Contrastive focus particles in Kusaal
This paper presents and discusses the particles used in expressing contrastive fo-
cus in Kusaal, a Gur language spoken in Ghana, Burkina Faso and Togo. Contrary
to the earlier claim made by Abubakari (2011) that focus is morphologically null in
the language, the particles kà, ń and nɛ́ are identified as contrastive focus markers
in Kusaal. The particle kà is limited to fronted focused items, whilst ń and nɛ́ are
limited to in-situ focused constituents. Ex-situ focus always bears contrastive in-
terpretation, hence the obligatory use of kà. In-situ focus is marked prosodically.
However, the in-situ use of ń and nɛ́ correlates with a contrastive and exhaustive
focus interpretation. To determine the validity of ń, nɛ́ and kà as contrastive focus
particles, I subject them to various tests of exhaustivity from which I conclude that
these are contrastive focus particles in the language.
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