Beyond Time - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

claims according to which grammatical agreement is the major factor licensing
word order variation need to be carefully double-checked against a large body of
textual evidence for various language. (Bearth 2003:129-130)
In Totela, while SVO seems to be the “default” word order, as in many Bantu languages,
all orderings of subject-verb-object except for those that are verb-final, are possible, as shown
in (81a)-(81d). When the verb is final, an object marker is preferred. When the object
precedes the subject in such constructions (OSV), the object acts like a topic, separated
by comma intonation (pause and final rising tone). When the subject precedes the object
(SOV), both act like topics. It is likely for this reason that the resumptive object pronoun
occurs in such cases (81e)-(81f).
(81) a. Jacky àlàtòbèlá àbàchèchè SVO
Jacky a-la-tobel-a
abacheche
Jacky 3sg-noncmpl-seek-fv cl2.child
‘Jacky is looking for the children’ 26
b. àlàtòbèlà Jacky àbàchèchè VSO
a-la-tobel-a
Jacky abacheche
3sg-noncmpl-seek-fv Jacky cl2.child
‘Jacky is looking for the children’
c. àlàtòbèlà àbàchèchè Jacky VOS
a-la-tobel-a
abacheche Jacky
3sg-noncmpl-seek-fv cl2.child Jacky
‘Jacky is looking for the children’
d. àbàchèchè àlàtòbèlà Jacky OVS
abacheche a-la-tobel-a
Jacky
cl2.children 3sg-noncmpl-seek-fv Jacky
‘Jacky is looking for the child’ (ZT2009Elic142-143)
e. àbàchèchè, Jacky àlábàtòbèlà OSV, with OM
abacheche,
cl2.child,
Jacky a-la-ba-tobel-a
Jacky 3sg-noncmpl-cl2-seek-fv
‘The children, Jacky is looking for them’
f. Jacky, àbàchèchè, àlábàtòbèlà SOV, with OM
Jacky, abacheche, a-la-ba-tobel-a
Jacky, cl2.child 3sg-noncmpl-cl2-seek-fv
‘As for Jacky, as for the children, he is looking for them’
26 These translations are somewhat artificial; -la- is more often used in this context as a marker of near
future.
101