Comparative Analysis of Topic Marking Strategies in Portuguese and Cinyanja

Authors

  • admin admin Universidade Rovuma

Keywords:

Comparative analysis, Cinyanja, Portuguese, topic

Abstract

The universal grammar displays principals and parameters that characterize the natural languages over the world. The principals are universal, whereas parameters show the different ways languages express the principals. The research describes comparatively the topicalization strategies in Portuguese and Cinyanja, concerning the following objectives (1) to analyze the strategies used by both languages to mark the topic and (2) to explain the differences through the grammatical theories. The approach is qualitative, whose procedures methods are introspective and phenomenological. The former consisted of the use of previous knowledge from the researcher, related to the grammar of both languages, and the last was based on the observation of the way the language functions in natural environment. The data were described following content analysis platform. From the study, one may conclude that the pending topic and the left pending topic dislocation occur in Portuguese and Cinyanja; the left clitic dislocation is a common strategy in Portuguese, but in Cinyanja it occurs with restrictions; the topicalization, which is a basic strategy in Portuguese, as well, is allowed in Cinyanja only in verbs that require obligatory cliticization; the savage topicalization does not occur in Cinyanja, whereas in Portuguese is only allowed when the suppressed preposition has no semantic meaning; and, finally, Portuguese and Cinyanja can be characterized as topic and subject prominence languages in the sense that in both languages can be distinguished subject-predicate and topic-commentary sentences.

References

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Published

2021-12-30

How to Cite

Macalane, G. . (2021). Comparative Analysis of Topic Marking Strategies in Portuguese and Cinyanja. UEM Scientific Journal: Arts and Social Sciences Series , 3(1). Retrieved from http://196.3.97.23/revista/index.php/lcs/article/view/168