Languages Which Show Pied-piping With Inversion
Pied-piping with inversion seems to be found in all Mesoamerican languages. It is documented in many of these languages, including several Zapotec languages (San Dionisio Ocotepec Zapotec, Tlacolula de Matamoros Zapotec, and Quiegolani Zapotec), several Mayan languages (K'ichee', Kaqchikel, Chuj, Tzotzil), and several Mixtecan languages (Ocotepec Mixtec, and Copala Triqui).
Pied-piping with inversion is unusual outside Mesoamerica. It is documented in Sasak, an Austronesian language of Indonesia (Austin 2001).
A somewhat similar phenomenon is found in a number of Germanic languages, where certain pronominal objects of prepositions appear before the preposition. The following Dutch examples show that ordinary objects follow the preposition op 'on', while the pronouns er 'it', daar 'there', and hier 'here' precede the preposition:
- Ik reken . ("I count on your support.")
- Ik reken erop/daarop/hierop ("I count on it/on that/on this.")
These examples show inversion of a prepositional phrase, but this inversion does not necessarily occur in contexts of pied-piping.
Possibly related is the phenomenon known as swiping, which a wh-phrase is inverted with a governing preposition in the context of sluicing:
- Ralph was arguing, but I don't know who with.
Such inversion does require pied-piping, though it also requires ellipsis, unlike what is found in the Meso-American languages.
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