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In our presentation we will outline the verb system of Lelemi and concentrate on certain “focal” aspects which are of primary interest to us. Lelemi has two TAMP paradigms: one constituting the so-called “simple tenses”, the other the so-called “relative tenses” (Allan 1973), although not every “simple tense” has a counterpart in the “relative tenses”. The simple paradigm is formed by subject prefixes (prefixed pronouns for 1st or 2nd person and noun class pronouns for 3rd persons) and the verb form whereas the relative paradigm is build up by the obligatory use of an external subject noun, an invariable verb prefix, and the verb form. While the simple paradigm is used in quite a lot of syntactic environments the relative paradigm only shows up in relative clauses with the subject being the head as well as in subject and sentence focus constructions including questions concerning the subject. We will show some interesting interactions between the grammatical expression of focus and the verb system and sketch the grammaticalisation path of the morpheme nà.
These proceedings, also online available as No. 46 in the ZAS Papers in Linguistics series under http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/index.html?publications_zaspil have resulted from the International Conference "Focus in African languages" held October 6-8, 2005 at the Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS) in Berlin. The conference was cooperatively organized by the latter, together with the Collaborative Research Center (Sonderforschungsforschungsbereich) 632, generously funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). It was the first conference bringing together colleagues working on this topic from all over the world in such scale.
Even though this volume contains only ten contributions out of the 35 papers presented at the conference, it displays the wide range of approaches, subjects and languages studied in the field of information structure in African languages. The collection thus reflects the synergetic atmosphere of the conference.
In the name of all organizers (Laura Downing, Ines Fiedler, Katharina Hartmann, Brigitte Reineke, Anne Schwarz, Sabine Zerbian, Malte Zimmermann) we would like to take this opportunity to thank the participant reviewers and student assistants for their contributions by which the conference became such a fruitful forum for inspiring and seminal studies in this field. Also special thanks for their effort in copy editing to our research assistants Lars Marstaller and Paul Starzmann.