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Focus expressions in Foodo
(2007)
This paper aims at presenting different ways of expressing focus in Foodo, a Guang language. We can differentiate between marked and unmarked focus strategies. The marked focus expressions are first syntactically characterized: the focused constituent is in sentence-initial position and is second always marked obligatorily by a focus marker, which is nɩ for non-subjects and N for subjects. Complementary to these structures, Foodo knows an elliptic form consisting of the focused constituent and a predication marker gɛ́. It will be shown that the two focus markers can be analyzed as having developed out of the homophone conjunction nɩ and that the constraints on the use of the focus markers can be best explained by this fact.
This paper investigates the structural properties of morphosyntactically marked focus constructions, focussing on the often neglected non-focal sentence part in African tone languages. Based on new empirical evidence from five Gur and Kwa languages, we claim that these focus expressions have to be analysed as biclausal constructions even though they do not represent clefts containing restrictive relative clauses. First, we relativize the partly overgeneralized assumptions about structural correspondences between the out-of-focus part and relative clauses, and second, we show that our data do in fact support the hypothesis of a clause coordinating pattern as present in clause sequences in narration. It is argued that we deal with a non-accidental, systematic feature and that grammaticalization may conceal such basic narrative structures.
This is the 16th issue of the working paper series Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure (ISIS) of the Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) 632. The present issue continues the series on Linguistic Fieldnotes providing data elicited and documented by different members of the Sonderforschungsbereich 632. Here, the focus is placed on primary linguistic data from Gur and Kwa languages, collected and prepared by Anne Schwarz, former investigator in Project B1 and D2, and Ines Fiedler, former investigator in Project B1 and D2 and current member of Project B7 at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
This is the second part of the presentation of data elicited by means of QUIS within the project on information structure in Gur and Kwa languages. Whereas the first part (Anne Schwarz) introduces the project and the rationals behind the development of the focus translation task, this part provides some comparative remarks gained from the data presented in both parts.
Information structure
(2007)