Verb Semantics, Focus Type and Split O in Tsou

Starosta (2001) first observed that it is very rare to find a verb in Western Austronesian languages that has forms for all the focus slots. Viewing ‘focus construction ’ as an argument-enhancing applicative strategy, S. Huang (To appear) builds on Starosta’s observation, and demonstrates that non-agent focus constructions (NAF) in Formosan languages exhibit a split O phenomenon: Nominative NPs in NAF clauses are expressed in three grammatically distinct ways: some must be expressed as the nominative NPs of the patient focus construction (PF), others as the nominative NPS of the locative focus construction (LF), still others as the nominative NPs of the referential focus construction (RF). Moreover, all of the thematic roles of the nominative NPS in these NAF clauses derive ultimately from spatial notions. In this paper, we offer further evidence to show that Tsou is a (nearly) perfect split O language. Analyses of the thematic roles of the NPs in our data suggest that lexical verb semantics largely define acceptable focu