[Lingtyp] copula as focus marker

[Kofi Yakpo]

Dear Christian,

Focus and (identity-equative) copula interactions/isomorphy are also a
hallmark of much of Niger-Congo and has therefore been imposed in on many
(most?) Afro-European contact languages of Africa (e.g. Krio, Pichi, West
African Pidgin, Kriyol and the Americas (all English-lexifier Creoles,
Haitian, and many Spanish varieties spoken by African-descended majority
population.

Here are two publications (and references there):
https://zenodo.org/record/5651783
http://www.acblpe.com/revista/volume-11-2021/construcciones-existenciales-en-el-continuo-afroiberorromanico

best,
Kofi
————
Dr Kofi Yakpo • Associate Professor
Chair of Linguistics <http://www.linguistics.hku.hk/> • University of Hong
Kong <http://arts.hku.hk/>
My publications @ zenodo
<https://zenodo.org/search?page=1&size=20&q=yakpo&sort=-publication_date> •
 My Page <http://hub.hku.hk/cris/rp/rp01715>

Recently published:
Creole prosodic systems are areal, not simple
<https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.690593>
Social entrenchment influences the amount of areal borrowing
<https://zenodo.org/record/5651783>
Unidirectional multilingual convergence
<https://doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2021.1978453>
Two types of language contact involving English Creoles
<https://zenodo.org/record/6375868>




On Mon, Mar 13, 2023 at 4:27 AM Christian Lehmann <
christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
>
> the literature available to me adduces a Caribbean Spanish example of what
> I am looking for:
> Juan compró fue un libro.
> John bought was a book
> 'A book is what John bought.'
>
> The copula here separates the topical portion of the clause from the
> comment portion, including importantly the focus (to which this portion
> reduces in the example). Different sources of such a construction are
> conceivable, for instance a pseudo-cleft:
> Lo que Juan compró fue un libro.
> it that John bought was a book
> 'What John bought was a book.'
>
> What concerns me at the moment, however, is the bare copula in the
> function of a focus marker. I am sure I have seen or heard sentences like
> the following in Portuguese:
>
> O João comprou foi um livro.
>
> or with neutralization of tense and, thus, reduction to the default form
> of the copula:
>
> O João comprou é um livro.
>
> However, I cannot seem to find evidence for this, neither primary data nor
> linguistic treatments of it. Could you please help me out? Both references
> to the linguistic literature and examples, preferably from Portuguese, but
> also from any other language (I do have data from Mandarin!) would be
> welcome.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Christian
> --
>
> Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
> Rudolfstr. 4
> 99092 Erfurt
> Deutschland
> Tel.: +49/361/2113417
> E-Post: christianw_lehmann at arcor.de
> Web: https://www.christianlehmann.eu
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