[Lingtyp] Topic and focus markers with other functions

[Reggie Duah]

Dear Fritz,

In some Kwa languages, what has been called a focus marker can be shown to be a clausal coordinator/complementizer.

Akan

Manu nyaa      sika      na       osii                 dan
Manu get.PST money CONJ 3SG.buy.PST house
‘Manu got money and he built a house.’

Manu na   onyaa sika
Manu FM  3SG.get.PST money
'It was Manu who got money.'

Ga — ni
Dangme — nɛ
Lelemi — na

Here are a few references:

Fiedler, I.& A. Schwarz (2005). Out-of-focus Encoding in Gur and Kwa. In: Ishihara, S., M. Schmitz and A.
Schwarz (eds.): Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure 03, 111-142. Potsdam: Potsdam
University.

Fiedler, I.& A. Schwarz (2008). Focus or Narrative Construction? In: Aboh, E., K. Hartmann & M. Zimmermann (eds.),
Focus Strategies: Evidence from African Languages, Berlin: de Gruyter. Fiedler & Schwarz (2005, 2008) for more examples.

Duah, Reginald Akuoko (2019). Coordination, tense, focus and the road in between: the case of the particle na in Akan <https://www.dropbox.com/s/kzuph3bsswtazeg/Seminar-Potsdam.pdf?dl=0>. Synsem Colloquium, Potsdam University.

Best regards,

/reggie.


Dr. R. Akuoko Duah
------
Department of Linguistics
School of Languages
University of Ghana, Legon
Alternative email: reggieduah at gmail.com
www.ug.edu.gh/linguistics/staff/duah <http://www.ug.edu.gh/linguistics/staff/duah>

 

> On 1. Aug 2019, at 1:08 AM, Frederick J Newmeyer <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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