Information Structure and Word Order in Matengo

Abstract

Matengo is a Bantu language spoken in the south-west part of Tanzania. Its word order is determined by information structure. The principles of sentence formation in Matengo are (i) the topic of the sentence occurs in sentence-initial position, and (ii) non-topical elements occur post-verbally, and the focus of the sentence (if there is one) occurs immediately after the verb. The position of each element is determined according to these principles. However, there is one case which does not follow them. When a verb has two or more arguments and none of them is topicalized, the subject is placed in the topic slot even though it is not topicalized. It is suggested that this happens because of the high topicality which the subject has inherently. Thus, the element which can be placed in topic slot is not exactly a topic, but rather an “element high enough in the topicality.” that is, a non-focused subject.

In many Bantu languages, agreement of subject marker is related to both the topicality of the subject and its position in the sentence. In Matengo, however, topicality relates only to word order. The subject marker in this language strictly agrees with subject, regardless of its topicality and the position in the sentence. This means that grammatical relation is shown by grammatical agreement and information structure is shown by word order.