Gisbert Fanselow’s work has been invaluable and inspiring to many ­researchers working on syntax, morphology, and information ­structure, both from a ­theoretical and from an experimental perspective. This ­volume comprises a collection of articles dedicated to Gisbert on the occasion of his 60th birthday, covering a range of topics from these areas and beyond. The contributions have in ­common that in a broad sense they have to do with language structures (and thus trees), and that in a more specific sense they have to do with birds. They thus cover two of Gisbert’s major interests in- and outside of the linguistic world (and ­perhaps even at the interface).

We provide an analysis of focus and exhaustive focus in the Grassfields Bantu language Awing. We show that Awing provides an exceptionally clear window into the syntactic properties of exhaustive focus. Our analysis reveals that the Awing particle lə́ (le) realizes a left-peripheral head which, in terms of its syntactic position in the functional sequence, closely corresponds to the Foc(us) head in standard cartographic analyses (e.g., Rizzi 1997). Crucially, however, we show that le is only used if the focus it associates with receives a presuppositional exhaustive (cleft-like) interpretation. Other types of focus are not formally encoded in Awing. In order to reflect this semantic specification of le, we call its syntactic category Exh rather than Foc. Another point of difference from what one would consider a “standard” cartographic Foc head is that the focus associated with le is not realized in its specifier but rather within its complement. More particularly, we argue that le associates with the closest maximal projection it asymmetrically c-commands. The broader theoretical relevance of the present work is at least two-fold. First, our paper offers novel evidence in support of Horvath’s (2010) Strong Modularity Hypothesis for Discourse Features, according to which information structural notions such as focus cannot be represented in narrow syntax as formal features. We argue that the information structure-related movement operations that Awing exhibits can be accounted for by interface considerations, in the spirit of Reinhart (2006). Second, our data support the generality of the so-called closeness requirement on association with focus (Jacobs 1983), which dictates that a focus-sensitive particle be as close to its focus as possible (in terms of c-command). What is of special significance is the fact that Awing exhibits two different avenues to satisfying closeness. The standard one—previously described for German or Vietnamese and witnessed here for the Awing particle tśɔ’ə ‘only’—relies primarily on the flexible attachment of the focus-sensitive particle. The Awing particle le, in contrast, is syntactically rigid. For that reason, the satisfaction of closeness relies solely on the flexibility of other syntactic constituents.

This project describes the nominal, verbal and ‘truncation’ systems of Awing and explains the syntactic and semantic functions of the multifunctional l<-><-> (LE) morpheme in copular and wh-focused constructions. Awing is a Bantu Grassfields language spoken in the North West region of Cameroon. The work begins with morphological processes viz. deverbals, compounding, reduplication, borrowing and a thorough presentation of the pronominal system and takes on verbal categories viz. tense, aspect, mood, verbal extensions, negation, adverbs and triggers of a homorganic N(asal)-prefix that attaches to the verb and other verbal categories. Awing grammar also has a very unusual phenomenon whereby nouns and verbs take long and short forms. A chapter entitled truncation is dedicated to the phenomenon. It is observed that the truncation process does not apply to bare singular NPs, proper names and nouns derived via morphological processes. On the other hand, with the exception of the 1st person non-emphatic possessive determiner and the class 7 noun prefix, nouns generally take the truncated form with modifiers (i.e., articles, demonstratives and other possessives). It is concluded that nominal truncation depicts movement within the DP system (Abney 1987). Truncation of the verb occurs in three contexts: a mass/plurality conspiracy (or lattice structuring in terms of Link 1983) between the verb and its internal argument (i.e., direct object); a means to align (exhaustive) focus (in terms of Fery’s 2013), and a means to form polar questions. The second part of the work focuses on the role of the LE morpheme in copular and wh-focused clauses. Firstly, the syntax of the Awing copular clause is presented and it is shown that copular clauses in Awing have ‘subject-focus’ vs ‘topic-focus’ partitions and that the LE morpheme indirectly relates such functions. Semantically, it is shown that LE does not express contrast or exhaustivity in copular clauses. Turning to wh-constructions, the work adheres to Hamblin’s (1973) idea that the meaning of a question is the set of its possible answers and based on Rooth’s (1985) underspecified semantic notion of alternative focus, concludes that the LE morpheme is not a Focus Marker (FM) in Awing: LE does not generate or indicate the presence of alternatives (Krifka 2007); The LE morpheme can associate with wh-elements as a focus-sensitive operator with semantic import that operates on the focus alternatives by presupposing an exhaustive answer, among other notions. With focalized categories, the project further substantiates the claim in Fominyam & Šimík (2017), namely that exhaustivity is part of the semantics of the LE morpheme and not derived via contextual implicature, via a number of diagnostics. Hence, unlike in copular clauses, the LE morpheme with wh-focused categories is analysed as a morphological exponent of a functional head Exh corresponding to Horvath's (2010) EI (Exhaustive Identification). The work ends with the syntax of verb focus and negation and modifies the idea in Fominyam & Šimík (2017), namely that the focalized verb that associates with the exhaustive (LE) particle is a lower copy of the finite verb that has been moved to Agr. It is argued that the LE-focused verb ‘cluster’ is an instantiation of adjunction. The conclusion is that verb doubling with verb focus in Awing is neither a realization of two copies of one and the same verb (Fominyam and Šimík 2017), nor a result of a copy triggered by a focus marker (Aboh and Dyakonova 2009). Rather, the focalized copy is said to be merged directly as the complement of LE forming a type of adjoining cluster.