This article examines two so-far-understudied verb doubling constructions in Mandarin Chinese, viz., verb doubling clefts and verb doubling lian…dou. We show that these constructions have the same internal syntax as regular clefts and lian…dou sentences, the doubling effect being epiphenomenal; therefore, we classify them as subtypes of the general cleft and lian…dou constructions, respectively, rather than as independent constructions. Additionally, we also show that, as in many other languages with comparable constructions, the two instances of the verb are part of a single movement chain, which has the peculiarity of allowing Spell-Out of more than one link.
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.
Focus asymmetries in Bura
(2008)
(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.