@misc{ChengVicente2012,
  author    = {Cheng, Lisa Lai-Shen and Vicente, Luis},
  title     = {Verb doubling in Mandarin Chinese},
  series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe},
  journal   = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe},
  number    = {629},
  issn      = {1866-8364},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-43688},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-436880},
  pages     = {1 -- 37},
  year      = {2012},
  abstract  = {This article examines two so-far-understudied verb doubling constructions in Mandarin Chinese, viz., verb doubling clefts and verb doubling lian…dou. We show that these constructions have the same internal syntax as regular clefts and lian…dou sentences, the doubling effect being epiphenomenal; therefore, we classify them as subtypes of the general cleft and lian…dou constructions, respectively, rather than as independent constructions. Additionally, we also show that, as in many other languages with comparable constructions, the two instances of the verb are part of a single movement chain, which has the peculiarity of allowing Spell-Out of more than one link.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{GrubicRenansDuah2018,
  author    = {Grubic, Mira and Renans, Agata and Duah, Reginald Akuoko},
  title     = {Focus, exhaustivity and existence in Akan, Ga and Ngamo},
  series = {Linguistics : an interdisciplinary journal of the language sciences},
  volume    = {57},
  journal   = {Linguistics : an interdisciplinary journal of the language sciences},
  number    = {1},
  publisher = {De Gruyter Mouton},
  address   = {Berlin},
  issn      = {0024-3949},
  doi       = {10.1515/ling-2018-0035},
  pages     = {221 -- 268},
  year      = {2018},
  abstract  = {This paper discusses the relation between focus marking and focus interpretation in Akan (Kwa), Ga (Kwa), and Ngamo (West Chadic). In all three languages, there is a special morphosyntactically marked focus/background construction, as well as morphosyntactically unmarked focus. We present data stemming from original fieldwork investigatingwhether marked focus/background constructions in these three languages also have additional interpretative effects apart from standard focus interpretation. Crosslinguistically, different additional inferences have been found for marked focus constructions, e.g. contrast (e.g. Vallduvi, Enric \& Maria Vilkuna. 1997. On rheme and kontrast. In Peter Culicover \& Louise McNally (eds.), The limits of syntax (Syntax and semantics 29), 79-108. New York: Academic Press; Hartmann, Katharina \& Malte Zimmermann. 2007b. In place -Out of place: Focus in Hausa. In Kerstin Schwabe \& Susanne Winkler (eds.), On information structure, meaning and form, 365-403. Amsterdam \& Philadelphia: John Benjamins.; Destruel, Emilie \& Leah Velleman. 2014. Refining contrast: Empirical evidence from the English it-cleft. In Christopher Pinon (ed.), Empirical issues in syntax and semantics 10, 197-214. Paris: Colloque de syntaxe et semantique a Paris (CSSP). http://www.cssp.cnrs.fr/eiss10/), exhaustivity (e.g. E. Kiss, Katalin. 1998. Identificational focus versus information focus. Language 74(2). 245-273.; Hartmann, Katharina \& Malte Zimmermann. 2007a. Exhaustivity marking in Hausa: A re-evaluation of the particle nee/cee. In Enoch O. Aboh, Katharina Hartmann \& Malte Zimmermann (eds.), Focus strategies in African languages: The interaction of focus and grammar in Niger-Congo and AfroAsiatic (Trends in Linguistics 191), 241-263. Berlin \& New York: Mouton de Gruyter.), and existence (e.g. Rooth, Mats. 1999. Association with focus or association with presupposition? In Peter Bosch \& Rob van der Sandt (eds.), Focus: Linguistic, cognitive, and computational perspectives, 232-244. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.; von Fintel, Kai \& Lisa Matthewson. 2008. Universals in semantics. The Linguistic Review 25(1-2). 139-201). This paper investigates these three inferences. In Akan and Ga, the marked focus constructions are found to be contrastive, while in Ngamo, no effect of contrast was found. We also show that marked focus constructions in Ga and Akan trigger exhaustivity and existence presuppositions, while the marked construction in Ngamo merely gives rise to an exhaustive conversational implicature and does not trigger an existence presupposition. Instead, the marked construction in Ngamo merely indicates salience of the backgrounded part via a morphological background marker related to the definite determiner (Schuh, Russell G. 2005. Yobe state, Nigeria as a linguistic area. Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 31(2). 77-94; Guldemann, Tom. 2016. Maximal backgrounding = focus without (necessary) focus encoding. Studies in Language 40(3). 551590). The paper thus contributes to the understanding of the semantics of marked focus constructions across languages and points to the crosslinguistic variation in expressing and interpreting marked focus/background constructions.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{HartmannJacobZimmermann2008,
  author    = {Hartmann, Katharina and Jacob, Peggy and Zimmermann, Malte},
  title     = {Focus asymmetries in Bura},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19381},
  year      = {2008},
  abstract  = {(Chadic), which exhibits a number of asymmetries: Grammatical focus marking is obligatory only with focused subjects, where focus is marked by the particle {\´a}n following the subject. Focused subjects remain in situ and the complement of {\´a}n is a regular VP. With nonsubject foci, {\´a}n appears in a cleft-structure between the fronted focus constituent and a relative clause. We present a semantically unified analysis of focus marking in Bura that treats the particle as a focusmarking copula in T that takes a property-denoting expression (the background) and an individual-denoting expression (the focus) as arguments. The article also investigates the realization of predicate and polarity focus, which are almost never marked. The upshot of the discussion is that Bura shares many characteristic traits of focus marking with other Chadic languages, but it crucially differs in exhibiting a structural difference in the marking of focus on subjects and non-subject constituents.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{AkuokoDuah2015,
  author    = {Akuoko Duah, Reginald},
  title     = {Exhaustive Focus Marking in Akan},
  series = {Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632},
  journal   = {Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632},
  number    = {19},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  issn      = {1614-4708},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-83748},
  pages     = {1 -- 28},
  year      = {2015},
  abstract  = {This paper reopens the discussion on focus marking in Akan (Kwa, Niger-Congo) by examining the semantics of the so-called focus marker in the language. It is shown that the so-called focus marker expresses exhaustivity when it occurs in a sentence with narrow focus. The study employs four standard tests for exhaustivity proposed in the literature to examine the semantics of Akan focus constructions (Szabolsci 1981, 1994; {\´E}. Kiss 1998; Hartmann and Zimmermann 2007). It is shown that although a focused entity with the so-called focus marker nà is interpreted to mean 'only X and nothing/nobody else,' this meaning appears to be pragmatic.},
  language  = {en}
}