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4.7 Summary
This chapter has proposed an analysis of Marshallese declaratives and argued that the
three Marshallese subject positions – sentence initial, sentence internal and sentence final
–correspond to different positions within the syntactic structure: the specifier of AgrSP,
the specifier of the verb phrase, or the specifier of TopP or FocP in the left periphery. I
have also argued that the sentence final position of the Marshallese subject is due not
only to subject movement but also to movement of the remnant AgrSP into the left
periphery. I have shown that this analysis is supported by constituency and the position of
the verb with respect to adverbs and the negative and that this analysis provides the tools
to explain why V S O order is not possible in Marshallese. Finally, I have provided an
explanation as to how third singular agreement occurs with postverbal third plural
subjects.
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