Out-of-focus encoding in Gur and Kwa

This paper investigates the structural properties of morphosyntactically marked focus constructions, focussing on the often neglected non-focal sentence part in African tone languages. Based on new empirical evidence from five Gur and Kwa languages, we claim that these focus expressions have to be analysed as biclausal constructions even though they do not represent clefts containing restrictive relative clauses. First, we relativize the partly overgeneralized assumptions about structural correspondences between the out-of-focus part and relative clauses, and second, we show that our data do in fact support the hypothesis of a clause coordinating pattern as present in clause sequences in narration. It is argued that we deal with a non-accidental, systematic feature and that grammaticalization may conceal such basic narrative structures.

Metadaten
Author:	Ines Fiedler GND, Anne Schwarz ORCiD GND
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hebis:30-1112483
URL:	http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2006/873/
ISBN:	978-3-937786-01-8
Parent Title (German):	Approaches and findings in oral, written and gestural language / Ishihara, S., M. Schmitz, and A. Schwarz (eds.) ; Working Papers of the SFB 632, Interdisciplinary studies on information structure ; Vol. 3
Publisher:	Univ.-Verl.
Place of publication:	Potsdam
Document Type:	Part of a Book
Language:	English
Date of Publication (online):	2008/11/06
Year of first Publication:	2005
Publishing Institution:	Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:	2008/11/06
Tag:	conjunction; ex-situ focus; focus marker; grammaticalization; relative clause
Volume:	3
Page Number:	32
First Page:	111
Last Page:	142
Source:	Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure (ISIS), 3, 2005, S. 111-142 ; http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2006/873/
HeBIS-PPN:	207964769
Dewey Decimal Classification:	4 Sprache / 40 Sprache / 400 Sprache
Sammlungen:	Linguistik
Licence (German):	Deutsches Urheberrecht

Open Access