Information Structure in Sara-Bagirmi: A Comparative Approach to the Synchronic State and Diachronic Development in the Expression of Information Structure, with Special Attention to Predicate-Centered Focus Types

The development of information structue and its expression has become increasingly important in the recent decades. The main focus is on the investigation of linguistic universals that are used to identify “old/given” and “new/important” information. Despite of a body of literature on this issue, little is known about the possibilities of realization of topic and focus in poorly documented languages. This investigation contributes to basic informational research in the field of information on the focus marking strategies of a small language family in the heart of Africa. It gives an overview of the way in which topic and focus are implemented in six genealogically related languages of Sara-Bagirmi (BAGIRMI, KENGA, MBAY, KABBA, NGAMBAY and SAR). The focus is on the investigation of predicate-centered focus types. These consist of i) focus on the lexical meaning of the verb, ii) focus on the polarity operator (“truth-value focus”), and iii) focus on the tense-aspect-mode operator. The work thus not only illuminates the grammatical structure of insufficiently studied languages, but also provides an insight into a neglected field of research with emphazising non-term focus. The results show that the Sara-Bagirmi languages have a variety of different focus strategies. Although all six languages belong to one family, the existing strategies differ formally and partly functionally from each other. The inter-familiar comparison of the similarities and the differences allows, on the one hand, conclusions about the relationship between form and function in general. On the other hand, it makes concrete statements on the diachronic development of the selected constructions. The corpus study on one of the languages complements the research work. It presents selected features of the focus realization and shows the use of the presented strategies in natural discourse. This dissertation completes the database of empirical linguistic research and enriches the theory of language with valuable results. Thus, for example, the analysis of the focusing strategies in Sara-Bagirmi confirms the close relationship of predicate-centered focus types and TAM-based categories. It also shows that the classification of the predicate-centered focus types should be reconsidered, since some of the examined languages in addition to the above-mentioned types have grammaticalized forms of “intensification” or “definiteness/ certainty”