The grammaticalization of term focus structures in Chadic languages: A case of microvariation

Abstract This paper argues that the Chadic languages Bura, South Marghi, Hausa, and Guruntum show different stages of the assumed grammaticalization path from bi-clausal cleft structures to mono-clausal constructions for the expression of term focus. This development is characterized by several syntactic and semantic changes, i.e. the reinterpretation of the cleft copula into a focus marker, the loss of the exhaustive inference typically associated with clefts, as well as the loss of syntactic indicators of embedded structures. Based on a microvariational comparison of the four languages, the paper hypothesizes that clefts are diachronically abandoned in favour of mono-clausal focus structures.