The syntax of weak and strong pronouns in Dagbani and Kusaal

Abstract Although studies in Dagbani and Kusaal have distinguished between weak and strong pronouns, their syntactic peculiarities remain largely uninvestigated. This paper aims to fill this gap by presenting a systematic investigation of the distribution of these pronouns drawing data from these two languages. We demonstrate that strong pronouns have dedicated syntactic positions including left peripheral focus, predicate focus, and fragmentary answers where pronominals are required. We further show that Dagbani and Kusaal behave differently regarding the distribution of strong and weak pronouns in two domains (i) conjunct ordering of pronouns in conjoined noun phrases and in (ii) fragmentary or elliptical answers. We contend that the ban on weak pronouns in positions of syntactic focus is attributable to their prosodic deficiency.