Lecture | Com(parative) Syn(tax) Series
Preverbal focus in Kîîtharaka revisited
- Date
- Thursday 31 October 2024
- Time
- Series
- Com(parative) Syn(tax) Series
- Location
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 0.01
Abstract
Term focus in Kîîtharaka (Bantu E54, Kenya) can be expressed by marking the focused constituent by ni and placing it in clause-initial position, as illustrated in (1) for the question word ûû ‘who’.
(1) N'ûû agûpéere rûûtha rwa gûtaa rûûyî?
ni ûû a-kû-pa-îre rûûtha rû-a kû-ta-a rû-ûyî
foc/cop 1.who 1sm-prs-give-pfv 11.permission 11-conn 15-fetch 11-water?
‘Who gave you permission to fetch water?’
This construction has been analysed in two ways: Harford (1997) proposes an analysis as a biclausal cleft, while Muriungi (2005) and Abels and Muriungi (2008) argue that the structure is a monoclausal focus construction and propose a Focus projection in the left periphery.
In this talk, I systematically check the properties of the copula/focus marker, the relative marking (which turns out to also be tonal!), the scope interpretations, and movement diagnostics, showing that these new data force us to reconsider the monoclausal analysis. The alternative analysis as a reduced cleft needs discussion in this seminar.
This is joint work with Patrick Kanampiu.