Morphological marking of contrast in Tima

Abstract

Tima (Niger-Congo, Sudan) has two morphological means to express contrast: focus marking and selective marking. We take the distribution of both marking options and their interaction as evidence for a broad approach to contrast, the latter being a gradient phenomenon rather than a categorical one. We show for Tima that exhaustivity and unexpectedness play a role in determining the strength of the contrast, with the selective marker and focus marker occurring with weaker and stronger types of contrast respectively. While the selective marker signals the existence of a set of alternatives singling out one alternative, the focus marker requires that the information under focus is either exhaustive or unexpected.

Split case marking and constituent order in Nilotic languages

“…Tima is a language with split ergativity, overtly marking postverbal A arguments by means of an ergative proclitic. Case-marked structures occur in two distinct discourse contexts: to shift attention to a non-agent referent, and to establish a prominent agent (see Becker & Schneider-Blum 2020;Casaretto et al 2020;Compensis et al, submitted;Dolscheid et al, submitted;Schneider-Blum 2022, 2023Schneider-Blum & Hellwig 2018;Schneider-Blum et al 2022). 10 With regard to the first function, case-marked structures allow narrators to temporarily shift attention to a non-agent referent in order to elaborate on it.…”