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Theses and Dissertations

Linguistics

University of North Dakota

Focus

Publication Year

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

A Typology Of Morphological Argument Focus Marking, Aidan Alexander Aannestad May 2021

A Typology Of Morphological Argument Focus Marking, Aidan Alexander Aannestad

Theses and Dissertations

One of the methods that languages use to indicate which argument (if any) is in focus is morphological; however, there seems to be a major gap in the literature when it comes to understanding the variety and classification of morphological argument focus marking constructions. This thesis is an attempt to fill that gap. I present here both an overview of the types of morphological focus marking constructions found in the world's languages, and a taxonomic classification of said constructions based on the grammaticalisation pathways that result in their genesis. Such constructions include not only the traditional `particle focus' constructions, but …


Case And Pragmatic Status Markers In Embera Katío, Bethany Winter Carlson Aug 2015

Case And Pragmatic Status Markers In Embera Katío, Bethany Winter Carlson

Theses and Dissertations

In previous research on the Embera languages of the Chocó genus of Colombia and Panama, many different terms have been applied to one or all of the morphemes ba, ta and ra that frequently mark noun phrases and dependent clauses, and some of these descriptions have been conflicting. This study summarizes the previous analyses and compares them to language data from a corpus of texts and elicited material. The result is an analysis in which ba has three functions, marking ergative case, instrumental case and reason; ta marks focus on absolutives; and ra marks pragmatic topic and syntactic topics. …