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Focus markers that link topic and comment
(2009)
- This talk deals with the interdependence between the pragmatic categories topic and focus as displayed by certain alleged focus marking particles of some West African languages.
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Tonal focus reflections in Buli and some Gur relatives
(2009)
- Buli is an Oti-Volta tone language spoken in Northern Ghana. This paper outlines the basic features of its tonal system and explores whether and in which way pitch respectively phonemic tone is approached as a means to indicate the pragmatic category of focus. Pursued are cases with focus-related surface tone changes as well as cases where pitch could help to disambiguate between broad and narrow foci. It is argued that focus is not consistently encoded by pitch or tone. Parallel findings for the closely related languages Kopen o (phonetic symbol)nni and Dagbani suggest that the apparent lack of significant prosodic focus signals in Buli might pertain to a larger group of tonal languages of the Gur family.
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How many focus markers are there in Konkomba?
(2009)
- This article discusses the divergent status of the two particles lé and lá in the grammar of Konkomba, a Gur language (Niger-Congo) of the Gurma subgroup. While previous studies claim that both particles are focus markers, this author argues that only the particle lá should be analyzed as a pure pragmatic device. Distributional studies suggest that the use of particle lé, on the other hand, is only required under specific focus conditions, and primarily represents a syntactic device.
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Principles of information packaging in Baatonum (Gur)
(2009)
- This talk presents a study on information structure in the under-documented Gur language Baatonum (Bénin and Nigeria, language code bba).
