Subject and non-subject ex-situ focus in Dagbani. Issue 1 (8th January 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Issah, Samual A.; Smith, Peter W.
• Is Part Of: Glossa. Volume 5:Issue 1(2020)
• Publication Date: 2020-01-08
• Subjects: Focus movement -- antilocality -- resumptive pronouns -- subject-only resumption; Linguistics -- Periodicals; Language and languages -- Periodicals; 410.5
• DOI: 10.5334/gjgl.664
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2397-1835

Abstract

Abstract : This paper offers a description and account of the patterns of ex-situ focus in Dagbani. We show that there are two syntactic strategies for creating ex-situ focus in the language, one involving A'-movement to the left periphery, and the second involving base generation in the left periphery combined with coreference to a resumptive pronoun. Furthermore, we argue that subjects are difficult to move from Spec, TP to Spec, CP in the left-periphery because of anti-locality, which creates a tension when trying to focus subjects, which are required to derivationally fill the specifier of both positions. We further show that what looks to be a two-way distinction between the behaviour of subjects and non-subjects in the language is in fact a three-way distinction between subjects that are focussed to a local left-periphery, subjects that are focussed to a non-local left-periphery, and non-subjects. These distinctions arise due to there being two methods for Dagbani to resolve the antilocality problem of subject movement, and so local subjects solve the problem differently to non-local subjects.