The relation between focus and theticity in the Tuu family
Philosophische Fakultät II
The paper presents fi rst results of the documentation of Tuu languages regarding information structure, based on the analysis of coherent texts, partly supplemented by elicitated utterances. Unmarked clauses display a fairly strict verb-medial structure; the clause-initial subject can be characterized as a confl ation of topic function and agent role-complex and the material after it contains the assertive focus. Pragmatically more marked clauses display an initial nominal which is morphosyntactically set off from the rest of the sentence. These cleft-like constructions are typical for utterances involving contrastively focused items as well as constituent question words. At least in some languages, these structures are also associated with another pragmatic function, namely the expression of so-called entity-central thetic statements in the sense of Sasse (1987). This polyfunctionality of cleft-like sentences is motivated, because both of these functions need to expose a nominal: while it must be more salient than the predicate in the case of term focus, it must be “up-graded” from the status of topical predication base in the case of thetic utterances.
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Anmerkungen
The paper was presented previously at the International Conference “Focus inAfrican Languages”, Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS) Berlin(07/10/2005); at the “Work in Progress” Series, Max Planck Institute for EvolutionaryAnthropology (MPI-EVA) Leipzig (07/02/2006); at the “Deutscher Afrikanistentag2006”, Universität München (13/02/2006); at the Faculdade de Letras, UniversidadeClassica de Lisboa (26/06/2006); and at the joint “Annual conference of the LinguisticSociety of Southern Africa (LSSA) and the Southern African Applied LinguisticsAssociation (SAALA)”, University of KwaZulu-Natal (07/07/2006). The notation ofexamples is explained above under “Abbreviations”.