TY  - CHAP
A1  - Caron, Bernard
T1  - Condition, topic and focus in African languages : Why conditionals are not topics
T2  - Papers on information structure in African languages : [resulted from the International Conference "Focus in African Languages" held October 6-8, 2005 at the Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS) in Berlin] / eds.: Ines Fiedler ...
N2  - Since Haiman (1978), a general assumption concerning the information structure of conditional sentences is that "conditionals are topics". However, in Chadic South Bauchi West languages spoken in Northern Nigeria, as well as in Banda Linda, an Adamawa language spoken in the République Centre-Africaine, conditionals share their structure with focus, not topic. This seriously questions Haiman’s claim and forces us to reconsider the facts and characterizations of conditionals, topic and focus in general.
In order to do this, we will first examine the facts of conditionals in some Chadic languages, then their information structure. We will see how both data and theory invalidate Haiman's claim. Then we will see that if they are not topics, they are different from focus as well. We will argue that if the elements which make a topic or a focus can appear in conditionals, these must be separated from what constitutes the identity of conditions. Then, we will see if these can be characterized in the same way as Lambrecht characterizes temporal clauses, viz. as "activated propositions" (Lambrecht 1994). We will finally conclude that they should rather be defined as "fictitious assertions" (Culioli 2000).
KW  - Thema-Rhema-Gliederung
KW  - Topikalisierung
KW  - Konditionalsatz
KW  - Afrikanische Sprachen
Y1  - 2006
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/30996
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-309966
UR  - http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/187.html?&L=1]
SN  - 1435-9588
SN  - 0947-7055
VL  - 46
SP  - 69
EP  - 82
PB  - Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung
CY  - Berlin
ER  -