TY  - JOUR
A1  - Fiedler, Ines
A1  - Schwarz, Anne
T1  - Out-of-focus encoding in Gur and Kwa
JF  - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632
N2  - This paper investigates the structural properties of morphosyntactically marked focus constructions, focussing on the often neglected non-focal sentence part in African tone languages. Based on new empirical evidence from five Gur and Kwa languages, we claim that these focus expressions have to be analysed as biclausal constructions even though they do not represent clefts containing restrictive relative clauses. First, we relativize the partly overgeneralized assumptions about structural correspondences between the out-of-focus part and relative clauses, and second, we show that our data do in fact support the hypothesis of a clause coordinating pattern as present in clause sequences in narration. It is argued that we deal with a non-accidental, systematic feature and that grammaticalization may conceal such basic narrative structures.
KW  - ex-situ focus
KW  - focus marker
KW  - relative clause
KW  - conjunction
KW  - grammaticalization
Y1  - 2005
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-8739
SN  - 1866-4725
SN  - 1614-4708
IS  - 3
SP  - 111
EP  - 142
ER  - 
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  -