Lexical, pronominal and zero argument encoding in Movima

Abstract Past research on the cross-linguistic discourse conditions for the lexical and nonlexical expressions of arguments has shown that semantic role and animacy both play an important role. Some less attention has been paid so far to the choice between different nonlexical expressions, in particular, unstressed pronouns and zero. This choice is possible in Movima (isolate, Bolivia), where the single argument of a basic intransitive clause and one of the two arguments of a basic transitive clause can remain unexpressed. Based on data from spontaneous oral discourse, the present study investigates the lexical, pronominal, and zero expression of S of the intransitive and P of the ergative transitive clause and shows that S and P do not display the same behaviour in discourse: Overall, P is less often expressed by a pronoun than S, and inanimate referents favour zero rather than pronominal expression. Only an animate S is more often encoded as a pronoun than as zero. It is argued that this exceptional behaviour of animate S arguments reflects their affinity with the A argument of the ergative transitive clause, which typically encodes an animate and topical referent, is obligatorily overtly expressed, and typically expressed by a pronoun.