Focus Fronting in a Language with In Situ Marking

The Case of Mǝ̀dʉ́mbà

Bibliographic Data

ID5901374
AuthorsMalte Zimmermann (0000-0001-5972-3463, University of Potsdam), Constantine Kouankem (0000-0003-4085-7319, University of Buea)
Year2024
Volume9
Issue4
Pages117
Publication date2024-03-26
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguages (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2226-471X • E-ISSN: 2226-471X
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/languages9040117
OpenAlexW4393181659
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited46

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

Focus (optics · In situ · Linguistics · Optics · Physics · Computer Science · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy · Speech and dialogue systems · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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