Masha in L.A. on Tongan right periphery

The USC Linguistics colloquium has Maria Polinsky with "On the right periphery," focusing on her analysis of VOS order in Tongan.

October 8, the USC Linguistics colloquium has Maria Polinsky with "On the right periphery." Central to the talk is the analysis of VOS order in Tongan. Masha provides evidence, including novel prosodic data, that this involves rightward displacement of the subject, so that Tongan VOS is a subject-topic structure. But the displacement results, not from rightward movement, but rather from ellipsis in a biclausal structure. The talk then broaches the question of whether we can predict the syntax or information structure of right-peripheral expressions, based on independent properties.