TT.buy Det child‘Indeed the airplane, the child will buy (it)’d.

Ny fiaramanidinai dia tenahovidin’ny zaza ei
Det airplane
Dia indeed Irr.TT.buy Det child‘The airplane, the child will indeed buy (it)’Suppose, then, that fronted constituents occupy the specifier of some functional projection FP headed bydia, as in (40) (in multiple fronting sentences such as (37d), the leftmost constituent would merge as anouter specifier of FP, or perhaps adjoin to FP):(40)

[FP i Bakoly [F’ dia [XP nanapaka bozaka ] ] ]Since fronted constituents occur leftmost in the clause, the specifier of FP must be higher than the surface
position of the predicate phrase, which is clause-initial in sentences without fronting. Supposing that thepredicate phrase has raised to adjoin to TopP (and assuming further that phrasal movement obeys strict

18

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

cyclicity), we predict that a predicate-internal constituent XP will be blocked from extracting and raisingon to SpecFP, as schematized in (41). On the other hand, nothing would prevent a constituent in SpecTopP from raising to SpecFP. Such constituents include the trigger itself, along with other predicateexternal constituents such as the temporal adverb omaly ‘yesterday’ (= YP in (41); see 3.4 above).
(41)

FP
*XP

F'
F

TopP
WhP
... e ...

TopP
TRIGGER

Top'
YP

Top'
Top

tWhP

Initial evidence suggests that this prediction is borne out. Triggers may undergo dia-fronting, while nontriggger arguments may not:13(42) a.

Ny mpianatrai dia [WhP nanoratra
Det student
Dia
Pst.AT.write‘As for the student, he wrote the letter’

ny taratasy ] ei
Det letterb. * Ny taratasyi dia [WhP nanoratra ei ] ny
Det letter
Dia
Pst.AT.write
Det‘As for the letter, the student wrote it’mpianatra
studentc. * Ny mpianatrai dia [WhP nosoratanaei ] ny taratasy
Det student
Dia
Pst.TT.write
Det letter‘As for the student, he wrote the letter’d.

Ny taratasyi dia [WhP nosoratan’ny mpianatra ] ei
Det letter
Dia
Pst.TT.write Det student‘As for the letter, the student wrote it’

Likewise, it appears that adverbs can undergo dia-fronting if and only if they are capable of appearing
outside the predicate phrase: Whereas omaly ‘yesterday’ may be fronted, as shown in (43), manner adverbs such as haingana ‘quickly’, which never follow the trigger and are presumably licensed low in thepredicate phrase, cannot undergo fronting, as shown in (44):(43) a.

13

Nanapaka
bozaka omalyiBakolyPst.AT.cut grassyesterday Det Bakoly‘Bakoly cut the grass yesterday’

In fact, non-trigger arguments can act as discourse topics in a dia-construction, but only if they are coindexed witha resumptive pronoun inside the predicate phrase (see Keenan 1976, Paul 1999 for examples and discussion). If thepresence of a resumptive pronoun indicates that the discourse topic has been base-generated in the specifier of FP
rather than moved there, then this is consistent with the claim that predicate phrases are islands for extraction.

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasyb.

Nanapaka
bozaka i
Bakoly omaly
Pst.AT.cut grass Det Bakoly yesterday‘Bakoly cut the grass yesterday’

c.

Omaly
dia nanapaka bozaka i
Bakolyyesterday Dia Pst.AT.cut grass Det Bakoly‘Yesterday, Bakoly cut the grass’(44) a.

19

Nanapaka
bozaka haingana i
BakolyPst.AT.cut grass quickly
Det Bakoly‘Bakoly cut the grass quickly’

b. * Nanapaka
bozaka i
Bakoly haingana
Pst.AT.cut grass Det Bakoly quickly‘Bakoly cut the grass quickly’
c. * Haingana dia nanapaka bozaka i
Bakolyquickly
Dia Pst.AT.cut grass Det Bakoly‘Quickly, Bakoly cut the grass’
In fact, it is not entirely clear that dia-fronting involves movement: discourse topics might be left-dislocated constituents, base-generated in their surface position, as has been argued for other languages (cf. note
12). However, the constraints on dia-fronting and wh-question formation are at least consistent with theprediction that predicate phrases are islands for extraction, and thus fully compatible with the predicate
fronting analysis.
Having outlined an XP-adjunction approach to Malagasy word order and considered some of its consequences, I now turn to evidence that the predicate undergoes fronting over the trigger. In section 4 I
discuss the placement of the yes/no question marker ve. Following Paul (2001a), I treat ve as a second
position clitic, and show how the predicate fronting analysis yields a simple ve placement rule. In section
5 I turn to word order in embedded clauses. The right-specifier analysis predicts that, all else being equal,
the trigger will always follow the predicate phrase. However, if the predicate fronting analysis is correct,
this leaves open the possibility that fronting might fail to take place under certain circumstances, in whichcase the trigger would be spelled out at the beginning of the clause. I show that trigger-initial order is infact attested in certain types of embedded clauses. Insofar as the arguments in these sections go through,we can conclude that Malagasy word order is compatible with theories such as Kayne (1994), which prohibit right-specifiers and rightward adjunction.
4. Evidence for predicate fronting: Question particle placement
Malagasy possesses various particles for expressing illocutionary force in matrix clauses. The most common of these is ve, used to mark yes/no questions. Ve typically occurs at the boundary between the predicate phrase and the trigger (regardless of how heavy the predicate phrase is):(45) a.

b.

Matory ve ny gidro?
AT.sleep Qu Det lemur‘Is the lemur sleeping?’Naka
fanafody ho anao
ve
Pst.AT.get medicine for 2s.Acc Qu‘Did your mother get medicine for you?’ny reninao?
Det mother=2s

20

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasyc.

Namonoan’ ny mpamboly ny akoho tany
an-tokotany ve ny antsy?
Pst.CT.kill Det farmer
Det chicken Pst.there Obl=yard
Qu Det knife‘Was the knife used by the farmer to kill the chickens in the yard?’

Recall from section 3.2 that contrastive focus in Malagasy is done by means of clefting: The focused constituent constitutes the main predicate, while the presupposition is expressed by a free relative whichfunctions as the trigger. As (46) shows, ve appears between the clefted constituent and no:(46)

Ny mpianatra ve no namaky
ny boky?
Det student
Qu Foc Pst.AT.read Det book
‘Is it the student who is reading the book?’

Existential constructions, formed with the verb misy ‘exist’, often lack an overt trigger and consist of justa predicate phrase, in which case ve will occur at the end of the clause (47a); moreover, ve precedes thetrigger even when it is not clause-final (47b). This shows that ve does not occupy some sort of ‘mirror
image Wackernagel’ position, immediately preceding the final constituent in the clause. Instead, particle
placement targets the right edge of the predicate phrase.
(47) a.

b.

Nisy
olona nividy
akanjo ve?
Pst.AT.exist person Pst.AT.buy dress Qu‘Did anybody buy a dress?’ (lit. ‘Was there a person who bought a dress?’)
Namakyboky ve ny mpianatra omaly?
Pst.AT.read book Qu Det student
yesterday‘Was the student reading a book yesterday?’

However, Paul (2001a) shows that ve does not invariably occur at the right edge of the predicate phrase.
In (45)–(47) above, the predicate phrase is the first constituent in the clause. However, in some cases one
or more elements precede the predicate phrase, as in the dia-fronting construction discussed in section
3.5. If ve occupied a fixed position in the clause, we would expect it to appear to the right of the predicate
phrase in sentences with fronting as well. This turns out to be incorrect. In such sentences ve immediately
follows the first fronted constituent. Consider the examples in (48) (from Paul 2001a):(48) a.

Nanapaka bozaka omaly
ve iBakoly?
Pst.AT.cut grassyesterday Qu Det Bakoly‘Did Bakoly cut the grass yesterday?’

b.

Omaly
ve dia nanapaka bozaka i
Bakoly?
yesterday Qu Dia Pst.AT.cut grass Det Bakoly‘Yesterday, did Bakoly cut the grass?’c.

I
Bakolyi ve dia nanapaka bozaka omalyei?
Det Bakoly Qu Dia Pst.AT.cut grassyesterday‘As for Bakoly, did (she) cut the grass yesterday?’

d.

Omaly
ve i
Bakolyi dia nanapaka bozaka ei?
yesterday Qu Det Bakoly Dia Pst.AT.cut grass‘Yesterday, as for Bakoly, did (she) cut the grass?’

In addition to clauses with dia, there are other constructions which feature fronting. For example, when
two or more clauses are juxtaposed and their triggers are contrasted with one another, the trigger may pre-

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

21

cede the predicate phrase, as in (49) (from Paul 2001a; cf. Keenan 1976). In such sentences the trigger haspresumably raised over the predicate to a higher specifier position, much as in dia clauses.
(49)

Ny mpianatra mamaky teny, ny mpampianatra mihaino
Det student
AT.read word Det teacher
AT.listen‘The students read aloud, (while) the teacher listens’

Again, if ve consistently targeted the right edge of the predicate phrase, we would expect it to come at theend of the clause in sentences with parallel contrastive fronting. However, Paul shows that ve immediately follows the fronted trigger, as in (50) (cf. also (51), adapted from a text):(50)

Ny mpianatra ve mamaky teny, ny mpampianatra ve mihaino?
Det student
Qu AT.read word Det teacher
Qu AT.listen‘Do the students read aloud, (while) the teacher listens?’(51)

Ianao ve ho tonga any
anefa
izahay aza niverina?
2s
Qu Irr arrive there although 1ex
even Pst.AT.return‘You will reach that place, even though we (were forced to) turn back?’

Based on sentences such as these, Paul (2001a) concludes that ve is a second position clitic (cf. Halpern
and Zwicky 1996). But how is second position determined? Here I claim that, by adopting the predicate
fronting analysis, we can formulate a simple structure-based rule of ve placement along the lines of (52):(52)

Ve encliticizes to the highest c-commanding maximal projection in the clause.

In sentences with dia-fronting (48b,c,d) and contrastive fronting (49), the highest c-commanding maximal
projection will be the (leftmost) fronted constituent, making this the target of ve encliticization. This is
schematized in (53) (cf. (40)):(53) a.
b.

[FP [DP i Bakoly ] =ve [F’ dia [TopP nanapaka bozaka omaly ] ] ](= (48c))[FP [AdvP omaly ] =ve [F’ [DP i Bakoly ] [F’ dia [TopP nanapaka bozaka ] ] ] ](= (48d))In sentences which lack fronting, the FP which licenses the fronted element(s) is absent, making (the topmost segment of) TopP the root node. In such cases, according to the predicate fronting analysis in (22),the highest c-commanding maximal projection in the clause will be WhP, containing the predicate phrase.
This derives the fact that in unmarked sentences, ve appears at the right edge of the predicate phrase,
immediately preceding the trigger (if any):(54) a.

[TopP [WhP nanapaka bozaka omaly ]i =ve [TopP [DP i Bakoly ] ti ] ](= (48a))b.

[TopP [WhP ny mpianatra ]i =ve [TopP [XP no namaky ny boky ] ti ] ](= (46))

How would the right-specifier analysis in (15) handle ve placement? Let us begin with predicate-initialsentences. In order to ensure that ve appears between the predicate phrase and the trigger, we could assume either that ve cliticizes to the right of the constituent which projects the root node, namely Top’(55a), or that it cliticizes to the left of the maximal projection immediately dominated by the root node,
namely the trigger in the specifier of TopP (55b).14
14

Other alternatives, in which ve cliticizes to a lower projection such as WhP, are also possible; however, in keepingwith the hypothesis that ve is a second position clitic, I will assume that the rule governing its placement refers togeneral structural criteria such as ‘highest maximal projection’, rather than specific positions or categories.

22

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy(55) a.

[TopP [Top’ nanapaka bozaka omaly ] =ve [DP i Bakoly ] ]b.

[TopP [Top’ nanapaka bozaka omaly ] ve= [DP i Bakoly ] ](= (48a))

However, neither of these alternatives generalizes in any obvious way to sentences with fronting. Consider (48b), repeated below as (56), and the corresponding right-specifier tree in (57):
(56)

Omaly
ve dia nanapaka bozaka i
Bakolyyesterday Qu Dia Pst.AT.cut grass
Det Bakoly‘Yesterday, Bakoly cut the grass’

(57)

FP
AdvP
omaly

F'
F

TopP

dia

Top'
Top

DP
WhP

i Ketaka

nanapaka bozaka
If the rule were that ve cliticizes to the right of the constituent which projects the root node, as in (55a),
we predict that the clitic will be right-adjacent to F’ in (57)—that is, sentence-final. On the other hand, if
the rule is that ve cliticizes to the left of the maximal projection immediately dominated by the root node,
as in (55b), it should be left-adjacent to the adverbial—that is, sentence-initial. Of course, neither prediction is correct: ve appears between omaly and dia.
The right-specifier analysis of Malagasy thus forces us to assume that the ve-cliticization rule varies
with the type of clause, either in the direction of cliticization (left vs. right), or in the target of cliticization(projecting vs. non-projecting daughter of the root node). In short, if we assume that fronted constituentsoccupy left-specifiers while right-peripheral triggers occupy right-specifiers, there is no obvious way tocapture the distribution of ve in terms of a single structural rule.15 By contrast, the predicate fronting analysis allows for a straightforward structural generalization: ve uniformly follows the highest maximal projection dominated by the root node.
Note in closing that there is a variation on the right-specifier analysis which does not present quite thesame problems for ve placement, namely the structure proposed by MacLaughlin (1995). In MacLaughlin’s tree, Top selects its complement to the left, giving us an extra head position between the predicate
phrase and the trigger (58). Given this extra position, we might suppose that ve procliticizes to the highest
head in the clause, namely F in sentences with dia-fronting and Top otherwise (assuming that F is present
in the derivation only when needed to license a fronted constituent).

15

I believe that this is true even if the ve placement rule does not operate directly on syntactic trees, but on linearized morpho-phonological representations with category labels and other PF-uninterpretable features removed. Paul
(2001a) suggests that ve might encliticize to the leftmost phonological phrase in the sentence. However, prosodic
boundaries are presumably determined by phrase structure boundaries (cf. Nespor and Vogel 1983), such that the ve
placement rule must ultimately make reference to syntactic constituency. (In any case, it is unclear to me that thetarget of ve cliticization—i.e., the leftmost contrastively fronted constituent if any, otherwise the predicate, regardless of weight—corresponds to a consistent prosodic domain.)Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

23

(58)

FP
AdvP
omaly

F'
F

TopP

dia

Top'
WhP

DP
Top

i Ketaka

nanapaka bozaka
There are two problems with this alternative. First, it incorrectly predicts that ve will immediately precededia in multiple fronting sentences like (48d). Second, it requires us to stipulate that Top selects a complement to its left while all other heads in the language select complements to their right. This is a conceptually unappealing language-internal asymmetry for which there does not seem to be any motivation apartfrom the desire to ensure correct placement of ve.
Summarizing this section: The yes/no question marker ve occurs between the predicate phrase and thetrigger, except in clauses where one or more constituents have undergone contrastive fronting, in whichcase it appears after the first fronted constituent. Paul (2001a) argues that ve is a second position clitic.
Under the predicate fronting analysis of Pred1 in Malagasy, we can formulate a uniform structure-based
rule of clitic placement—namely, ve follows the highest c-commanding maximal projection in the clause.
Under the right-specifier analysis, by contrast, no such rule can be formulated. Instead we must assume
that the clitic’s host and/or direction of attachment varies from one clause type to another. I take this difference in parsimony as evidence for the predicate fronting analysis and against the right-specifier
analysis.
5. Evidence for predicate fronting: Inverted order in non-root clauses
Suppose that predicate-initial order in Malagasy is derived through fronting, as argued here. This raises
the possibility that, under the right circumstances, fronting will fail to take place, resulting in a surface order where the trigger precedes the predicate phrase. By contrast, all else being equal, no variation in theposition of the trigger is expected under the right-specifier analysis.
In fact, there is evidence for trigger-initial order in certain kinds of clauses. In the previous section I
noted that the trigger precedes the predicate phrase in parallel contrastive constructions (cf. (49)). In suchcases, it seems likely that the trigger has raised over the predicate phrase to some high position in theclause. However, trigger-initial order is also found in various types of non-root clauses where the trigger
does not receive a contrastive interpretation, making a trigger fronting analysis less plausible. Principal
among these are the clausal complements of predicates of perception such as ‘see’ and ‘hear’ (abbreviatedPVCs, for PERCEPTION VERB COMPLEMENTS). Examples are given in (59b) and (60b), where the PVC isbracketed. Comparing these with the corresponding root clauses in (59a) and (60a), we see that in PVCs
the trigger comes before the predicate rather than after it:16

16

Keenan (1976) mentions that trigger-initial order is also found in adverbial clauses headed by satria ‘because’, asin (i) (trigger-initial order is apparently optional here; the normal Pred1 order is also possible). The syntax of these
constructions has proved harder to investigate than that of PVCs, and so I will set them aside here.
(i)Aza
mitabataba[ satria [ ny rainareo
mamaky boky ] ]Neg.Imp AT.make.noise because Det father=2p AT.read book
‘Don’t make noise because your father is reading a book’24

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy(59) a.

b.

(60) a.

b.

Niditratao
an-trano
ny zaza
Pst.AT.enter Pst.there Obl=house Det child‘The child entered the house’
Nahare[ ny zaza niditrataoan-trano ] ny vehivavy
Pst.AT.hear Det child Pst.AT.enter Pst.there Obl=house Det woman‘The woman heard the child enter the house’
Namakyboky ny mpianatra
Pst.AT.read book Det student‘The student was reading a book’
Nahita[ ny mpianatra namaky
boky ] ny mpampianatra
Pst.AT.see Det student
Pst.AT.read book
Det teacher‘The teacher saw the student read(ing) a book’

While it is unclear why predicate fronting would be blocked in PVCs, the existence of such a construction
is not unexpected under the theory argued for here, where predicate fronting is treated as the XP-adjunction counterpart of T-to-C movement. As is well known, in many languages with overt V-to-T(-to-C)
movement, the verb fails to raise as high in certain non-root contexts as it does in root contexts, resulting
in word order differences among clause types. Many verb-second languages (German, Mainland Scandinavian, etc.) show an absence of V2 in most embedded clauses. Likewise, root clauses and finite embedded clauses in Irish exhibit VSO order, while non-finite embedded clauses exhibit SOV or SVO order,
depending on dialect (Bobaljik and Carnie 1996). It is plausible that whatever mechanisms account forthese kinds of V-raising asymmetries can be extended to explain the presence or absence of predicate
fronting in different types of Malagasy clauses (I leave this as a matter for future research).
In this section I discuss the PVC construction in some detail. I begin by showing that PVCs are constituents, and then consider their internal syntax. I argue that PVCs are finite clauses—rather than, say,small clauses or complex nominal phrases—and I provide conceptual and empirical arguments thattrigger-initial order results from the failure of the predicate to raise over the trigger.
5.1. Clausal complements of perception predicatesPredicates of perception in Malagasy include re ‘hear’ and hita ‘see, find’, which take an experiencer
argument and a theme argument. In the AT voice, the experiencer maps to the trigger function and thetheme is predicate-internal (61a)/(62a), while in the TT voice this mapping is reversed (61b)/(62b):17(61) a.

b.

(62) a.

17

Nahareny alika ny zaza
Pst.AT.hear Det dog
Det child‘The child heard the dog’
Ren’
ny zaza ny
TT.hear Det child Det‘The child heard the dog’

alika
dog

Nahitaan’ i
Naivo
Pst.AT.see Acc Det Naivo‘The woman saw Naivo’

ny vehivavy
Det woman

Hita and re are among those roots which appear uninflected in TT clauses (cf. note 6). The suffix -n’ is a linker
morpheme which licenses predicate-internal actor phrases.

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasyb.

25

Hitan’ ny vehivavy i
Naivo
TT.see Det woman
Det Naivo‘The woman saw Naivo’

In addition to taking DP themes, as in (61) and (62), perception predicates may also take clausal themes
denoting events (PVCs). The examples given in (59b) and (60b) are repeated below as (63a,b):(63) a.

b.

Nahare[ ny zaza niditrataoan-trano ] ny vehivavy
Pst.AT.hear Det child Pst.AT.enter Pst.there Obl=house Det woman‘The woman heard the child enter the house’
Nahita[ ny mpianatra namaky
boky ] ny mpampianatra
Pst.AT.see Det student
Pst.AT.read book
Det teacher‘The teacher saw the student read(ing) a book’

As evidence that the bracketed strings in (63) are constituents, note that they can be made into the matrix
trigger by placing the perception predicate in the TT form. This is shown in (64) (cf. (59b)/(60b)), where
the fact that the PVC is outside the predicate is indicated by the position of ve. Presumably only constituents can function as triggers.
(64) a.

b.

Ren’
ny vehivavy (ve) [ ny zaza niditrataoan-trano ]TT.hear Det woman
Det child Pst.AT.enter Pst.there Obl=house‘The child entering the house, the woman heard (it)’Hitan’ ny mpampianatra (ve) [ ny mpianatra namaky
boky ]
TT.see Det teacher
Det student
Pst.AT.read book
‘The student reading the book, the teacher saw (it)’Further evidence for constituency is given below, showing that PVCs can be coordinated (65) and clefted(66) (recall that clefted elements appear at the left edge of the clause followed by the focus particle no).
(65)

Hitako[ Rajaona manoratra taratasy ] ary [ Rakoto
TT.see=1s Rajaona AT.write letter
andRakoto‘I saw Rajaona writing letters and Rabe reading a book’(66) a.

[ Ny zaza niditrataoan-trano ] no ren’ny vehivavy
Det child Pst.AT.enter Pst.there Obl=house Foc TT.hear Det woman‘The child entering the house is what the woman heard’b.

mamaky boky ]AT.read book

[ Ny mpianatra namaky
boky ] no hitan’ ny mpampianatra
Det student
Pst.AT.read book
Foc TT.see Det teacher‘The student reading a book is what the teacher saw’

Having established that PVCs are constituents, we may ask what their category is. Four possible answers:(67) a.
b.
c.
d.

PVCs are verbal small clauses.
PVCs are DPs containing a relative clause modifier.
PVCs are full clauses in which the trigger has been fronted over the predicate.
PVCs are full clauses in which the trigger occupies its usual position and the predicate has
failed to raise over it.

26

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

Of these possibilities, (67a-c) are compatible with both the right-specifier analysis and the predicate fronting analysis of Pred1 in Malagasy, while (67d) is compatible only with the predicate fronting analysis. In
the following subsections I provide evidence against the first three alternatives, arguing for the fourth alternative by process of elimination. In 5.2 I consider arguments against (67a,b), while (67c) is discussed
in 5.3. In the latter section I compare the PVC construction with the superficially similar RAISING-TO-OBJECT construction, showing that the two have very different syntactic properties.
5.2. Arguments that PVCs are full clauses
According to the standard analysis of English sentences like The teacher saw the student read a book, thecomplement the student read a book is a small clause, presumably of category vP (or its equivalent inother theories). One might argue that the bracketed string in (68a) is also a small clause, in which case ny
mpianatra ‘the student’ is not a trigger at all, but a VP-internal subject, as diagrammed in (68b). If thiswere correct, then word order within the PVC would have no bearing on the choice between the predicate
raising and right-specifier analyses of main clause order, since both assume that VP-internal subjects occupy a left-specifier (cf. the trees in (2) and (3)).
(68) a.

b.

Nahita[ ny
mpianatra namaky
Pst.AT.see
Det student
Pst.AT.read‘The teacher saw Rabe read a book’

boky ] ny mpampianatrabook
Det teacher

Nahita [vP ny mpianatra [v’ namaky boky ] ] ny mpampianatra

On the face of it, it seems unlikely that the PVC is a small clause because the embedded verb (namaky) ismarked for past tense. However, one might argue that past marking in this case does not signal the presence of a T head in the embedded clause, but is instead inserted by default, due to a morphological requirement that all verbs have tense (non-finite forms are absent in Malagasy). Even if we make this assumption, we run into problems in analyzing ny mpianatra as a VP-internal subject rather than a trigger.
PVCs exhibit the full array of voice alternations, allowing foregrounding not only of the actor argument(69a), but also the theme argument (69b), or an oblique (69c), just as in main clauses:(69) a.

Ren’
ny zaza [ Rabe namono
akoho tamin’ ny antsy ]TT.hear Det childRabe Pst.AT.kill chicken Pst.with Det knife‘The child heard Rabe kill chickens with the knife’

b.

Ren’
ny zaza [ ny akoho
novonoin-dRabe tamin’ ny antsy ]TT.hear Det child
Det chicken Pst.TT.kill=Rabe Pst.with Det knife‘The child heard Rabe kill the chickens with the knife’

c.

Ren’
ny zaza [ ny antsy namonoan-dRabe akoho ]TT.hear Det child
Det knife Pst.CT.kill=Rabe chicken‘The child heard Rabe kill chickens with the knife’

In section 2 I reviewed evidence for locating the trigger in an A’-position. In Pearson (2005a,b) I argue
that the function of voice marking is to identify the abstract Case of an A’-chain, in the manner of whagreement in Chomorro (Chung 1998). Assuming this is correct, the underlined elements in (69) must be
sitting in an A’-position rather than the VP-internal subject position. This in turn means that the bracketed
constituents in (69) must be larger than vP—something large enough to include TopP. We can therefore
set aside the possibility that PVCs are small clauses.
Consider next another approach, according to which PVCs are not clauses at all, but DPs containing
relative clause modifiers (Ed Keenan, p.c.). As Keenan (1976) discusses, relative clauses in Malagasy follow the head noun, and do not require special marking (the operator izay, which may be used to introduce

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

27

relative clauses, is generally optional and often omitted). Moreover, the verb in the relative clause inflects
for voice according to the grammatical function of the relativized noun: if the actor is relativized, the verb
carries AT marking, if the theme is relativized, the verb carries TT marking, and so on:(70) a.

b.

ny zazalahy [Rel namangyahy
an-tsekoly omaly ]Det boy
Pst.AT.visit 1s.Acc Obl=school yesterday‘the boy who visited me at school yesterday’
ny zazalahy [Rel novangiako
an-tsekoly omaly ]Det boy
Pst.TT.visit=1s Obl=school yesterday‘the boy who I visited at school yesterday’

Notice that the DPs in (70) resemble the bracketed PVCs in (69): In both cases a nominal is followed by apredicate phrase whose verb agrees with the nominal in voice. Perhaps the two constructions are in fact
the same. Under the relative clause analysis of PVCs, a sentence like (71) would be more properly translated ‘The teacher saw the student who was reading the book’.
(71)

Hitan’ ny mpampianatra [ ny mpianatra namaky
boky ]
TT.see Det teacher
Det student
Pst.AT.read book
‘The teacher saw the student reading the book’

The relative clause analysis and the clausal complement analysis make very different claims about
constituency. Under the relative clause analysis, the embedded predicate, namaky boky, is located insideof the DP containing mpianatra. The clausal complement analysis, on the other hand, asserts that namaky
boky is outside of the DP headed by mpianatra. These two alternatives are schematized in (72) (using CP
as an abbreviation for a full clause):(72) a.
b.

[DP ny mpianatra [CP (= Rel) namaky boky ] ][CP [DP (= trigger) ny mpianatra ] [PredP namaky boky ] ]How can we test these competing structures? As it happens, Malagasy provides a handy means for detecting the constituent boundaries of a DP: demonstrative determiners, such as itỳ ‘this’, occur as a pair ofcopies, where the first copy appears at the left edge of the DP and the second copy at the right edge. Thisis illustrated in (73). Crucially, the second copy of the demonstrative is always DP-final, regardless of
how heavy the DP is—in particular, it must follow a relative clause, as shown in (73b,c).
(73) a.

b.

itỳ boky mena itỳ
this book red
this‘this red book’itỳ boky novakin’
ny mpianatra tany
an-tokotany
this book Pst.TT.read Det student
Pst.there Obl=garden‘this book which the student was reading in the garden’

itỳ
this

c. * itỳ boky itỳ novakin’
ny mpianatra tany
an-tokotany
this book this Pst.TT.read Det student
Pst.there Obl=garden‘this book which the student was reading in the garden’
Returning to the competing analyses in (72): If namaky boky were a relative clause modifying mpianatra(72a), we would expect the second copy of a framing demonstrative to follow boky. On the other hand, if

28Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

namaky boky were the predicate of a complement clause, with ny mpianatra the trigger of that clause(72b), then the second copy of the demonstrative should come immediately after mpianatra.
As it turns out, both possibilities are attested, with the predicted difference in interpretation: In (74a)below, the bracketed string is an individual-denoting DP complement, where namaky boky ‘read a book’delimits the reference of the head noun mpianatra ‘student’ (the teacher saw the student, who may or may
not have been reading at the time s/he was seen). In (74b), by contrast, the bracketed string denotes anevent (the teacher witnessed the action of the student reading). The acceptability of (74b) alongside (74a)shows that PVCs are structurally distinguishable from DPs containing relative clause modifiers, and areapparently not of category DP at all.
(74) a.

Hitan’ ny mpampianatra [ itỳ mpianatra namaky
boky itỳ ]TT.see Det teacher
this student
Pst.AT.read book this‘The teacher saw this student who was reading a book’b.

Hitan’ ny mpampianatra [ itỳ mpianatra itỳ namaky
boky ]
TT.see Det teacher
this student
this Pst.AT.read book
‘The teacher saw this student read(ing) a book’

Final confirmation that PVCs are clauses and not DPs comes from coordination. Recall that Malagasy has
various connectives equivalent to English ‘and’, including sy and ary. Of these, ary is used primarily for
conjoining clauses, while sy is restricted to constituents other than clauses, including DPs. This is illustrated below, with clausal coordination in (75a) and DP coordination in (75b). As (76) shows, PVCs may
be freely coordinated using ary, while coordination with sy is judged awkward at best. As predicted,
PVCs pattern as clauses rather than DPs.
(75) a.

b.

(76)

Manoratra taratasy Rajaona { ary / ??sy } mamaky boky Rakoto
AT.write letter
Rajaona andAT.read book Rakoto‘Rajaona is writing letters and Rakoto is reading a book’
Manoratra taratasy Rajaona { sy / ??ary } Rakoto
AT.write letter
Rajaona and
Rakoto‘Rajaona and Rakoto are writing letters’
Hitako[ Rajaona manoratra taratasy ] { ary / ??sy } [ Rakoto
TT.see=1s Rajaona AT.write letter
andRakoto‘I saw Rajaona writing letters and Rabe reading a book’mamaky boky ]AT.read book

Having ruled out the small clause analysis and the complex DP analysis, I conclude that PVCs are fullclauses, with the same bipartite structure as ordinary root clauses (trigger plus predicate phrase), but thelinear order of the elements reversed, as in (72b).
5.3. Arguments against trigger fronting in PVCs
If PVCs are indeed clauses, the question remains as to whether trigger-initial order results from the absence of predicate fronting, as argued here, or is derived by raising the trigger over the predicate phrase.
The latter option is the only one available under the right-specifier analysis. Given such an analysis, wemight suppose that word order in PVCs is derived as in (77), where the trigger moves from the right-specifier of TopP to the left-specifier of some higher projection XP:

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

29

(77)

XP
TRIGGERi

X'
X

TopP
Top'
Top

ti
WhP

Wh'
Wh

Opi
TP

What would force the trigger to raise to SpecXP? One possibility is that it must raise in order to be Caselicensed in SpecXP by the higher verb. Initial support for this idea appears to come from the distributionof morphological case in PVC constructions. To see why, it is necessary to say a few things about casemarking in Malagasy.
While common noun phrases have the same form regardless of their abstract Case role, pronouns havespecial nominative, accusative, and genitive forms (the latter being enclitic). Simplifying somewhat, apronoun is marked accusative when it is a non-trigger object; genitive when it is a non-trigger subject, apossessor, or the complement of a preposition; and nominative elsewhere—e.g., when it acts as the triggerof the clause, is clefted or fronted, or appears in isolation. Proper names like Rabe also distinguish nominative and accusative morphologically, where the nominative is unmarked and the accusative takes the
proclitic an-.18
Returning to the PVC construction: As the examples in (78) show, when a PVC appears inside thematrix predicate phrase (with the perception predicate in the AT voice) and the trigger is a pronoun orproper name, that pronoun or proper name is marked accusative. This makes the PVC construction look
like an ECM or raising-to-object construction, lending plausibility to the idea that the embedded trigger
raises over the predicate to some higher licensing position, as in (77).
(78) a.

b.

Nahita[ anaonamakyboky ] ny mpampianatra
Pst.AT.see 2s.Acc Pst.AT.read book
Det teacher‘The teacher saw you reading a book’
Nahita[ an-dRabe namaky
boky ] ny mpampianatra
Pst.AT.see Acc=Rabe Pst.AT.read book
Det teacher‘The teacher saw Rabe reading a book’In fact, though, there are good reasons to reject the ECM/raising-to-object analysis of the PVC construction. As discussed earlier, there is considerable evidence that triggers occupy an A’-position, and arelicensed clause-internally by binding an operator-variable chain. Hence it is unlikely that the Case requirements of the trigger would motivate it to raise to some higher position. Moreover, recall that the
PVC as a whole can act as the trigger of the clause containing it (with the matrix perception predicate in
the TT voice). In such cases it is even less likely that the embedded trigger is Case-licensed by some18

The proclitic an- also functions as an oblique marker (cf. an-tokotany ‘in the garden’ in (73b,c)). Note that n + r
becomes ndr (a prenasalized retroflex obstruent) through a regular phonological rule, hence an- + Rabe > an-dRabein (78b). See Keenan (1976), Voskuil (1993), Zribi-Hertz and Mbolatianavalona (1999), and Pearson (2005a) for
more on case marking in Malagasy.

30

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

element within the higher clause, and yet it still appears in clause-initial position, as (79) shows. Noticethat here, the embedded trigger is marked nominative rather than accusative. It seems that the embedded
trigger ‘inherits’ its morphological case from the PVC containing it. That is, the embedded trigger takes
the nominative form when the PVC appears in a position associated with nominative case (the matrix
trigger position), and the accusative when the PVC appears in an accusative postion (acting as a predicate-internal complement).
(79) a.

b.

Hitan’ ny mpampianatra [ ianao namaky
boky ]
TT.see Det teacher
2s.Nom Pst.AT.read book
‘The teacher saw you reading a book’
Hitan’ ny mpampianatra [ Rabe
TT.see Det teacher
Rabe‘The teacher saw Rabe reading a book’

namakyboky ]
Pst.AT.read bookHow do we account for the variation in morphological case of the embedded trigger if it is uniformly
Case-licensed from within the PVC? Here I propose that the PVC as a whole has an abstract Case feature
which needs to be checked. When the PVC surfaces inside the predicate (in the canonical object position),
this Case feature is checked by the perception predicate and spelled out morphologically as accusative
marking (e.g., an-) on the embedded trigger. On the other hand, when the PVC is the trigger of the matrix
clause, it is Case-licensed by binding an operator-variable chain in the matrix predicate phrase, and its
trigger appears in the default nominative form. In other words, the morphological case of the embedded
trigger is determined not by its own abstract Case feature, but by the abstract Case feature of the PVC
containing it.
As it happens, a closer examination of pronominal case marking patterns provides us with direct evidence against the trigger raising derivation in (77). As mentioned above, pronouns in Malagasy inflect for
nominative, accusative, and genitive case. Uniquely, the first person singular pronoun has two distinct
nominative forms, aho and izaho. Aho is used only when the pronoun occupies the canonical trigger position. A few speakers also accept izaho in the trigger position, though most permit this form only when the
pronoun is clefted, fronted, or used in isolation. Crucially, all speakers disallow fronting and clefting ofaho. The distribution of aho and izaho is illustrated in (80):19(80) a.

Manasa ny lamba { aho / % izaho }AT.wash Det clothes 1s.Nom‘I am washing the clothes’b.

{ Izaho / * aho } no manasa ny lamba
1s.NomFoc AT.wash Det clothes‘It is I who am washing the clothes’c.

{ Izahoi / * ahoi } dia manasa
ny lamba ei
1s.NomDia AT.wash Det clothes‘As for me, (I) am washing the clothes’

Returning to PVCs: If the trigger is clause-initial because it has raised over the predicate to some higher
left-specifier, as in (77), we might expect that aho would be disallowed as the trigger of a PVC. However,this turns out not to be the case. As shown in (81), speakers accept aho in this position. In addition, the19

Whether (80) is acceptable with izaho may depend on the speaker’s native dialect. The aho/izaho distinction ischaracteristic of Standard Malagasy, which is based on the Merina dialect. It appears that other varieties of Malagasy lack the aho form, and use izaho in all positions.

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

31

majority of speakers I consulted—crucially, all those who reject izaho in sentences like (80)—also rejectizaho in (81). With regard to the distribution of aho and izaho, then, clause-initial triggers in PVCs
pattern with canonical clause-final triggers in root clauses, rather than behaving as though they have been
fronted.
(81)

Hitan’ ny mpampianatra [ { aho / % izaho } namaky
boky ]
TT.see Det teacher
1s.Nom
Pst.AT.read book
‘The teacher saw me reading the book’

Finally, note that Malagasy does in fact have a productive raising-to-object construction (Keenan 1976,
Paul and Rabaovololona 1998), which has very different properties from the PVC construction discussed
here. The raising-to-object construction is illustrated in (82b) below. Here a semantic argument of theembedded verb behaves like the structural object of the higher verb: it appears adjacent to the higher verb,
separated from the embedded predicate by the particle ho, and inflects for accusative case (when a pronoun or proper name). Compare the non-raising construction in (82a), where Rabe is the nominative casemarked trigger of the embedded clause, headed by fa.20 In Pearson (2005a) I argue that the raised object isgenerated in the matrix clause and receives its theta role through coindexation with a null operator in theembedded clause; the particle ho is a functional head projecting a small clause, which takes the raised
object as its specifier and the embedded clause as its complement. (For convenience, I will continue to refer to the object as ‘raised’, to distinguish it from objects that are θ-marked by the higher verb).
(82) a.

b.

Mihevitra i
Tenda [ famanajany mpampianatra Rabe ]AT.think Det Tenda
that AT.respect Det teacher
Rabe‘Tenda thinks that Rabe respects the teacher’Mihevitra an-dRabe [ ho manaja
ny mpampianatra ]AT.think Acc=RabePart AT.respect Det teacher‘Tenda believes Rabe to respect the teacher’or ‘Tenda thinks (of) Rabe that (he) respects the teacher’i
Tenda
Det Tenda

Superficially, the raising-to-object construction in (82b) looks essentially the same as the PVC construction in (83), apart from the presence or absence of the particle ho:(83)

Nahita[ an-dRabe namaky
boky ] ny mpampianatra
Pst.AT.see Acc=Rabe Pst.AT.read book
Det teacher‘The teacher saw Rabe reading a book’

However, there is reason to believe that in the PVC construction in (83), an-dRabe is the trigger of theembedded clause, whereas in the raising to object construction in (82b), an-dRabe is in the matrix clause.
For example, in raising-to-object sentences, the raised object may be separated from the embedded predicate phrase by a matrix adverb (84), showing that it is properly outside the embedded clause:21

20

Notice that the fa clause is extraposed after the trigger. I discuss clause extraposition in section 6. Notice also thatthe predicate precedes the trigger in fa clauses, showing that predicate fronting is compatible with the presence of an
overt complementizer. Insofar as predicate fronting in Malagasy is derivationally analogous to T-raising in verb-second languages, as suggested here, the proper analogy is clearly with languages like Icelandic, where V2 can cooccur with an overt complementizer, rather than languages like Dutch and German, where the two are mutually
exclusive.
21
The example in (84) is somewhat degraded compared with (i) below, where the adverb precedes the raised object.
I attribute this to a general preference for definite direct objects to follow manner adverbs, as demonstrated in (ii):32

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy(84)? Nilaza
an-dRabe tamin-katezerana ho mpangalatra Rasoa
Pst.AT.say Acc=Rabe Pst.with-anger
Part thief
Rasoa‘Rasoa said (of) Rabe angrily (that he was) a thief’

By contrast, the trigger of a PVC may not be separated from the embedded predicate phrase by a matrix
adverb. Consider the negative polarity adverb intsony ‘anymore’. When perception predicates occur insimple transitive (AT) clauses with DP objects, intsony generally follows the object, although it may marginally precede the object if the latter is definite. This is shown in (85):(85) a. ? Tsy mijery
intsony ny namany izyireo
Neg AT.watch anymore Det friend=3 3.Nom Pl‘They are not watching their friends anymore’b.

Tsy mijery
ny namany intsonyizyireo
Neg AT.watch Det friend=3 anymore 3.Nom Pl‘They are not watching their friends anymore’

When the DP object ny namany ‘their friends’ is replaced with the PVC ny namany miady ‘their friends
fight’, we get the pattern in (86). The preference is for intsony to follow ny namany miady, although it canmarginally precede this string; crucially, however, it is barred from intervening between the DP and thepredicate. Compare (86b) with (84), which, though awkward, is grammatical. I take this as further evidence that PVCs are constituents, whereas in raising-to-object sentences the raised object does not form a
constituent (of the same sort) with the ho-phrase.
(86) a. ? Tsy mijery
intsony ny namany miadyNeg AT.watch anymore Det friend=3 AT.fight‘They are not watching their friends fight anymore’

izy
ireo
3.Nom Plb. * Tsy mijery
ny namany intsony
miady
Neg AT.watch Det friend=3 anymore AT.fight‘They are not watching their friends fight anymore’

izy
ireo
3.Nom Pl

c.

izy
ireo
3.Nom PlTsy mijery
ny namany miadyintsony
Neg AT.watch Det friend=3 AT.fight anymore‘They are not watching their friends fight anymore’

In raising-to-object constructions, the raised object, like objects generally, can be promoted to the matrix
trigger function by altering the voice of the matrix verb: In (87a) Rasoa is an accusative-marked predicate-internal object, with the matrix verb ‘think’ in the AT voice, while in (87b) Rasoa has been promoted
to the trigger function and ‘think’ appears in the TT voice. (That Rasoa is outside the matrix predicate
(i)

(ii)

Nilazatamin-katezerana an-dRabe ho mpangalatra Rasoa
Pst.AT.say Pst.with-anger
Acc=Rabe Part thief
Rasoa‘Rasoa said angrily of Rabe that (he was) a thief’a.

Namonotamin-katezerana ny voalavo ny mpamboly
Pst.AT.kill Pst.with-anger
Det rat
Det farmer‘The farmer killed the rat angrily’

b. ? Namono
ny voalavo tamin-katezerana
Pst.AT.kill Det rat
Pst.with-anger‘The farmer angrily killed the rat’ny mpamboly
Det farmer

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

33

phrase in the latter case is shown by the placement of ve.) Note, however, the ungrammaticality of (87c).
This shows that while the raised object can be promoted to the matrix trigger function, it is not possible topromote the string consisting of the raised object and the following ho-phrase. Here again it appears thatthe raised object and the ho-phrase do not form a surface constituent—or at least, not a constituent capable of acting as the trigger.
(87) a.

b.

Mihevitra an-dRasoa ho namono
ny voalavo (ve)AT.think Acc=Rasoa Part Pst.AT.kill Det rat‘The child believes Rasoa to have killed the rat’Heverin’ ny zaza honamonony voalavo (ve)TT.think Det child Part Pst.AT.kill Det rat‘Rasoa, the child believes (her) to have killed the rat’ny zaza
Det child

Rasoa
Rasoa

c. * Heverin’ ny zaza (ve) Rasoa ho namono
ny voalavo
TT.think Det childRasoa Part Pst.AT.kill Det rat‘Rasoa to have killed the rat, the child believes (it)’With the PVC construction, the promotion facts are different. When the perception predicate occurs in the
TT form, there are two options with regard to which constituent maps to the matrix trigger position:
Either the embedded trigger is promoted by itself (88b)/(89b), or the entire PVC is promoted (88c)/(89c).
These two options are distinguished by word order, and by the placement of ve. The contrast in acceptability between (87c) and (88c)/(89c) reinforces the claim that the PVC construction has a very different constituent structure from the raising-to-object construction:(88) a.

Naharean-dRabe niditrataoan-trano(ve) ny zaza
Pst.AT.hear Acc=Rabe Pst.AT.enter Pst.there Obl=house
Det child‘The child heard Rabe enter the house’

b.

Ren’
ny zaza niditrataoan-trano(ve) Rabe
TT.hear Det child Pst.AT.enter Pst.there Obl=house
Rabe‘Rabe, the child heard (him) enter the house’

c.

Ren’
ny zaza (ve) Rabe niditrataoan-trano
TT.hear Det childRabe Pst.AT.enter Pst.there Obl=house‘Rabe entering the house, the child heard (it)’(89) a.

Nahitaan-dRabe namaky
boky (ve) ny mpampianatra
Pst.AT.see Acc=Rabe Pst.AT.read book
Det teacher‘The teacher saw Rabe reading a book’b.

Hitan’ ny mpampianatra namaky
boky (ve)TT.see Det teacher
Pst.AT.read book
‘Rabe, the teacher saw (him) reading a book’

Rabe
Rabe

c.

Hitan’ ny mpampianatra (ve) Rabe namaky
boky
TT.see Det teacher
Rabe Pst.AT.read book
‘Rabe reading a book, the teacher saw (it)’Finally, consider clefting. In the case of the PVC construction, it is possible to cleft either the embedded
trigger by itself (90a), or the entire PVC (90b). In the case of the raising-to-object construction, only the

34

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

non-thematic object may be clefted (91a); it is not possible to cleft a string consisting of the object and theho-phrase (91b):(90) a.

Rabe nohitan’
ny mpampianatra namaky
boky
Rabe Foc TT.see Det teacher
Pst.AT.read book
‘It was Rabe who the teacher saw reading a book’b.

Rabe namaky
boky no hitan’ ny mpampianatra
Rabe Pst.AT.read book Foc TT.see Det teacher‘It was Rabe reading a book that the teacher saw’(91) a.

Rasoa noheverin’ ny zaza ho namono
ny voalavo
Rasoa Foc TT.think Det child Part Pst.AT.kill Det rat‘It is Rasoa who the child believes to have killed the rat’b. * Rasoa honamonony voalavo noheverin’Rasoa Part Pst.AT.kill Det rat
Foc TT.think‘It is Rasoa to have killed the rat that the child believes’ny zaza
Det child

Summarizing, in PVCs it appears that the left-peripheral DP forms a constituent with the following predicate phrase, and that this constituent has the distribution of a clausal argument: it can be clefted, can function as the trigger of the clause containing it, and may not be broken up by an matrix adverb. By contrast,
the raised object in a raising-to-object construction does not form a surface constituent with the following
ho-phrase—or at least, not a constituent of the same category as a PVC.
I take the data in this section to show that (a) PVCs are trigger-initial clauses which bear a Case feature, and (b) trigger-initial order within the PVC is not the result of trigger raising, but rather the failure of
the predicate to adjoin to TopP—in other words, PVCs represent the ‘underlying’ order of trigger and predicate in Malagasy. The existence of this clause type supports the predicate fronting analysis of Pred1
order, while remaining mysterious under the right-specifier analysis.
6. Clause extraposition
I conclude my account of predicate fronting in Malagasy with some tentative remarks on the position ofembedded clauses. In 3.4 I noted that temporal and modal adverbs and presuppositional PPs can come at
the end of the clause, following the trigger. In addition, complement and adverbial clauses (often introduced by a complementizer such as fa) routinely follow the trigger, as illustrated below ((92b,c) are adapted from texts). I refer to this phenomenon descriptively as CLAUSE EXTRAPOSITION.
(92) a.

Manantena ny vehivavy [ fahamono ny akoho aho]
AT.hopeDet womanthat Irr.AT.kill Det chicken 1s.Nom‘The woman hopes that I will kill the chicken’b.

Taitraizyroalahy [ nahare
izany vaovao izany ]surprised 3.Nom two.male Pst.AT.hear thatnews that‘The two men were surprised to hear that news’c.

Tsy maintsy nandalo
amin’ ny lavabato izy[ vao
tonga tany]
necessary
Pst.AT.pass in
Det cave
3.Nom before arrived Pst.there‘They had to pass through a cave to get there’ (lit. ‘… before arriving there’)To account for clause extraposition in a way which is compatible with the predicate fronting analysis, wemight assume that the clause (abbreviated CP) extracts from the predicate phrase and raises to some left-

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

35

peripheral position below that of the trigger—perhaps merging as an inner specifier of TopP, much likeclause-final adverbials and PPs. Once the CP has moved out, the predicate phrase remnant, containing thetrace of CP, raises to adjoin to TopP, yielding the surface order. This derivation is schematized in (93):(93) a.
b.

[TopP Trigger [Top’ CPi [WhP V … ti … ] ] ][TopP [WhP V … ti … ] [TopP Trigger [Top’ CPi tWhP ] ] ]One problem with (93) is that it is unclear what would force the CP to raise out of the predicate phrase,other than the need to derive the correct surface order. Whereas clause-final adverbials and PPs are arguably licensed by the Top head by virtue of their association with the presuppositional content of the sentence, the same cannot be said of embedded clauses, which are typically non-presuppositional. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the right-specifier analysis fares no better than the predicate raising analysis in
this regard: To account for extraposition under the right-specifier analysis, we must assume that the CP
undergoes rightward movement over the trigger, as in (94). At least the derivation in (93) has the conceptual advantage of being consistent with linearization algorithm theories which prohibit rightward movement, such as Kayne (1994).
(94)[TopP [WhP V … ti … ] Trigger ] CPi

However, we might entertain an alternative approach to extraposition based on the copy theory of movement (Chomsky 1995), according to which ‘extraposed’ clauses actually occupy their base position rather
than a dislocated position. Such an approach would favor the predicate fronting analysis, inasmuch as theright-peripheral position of embedded clauses is explained by the fact that the predicate phrase originates
to the right of the trigger.
According to the copy theory of movement, the formation of multi-member chains involves merger of
non-distinct feature bundles (copies) at different points in the derivation, with deletion of redundant features at PF (perhaps in order to satisfy the LCA, as in Nunes 2004). It is usually assumed that the lower(c-commanded) copy is targeted for deletion. However, Wilder (1995) has proposed that in some cases
only a portion of the lower copy is deleted, along with the complementary portion of the higher copy,
yielding (the appearance of) discontinuous constituency. Hinterhölzl (2000) applies this idea to the treatment of PP extraposition in German: In accordance with Kayne (1994), Hinterhölzl argues that OV orderin German is derived from underlying VO via leftward movement of the object over the verb. To accountfor sentences like (95a), where object raising strands a PP modifier, he argues that the object DP-chain
has undergone discontinuous deletion, as schematized in (95b):(95) a.

b.

Hans hat ein Buch gekauft über Chomsky
Hans has abook bought about Chomsky‘Hans bought a book about Chomsky’
Hans hat [ ein Buch über Chomsky ]i gekauft [ ein Buch über Chomsky ]iClause extraposition in Malagasy might be accounted for in a similar manner. Consider (92a), repeatedbelow as (96a): Under the predicate raising analysis argued for in this paper, feature checking triggers
copying of WhP (containing the embedded clause), with the copy left-adjoined to TopP. Discontinuous
deletion might apply to this chain at PF, so that the matrix verb is pronounced in the moved position
while its clausal complement is pronounced in situ, as diagrammed in (96b). If this approach is correct,
then embedded clauses appear to the right of the trigger because that is where the predicate phrase starts
out: clause extraposition is actually clause stranding.

36

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy(96) a.

b.

hamono ny akoho aho]
Manantena ny vehivavy [ faAT.hopeDet womanthat Irr.AT.kill Det chicken 1s.Nom‘The woman hopes that I will kill the chicken’[ manantena fa hamono ny akoho aho ]i ny vehivavy [ manantena fa hamono ny akoho aho ]i

Of course, this analysis requires PF-deletion to be a much more selective operation—and hence, a much
more powerful operation—than is usually assumed. In order to avoid massive overgeneration, we would
need to establish principled constraints on discontinuous deletion. How, for example, would we rule out
derivations in which a verb and its DP complement are spelled out in separate copies, yielding the illformed VSO clause in (97) as a PF-variant of (98)?
(97) a. * Namangynyvehivavy an-dRasoa
Pst.AT.visit Det woman
Acc=Rasoa‘The woman visited Rasoa’b.
(98) a.

b.

[ namangy an-dRasoa ]i ny vehivavy [ namangy an-dRasoa ]iNamangyan-dRasoa ny vehivavy
Pst.AT.visit Acc=Rasoa Det woman‘The woman visited Rasoa’[ namangy an-dRasoa ]i ny vehivavy [ namangy an-dRasoa ]iWilder (1995) suggests that discontinuous deletion may apply only when the undeleted portion of thelower copy can be parsed as a prosodic constituent. Adopting this idea, we might speculate that embedded
clauses form prosodic domains of the appropriate sort to the exclusion of the matrix verb, whereas DP
dependents do not. An alternative solution is suggested by Chomsky’s (2000, 2001) theory of cyclic spellout. Suppose we assume that a CP dependent, but not a DP (or PP) dependent, counts as a STRONG
PHASE, subject to spell-out once the strong phase which contains it (= vP) has been constructed. Suppose
further that once a strong phase has been spelled out, its PF-interpretable features are removed from thederivation, rendering them unavailable for further copying. If so, then the representation in (96b) should
be revised as in (99): Once the verb (manantena) merges with its CP complement (fa hamono ny akohoaho) and its subject to form vP, the CP is spelled out, and its PF-interpretable features removed. Thistakes place prior to predicate fronting; hence only the verb is copied (with subsequent deletion of thelower copy of the verb once the matrix clause is spelled out).22(99)[ manantena ]i ny vehivavy [ manantena fa hamono ny akoho aho ]iObviously this approach raises as many questions as it answers.23 However, we can safely conclude thatthe clause extraposition facts are either neutral between the right-specifier analysis and the predicate
raising analysis, or favor the latter. If some version of the discontinuous deletion approach goes through,then the right-peripheral placement of embedded clauses merely reflects the base position of the fronted

22

By assumption, the subject of the clause is a null operator coindexed with the trigger ny vehivavy. This operator ispresumably not copied, since it lacks PF-interpretable features.
23
For example, in order to rule out DP stranding (97), we must assume that DP does not count as a strong phase,though other authors have argued that DP is a strong phase. Also, since vP is a strong phase, we would need some
way to rule out vP stranding (which would yield the VSO order in (97) in a somewhat different way). I leave theseas questions for future investigation.

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

37

predicate (i.e., extraposition is really stranding). If not, then we must assume that extraposed clauses undergo movement, regardless of which approach to Pred1 we adopt.24
7. Summary and further issues: X0- versus XP-adjunction
In this paper I discussed predicate-trigger (‘VOS’) order in Malagasy. I argued against an analysis where
the trigger occupies a right-specifier, and in favor of an analysis where the trigger occupies a left-specifierand surface order is derived by raising the predicate phrase over the topic: Functional heads at the left
periphery of the clause (Wh, Top) attract a tense feature, resulting in the pied-piping of a maximal projection containing the T head. This is analogous to T-to-C raising in V2 languages like German, except thatmovement takes the form of successive XP-adjunction rather than successive head-adjunction. Insofar as
the predicate raising analysis is supported, Malagasy word order is compatible with Kayne (1994), Chomsky (1995), Brody (2000a/b), and other theories of phrase structure which disallow right-specifiers andrightward movement.
After presenting the details of this analysis, I considered some of its consequences for the treatment ofcontrastive focus constructions, extraction, and other phenomena. I then provided empirical evidence forpredicate fronting from two domains. I began by showing that the yes/no question particle ve occurs in
between the predicate phrase and the trigger, unless the clause contains one or more fronted constituents,
in which case ve follows the first such constituent. This led Paul (2001a) to identify ve as a second position clitic. I showed that by adopting the predicate fronting analysis, we can formulate a uniform structure
based rule of clitic placement (ve attaches to the right of the highest c-commanding XP in the clause),
whereas the right-specifier analysis forces us to posit a more complex, construction-sensitive clitic placement rule. I then turned to order in non-root contexts. I argued that if the trigger occupies a right-specifier
position from which it c-commands the predicate phrase, then we predict it will consistently occur at theright periphery of the clause. However, if the trigger occupies a left-specifier and the predicate raises overit, it is possible that under the right conditions predicate raising will fail to occur, causing the trigger tosurface to the left of the predicate (I compared this situation with that in some V-raising languages, wherethe verb fails to raise as high in embedded contexts as in root contexts). I argued that trigger-initial order
is in fact attested in certain types of embedded clauses, in particular those selected by perception verbs
such as ‘see’ and ‘hear’. I showed that these constituents are full clauses (rather than small clauses or DPs
containing modifying relative clauses). I then showed that there is no evidence that the trigger has raisedover the predicate in these clauses, and at least some evidence that it has not raised over the predicate,meaning that trigger-initial order must result from the absence of predicate fronting. I concluded withsome tentative remarks on the treatment of clause extraposition under a predicate fronting analysis.
My attempt to motivate predicate fronting led me to propose an analogy with T-to-C raising in V2
languages. But this begs the question: Why should Malagasy employ XP-adjunction to satisfy the tensefeatures of Wh and Top whereas V2 languages make use of X0-adjunction? While I do not pretend tohave an answer to this question, I suspect that the choice might depend on morphological factors. Chomsky (1995) suggests that when movement (copying and remerger) takes place, the smallest constituent
necessary for convergence will be copied, in accordance with general principles of economy. Overt movement occurs when PF-interpretable features are copied and remerged along with LF-interpretable and uninterpretable features (generalized pied-piping). It stands to reason that the requirements for PF-convergence—for example, the need to satisfy conditions on morphological well-formedness—will play a crucial role in determining the size of the constituent to be pied-piped: X0 versus XP.
Following this line of reasoning, we might turn to morphological differences between Malagasy and
the Germanic V2 languages. Note, for instance, that in V2 languages tense morphology is suffixal, where24

Yet another approach would be to treat clause extraposition as a ‘post-linearization’ rule, whereby a prosodicallyheavy constituent (the embedded clause) is reordered after a prosodically lighter constituent (the trigger) in response
to parsing pressures, more or less in the spirit of Hawkins (1990). It seems to me that this approach—insofar as it isconsistent with the linearization algorithm theories assumed here—is also neutral between the right-specifier analysis and the predicate raising analysis.

38

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

as in Malagasy tense is marked by prefixes (e.g., manoratra ‘writes’, nanoratra ‘wrote’, hanoratra‘will/would write’). It is possible that this morphological difference reflects a syntactic difference between the two types of languages with respect to the hierarchical relation between the tense head and theverb at spell out. The usual assumption for V2 languages is that V (or some larger X0 constituent containing V) raises to adjoin to T (100a). Suppose that in Malagasy, by contrast, V does not raise all the way toT, but is instead spelled out at the left edge of the complement of T (100b); T and V then undergo someform of morphological merger under adjacency.25 If this is correct, then V+T in Germanic constitutes a
syntactic word (X0-level unit) as well as a morphological word, whereas T+V in Malagasy constitutes amorphological word but not a syntactic word.
(100) a.
b.

[TP … Vi+T [XP … ti … ] ][TP … T [XP V … ] ]In Malagasy, as in Germanic, tense is a bound morpheme: if the T and V heads failed to undergo morphological merger, the derivation would crash at PF. If morphological well-formedness conditions (e.g.,bound morphemes must form a unit with their hosts) act as a filter on the pied-piping of PF-interpretablefeatures, then the choice between predicate fronting and T-to-C movement might follow from the difference in (100). When Wh and Top attract a tense feature in Germanic V2 clauses, pied-piping T0 would
not prevent the tense morpheme and the verb stem from being spelled out together, since V has incorporated into T in the syntax. Therefore it is T0 which is pied-piped, since this is the most economincal option. In Malagasy, however, pied-piping T0 would strand the verb stem, preventing morphological merger
of T and V. The smallest constituent containing the tense feature which can be pied-piped, while still
maintaining linear adjacency between T and V at spell out, is the entire TP. Therefore, tense featurechecking in Malagasy will involve XP-adjunction.
The consequences of this analysis remain to be worked out. But whatever the ultimate motivation forpredicate fronting in Malagasy might turn out to be, it is worth noting that the preference for XP-adjunction over head adjunction is reflective of a general pattern in the language. Rackowski and Travis (2000),
Pearson (2000), and Travis (2005) argue that within the Malagasy predicate phrase there is evidence forsuccessive raising of XP remnants containing the verb, in contexts where other languages exhibit verb
raising. XP remnant movement results in ROLL-UP structures, where the underlying order of phrases in
specifier positions is inverted, as schematized in (101) (cf. Cinque 1996): The verb phrase, selected bysome functional head F1, raises and adjoins to the maximal projection FP1. FP1 is then selected by somehigher functional head F2, and raises to adjoin to FP2, and so on. As a result of these movements, theoriginal order of YP (in the specifier of FP1) and XP (in the specifier of FP2) is reversed.
(101)
FP 2

FP 1
VP

FP 2
FP 1

XP

F'1
F1

25

YP

F'2
F2

tFP 1

tVP

On morphological merger, see Halle and Marantz (1993). Merger might involve lowering of T to V, much as
McCloskey (1996) argues that C lowers and left-adjoins to INFL at PF in Irish.

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

39

Compare (101) with the head-movement derivation in (102), where V raises out of VP to adjoin to the F1
head that selects it, after which F1 (containing V) raises to adjoin to F2, and so on. Here the underlying
order of YP and XP is not disturbed by successive adjunction.
(102)
FP 2

YP

F'2
F2
F1
V

FP 1
F2

XP

F1

F'1
tF1

VP
... tV ...

As evidence of roll-up movement in Malagasy, Rackowski and Travis (2000), Pearson (2000), and Travis(2005) note that the unmarked linear order of deeply embedded verbal dependents (internal arguments,
low adverbs, etc.) is generally the inverse of their order in V-movement languages like German, French,and Dutch. For example, consider the relative order of frequency adverbs such as ‘always’ and manneradverbs such as ‘well’: The unmarked pattern in French (103a) and Dutch (103b) is for the frequency adverb to precede the manner adverb. Compare these with Malagasy, where (as noted first by Rackowski
1998) frequency adverbs consistently follow manner adverbs (104). If adverbs occupy specifier positions,and if the specifier that hosts frequency adverbs is higher than the specifier that hosts manner adverbs, asin Cinque (1999), then the inverted order in (104) can be explained as a result of roll-up movement (seeRackowski and Travis 2000, Pearson 2000 for discussion).
(103) a.

b.

(104)

Jean lave
toujours bien ses vêtements
Jean washes always
well his clothes‘Jean always washes his clothes well’
Jan wastaltijd zijn kleren goed
Jan washes always his clothes well‘Jan always washes his clothes well’
Manasa tsara ny lambany foana i
KetakaAT.wash well Det clothes=3 always Det Ketaka‘Ketaka always washes his clothes well’

Likewise, object-oriented secondary predicates follow the object in Dutch (105), but precede the object inMalagasy (106) (examples taken from Hoekstra 1988 and Paul 1999, respectively). Assuming that suchpredicates are generated in a deeply embedded position, below the specifier position in which objects are
Case-licensed, the Malagasy order can again be explained as the result of a roll-up derivation.
(105)

Hij maaide het gras kort
he mowed the grass short‘He mowed the grass short’(106)

Misotro mangatsiaka ny kafe
Rasoa
AT.drink cold
Det coffee Rasoa‘Rasoa drinks coffee cold’40

Pearson – Predicate fronting and constituent order in Malagasy

Finally, in Malagasy object shift out of the VP involves rightward displacement, whereas in other languages object shift is to the left. Compare the Dutch sentences in (107) (adapted from Zwart 1997) with the
Malagasy sentences in (108): In Dutch, we see that non-specific direct objects are left-adjacent to theverb, following the temporal adverb gisteren ‘yesterday’ (107a), whereas specific direct objects canappear in a displaced position preceding the adverb (107b). In Malagasy, we find the mirror image of this:In (108a) the non-specific direct object occurs right-adjacent to the verb, preceding the adverb haingana‘quickly’, while the specific object in (108b) appears in a scrambled position to the right of the adverb.
Assuming that object shift targets a specifier above the specifier containing the adverb, the appearance ofrightward movement in Malagasy can again be attributed to the roll-up derivation in (101) (see Pearson
2000 for details).
(107) a.

Jan heeft gisteren een meisje gekust
Jan has yesterday a
girlkissed‘Jan kissed a girl yesterday’b.

Jan heeft een meisje gisteren
gekustJan has a
girlyesterday kissed‘Jan kissed a [specific] girl yesterday’(108) a.

Nijinjavary haingana ny mpamboly
Pst.ATcut rice quickly
Det farmer‘The farmer harvested rice quickly’b.

Nijinjahaingana ny vary ny mpamboly
Pst.AT.cut quickly Det rice
Det farmer‘The farmer harvested the rice quickly’

Presumably, cross-linguistic comparison with other predicate-initial languages would yield evidence bearing on the questions raised in this section. It remains to be seen, for example, whether the kinds of mirror
image orders illustrated in (104), (106), and (108) are a general feature of predicate-initial languages. If
so, we might have reason to posit a general parameter determining whether a language will employ X0adjunction or XP-adjunction in the overt checking of T and V features (different versions of such a parameter are suggested by Pearson 2000 and Travis 2005). I leave this as an issue for future research.
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