Czech (Lenertová & Fanselow 2011:180)
(Q) What’s new?
A: KARIa
i
někdo hledal t
i
Karel.acc somebody.nom looked-for.sg.ms
‘Somebody was looking for Karel.’
(2)
German (Lenertová & Fanselow 2011: 179)
Q: What happened? /what did he do?
A1: Er hat die FLInte ins KORN geworfen
he has the gun into-the grain thrown
‘He has given up.’
A2: [Die FLInte]
i
hat er t
i
ins KORN geworfen
(3)
French (Sasse 19987: 538)
Q: Qu’est-ce qu’il ya? A: C’est maman qui me bat
‘What’s the matter?’ ‘Mum is beating me.’
The aim of this paper is to discuss focus fronting in ‘all’-new contexts in Basaá, a Bantu
language spoken in Cameroon, and to show that there exists no syntax-semantics mismatching in
cases like (4A2 & 5A2) where the fronted element seems to be the focus of the sentence. I will
show that focus fronting in these contexts simply boils down to the satisfaction of syntactic
principles such as the EPP, the focus-criterion and the LCA. More precisely, I will show that
there is only one way of deriving focus fronting in Basaá and that focus fronting in all-new
contexts is simply an instance of second position effects and depends on syntatic factors, namely
the need for the matrix TP to have an overt subject, the need for the embedded FocP to be
occupied by the focalized material prior to spellout and the condition that a focus head must
always be followed (it should c-command) and not be preceded by an overt TP/AgrSP
complement (Kayne’s 1994 Linear Correspondence Axiom) at the final stage of the derivation as
depicted in (6).
(4)
Q: What’s new?
A1: Litówa lí- bí- ɓomôl mááŋgɛ́ jaaní
5.car 5.SM-PST2-hit 1.child 1.yesterday
‘The car hit the child yesterday.’
A2: Maaŋgɛ́
i
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