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AbstractPseudosluicing diagnostics have played an important role in wider debates about sluicing. Sluicing is the term used to describe the deletion of an embedded clausal constituent, which leaves only a wh‐phrase overt. Genuine sluicing requires syntactic or semantic identity between the sluiced clause and its antecedent, contrasting with pseudosluicing, in which pro‐drop creates the appearance of a sluice but no identity is required. The underlying structure of sluicing in several Austronesian languages has been argued to be pseudoclefts, which involve a nominal wh‐predicate and a headless relative clause argument. Both Malagasy and Nukuoro have been analysed as having pseudocleft sluicing, and on the basis of this, claims about the type of identity required in sluicing have been made. Both analyses rely on diagnostics that rule out the possibility of pseudosluicing. This paper reexamines the pseudosluicing diagnostics used for Malagasy and Nukuoro and concludes that they have been insufficiently controlled for. This is supported by data from Madurese showing that pseudosluicing diagnostics are inconclusive in these Austronesian languages. Language‐internal support is needed for such diagnostics, especially as they play an important role in the conclusions drawn from Austronesian languages on the wider identity requirement for sluicing. Three language‐specific diagnostics are given which are successfully able to identify pseudosluicing in Madurese.

The Lugbara and Madi (properly Ma'di, but I shall keep the traditional spelling) are the most easterly speakers of the Eastern Sudanic group of languages, which stretches from the Lake Chad region to the Nile Valley. They are usually referred to by Government sources as Nilotic tribes; this is incorrect. They are distinct both culturally and linguistically from the neighboring Nilotic peoples to the east of the Nile.

Merchants differ from traders in that they act as intermediaries between different producers and consumers. An example discussed here is that of the Swahili merchants of the East African coast, who flourished in the early Modern Era. The several Swahili port towns established control of mercantile exchange between the African interior and the peoples of the western Indian Ocean. Exchange was based on relations of affinity and quasi‐kinship established by the Swahili at the centre. They used locally minted coins as counters of value; exchanges were negotiated in the security and purity of Swahili houses; and the merchants, by adroit use of gifts of luxuries to others along the coast, were able to influence or even control the local system of ranking and power. They were colonized in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the Arabian state of Oman, which established the sultanate of Zanzibar, with a quite a different pattern of exchange. The Swahili are today no more than marginal merchants. Their organization of exchange was similar to that of other mercantile societies of the early colonial period.

Joan Vincent. Anthropology and Politics: Visions, Traditions, and Trends. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990.