The expression of information structure in Makhuwa-Enahara

This chapter describes which morphosyntactic strategies Makhuwa-Enahara uses to structure the information in a sentence. Makhuwa-Enahara is a language in which word order plays an important role in expressing information structure: the preverbal domain is reserved for topics, non-topical subjects occur in subject inversion, and there is an immediate after verb (IAV) focus position. The conjoint verb form expresses exclusive focus on the IAV constituent, whereas the disjoint verb form is an elsewhere form. A topic doubling construction involving a fronted infinitive may be used to express verum, and three types of cleft sentences are used to express focus. Pronouns and (emphatic) demonstratives are used to indicate referent activation and contrast.