[Lingtyp] Topic and focus markers with other functions

John Du Bois dubois at ucsb.edu
Fri Aug 2 10:07:10 UTC 2019


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
>     _______________________________________________
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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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