Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

espects and differ only with respect to a single parameter: the head-initial sequence of
languages like English as opposed to the strictly head-final order in Sumerian. Whether
viewed in terms of dependency theory (Nichols 1986; Van Valin 2001, 86-107) or one of
several XP-movement hypotheses currently under discussion (Koopman and Szabolcsi
2000, Julien 2002), the most reasonable way of coding telicity in Sumerian would appear
to be through the introduction of a noun immediately to the left of the finite verb that, due
to its inalienability, is not highly referential. At the same time, the inherently relational
nature of body-part nouns, taking the human body as its default compass, means that the
directional quality of English particles such as “up,” “down,” “out” and “in,” can likewise
be coded using inalienable nouns like gu 2 “neck,” giri 3 “foot,” a 2 “arm,” and ßa 3
“stomach.”
Whereas chapters 1 and 2 attempt to elucidate two perspectives on the BNBV inal
construction (case and thematic role in chapter 1 and lexical aspect (telicity) in chapter
2), chapters 3 and 4 identify two morphosyntactic environments in which *bi-√ prefix
verbs such as BNBV inal predicates (but not limited to them exclusively) regularly occur.
These two environments correspond to topicalizing and a particular kind of focalizing
contexts of occurrence: the topicalized *bi-√ prefix construction is dealt with in chapter
3, the focalized in chapter 4. Topics regularly presuppose that the referent of the topical
phrase is known to both speaker and addressee, so topical phrases are often definite (even
when indefinite, they tend to be highly specific). As I argue below, there are three
primary ways of indicating that a nominal phrase is a topic in Sumerian: the two familiar
methods are the use of the ergative postposition or an independent pronoun, but I would
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