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  - 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  -