Assessing the relationship between object topicalisation and the grammaticalisation of object agreement

Abstract

In this paper we report on a corpus study of narrative texts from different languages, aimed at testing Givón’s (1976) topicalisation-origin account of the grammaticalisation of object agreement from free pronouns. In the narrative texts investigated here, we find an exceedingly low proportion of object topicalisation constructions, which suggests that the construction is an unlikely candidate for the origin of object agreement. Moreover, the usage of both bound and unbound object pronouns is independent of object topicalisation, though it is conditioned by animacy in some languages. We conclude that topicalisation and pronominalisation are two distinct operations, with distinct functions. We further suggest that the facts from discourse provide a partial explanation for the findings from language typology, which reveal that canonical object agreement is exceedingly rare in the languages of the world, with some form of conditioned agreement being the norm for objects.