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Gesture has been a topic of recent interest in formal linguistics, especially with respectto its pragmatic and semantic properties (Lascarides & Stone 2009a,b; Ebert & Ebert2014; Schlenker 2018; Esipova 2019a). There is emerging consensus within this literaturethat the meaning of certain gestures is integrated into the semantic content of the utter-ances they co-occur with (as co-speech gestures). This would follow straightforwardly ifsuch gestures were in fact morphemes, meaning they have syntactic status as well (Jouit-teau 2004, 2007; Sailor & Colasanti 2020). This paper provides additional support forthis hypothesis, involving the conventionalised co-speech gesture RING-FOCUS (Kendon1995:268–274) in Lancianese, a southern Italo-Romance language. On the basis of origi-nal experimental fieldwork, I argue that RING-FOCUS is a gestural morpheme associatedwith information-structural focus: it arises in focus contexts, temporally aligned with thefocalised constituent. I argue that the RING-FOCUS morpheme is simply a focus marker(of the sort found in Gungbe, Malay, etc.), albeit one whose PF realisation happens to begestural rather than spoken.

Focus constructions are syntactically rich aspects of Fulfulde grammar. This paper aims at investigating the nature of noun phrase (NP) focus in Fulfulde with particular reference to Adamawa dialect. The study employed two methodological techniques for data collection: observation and oral interview. These techniques were used in collecting data from different categories of native speakers. The Principles and Parameters theory was adopted as the theoretical framework for data analysis in the study. The study shows that noun phrase NP focus in Adamawa dialect of Fulfulde involves movement of the focused element which is accompanied with a focus marker (FM). The study has identified five different FMs that are commonly used in the dialect depending on the semantic requirement. They are: on, ni, faa, dey and tan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the past half century, the versatile nature of demonstratives across languages has increasingly attracted attention in language typology. The present study contributes to this research agenda by examining the grammaticalisation pathways of two distal demonstratives in the Lobr dialect of Dagaare (Niger-Congo: Gur), namely, n ɛ , an adnominal demonstrative, and l ɛ , a pronominal demonstrative. The analysis reveals that the adnominal demonstrative n ɛ first got reanalysed as an identifying copula verb and, subsequently fused with third person pronouns, ʋ and a , to derive identifying pronouns, n ʋ and na respectively. Further, the identifying pronouns n ʋ and na fused with the attributive copula ι to derive the focus particle nι. The identifying pronoun na has also been reanalysed into an affirmative final particle. On the other hand, the pronominal demonstrative l ɛ first developed into a scalar demonstrative determiner and then into an intensifier. Subsequently, the scalar demonstrative determiner evolved into a copula, which fused with third person pronouns ʋ , a and b ɛ to derive the emphatic counterparts of these pronouns, comprising ʋ l ɛ , al ɛ and b ɛ l ɛ respectively. These are further cliticised and have evolved into adnominal demonstratives and then postnominal focus particles. These grammaticalisation trajectories contribute to a finer-grained and richer account of the diachrony and typology of demonstratives, including the substantivizing role of morpho-phonemic fusion on the development of grammaticalisation chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indian English only (IndE-only), e.g. "I'll meet you here only", is rejected as poor English by many IndE speakers. In the present study, we used a mixed method to investigate familiarity, comprehension and use of IndE-only in 20 L1 IndE speakers in the US. Participants completed a psycholinguistic task comprising syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic judgments of IndE, standard English, and grammatically or semantically odd control sentences. L1 IndE speakers' task performance was compared to a control group of 33 American English speakers. Results showed that IndE speakers were familiar with syntactic aspects of IndE-only consistent with the literature, and were able to extract significantly more information about implicatures and conversational contexts compared to the control group. L1 IndE speakers were also interviewed about their attitudes towards IndE and IndE-only. Qualitative results indicated that despite some stigmatization, mostly in the written form, IndE-only exemplifies the emerging identity of L1 IndE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from Hjelmslev’s distinction between content-purport and content-substance, we investigate the meaning of focus markers mere and merely from a diachronic perspective. We argue that their shared ability to convey the four focus types (exclusive-categorial, exclusive-scalar, particularizing, inclusive) can be viewed as their shared content-purport. We approach their content-substance, i.e. the meanings coded by their structures, in terms of the interpersonal modification structures of McGregor’s Semiotic Grammar. The different syntagmatic combinations are associated with different contextual usage types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the use of only and itself in Indian English, drawing on data from the Indian subcorpus of the International Corpus of English (ICE-India). In all varieties of English, only is used as an exclusive focus particle and itself as a reflexive pronoun and intensifier. Indian English has developed an additional use for only and itself as presentational, i.e. non-contrastive focus markers. The paper investigates the syntactic and semantic contexts of itself and only in order to capture the two lexical items’ functional extension in current Indian English. One interesting finding concerns the distribution of the two forms within the corpus: Itself is mainly found in written texts, while only is restricted to the spoken language. The paper further considers the origin and the likely future of this innovation in Indian English: Whereas it is quite clear that substrate influence is directly responsible for the innovative usage, the question whether this usage will also become accepted as part of an emerging Indian English standard remains to be settled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]