Project B7

3rd Phase - Predicate-centered focus types: A sample-based typological study in African languages

The project "Predicate-centered focus types: A sample-based typological study in African languages" is a continuation of the project B7 which started in September 2009. It investigates predicate-centered focus types from a typological perspective, sampling more than 20 diverse African languages. This sample will be partly extended in the present application phase. Based on the results obtained so far, we will focus in this phase on the following topics:

• (1) Encoding of predicate-centered focus in affirmative main clauses: Our previous research will be continued and extended concerning the investigation of the formal and functional relationships between predicate-centered focus types and other focus types, the functions of predicate-centered focus types in discourse, the organization of TA systems in single languages with respect to predicate-centered focus,and the syntactic properties of focus structures.
• (2) Predicate-centered focus in clause types other than affirmative main clauses including clause linkage: We extend the questions developed in phase 1 for affirmative main clauses to other clause types, especially relevant for predicate-centered focus, such as (i) negative main clauses, (ii) selected subordinate clauses, and (iii) yes-no interrogatives.
• (3) Synchronic variation and diachronic development of predicate-centered focus: We aim to deepen our investigation by researching its dynamics in terms of (i) possible influence of language contact, namely among languages of eastern Mali, and (ii) its stability and variation within a genealogical language group, viz. the Bantu family.

An overarching goal of the 2nd phase is the development of a cross-linguistic data base on predicate-centered focus which will bring the data of the project and other sources into a unified format and annotation scheme and will be searchable for different parameters.

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2nd Phase - Predicate-centered focus types: A sample-based typological study in African languages

While such notions as argument focus, topic, givenness and contrast have been playing a major role in the investigation of information structure, other functional concepts, such as verb-related focus or the thetic-categorical distinction, have, if at all, been investigated only sporadically or marginally. However, recent research (Hyman & Watters 1984, Güldemann 1996, 2003) has shown that these less frequently treated categories are highly relevant in a number of different languages with a great impact on their grammar. In continuation of the past SFB project B1, the project B7 will concentrate on one of these neglected subjects, namely so-called “predicate-centered focus types”, and will study them in more detail by means of a controlled sample of African languages. Predicate-centered focus types subsume different categories which are typically tied semantically and morphosyntactically to the verb or predicate as the carrier of both proposition and illocution. These are focus on the lexical meaning of the verb (= “verb focus”) and focus on predicate operators like the truth value of the utterance or such categories as tense, aspect, modality etc. (= “operator focus”). We will investigate which language-specific means are used in languages of the African continent to express predicate-centered focus types and how these are distinguished, both from each other and from other focus types with scope on nominal constituents (= “term focus”). This will be carried out on the basis of a planned language sample representing the four indigenous language groups and strives for representative typological profile of the continent. The study will use data collected in previous projects as well as from the secondary literature. For selected Nilo-Saharan languages primary data will be collected during field research. The overall goal is to model the interaction of predicate-centered focus types and other focus types with respect to form and function, taking the possible influence of typological and areal factors into account. Since the typological profile of African languages does not differ fundamentally from that of other continents, we expect that the research of the project also allows to draw new insights into information-structural systems of non-African languages, which in turn feeds into the general theory of information structure.

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Website of project B7 hosted by Humboldt University of Berlin.

Principal Investigators

• Prof. Dr. Tom Güldemann

Former Staff Members

• Dr. Ines Fiedler
• Dr. Yukiko Morimoto
• Dr. Anne Schwarz
• Dr. Andreas Wetter
• Peggy Jacob
• Kirill Prokhorov
• Tsameret Samuels
• Christoph Terwitte

Student Assistants

• Ekaterina Levina
• Maria Lober
• Sylvanus Job

Activities