Exclusive Particles in Ga (Kwa)

Renans, Agata

doi:10.1093/jos/ffx005

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…In this paper, we take issue with Keupdjiou's analysis of focus left-dislocation in terms of focus exhaustivity. We will show that the exhaustivity inference observable with Mǝ dʉ ́mbà's focus is already expressed as part of the lexical meaning of the pre-focal focus marker á, both in situ and ex situ (see Hartmann and Zimmermann (2007a) on Hausa (Chadic) nee/cee, Renans (2016) on Ga (Kwa) ni, Fominyam and Šimík (2017) on Grassfields Bantu Awing lɛ, and Kiemtoré (2022) on Jula (Mande) ale, among others, for a discussion of morphological focus markers that trigger comparable EXH-inferences. For Mǝ dʉ ́mbà, it follows that the need to express focus exhaustivity is not the driving force behind focus left-dislocation, and that there must therefore be another reason for it.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…If á is absent in the question, it will normally be absent in the answer as well, but its optional occurrence is also licit. The distinction between two subtypes of focus is well known since Kiss's (1998) seminal work on Hungarian, and it is also a ested in many other West African languages, such as Ga (Renans 2016), Ngamo (Grubic 2015), and Akan (Grubic et al 2019). Theoretically, this raises the question of how to analyse this in formal semantic terms.…”

Section: Interpretation Of New Information Vs Contrastive Focus: Towa...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Focus Fronting in a Language with In Situ Marking: The Case of Mǝ̀dʉ́mbà

Zimmermann,

Kouankem

2024

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This paper discusses the structural realisation of contrastive focus in the Grassfields Bantu language Bamileke Mǝ̀dʉ́mbà, yet another language with grammatically optional focus fronting. We show that the realisation of contrastive focus in Mǝ̀dʉ́mbà is by default marked in situ with the morphological focus marker á. We further show that á introduces an additional, not-at-issue exhaustivity inference as part of its lexical meaning. Taken together, this means that two often-discussed interpretive triggers of grammatically optional focus fronting, namely, contrastivity and exhaustivity, are not responsible for triggering Mǝ̀dʉ́mbà’s focus left-dislocation. Rather, the main semantic contribution of focus fronting consists in triggering an existence presupposition, a discourse-semantic effect well known from other focus–background bipartitions, possibly in combination with other, softer discourse-semantic effects, such as the special emphasis required in cases of discourse unexpectedness.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Section: Interpretation Of New Information Vs Contrastive Focus: Towa...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Focus Fronting in a Language with In Situ Marking: The Case of Mǝ̀dʉ́mbà

Zimmermann,

Kouankem

2024

Languages

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“…7 The existential quantifier bí , and its interactions nó in Akan (Kwa, Niger-Congo) was examined by Amfo (2010), 8 Dua et al (2020) and Owusu (2020). Renans (2017;2018) delved into the quantifier system of Ga, a Kwa language, focussing on some exclusive particles, such as too or pɛ ('also'), as well as on the distribution and interpretation of indefinites.…”

Section: Previous Studies On Quantification In Niger-congo Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

On quantified DPs in Baule-Kode

Konan

Puskás

2021

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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Baule, a language of the Kwa family, has a rich set of quantifiers, which occur post-nominally within the DP. Moreover, Baule DPs can also combine more than one quantifier, and the order of occurrence of the quantifiers yields different interpretations of the quantified DPs. We focus on three quantifiers, ngba ‘all’, klwaa ‘every’ and jwe ‘some’. Given the distribution and the semantic contribution these quantifiers, we propose a structure of the Baule DP in which quantifiers merge as the head of different functional projections. We show that Baule DPs are strictly head-initial, and argue that the word orders observed within the DP is the result of systematic leftward movement of different portions of the nominal structure.

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“…The embedded pronoun below the focus marker is a weak subject pronoun (seeRenans 2016, Campbell 2017). 6 The verb lákà can mean 'coax', 'deceive', or 'persuade' depending on the context.…”

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confidence: 99%

Overt PRO in Gã

Allotey,

Paul

2024

sal

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This paper presents data from Gã (Kwa, Niger-Congo language spoken in Ghana) that show that controlled subjects of non-finite predicates must be overt in this language. The presence of an overt pronominal subject in a non-finite embedded clause is surprising from the perspective of languages such as English and French, where such subjects must be covert (PRO). We provide evidence that the overt pronoun in Gã patterns with obligatorily controlled PRO (Hornstein 1999; Landau 2013) and argue for the minimal pronoun analysis of Kratzer (2009).

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Exclusive Particles in Ga (Kwa)

Cited by 4 publications

References 12 publications

Focus Fronting in a Language with In Situ Marking: The Case of Mǝ̀dʉ́mbà

Focus Fronting in a Language with In Situ Marking: The Case of Mǝ̀dʉ́mbà

On quantified DPs in Baule-Kode

Overt PRO in Gã

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