A Descriptive Note on Malagasy Verbal Complementation and the Binding Hierarchy: With Special Reference to the Occurrence of the Complementizer 'fa.'

The aim of this paper is to describe verbal complementation in Malagasy and to consider how the Malagasy data reflect the "binding hierarchy" proposed by Givon (1980). It is shown that the Malagasy data provide support for the hierarchy and that the occurrence of the complementizer "fa" can be accounted for in terms of the strength of binding the main-clause verb. (Author/JL)