Open AccessIntervention and focus in Asante Twi
Author(s) -
Gregory M. Kobele,
Harold Torrence
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
zas papers in linguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1435-9588
DOI - 10.21248/zaspil.46.2006.341
Subject(s) - german , intervention (counseling) , focus (optics) , set (abstract data type) , linguistics , core (optical fiber) , history , political science , computer science , psychology , philosophy , telecommunications , physics , psychiatry , optics , programming language
This paper concerns the distribution of wh-words in Asante Twi, which has both a focus fronting strategy and an in-situ strategy. We show that the focusing and the in-situ constructions are not simply equally available options. On the contrary, there are several cases where the focusing strategy must be used and the in-situ strategy is ungrammatical. We show that the cases in Asante Twi are "intervention effects", which are attested in other languages, like German, Korean, and French. We identify a core set of intervening elements that all of these languages have and discuss their properties.