Dagbani focus particles, a descriptive study

Abstract

This paper describes focus marking in Dagbani, a Gur language of Ghana, with emphasis on the particles that are used to mark focus. It presents evidence that contrary to previous analyses of Dagbani (e.g. Olawsky 1999, Issah 2008) the particles ka, n, la, and mi all mark contrastive focus in Dagbani. These particle mark a range of focus types including subject focus, non-subject focus, predicate focus and clausal focus. Part of the discussion is devoted to the need to distinguish between these particles and homophones that are a subject of confusion in the literature. The particles are also subjected to several tests of exhaustivity used in the literature to determine contrastive focus. The approach adopted here is mainly descriptive. The goal is to present the bare descriptive generalisations on these particles with little recourse to the detailed assumptions of any specific syntactic or semantic theoretical approach.