Reduced structure in Malagasy headlines

Authors

Ileana PaulFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2017

Volume

17

Issue

2

Journal

Linguistic Variation

Abstract

This paper examines the register associated with headlines in Malagasy. While in many languages headlines appear to have reduced structure as evidenced by the absence of certain grammatical markers (determiners, copulas, tense), Malagasy headlines show a change in word order from VOS to SVO. It is argued that like English, Malagasy headlines involve a truncated syntactic structure and that the absence of certain functional projections accounts for the change in word order.