Lexical signaling of information structure in Akan

Amfo, Nana Aba Appiah

doi:10.1515/ling.2010.006

Cited by 6 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…The element in question belongs to a set of alternatives (cf., Rooth, 1992Rooth, , 1995Krifka, 2008). In Akan, ex situ focus is encoded syntactically by constituent fronting to the sentence initial position and morphologically by a focus marker (Boadi, 1974;Saah, 1988;Marfo & Bodomo, 2005;Ermisch, 2006;Kobele & Torrence, 2006;Amfo, 2010). In (6) the object Áǃmá is the answer to the preceding question, hence focused and syntactically fronted.…”

Section: Prog-helpmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to Boadi (1974) the focus marker nà has a semantic function of putting the constituent in contrast with a set of discourse alternatives, which in our view constitutes a focus in the sense of Rooth (1985, 1992). A further feature of focus fronting in Akan is pronoun resumption in the case of animate focused elements (Boadi, 1974; Saah, 1988; Ermisch, 2006; Amfo, 2010). According to Kobele and Torrence (2006) this feature, however, is optional, and hence does not occur in our speech materials.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

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On the Prosodic Expression of Pragmatic Prominence: The Case of Pitch Register Lowering in Akan

Kügler

Genzel

2011

Lang Speech

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This article presents data from three production experiments investigating the prosodic means of encoding information structure in Akan, a tone language that belongs to the Kwa branch of the Niger-Congo family, spoken in Ghana. Information structure was elicited via context questions that put target words either in wide, informational, or corrective focus, or in one of the experiments also in pre-focal or post-focal position rendering it as given. The prosodic parameters F0 and duration were measured on the target words. Duration is not consistently affected by information structure, but contrary to the prediction that High (H) and Low (L) tones are raised in ex situ (fronted) focus constructions we found a significantly lower realization of both H and L tones under corrective focus in ex situ and in situ focus constructions. Givenness does not seem to be marked prosodically. The data suggest that pragmatic prominence is expressed prosodically by means of a deviation from an unmarked prosodic structure. Results are thus contradicting the view of the effort code that predicts a positive correlation of more effort resulting in higher F0 targets.

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Section: Prog-helpmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

On the Prosodic Expression of Pragmatic Prominence: The Case of Pitch Register Lowering in Akan

Kügler

Genzel

2011

Lang Speech

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“…From a syntactic point of view, however, the switches into English are not in focus: canonical morphosyntactic focus marking in Twi occurs either in situ or through left-fronting with the focus marker na and a resumptive pronoun (cf. Ameka, 2009;Amfo, 2010;Fiedler, Hartmann, Reineke, Schwarz, & Zimmermann, 2006;Kobele & Torrence, 2006;and others). While some of the switches are arguably in the appropriate clause position for syntactic focus, none make use of the clitic morpheme na.…”

Section: Codeswitching Pragmatics and Information Structurementioning

confidence: 95%

The pragmatics of codeswitching on Ghanaian talk radio

Flamenbaum

2013

International Journal of Bilingualism

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Radio, in particular, the popular Asante Twi talk-radio format that emerged in the mid-1990s, provides a unique forum for analyzing the linguistic tensions of contemporary Ghana. Radio is a context where talk and debate are central; since language is foregrounded, anxieties and beliefs about what the use of a particular language indexes socially are thrown into stark relief. This paper draws on conversation analysis, information structure, and ethnography to make sense of the prevalence of intrasentential codeswitching into English in the context of predominantly Twi talk-radio debates. It proposes that switches into English mark new or salient information, and as such function as a pragmatic tool in radio discourse, allowing speakers to negotiate the conversational floor and metapragmatically frame the speech event. It is argued that English’s pragmatic force in this context is drawn from its ability to index a multivalent prestige born of contradictory sites of authority within contemporary Ghanaian life.

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“…This applies, particularly to deictic expressions. "Deixis" is not a pronoun, but also adverbs [4]. Furthermore, at the level of semantics, deixis demonstrative in many different languages.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deixis of Narration: Research in the Student Education in Indonesian Language and Literature, Faculty of Language and Literature, State University of Makassar University

Azis¹,

Juanda²

2018

KSS

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This study aims to analyze deixis in the narration of student education Indonesian language and literature. The data sources were collected from the narrations of students in the 2014 academic year. The data were analyzed by using the content analysis method with reference to the various types of deixis. The research resultsshow that the location of person deixis in a recurring sentence network is sometimes with a similar word. Second, the placement of spatial deixis is at the beginning of a sentence, the middle of a sentence, and the end of a sentence. Third, the placement of temporal deixis can be in the form of a deixis expressing start with the word of "sejak" (since) its location reside in the middle of a sentence. Temporal deixis there is also in the form of boundary time at the same time with the word 'sedari' (since) which its location be at middle sentence, while temporal deixis with the word 'sementara, ketika, dan selama' (whereas, when, and during) are located at the early sentence.

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Lexical signaling of information structure in Akan

Cited by 6 publications

References 5 publications

On the Prosodic Expression of Pragmatic Prominence: The Case of Pitch Register Lowering in Akan

On the Prosodic Expression of Pragmatic Prominence: The Case of Pitch Register Lowering in Akan

The pragmatics of codeswitching on Ghanaian talk radio

Deixis of Narration: Research in the Student Education in Indonesian Language and Literature, Faculty of Language and Literature, State University of Makassar University

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