Focus in an active/agentive alignment system : the case of Beria (Saharan)
- Beria, a member of the Saharan language family, is one of the rare languages in Africa exhibiting both an ergative and an active/agentive alignment system of grammatical relations.1 While the active/agentive pattern is shown by the participant reference markers, the ergative pattern is attested both in the constituent order and in the focus markers on the core constituents. In the pragmatically unmarked constituent order, the Agent constituent precedes the Patient constituent. An unmarked single constituent immediately preceding the verb may represent a Patient or a Subject argument. In this position, the Agent constituent requires the clitic GU. The focused Patient and Subject constituents are both either marked by the clitic DI or by a cleft construction.
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| Author: | Angelika Jakobi |
|---|---|
| URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-309993 |
| URL: | http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/187.html?&L=1] |
| ISSN: | 1435-9588 |
| ISSN: | 0947-7055 |
| Parent Title (English): | 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 ... |
| Publisher: | Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung |
| Place of publication: | Berlin |
| Document Type: | Part of a Book |
| Language: | English |
| Year of first Publication: | 2006 |
| Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
| Release Date: | 2013/11/14 |
| GND Keyword: | Thema-Rhema-Gliederung; Saharanische Sprachen |
| Volume: | 46 |
| Page Number: | 14 |
| First Page: | 129 |
| Last Page: | 142 |
| HeBIS-PPN: | 381130010 |
| Sammlungen: | Linguistik |
| Linguistik-Klassifikation: | Linguistik-Klassifikation: Syntax |
| Zeitschriften / Jahresberichte: | ZAS papers in linguistics : ZASPiL / ZASPiL 46 = Papers on information structure in African languages |
| : | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-306894 |
| Licence (German): |  Deutsches Urheberrecht |
