Ce mercredi 7 février 2024, de 10h à 11h ,nous recevons Paul Roger Bassong (Collège de France & University of Yaounde 1), pour une communication sur le bantou des Grassfields : A smuggling-based approach to focus fronting in Grassfields Bantu.
Résumé :
In this talk, I explore the distributional and interpretational properties of three focus strategies as attested in Lamnsɔ́’ and Limbum. I propose a uniform syntactic analysis according to which postverbal focus is derived by focus movement into a low focus position in the vP periphery (Belletti 2005) and related work. However, though postverbal subject focus is derived by simple focus movement, postverbal non-subject focus targets the same focal slot by a series of smuggling operations along the lines of Collins (2005; Collins & Belletti 2022). Conversely, the fronting (clefting) strategy is derived from an underlying small clause configuration whereby the focalised constituent, initially merged as the subject of a small clause, the predicate of which is a free relative clause, raises into a lower focus phrase in the vP-periphery of the matrix clause, just as in the postverbal focus strategy.
Lien Zoom pour assister au séminaire : https://cnrs.zoom.us/j/95654741763
ID réunion : 956 5474 1763
Code secret : 81Llacan35
