@phdthesis{Renans2016,
  author    = {Renans, Agata Maria},
  title     = {Exhaustivity},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-89501},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {221},
  year      = {2016},
  abstract  = {The dissertation proposes an answer to the question of how to model exhaustive inferences and what the meaning of the linguistic material that triggers these inferences is. In particular, it deals with the semantics of exclusive particles, clefts, and progressive aspect in Ga, an under-researched language spoken in Ghana. Based on new data coming from the author's original fieldwork in Accra, the thesis points to a previously unattested variation in the semantics of exclusives in a cross-linguistic perspective, analyzes the connections between exhaustive interpretation triggered by clefts and the aspectual interpretation of the sentence, and identifies a cross-categorial definite determiner. By that it sheds new light on several exhaustivity-related phenomena in both the nominal and the verbal domain and shows that both domains are closely connected.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Mucha2015,
  author    = {Mucha, Anne},
  title     = {Temporal interpretation and cross-linguistic variation},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-85935},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {x, 249},
  year      = {2015},
  abstract  = {This thesis investigates temporal and aspectual reference in the typologically unrelated African languages Hausa (Chadic, Afro-Asiatic) and Medumba (Grassfields Bantu). It argues that Hausa is a genuinely tenseless language and compares the interpretation of temporally unmarked sentences in Hausa to that of morphologically tenseless sentences in Medumba, where tense marking is optional and graded. The empirical behavior of the optional temporal morphemes in Medumba motivates an analysis as existential quantifiers over times and thus provides new evidence suggesting that languages vary in whether their (past) tense is pronominal or quantificational (see also Sharvit 2014). The thesis proposes for both Hausa and Medumba that the alleged future tense marker is a modal element that obligatorily combines with a prospective future shifter (which is covert in Medumba). Cross-linguistic variation in whether or not a future marker is compatible with non-future interpretation is proposed to be predictable from the aspectual architecture of the given language.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Grubic2015,
  author    = {Grubic, Mira},
  title     = {Focus and alternative sensitivity in Ngamo (West-Chadic)},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-81666},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2015},
  abstract  = {The main research question of this thesis concerns the relation between focus interpretation, focus realization, and association with focus in the West Chadic language Ngamo. Concerning the relation between focus realization and interpretation, this thesis contributes to the question, cross-linguistically, what factors influence a marked realization of the focus/background distinction. There is background-marking rather than focus-marking in Ngamo, and the background marker is related to the definite determiner in the language. Using original fieldwork data as a basis, a formal semantic analysis of the background marker as a definite determiner of situations is proposed. Concerning the relation between focus and association with focus, the thesis adds to the growing body of crosslinguistic evidence that not all so-called focus-sensitive operators always associate with focus. The thesis shows that while the exclusive particle yak('i) (= "only") in Ngamo conventionally associates with focus, the particles har('i) (= "even, as far as, until, already"), and ke('e) (= "also, and") do not. The thesis provides an analysis of these phenomena in a situation semantic framework.},
  language  = {en}
}