Topic markers on direct objects

[Claire Bowern]

I replied offlist to the linguistlist version of Irina's queries, but 
I'm posting them here since my brief look into the subject indicated 
that Bardi was pretty rare in marking object topics, and this might be 
of interest to the list.

Bardi (Nyulnyulan, Australian) has one. Bardi has subject and object 
agreement (and oblique agreement) and there is a form -jarr- which fuses 
with the object markers for first and second person and marks topics. 
Third singular objects are zero-marked and 3 plural objects don't seem 
to participate, although -jirrirr-, which is what the form would be, is 
homophonous with the 3oblique+3pl.object marker so it's possible that 
some forms have been misparsed. It is technically possible with the 
oblique agreement set too, but it is very rare with them. I have a few 
examples with first person but not otherwise.

I wrote a paper on some aspects of this in Bardi, and have put a draft 
on my web site at 
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~bowern/Mypapers/Bowern_referentiality.pdf
comments very welcome.
Claire

Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm wrote:
> Dear colleagues, 
> I have been asked to forward the following message on behalf of Irina Nikolaeva.
> Best wishes,
> Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm
> 
> -----------------------------------------
> Dear Typologists,
> 
> If anyone knows of a language that has a topic marker (a dependent marker: 
> particle or case affix) used exclusively on direct objects, please let me 
> know at
> 
> irina_a_nikolaeva at yahoo.com
> 
> Thank you in advance.
> 

-- 
--------------
Dr Claire Bowern
Linguistics, Rice University
Houston TX