English (translated)

Discourse function has often been noticed to be a strong factor in conditioning Bantu word order (Van der Wal 2015a; Downing & Hyman 2016; Downing & Marten 2019). Core concepts of discourse function are topic, defined as what the sentence is about, and focus, most simply defined as new information added to the presupposition (Lambrecht 1994). 1 The importance of discourse function for determining the word order of Bantu languages is visible for example in locative inversion, which presents a topical element preverbally and a non-topical logical subject postverbally (1), and dedicated focus positions — immediate-before-verb (IBV) in (2a-b).

French (original)

Discourse function has often been noticed to be a strong factor in conditioning Bantu word order (Van der Wal 2015a; Downing & Hyman 2016; Downing & Marten 2019). Core concepts of discourse function are topic, defined as what the sentence is about, and focus, most simply defined as new information added to the presupposition (Lambrecht 1994).1 The importance of discourse function for determining the word order of Bantu languages is visible for example in locative inversion, which presents a topical element preverbally and a non-topical logical subject postverbally (1), and dedicated focus positions — immediate-before-verb (IBV) in (2a‑b).