[Lingtyp] Topic and focus markers with other functions

Eitan Grossman eitan.grossman at mail.huji.ac.il
Fri Aug 2 10:33:00 UTC 2019


Hi all,

The term 'focus marker,' whatever its definition, assumes (i) that we know
what focus is and (ii) that there are markers that *code* this particular
meaning or function.

There is some recent work on information structure that calls these two
assumptions into question, suggesting instead that 'focus' is a secondary
or epiphenomenal effect associated with items and constructions whose coded
meanings are interactional and discursive in nature. The same reasoning has
been applied to 'topic' and other notions fundamental to the study of
information structure.

I am thinking in particular by work by Dejan Matić, Daniel Wedgewood, and
Pavel Ozerov, such as the following and others cited therein.

Matić, Dejan, and Daniel Wedgwood. 2013. The Meanings of Focus: The
Significance of an Interpretation-Based Category in Cross-Linguistic
Analysis. *Journal of Linguistics *49 (1): 127–63.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226712000345.
Ozerov, Pavel. 2018. Tracing the sources of Information Structure: Towards
the study of interactional management of information
<https://www.academia.edu/35286594/Tracing_the_sources_of_Information_Structure_Towards_the_study_of_interactional_management_of_information>,
Journal of Pragmatics 138: 77-97.

Best wishes from Salos!
Eitan


On Fri, Aug 2, 2019 at 1:08 PM John Du Bois <dubois at ucsb.edu> wrote:

> Does the multilingualism include Tok Pisin? Could the new construction you
> describe be a calque on a Tok Pisin "there is" construction?
> Jack
>
> On Fri, Aug 2, 2019 at 9:03 AM Nicholas Evans <nicholas.evans at anu.edu.au>
> wrote:
>
>> Confirming Jeff's remark about Náma and related languages. In Nen and
>> Nmbo (closely related to Náma) a focus marker is in the process of
>> grammaticalising from a combination of a demonstrative (roughly: 'there')
>> plus an inflected copula. It can be used in its fully inflected form,
>> usually after a clause-initial NP, but as it grammaticalises the
>> inflectional categories on the copula(a rich set of subject agreement and
>> TAM values) are freezing around the 3sgPresent value. With Eri Kashima,
>> Mark Ellison and Saliha Muradoglu we are currently conducting a study that
>> looks at this grammaticalisation process in a variationist framework,
>> across two communities linked by many multilingual individuals
>>
>> Best Nick
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of
>> Maia Ponsonnet <maia.ponsonnet at uwa.edu.au>
>> *Sent:* Friday, August 2, 2019 1:24:45 PM
>> *To:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <
>> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] Topic and focus markers with other functions
>>
>>
>> Hello, I'm not sure I fully understand the scope of your query, but would
>> the discourse functions of optional ergative markers fall into your
>> target category?
>>
>> I'm attaching a paper that I recently coauthored just because it's handy,
>> but of course many, many authors have written about this for many
>> languages (see the reference list).
>>
>> Kind regards, Maïa
>>
>>
>> Dr Maïa Ponsonnet
>> Senior Lecturer and Chair, Discipline of Linguistics
>>
>> Social Sciences Building, Room 2.36
>>
>> Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Education
>> The University of Western Australia
>> 35 Stirling Hwy, Perth, WA (6009), Australia
>> P.  +61 (0) 8 6488 2870 - M.  +61 (0) 468 571 030
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of
>> Jeff Siegel <jsiegel2 at une.edu.au>
>> *Sent:* Friday, 2 August 2019 10:31 AM
>> *To:* Frederick J Newmeyer <fjn at uw.edu>
>> *Cc:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <
>> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] Topic and focus markers with other functions
>>
>> Greetings:
>>
>> The focus marker is also the copula or a  development from it in Nama, a
>> Papuan language of Southern New Guinea, and other languages in the Yam
>> family.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Jeff Siegel
>>
>>
>>
>>     ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>     Message: 1
>>     Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2019 08:03:08 +0000
>>     From: Patrick McConvell <patrick.mcconvell at anu.edu.au>
>>     To: Kilu von Prince <kilu.von.prince at hu-berlin.de>, Frederick J
>>          Newmeyer <fjn at uw.edu>
>>     Cc: "<LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>"
>>          <LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>     Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Topic and focus markers with other functions
>>     Message-ID:
>>          <
>> SYXPR01MB18563B5ECCCCD780FDAD50CBC7DE0 at SYXPR01MB1856.ausprd01.prod.outlook.com
>> >
>>
>>     Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>>
>>     There are quite a lot of languages in which the focus marker is the
>> copula or a  development from it. I wrote about this in Hausa in my Ph.D
>> thesis long ago:
>>
>>
>>     1973 Ph.D. awarded by SOAS, University of London, for thesis
>>
>>     Cleft sentences in Hausa? A syntactic study of focus
>>
>>     Pat McConvell
>>
>>
>>
>>     ________________________________
>>     From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf
>> of Kilu von Prince <kilu.von.prince at hu-berlin.de>
>>     Sent: Thursday, 1 August 2019 5:23 PM
>>     To: Frederick J Newmeyer <fjn at uw.edu>
>>     Cc: <LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG> <
>> LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>     Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Topic and focus markers with other functions
>>
>>     Hi Frederick,
>>
>>     the Chinese copula is an obvious candidate. I'm shamelessly
>> self-promoting the article I wrote about its semantics in both functions,
>> see attached.
>>
>>     All the best,
>>     Kilu
>>
>>     On Thu, Aug 1, 2019 at 1:09 AM Frederick J Newmeyer <fjn at uw.edu
>> <mailto:fjn at uw.edu>> wrote:
>>
>>     Dear Lingtyp,
>>
>>
>>
>>     I am looking for examples where topic markers or focus markers in
>> some language are clearly members of some broad morphosyntactic category.
>>
>>
>>
>>     Let me give an example involving negatives of the sort of thing that
>> I am looking for. Negative elements in various languages are often members
>> of a broader category: in Estonian negative particles are auxiliaries, in
>> Tongan they are complement-taking verbs, in English they are adverbs, and
>> so on.
>>
>>
>>
>>     So what I am looking for are parallel examples with topic and focus
>> markers: cases where a reasonable analysis would assign them to some
>> broader category.
>>
>>
>>
>>     Thanks,
>>
>>
>>
>>     Fritz
>>
>>     Frederick J. Newmeyer
>>     Professor Emeritus, University of Washington
>>     Adjunct Professor, U of British Columbia and Simon Fraser U
>>     _______________________________________________
>>     Lingtyp mailing list
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>>
>>
>>
>>     --
>>     Dr. Kilu von Prince
>>
>>     http://kiluvonprince.de/
>>     Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
>>     Dorotheenstraße 24
>>     Raum 3.410
>>     10099 Berlin
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>>
>>     Message: 2
>>     Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2019 12:16:31 +0200
>>     From: Isabelle BRIL <isabelle.bril at cnrs.fr>
>>     To: <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>     Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Topic and focus markers with other functions
>>     Message-ID: <dfe0d902-1352-1f54-9119-0e18a82bb320 at cnrs.fr>
>>     Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
>>
>>     Hi
>>
>>     There are many cases of coordinators (sequential, additive,
>>     constrastive, disjunctive), of demonstratives as well as some
>>     case-markers used as topic and focus markers in a number of
>>     Austronesian-Oceanic languages.
>>
>>     The attached article analyses such cases.
>>
>>     2010, Bril I., “Informational and referential hierarchy:
>> clause-linking
>>     strategies in Austronesian-Oceanic languages”. In Bril
>>     (ed.)./Clause-linking and clause hierarchy: syntax and pragmatics/.
>>     Amsterdam: Benjamins. 269-311.
>>
>>     This article is part of the following volume :
>>     2010,Bril I. (éd.), /Clause-linking and clause hierarchy: syntax and
>>     pragmatics./ [Studies in Language Companion Series 121]. Benjamins
>>
>>     in which other such cases are analysed in other language families,
>> for
>>     instance,
>>
>>     Frajzyngier in Wandala (Central Chadic) (Chapter 9),
>>     Vanhove in Yafi‘ Arabic (Yemen) (involving demonstratives and
>> perception
>>     verbs) (Chapter 10),
>>     Taine-Cheikh (Chapter 11) in Zenaga (Berber) .
>>
>>     TAM markers are another possible source analysed by:
>>
>>     Verstraete in Umpithamu (Paman language, Australia), Chapter 14
>>     Robert in Wolof (Niger-Congo, Senegal) (Chapter 15)
>>     François in Hiw and Lo-Toga (Oceanic, Vanuatu),Chapter 16) .
>>
>>     Hope this helps.
>>
>>     Best
>>     Isabelle Bril
>>
>>     Le 01/08/2019 à 01:08, Frederick J Newmeyer a écrit :
>>     >
>>     > Dear Lingtyp,
>>     >
>>     > I am looking for examples where topic markers or focus markers in
>> some
>>     > language are clearly members of some broad morphosyntactic category.
>>     >
>>     > Let me give an example involving negatives of the sort of thing
>> that I
>>     > am looking for. Negative elements in various languages are often
>>     > members of a broader category: in Estonian negative particles are
>>     > auxiliaries, in Tongan they are complement-taking verbs, in English
>>     > they are adverbs, and so on.
>>     >
>>     > So what I am looking for are parallel examples with topic and focus
>>     > markers: cases where a reasonable analysis would assign them to
>> some
>>     > broader category.
>>     >
>>     > Thanks,
>>     >
>>     > Fritz
>>     >
>>     >
>>     > Frederick J. Newmeyer
>>     > Professor Emeritus, University of Washington
>>     > Adjunct Professor, U of British Columbia and Simon Fraser U
>>     >
>>     > _______________________________________________
>>     > Lingtyp mailing list
>>     > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>     > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>
>>     --
>>     Isabelle Bril
>>     Directeur de recherches (LACITO-CNRS)
>>     Directeur d'Etudes à l'EPHE (Typologie et Typologie des langues
>> austronésiennes)
>>
>>     Ecole de typologie ESSLT 2016
>>     https://typoling2016.sciencesconf.org/
>>     http://www.typologie.cnrs.fr/
>>
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>
>
> --
>
> =======================================
>
> John W. Du Bois
> Professor of Linguistics
> University of California, Santa Barbara
> Santa Barbara, California 93106
> USAdubois at ucsb.eduhttp://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/dubois/
>
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