Bridging caught in a crossfire: The marker of situated definiteness in Mano and language contact

In this article, I review the basic semantic functions of the determiner à in the South Mande language Mano, which is used to mark situated definiteness: most prominently, bridging and anaphora. The marker derives from the 3sg pronoun. Similar markers are also used in a number of other South Mande languages, including Kla-Dan, Dan-Gweetaa, Guro, Tura and Gban. In Mano, as well as in the former four languages the head noun takes an optional low-tone head marking, which is more frequent in Mano than in other languages. I argue that the increased frequency of use of the marking is influenced by contact with the Southwest Mande language Kpelle, which has a grammaticalized preposed definiteness marker, also deriving from a 3sg prefix, and triggering low tone on the noun it attaches to.