Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences - Institute of Asian and African Studies

Collaborative Research Centre 632 (Sonderforschungsbereich, SFB) "Information structure: the linguistic means for structuring utterances, sentences and texts

Section B: "Language comparison and language change"

Projekt B7: "Predicate-centered focus types: A sample-based typological study in African languages"

term: July 2011 – June 2015

The present project 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 partly be extended in the present application phase. It is the only remai­ning project with a typological approach in the SFB. Based on the results obtained so far, we will focus in the new phase on the following topics, for which not all the languages in our sample will be relevant:

Topic 1: Phase-1 continuation - Encoding of predicate-centered focus in affirmative main clauses

Our previous research will be continued and extended concerning the investigation of:

- the functions of predicate-centered focus types in discourse;

- the organization of tense/aspect (TA) systems in individual languages with respect to predicate-centered focus;

- complex predicate structures;

- syntactic properties of focus structures.

Topic 2: Predicate-centered focus in clause types other than affirmative main clauses (I. Fiedler)

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 and alternative questions.

Topic 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 (here among languages of eastern Mali, K. Prokhorov) and (ii) its stability and variation within a genealogical language group (here Bantu languages, Y. Morimoto).

An overarching goal of the 2nd phase is the development of a cross-linguistic data base on predicate-centered focus. This data base is designed to bring the data of the project and other sources into a unified format and annotation scheme, being searchable for different parameters and ensuring the sustainability of the data.