Leituras de foco em Sintagmas movidos para a periferia esquerda em Ibibio

Abstract

Oliveira’s (2005a) demonstrates two types of WH movement
to the left periphery of the sentence in Ibibio. In this paper, we
extended Oliveira’s (2005a) analysis to say that phrases moved
to the left periphery of the sentence in Ibibio can manifest
contrastive and exhaustive listing focus reading. Ibibio phrases
in the left periphery of the sentence and followed by the ke
focus particle present contrastive focus reading as seen in:
(1) Ikot Ekpene ke E?me?m a- ke?-dñ
Ikot Ekpene ke E?me?m a- ke?- dñ
Ikot Ekpene FOC E?me?m 3S. SA- PST [+FOCUS]- live
“ It is in Ikot Ekpene that E?me?m lived (not in Uyo)”
In (2), we can see Ibibio phrases preceded by the ke focus
particle, moved to the left periphery via “remnant
movement” (RM):
(2) Kokomma  a-ke -wot ke enañ
Kokomma  a  ke - wot ke enañ
Kokomma  3SG. PST [+FOC]- kill FOC chicken
“Kokomma has killed chicken (not got, not cow) “In (2), as in (1), there is movement to focus position – split CP –
: I?kot Ekpene ke? (1) and ke enañ (2). Nevertheless, in (2),
there is a remnant movement (RM) to topic position: the VP [
Kokomma  a?ke?wott] is moved to the higher topic position
in the split CP. The RM, as seen in (2), is the responsible for the
exhaustive listing focus reading in Ibibio.