TY  - CHAP
A1  - Haacke, Wilfrid H. G.
T1  - Syntactic focus marking in Khoekhoe ("Nama/Damara")
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  - Khoekhoe syntax exhibits an unusually flexible constituent structure. Any constituent with a lexical head can be preposed into the focal initial slot immediately before the PGN-marker that marks the subject position. Two strategies of focalisation by foregrounding need to be distinguished: inversion and fronting. Inversion amounts to an inversion of subject and predicate in their entirety. Such sentences have two readings, though, according to their underlying constituent structure: "predicative" or "copulative". Fronting amounts to the preposing of a lexical constituent into the focal initial slot, with subsequent dislocation of the lexical specification of the subject from that slot.
The present analysis has wider implications, particularly: The generally accepted view that Khoekhoe has coreferential/equational "copulative" sentences of the type NPsubject = NPcomplement is a fallacy. Such sentences actually are sentences with their predicate fronted into the focal initial slot. They amount to cleft constructions.
The fact that the primary focal position is immediately before the PGNmarker of the subject is further independent evidence for the "desentential hypothesis", according to which subject and object NPs in the underlying matrix sentence consist of only an enclitic PGN-marker, and for the claim that Khoekhoe underlyingly is a SVO language, not a SOV language as generally held. By implication these findings affect the analysis of other Central Khoesaan languages.
KW  - Thema-Rhema-Gliederung
KW  - Syntax
KW  - Zentralkhoisan-Sprachen
KW  - Nama-Sprache
Y1  - 2006
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/30998
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-309981
UR  - http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/187.html?&L=1]
SN  - 1435-9588
SN  - 0947-7055
VL  - 46
SP  - 105
EP  - 127
PB  - Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung
CY  - Berlin
ER  -