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  -