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The Morphosyntactic Coding of Focus Structure in Igbo

Cross-linguistic studies have ascertained that the information units within clause structure are systematically coded. These information units shape the information structure of the clause and focus structure is the term for it in the literature. Previous studies on Igbo focus structure centre exclusively on the syntactic derivation of the clause to determine the focus structure. Therefore, this study investigates how pragmatic considerations and morphological markings in the clause structure determine the various types of Igbo focus structure. The study adopts the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) framework, which seeks out the relationship between referring expressions in a clause and the focus structure. RRG also has the advantage of formally projecting focus structure into the representation of clause structure. Four categorical types of focus structure occur in Igbo. These include, subject focus with the /e/, /a/, /kwá/, and /-nụ̀/ Maduabuchi Sennen Agbo Department of Linguistics and African Languages, Faculty of Arts, University of Benin, PMB 1154, Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria Phone: +234-8056021759; Email: maduagbo@gmail.com Received July 6, 2013; Revised August 27, 2013; Accepted September 3, 2013. 54 The Morphosyntactic Coding of Focus Structure in Igbo markers; object focus with /má/ and /ká/ as markers; verb focus with /weé/, /nà/, and /gá/ as markers and sentence focus with gwá ḿ and /ghí/̣ as markers. The study reveals that morphological markings code focus structure in Igbo. In other words, it describes the information units within clause structure from the perspective of the interaction between morphology, pragmatics, and syntax, and not exclusively from a syntactic perspective.


Introduction
Linguistic expressions systematically code information units within the clause structure, and even beyond it. The grammatical term focus structure is the nomenclature for the encoding of information units in linguistic expressions. Cross-linguistic studies of focus structure have established this grammatical operation as a universal property of language. Schachter (1973), Hyman & Watters (1984), Nwachukwu (1995), Cook (2002), Wolf & Lӧhr (2006), and  among others present detailed analyses of focus constructions in various languages. These analyses have a common understanding of focus as 'that information in an utterance which the speaker believes, assumes, or knows that the hearer does not share with him/her' (Hyman & Watters 1984: 237). Again, 'focus refers to that part of the clause that provides the most relevant or most salient information in a given discourse situation' (Aboh et al. 2007: 1). This paper will be specifically concerned with how focus is morphologically marked within the syntactic structure of the Igbo 1 clause, and also, the relationship between these markings and the context of usage. As a verb-centred language some of these morphological markings will be affixes attached to the verb. However, other morphological markings occur elsewhere in the clause. The paper makes the assumption that the Igbo clause is structured in terms of information units within it. In other words, the clause contains two components. The first component consists of the 'old information' while the second component consists of the 'new information.' The old information includes the part of the clause that 'the speaker shares with the listener.' The new information is the part of the clause that brings about 'communication dynamism.' That is, the part that contains information that is not shared by the speaker with the listener. In the literature, the two components of 'old information' versus 'new information' are referred to as topic versus comment and theme versus rheme. This opposition is known as the information structure of the clause. In all these, morphological markings contribute to the determination of information structure. This paper follows the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) theory with the assumption that 'focus structure affects the type of referring expression that is selected to fill a variable position in Logical Structure (LS) because the kind of referring expression that is chosen reflects the status of the referent in the discourse content' (van Valin 2005: 73).
RRG also has the advantage of the straightforward and elegant representation of focus structure.
The analyses focus greatly on the interaction between Igbo verbal morphology and focus structure. In the literature, it is known that all affixes in the clause are attached to the verb. These with two distinct tones High and Low and the phenomenon of downstep. affixes implicitly are referred to as inflexional affixes. However, in this study, we assume these affixes to be expressive affixes in the light of Scalise (1984), Fortin (2011), Kӧrtvelyessy & Stekauer (2011), Efthymiou (2013), and di Garbo (2013. Expressive affixes are representative of some referents within the clause structure. Their function is different from inflexion suffixes which modulate the event structure of the verb. Agbo (2010Agbo ( , 2013 argues that the event structure of the Igbo verb is inherently encoded in its Logical Structure and cannot be determined by affixes. The function of expressive affixes is understood within a communicative context. Expressive affixes give the speaker's point of view in relation to any of the referents in the communicative situation. These affixes also function to determine the modulation of the event structure from the perspective of the speaker. Expressive affixes do not only attach to verbs. Indeed, these affixes do attach to nouns in the clause. In other words, one could argue that all Igbo affixes within the clause are expressive affixes (Agbo (In Preparation)).

Data Sources and Methodology
The clauses derive from a variety of published and unpublished sources. These include two books of Igbo prose fiction: Ómàlínzè, a book of Igbo folktales and Ńzá nà Òbù. The other source includes Áká Wètá, a book of poems.
The clause forms essential for the study were derived from these texts. With regards to the objective of this study, these clause forms were presented to twenty-five native speakers of the Nsụkka, Nnewi, and Owerri dialects for validation. Additional data were elicited from these native speakers in line with the stated objectives. The writer who is a competent native speaker of the Nsụkka variety also provided more data by introspection. The data were then methodically described and the analysis of the focus structure followed afterwards. Nwachukwu (1995) seems to be the only significant account of focus structure in Igbo. His work is a structural analysis of focus constructions where the syntax of the language determines information units, therefore, the focus structure of the clause. He applies move-α̕ rules of Transformational Generative Grammar in his analysis. Nwachukwu's (ibid.) reliance on move-α̕ presents an analysis denying any role to morphology and the context of usage in focus constructions. Again, the analysis seems to assign the same structure to relative clause formation and focus. However, linguistic literature (Schachter 1973, Hyman & Watters 1984, de Vries 2006, Letsholo 2009 among others) is replete with the distinction between relative clause formation and focus construction. Nwachukwu's analysis has not distinguished Igbo relative clause construction from focus constructions. This can be attributed to his purely syntactic approach to the problem which has given rise to this vague differentiation. The objectives of this paper do not include this differentiation.

Previous Study of Focus Structure in Igbo
The paper therefore seeks to expand the description of the scope of focus to include the role of morphology and the context of use of the clause in addition to the role of the syntactic structure.

The Scope of Focus in Igbo
The grammatical structure of Igbo morphologically indicates focus structure and the types of focus. These include the marking out of information units within the clause into the broad categories of narrow versus broad focus types. The narrow focus types include the marking of focus on only one component among the information units and/or clause structure, viz. subject, object, verb, and other lexical categories. Broad focus on the other hand includes the marking out of more than one element as the focus and this may range from a phrase of two lexical items to the whole clause.
The rest of the paper is organised thus. Section 2.1 to 2.4.2 discusses the types of Igbo focus structure, section 3 presents a formal representation of focus structure and examines it in detail while section 4 is the conclusion of the study.

Subject Focus
Subject focus occurs when the 'new information' that the listener does not share with the speaker is expressed by the subject of the clause. In Igbo, subject focus markers include the morphemes e, a, kwá, -nụ, the progressive marker nà, and the tense marker gá. 2

E and A Subject Focus Markers
Examples (1a-c) illustrate subject focus constructions marked by the e and a subject focus markers. 2 The transcription follows standard Igbo orthography: à (low tone); á (high tone); and ā downstep. All tones are marked to avoid ambiguity due to lexical variance among the dialects. Igbo has the phonological features of vowel harmony where the eight vowels in the language are neatly divided into two sets. One set comprises vowels produced with the Advanced Tongue Root (+ATR) while the other set comprises vowels with -ATR. In standard Igbo, -ATR vowels are represented with the sub-dot, e.g., [ọ], while +ATR vowels do not have the sub-dot. The abbreviations used are: FOC-focus, IND-indicative, BENbenefactive, ABS-absolutive, PL-plural, SG-singular, 3SG (subj)-third person singular for subjects, 3SG (obj)-third person singular for objects, 3PLthird person plural, DEM-demonstrative, PROG-progressive, NEG-negative, AGR-agreement marker, AUX-auxiliary, IMP-imperative, CONJconjunction (1) a. É kùzì-rì hà ákwụ ΄kw΄ ọ. FOC teach-IND 3PL book 'They have been taught academics.'/'They have been educated.' The house has been swept.' In (1a) the morpheme é which is the subject focus marker makes reference to an unnamed subject in the discourse context. This unnamed subject is the agent in the clause. The morpheme á in examples (1b & c) fulfils similar functions as explained for example (1a). The morphemes -ri, -ru, and -ra are identified as -rV suffixes in Igbo syntax and they are indicative morphemes which express the natural facts about the verbs. The focus marker functions of the morphemes é and á are highlighted in examples (2a-c) where they operate to emphasise the action of the agent.
(2) a. Àdá è-kúzí-gó há ákwụ ΄kwọ ō. Ada FOC-teach-ABS 3PL book 'Ada has comprehensively taught them academics.'/ 'Ada has absolutely educated them.' (2) c. Ézè á-zà-gō ụ ΄lọ. Eze FOC-sweep-ABS house 'Eze has swept the house.'/'Eze has indeed completed the sweeping of the house.' In (2a-c) the morphemes e-and a-(in this case verbal prefixes) bring to focus the particular agent in the clause by cross-referencing them in the communicative event. In other words, these morphemes, in an explicit way, specify the subject in the clause. Note however that for this function to be operational the verbs must not take an indicative suffix (cf. 1a-c). The suffix of the verb must be able to communicate to the listener not the natural facts about the verb but the gradation of the event structure. The morpheme -gó in (2a-c) are absolutive markers found in the data. Other suffixes that can be taken by these verbs are relational suffixes like -la and -le which convey the notion of the relation between the time of utterance and the time the event was carried out.
The e-and a-subject markers can only cross-reference animate agents and only co-occur with achievement verbs (Agbo 2010). This seems to be so because the actions of the achievement verbs can be predicated only on animate agents. Again, e-prefixes to verb roots with +ATR vowels while a-prefixes to verb roots with -ATR vowels.

Kwá Subject Focus Marker
The kwá subject marker immediately follows the subject in the clause and functions to accentuate the fact that the subject is indeed the agent of the event the verb encodes. Examples (3a-c) below illustrate how kwá functions as subject focus marker.
( 3)  Kwá in (3a) gives emphasis to Òbí, the subject of the clause and introduces it as the focus element in the discourse. The same explanation goes for (3b & c) where kwá marks out the subjects gí and Òbí nà Àdá. Kwá is also a verb focus marker as will be shown in section 2.3.5.

-Nụ Subject Focus Marker
-Nụ is regarded as a clitic in Igbo syntax (Emenanjo 1978, Mbah et al. 2012. However, in this study it is observed that -nụ suffixes to verbs and functions to be the subject focus marker in the clause. This is illustrated in (4a-c) below.
(4) a. Gáá-nụ Àbá. go-FOC Aba 'Go to Aba.' Note that the focus marker -nụ in (4a-c) suffixes to the verbs. Their function is to identify the unnamed subject in the clause. This subject is the second person plural pronoun, únù. This claim bears out with the re-phrasing of (4a-c) in (5a-c). In (5a-c) the second person plural pronoun únù occurs in the subject position and the non-appearance of the -nụ as a suffix indicates that the whole clause is the focus of the utterance. Nonetheless, sentences like (6a-c) where the second person plural pronoun únù and the focus marker -nụ co-occur exist. In such sentences, the -nụ focus marker serves to further emphasise the subject of the clause únù by bringing it to spotlight.

Object Focus
Object focus is explicit in verbs where the activity of the agent completely affects that of the patient of the clause. In other words, object focus occurs with transitive verbs in the light of Agbo & Yuka (2011) and Agbo (2013), where a transitive verb in Igbo is one in which the agent/subject carries out an action that totally affects the patient/object. Object focus markers include má and ká.

Má Object Focus Marker
The má object focus marker immediately precedes the object in the clause and expectedly serves to highlight it as the object of the clause. The examples in (7a-c) demonstrate this statement. In (7a) above, the focus structure is the whole clause but with the introduction of the object focus marker má in (7a') the focus is narrowed down to the objects ewú and jí. In (7b & c) the focus marker precedes the objects íhùnánya and nné há and nná há respectively. Thereby bringing these objects to focus. Note that the object marker má cannot precede the verb. Otherwise, ungrammatical clauses like (8a-c) arise.

Ká Object Marker
The ká morpheme immediately follows the object in the object focus construction. Nwachukwu (1995) considers these constructions to result from movement rules, where the object is moved to a clause initial position in the surface structure of the transformational operation. The focus of this paper is the morphosyntactic coding of focus within such constructions. The sentences in (9a-c) below show these coding operations. The ká morpheme cannot occur elsewhere in the clause otherwise the construction will be ungrammatical. In other words, its canonical position for object marking is as shown in (9a-c) above.

Verb Focus
Verb focus arises when the focus marker attaches to the verb or in some instances it precedes the verb in the focus construction. Verb focus markers include the morphemes nà, gá, weé, and the various expressive suffixes (that are dialectal) that attach to the verbs.

Nà Focus Marker
In the literature, nà is a progressive marker and Emenanjo (1978Emenanjo ( , 1985 ascribes the grammatical category of auxiliary verb to nà. In our data nà also functions as an expressive morpheme to focus a particular attribute of the agent in the clause. Consider the Nnewi dialect examples in (10) and (11).
3SG (subj) FOC 1 -FOC 2 -sick 'S/he is always sick.' 3SG (subj) FOC 1 -FOC 2 -V 'S/he is jealous as a habit.' In (10a-c) nà functions as a progressive marker. This is the generic function of nà. However, in (11a-c) the function changes to that of a verbal focus marker. Observe that in (11a-c) the complements of the verbs (viz. óyà, njó, and ányaọkụ ΄ respectively) are missing. This also results in a change in the reading of the clause. The function of nà in (11a-c) is to highlight the fact that the agent of the clause peculiarly exhibits the activity the verb encodes. So in (11a-c) there are two focus markers, FOC 1 and FOC 2 . FOC 1 is a verbal focus marker while FOC 2 is a subject focus marker as exemplified in section 2.1.1.

Gá Focus Marker
The gá morpheme is also considered an auxiliary verb and a future tense marker in the literature (Emenanjo 1978(Emenanjo , 1985Uwalaka 1997). It is realised as [ʤa], já in the Nsukka dialect. As with the case of nà the available data indicates that gá also functions to express the synchronicity of an event with another concurrent one. (12) and (13) In (12a-c) já encodes a future tense reading to the clause. In (13a-c) the reading of the clause changes to one that is being synchronised with another event in the communicative context. Therefore, in (13a) the coming of Obi is parallel to another event not mentioned in the clause and já is the focus marker for that event. The same analysis applies to (13b & c). Emenanjo (1985: 146) defines the morpheme weé as a 'pre-verb that functions as a linker of the clause' in both the Igbuụzọ and Nnewi dialects. This pre-verb always precedes the verb of the clause it linking with the antecedent clause. Weé, according to Emenanjo (1985: 70), "is clearly derived from weé 'take.'" The Nnewi data in this study confirms Emananjo's (1981) claim. Nonetheless, our claim in this study is that weé is a verb focus marker often used in conversations. The clauses in (14a-c) illustrate this function of weé. As (14a-c) illustrates, weé always precedes the verb in the clause and its occurrence in a different position results in ungrammatical clauses. The role of weé is to underscore the verb representing the action taken by the agent in the clause.

Causative Alternation as Verb Focus Marker
Uwalaka (1988) identifies a class of Igbo verbs known in the literature as 'subject-object switching verbs' (or Ergative Complement Verbs by Emenanjo 2005). This is because this class of verbs has the unique feature of being able to alternate the positions of the nominals in the clause and still retain the essential meaning of it. However, Agbo (2013) based on arguments of the inherent temporal features of these verbs, identifies them as having the features that enable them to undergo causative alternation. In other words, when the positions of the nominals are interchanged, a causative reading is adduced to the clause. The examples in (15a', b', c') show the alternation of the positions of the nominals in the clauses in (15a, b, c). One can see that the meaning of the clauses remain the same in spite of these alternations. The examples in (15a', b', c') are focus constructions where the verb takes on a causative reading and functions to emphasise to the listener what is happening to the patient participant in the clause. In other words, (15a, b, c) are canonical clauses with no focus marking.

Kwá Verb Focus Marker
As mentioned in section 2.1.2 kwá in addition to functioning as a subject focus marker also functions as a verb focus marker. This function is illustrated in (16a-c) where kwá is a suffix on the verb preceding the indicative-rV suffix. The readings of the sentences (16) clearly show that kwá is an additive in the sense that it brings to focus the activity described by the verb in an addition to other activities earlier done by the agents. For Nnewi, this additive focus marking property is realised not as a suffix on the verb but as an independent kwá morpheme that is clause final. Examples (16a-c) re-presented as in (17a-c) below illustrates this Nnewi fact.

Sentence Focus
Sentence focus includes clauses where the information unit comprises all the constituents of the clause. Sentence focus in the data includes clauses that are introduced by gwá m ΄ 'tell me' and the negative suffix -ghí.̣

Gwá m ΄ as Sentence Focus Marker
Gwá m ΄ introduces riddles in the language. The art of telling riddles and finding out their meanings is a well known type of oral performance in Igbo literature. In the data, gwá m ΄ precedes the subject of the clause and it occurs nowhere outside that position. The data is exemplified with (18a-c). Gwá m ΄ in (18a-c) is indeed a sentence focus marker. It refers the listener to information outside the immediate communication event but within the cognitive experience of the listener. In other words, it prods the listener to relate the answer to the riddle to something within his/her world view. This answer is the new information that gwá m ΄ brings to focus and intends the listener to assume as 'new information.' Therefore, the answer to (18a) which is éró 'mushroom' is the 'new information.' In a similar vein are the answers to (18b & c) which are ókụ ΄ 'fire' and jí 'yam' respectively. (18a-c) can then be re-presented as (19a-c) where gwá m ΄ is simply indicated as a focus marker and not its literal translation.

The Negative Suffix as Sentence Focus Marker
The morpheme -ghí ̣ is a negative suffix in the Owerri dialect.
Other negative suffixes include -ghə for Nsukka, -h΄ ọ for Nnewi, and -r΄ ọ for Onitsha. These dialectal suffixes all function as sentence and not constituent negators. In these functions they also communicate the whole event as the focus structure. (20a-c) which is data from Owerri illustrate this. However, -ghí ̣ brings in the new information that the event denoted by the verb is negated. So -ghí ̣ as a focus marker expresses the negation of the event as the information the listener does not share with the speaker.

The Formal Representation of Focus Structure
The focus structure of clause in section 2 can be integrated into the clause structure representation within the RRG framework. This is because focus structure is related to clause structure. For Igbo, the basic information units are formed by the verb, its arguments (in this case the subject and the object) and the morphemes. In RRG terms the verb constitutes the nucleus of the clause while the subject and object constitute the arguments. The morphemes comprise of the operator projections of the clause. These express the context of the communication event. Each focus projection has a potential focus domain and actual focus domain. For Igbo the whole clause forms the potential focus domain while the actual focus domain depends on the morphosyntactic dynamics of the clause.
The focus projection is represented in Figure 1 below. The diagram takes example (19a) above as the reference for all the clauses in the data. The focus marker gwá m ΄ is spelt out without a pause between it and the rest of the clause. This is known as the pre-core slot (PrCs). The smallest focus domain is each of the constituents of the clause made up of the nucleus and the two arguments as shown. The potential focus domain is represented by the triangular shape which encompasses all the minimal information units except the pre-core slot gwá m ΄ . The potential focus domain is the represented by the arrowed lines. The operator projections are represented by the type of speech act. This speech act encodes the dynamism of the communicative event and the expressive affixes are represented by the focus projections.

Conclusions
The discussion of focus structure in this work shows the close relationship between the expressive functions of morphemes and the context of usage of the morphemes in the language. It is this close relationship that codes the focus structure of the language. It is remarkable that the morphemes studied in this work are not exhaustive but they help to categories the focus types and scope of focus in the language. The formal representation of focus structure in section 3 is evidence that the morphosyntactic coding of Igbo focus structure gets an elegant representation in the RRG framework. In conclusion, Igbo demonstrates the characteristic feature of in-situ focus strategy. This is unlike English and some other African languages, for example, Hausa (Hartmann & Zimmerman 2007), Gungbe , and Kikuyu (Schwarz 2007), which in addition to the in-situ focus strategy also exhibit ex-situ focus.
The hope is that the analysis presented here will prompt further inquiries into the focus structure of other Igbo dialects in order to have a more broad based perspective of the morphosyntactic coding of focus structure in Igbo.