TY - JOUR A1 - Akuoko Duah, Reginald T1 - Exhaustive Focus Marking in Akan JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - 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; É. 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. KW - Akan KW - focus marker KW - cleft KW - exhaustivity KW - ex situ KW - in situ KW - subject/non-subject asymmetry Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-83748 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 IS - 19 SP - 1 EP - 28 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Fiedler, Ines T1 - QUIS data from Yom, Aja, Anii and Foodo BT - with notes on genetic and areal relations JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - This is the second part of the presentation of data elicited by means of QUIS within the project on information structure in Gur and Kwa languages. Whereas the first part (Anne Schwarz) introduces the project and the rationals behind the development of the focus translation task, this part provides some comparative remarks gained from the data presented in both parts. Y1 - 2011 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-51420 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 IS - 16 SP - 49 EP - 96 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Fominyam, Henry Z. T1 - The Syntax of Focus and Interrogation in Awing BT - a Descriptive Approach JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - According to Aikhenvald (2007:5), descriptive linguistics or linguistic fieldwork “ideally involves observing the language as it is used, becoming a member of the community, and often being adopted into the kinship system”. Descriptive linguistics therefore differs from theoretical linguistics in that while the former seeks to describe natural languages as they are used, the latter, other than describing, attempts to give explanations on how or why language phenomena behave in certain ways. Thus, I will abstract away from any preconceived ideas on how sentences ought to be in Awing and take the linguist/reader through focus and interrogative constructions to get a feeling of how the Awing people interact verbally. KW - Awing KW - focus realization KW - question formation KW - descriptive grammar Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-83755 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 IS - 19 SP - 29 EP - 62 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Genzel, Susanne A1 - Kügler, Frank T1 - How to elicit semi-spontaneous focus realizations with specific tonal patterns JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - This article presents a situation description production experiment investigating the interaction between syntax and information structure in Akan, a tone language that belongs to the Kwa branch of the Niger- Congo family spoken in Ghana. Information structure was elicited via context questions that put the object in narrow informational focus or narrow corrective focus while controlling for the tonal structure of the target word. Contrary to the prediction that corrective focus is marked by fronting and morphological marking of the focused constituent the data suggest that the in-situ strategy is the preferred one. KW - Akan KW - information structure KW - syntax Y1 - 2011 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-49749 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 IS - 13 SP - 77 EP - 102 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Grubic, Mira T1 - Ngizim fieldnotes JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - This chapter presents field notes of the West Chadic language Ngizim, spoken in North-East Nigeria. In Ngizim, subject focus is indicated by subject inversion, whereas the word order of sentences with focused non-subjects can remain unchanged. The goal of the field work was to find out more about focus marking in Ngizim. KW - information structure KW - Ngizim Y1 - 2011 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-49738 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 IS - 13 SP - 1 EP - 76 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Klose, Claudius T1 - Sentence Type and Association with Focus in Aymara JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - Sentence type marking is realized by two suffixes in Aymara, one marks declaratives and the other polar sentences (polar questions and negated sentences) by picking out one or two propositions, respectively. A third suffix, initially associated with wh-questions, turns out to be a (scalar) additive and unrelated to sentence type. The sentence-type-related suffixes associate with focus and the additive can associate with focus by attaching to the focused constituent. KW - Focus KW - Association with Focus KW - Sentence Type KW - Aymara Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-83768 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 IS - 19 SP - 63 EP - 86 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Krifka, Manfred T1 - Basic notions of information structure N2 - This article takes stock of the basic notions of Information Structure (IS). It first provides a general characterization of IS — following Chafe (1976) — within a communicative model of Common Ground(CG), which distinguishes between CG content and CG management. IS is concerned with those features of language that concern the local CG. Second, this paper defines and discusses the notions of Focus (as indicating alternatives) and its various uses, Givenness (as indicating that a denotation is already present in the CG), and Topic (as specifying what a statement is about). It also proposes a new notion, Delimitation, which comprises contrastive topics and frame setters, and indicates that the current conversational move does not entirely satisfy the local communicative needs. It also points out that rhetorical structuring partly belongs to IS. KW - Information Structure KW - Focus KW - Topic KW - Givenness KW - Contrast Y1 - 2007 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19603 SN - 978-3-939469-88-9 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 SP - 13 EP - 55 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Pfeil, Simone A1 - Genzel, Susanne A1 - Kügler, Frank T1 - Empirical investigation of focus and exhaustivity in Akan JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - It has been observed for many African languages that focussed subjects have to appear outside of their syntactic base position, as opposed to focussed objects, which can remain in-situ. This is known as subjectobject asymmetry of focus marking, which Fiedler et al. (2010) claim to hold also for Akan. Genzel (2013), on the other hand, argues that Akan does not exhibit a subject-object focus asymmetry. A questionnaire study and a production experiment were carried out to investigate whether focussed subjects may indeed be realized in-situ in Akan. The results suggest that (i) focussed subjects do not have to be obligatorily realized ex-situ, and that (ii) the syntactic preference for the realization of a focussed subject highly depends on exhaustivity. KW - Akan KW - focus KW - subjects KW - exhaustivity KW - in-situ Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-83774 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 IS - 19 SP - 87 EP - 109 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schwarz, Anne T1 - QUIS data from Buli, Kɔnni and Baatɔnum with notes on the comparative approach JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - Contents: 1. Introduction 2. Selection of QUIS Data for Comparative Goals 2.1 Fairy Tale (Topic and Focus in Coherent Discourse) 2.2 Focus Translation Extract 3. On the Presentation and Comparison of the Data 4. Buli 4.1 Tomatoes Fairy Tale in Buli 4.2 Focus Translation Extract in Buli 5. Kɔnni 5.1 Tomatoes Fairy Tale in Kɔnni 5.2 Focus Translation Extract 6. Baatɔnum 6.1 Tomatoes Fairy Tale in Baatɔnum 6.2 Focus Translation Extract in Baatɔnum Y1 - 2011 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-51415 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 IS - 16 SP - 1 EP - 48 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Valle, Daniel T1 - Modality in Kakataibo JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - This paper explores the semantic space of modality in Kakataibo (Panoan). It is found that Kakataibo makes a distinction in the modal space based on the modality type. Circumstantial modality is encoded by a construction while the epistemic space is conveyed by the second position enclitics =dapi ‘inferential’, =id ‘second-hand information’ and =kuni ‘contrastive assertion’. However, none of these strategies to encode modality restricts the quantificational force, leaving it underspecified. These facts are consistent with the predictions of current typologies of modal systems. KW - modality KW - conversational background KW - quantificational force KW - Kakataibo Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-83784 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 IS - 19 SP - 111 EP - 137 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER -