Marking Exhaustivity in Dagbanli

Abstract

The paper examines the semantics of the so-called focus particle ko as an exhaustive focus marker which expresses exhaustive identification in Dagbani, a Gur language spoken in Ghana. The paper argues that ko expresses exhaustivity in both in situ and ex situ when it occurs in a focus sentence. The paper explores ko as an operator expressing exhaustive focus on constituents and examines exhaustivity of ko as a pragmatic inference giving specific meaning to it. It shows that the particle only occurs in exhaustive focus environments in the language and focuses on both non-subject constituents and subject constituents. The paper argues that Dagbani expresses exhaustive identification in ex-situ and in-situ with evidence to show that the construction of Dagbani is established as monoclausal. The available data show that ko exhaustively marks objects constituents in post-verbal position and subjects in pre-verbal position. Finally, it shows that ko can co-occur with the Dagbani focus markers [ka, n, la] in ex-situ. The paper employs standard tests for exhaustivity using mainly Kiss’s (1998) and test of exhaustivity developed by Szabolcsi (1981).