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Information Structure in Lesser-described Languages: Studies in prosody and syntax
Edited by Evangelia Adamou, Katharina Haude and Martine Vanhove
[Studies in Language Companion Series 199] 2018
► pp. 329–356

Chapter 12
Information structure in a spoken corpus of Cameroon Pidgin English

| University of Sussex
| University of Sheffield

We explore information structure in a spoken corpus of Cameroon Pidgin English, addressing the broad question of how far the corpus method addresses the needs of research in this area. Focusing on marked pronouns used in focus/topic constructions and the copula/focus marker na, we detail a method for investigating information structure in the corpus. Corpus analysis not only confirms but elaborates an emergent description allowed by the elicitation stage, demonstrating that while elicitation reveals what is possible, corpus analysis reveals what is preferred. However, we conclude that qualitative analysis is still required to identify instances of focus in the absence of marked morphosyntactic features, as well as interpretations governed by context.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1CPE
    • 2.2A spoken corpus of Cameroon Pidgin English
    • 2.3Information structure
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Elicitation
      • 3.1.1Topic
      • 3.1.2Focus
      • 3.1.3Emergent description and research questions
    • 3.2Extraction of tokens from the corpus
    • 3.3Coding
      • 3.3.1Marked topic/focus pronouns
      • 3.3.2Copula/focus marker na
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1Marked topic/focus pronouns
    • 4.2Copula/focus marker na
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1RQ1: Distribution of marked topic/focus pronouns
    • 5.2RQ2: Repeat pronoun construction
    • 5.3RQ3: Distribution of na copula/focus marker
    • 5.4RQ4: Preference for focus fronting over clefting?
    • 5.5RQ5: Predicate focus construction
    • 5.6Advantages and limitations of the corpus method
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations and transcription
  • References
Published online: 2 August 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.199.12gre
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