TOPIC and subordination in Whitesands

This paper examines subordination constructions in Narak (alias Whitesands, WSN, ISO: TNP), an under-described Oceanic language of southern Vanuatu spoken by roughly 5000 speakers. The primary data presented here was collected in situ by the author. In particular, I address various syntactic problems found in the Echo Subject switch reference-like system (see Lynch 1983 and Crowley 2002 for background on the system in related languages). Special attention is given to the properties of co-subordinate clauses, serial verb constructions and relative clauses. I argue that posited information structure categories, such as TOPIC, can account for some of the syntactically tricky data and that the behaviour of these subordinate clauses supports this hypothesis