Focus asymmetries in Bura
- (Chadic), which exhibits a number of asymmetries: Grammatical focus marking is obligatory only with focused subjects, where focus is marked by the particle án following the subject. Focused subjects remain in situ and the complement of án is a regular VP. With nonsubject foci, án 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.
Author details: | Katharina Hartmann, Peggy Jacob, Malte ZimmermannORCiDGND |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19381 |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Publication year: | 2008 |
Publishing institution: | Universität Potsdam |
Release date: | 2008/07/18 |
Tag: | Afro-Asiatic; argument/adjunct focus; cleft; focus asymmetries; focus copula; polarity focus; predicate focus |
RVK - Regensburg classification: | ER 300 |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik |
DDC classification: | 4 Sprache / 40 Sprache / 400 Sprache |
Collection(s): | Universität Potsdam / Schriftenreihen / Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632, ISSN 1866-4725 / ISIS (2008) 10 |
Institution name at the time of the publication: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Linguistik / Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft |
License (German): | Keine öffentliche Lizenz: Unter Urheberrechtsschutz |
External remark: | erschienen in: Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : Working papers of the SFB 632. -Potsdam : Univ.-Verl., 2008 - 92 S.(Interdisciplinary studies on information structure ; 10) ISSN 1866-4725 URN: urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-16929 |