176 Chapter 6 Clause types
b. Bengko mera rowa, jendela-na biyasana kotor.
house red that window-DEF usual dirty
‘That red house, its windows are usually dirty.’
(150) a. Bannya' mored-da Pa' Hasan lulus ujiyan.
many student-DEF Mr Hasan pass exam
‘Many of Pak Hasan’s students passed the exam.’
b. Pa' Hasan, bannya' mored-da lulus ujiyan.
Mr Hasan many student-DEF pass exam
‘Pak Hasan, many of his students passed the exam.’
The topics and the subjects of these sentences stand in a possessor-possessed
relationship. The sentence predicates some state of affairs regarding an element
that is associated with the possessor, the topic. For example, in (149b), bengko
mera rowa ‘that red house’ makes up the topic of the sentence and the comment
consists of the clause jendelana biyasana kotor ‘its windows are usually dirty’.
Again, the topic and comment stand in a subject - predicate type of relationship
as the comment clause predicates a property of the subject, here the fact that
usually that red house has dirty windows. The same is true in (150b), in which
bannya' moredda lulus ujiyan ‘many his students passed the exam’ is the com-
ment that is predicated of the topic Pa' Hasan.
The topic-comment structure is narrowly constrained so that the topic
must always be coindexed with the subject of the comment or must stand in a
possessor relationship with the subject of the comment. The topic cannot be
associated with any other grammatical position, such as direct object. Thus,
(151b) is not a possible topic-comment variant of (151a).
(151) a. Polisi nangkep anom-ma Satimma.
police AV.catch uncle-DEF Satimma
‘The police caught Satimma’s uncle.’
b. *Satimma, polisi nangkep anom-ma.
Satimma police AV.catch uncle-DEF
(Satimma, the police caught her uncle.)
In (151b), the topic Satimma is associated with the direct object of nangkep
‘catch’, anomma ‘her uncle’. In order for Satimma to be the topic, anomma
must be the subject of the comment clause, which it is in (152b), where the verb
occurs in the object voice.