Are topic particles generally derived from adpositions? I don't know many languages that have a specific topic marker (Japanese, Korean, Kawésqar...); but all of them are head-final, postpositional languages and the topic marker also follows the topic. And then there are prepositional languages like English, German or Spanish, where one can optionally mark the topic with a preposition or prepositional phrase like "as to", "bezüglich", "en cuanto a". Is there any postpositional language with a topic marker that precedes the topic, or viceversa? If a topic marker were derived from a relative clause, a participle or an adjective, then it would be on the opposite side of the adpositions, isn't it? Something like (in a head-initial language):
X of-which-we-speak > X TOP
X spoken-of > X TOP
Topic markers and adpositions
Re: Topic markers and adpositions
Quechua -qa presumably didn't derive from adpositions, because the language has none.
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Re: Topic markers and adpositions
Where do Quechua suffixes originate from?zompist wrote:Quechua -qa presumably didn't derive from adpositions, because the language has none.
< Cev> My people we use cars. I come from a very proud car culture-- every part of the car is used, nothing goes to waste. When my people first saw the car, generations ago, we called it šuŋka wakaŋ-- meaning "automated mobile".
Re: Topic markers and adpositions
I don't know the specific case of Quechua, but I think case affixes usually originate from adpositions and ultimately from adverbs, nouns or verbs as the head of the construction. In any case, Quechua -qa attaches enclitically to the topic and is thus "on the same side" of the case suffixes.
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Re: Topic markers and adpositions
Other things can turn into case affixes though - determiners and classifiers, for instance.Benturi wrote:I don't know the specific case of Quechua, but I think case affixes usually originate from adpositions and ultimately from adverbs, nouns or verbs as the head of the construction. In any case, Quechua -qa attaches enclitically to the topic and is thus "on the same side" of the case suffixes.
< Cev> My people we use cars. I come from a very proud car culture-- every part of the car is used, nothing goes to waste. When my people first saw the car, generations ago, we called it šuŋka wakaŋ-- meaning "automated mobile".