The study aims at examining current linguistic theories on information structure such as Rizzi's cartographic approach and modifications thereof in the light of empirical data. The author provides a preliminary overview on topic and focus constructions in a number of mostly European languages and then concentrates on two languages from West Africa, Akan and Ewe, in which focussed and topicalized constituents are overtly marked. On the basis of the data from these African languages the author modifies the preliminary topic and focus typology, discusses cases which cannot be accounted for by the theoretical assumptions put forward in the cartographic approach and challenges the interchangeability of the concepts of «concord» and «agreement».

Autorentext

The Author: Sonja Ermisch was born in 1971 in Bad Hersfeld. She obtained her MA in English and German linguistics in 2001 and was a member of the interdisciplinary Graduate «School Sentence types variation and interpretation» at the University of Frankfurt am Main from 2002 to 2004. She has spent several months in Africa and is currently working as a research fellow at the Institut für Afrikanische Sprachwissenschaften at the University of Frankfurt am Main.

Inhalt

Contents : Information Structure - Cartographic Approach - Topic Constructions - Focus Constructions - African Languages - Concord - Agreement.