Information structure in a spoken corpus of Cameroon Pidgin English

We explore information structure in a spoken corpus of Cameroon Pidgin English, addressing the broad question of how far the corpus method addresses the needs of research in this area. Focusing on marked pronouns used in focus/topic constructions and the copula/focus marker na, we detail a method for investigating information structure in the corpus. Corpus analysis not only confirms but elaborates an emergent description allowed by the elicitation stage, demonstrating that while elicitation reveals what is possible, corpus analysis reveals what is preferred. However, we conclude that qualitative analysis is still required to identify instances of focus in the absence of marked morphosyntactic features, as well as interpretations governed by context.