3.1 Introduction: the organization of the CP
3.3.3 Foci in DGS
In this section, I will give a brief overview of the focusing strategies used in DGS. In line with the literature, I will show that information focus mainly stays unmarked. As in other sign languages, DGS exhibits focus doubling and pseudo-clefts which are marked in a similar manner as in American Sign Language. Con-cerning contrastive focus I will show that the non-manual marking which is used is subject to dialectal variation as signers from Baden-Württemberg and signers from Bavaria use different strategies. Finally, I will briefly discuss the role of signing space and shoulder positions in contrastive focus. For the use of focus particles in DGS, which will not be discussed here, I refer the reader to Herrmann (2013).
3.3.3.1 Information focus
With information focus we do not find any reordering (i.e., movement) of manual constituents. On the whole, it information focus is usually left unmarked (see also Waleschkowski 2009). When it is marked, wide-open eyes, a short eyebrow raise, and a slight downward movement of the head or a head-nod on the focused constituent can be observed (see also Happ & Vorköper 2014: 396). This is shown in the example in (42).
(42) A: Who did you meet yesterday?
B:yesterday paul meetfoc B:‘I met Paul yesterday.’
Wide information focus can also be marked by wide-open eyes and raised eye-brows spreading over the whole clause. This is illustrated in (43) – although in most cases, wide focus stays unmarked.
(43) A: What happened?
B:poss1beer fall-downfoc B:‘My beer fell down.’
Taken together, if information focus is marked at all, it is marked by wide-open eyes and slightly raised eyebrows.
3.3.3.2 Focus doubling
As described for American Sign Language, several elements can undergo dou-bling in DGS, includingwh-signs (see Section 3.7.4), pronouns (see Section 3.6.3), and modals verbs (see Section 4.37). As in other sign languages, the items under-going doubling are heads and not full phrases (but see Section 3.7.4 for evidence that this is different forwh-doubling). In many (but not all) cases, the clause-final double receives stress, as shown in (44).
(44) paul can swim canfoc
‘Paul can swim.’
If we assume that the double is hosted in a head we could either assume FocP to be right-headed or that the non-doubled lexical material has moved to a left-branching specifier – probably SpecFocP. However, another possibility is that doubling is not related to focus, at least not to contrastive focus. Instead, it seems plausible to me that it is used as an emphasis device, but I will not pursue this option any further (but see Wilbur 2012).
3.3.3.3 Pseudo-clefts
Similar to what was described for American Sign Language, pseudo-clefts are possible in DGS (cf. Happ & Vorköper 2014: 397). As with American Sign Lan-guage, the non-focused material can receive a brow-raise (glossed ‘cleft’ in the example). The focused phrase in the clause-final position can receive non-manual focus marking that can be either a brow-raise or a backwards head tilt, sometimes accompanied by a nod. An example is given in (45).
(45) paul break whatcleftvase(foc)
‘What Paul broke was the vase.’
According to Happ & Vorköper (2014: 397) the first part of cleft-structures like the one in (45) receive a topic-marking, i.e., raised eyebrows. This is in line with my own observations. Similar to the description in Happ & Vorköper (2014: 397), the focus marking can be, and usually is, absent. Both possibilities are depicted in Figure 3.2. In the top example the focus marking on beer is missing, in the bottom example, the focus marking is present (an additional brow-raise). The premise for the focus marking to be present seems to be that it marks new or unexpected information. While the top example would be felicitous at the beginning of a talk
Figure 3.2: Two pseudo-clefts: one without and one with focus mark-ing.
(when everyone knows that a talk about beer will follow), the second example was elicited in a context in which the signer was reporting that he will visit a talk about beer (‘I’m going to a talk. The topic of the talk is beer’).12 Pseudo-clefts in DGS need further attention in the future. In my mind, it is not clear yet if they are really best analyzed as focus structures, but as topic-comment structures as similar constructions in the spoken language research tradition were indeed analyzed this way (e.g., Prince 1978; Gast & Levshina 2014; see also Caponigro &
Davidson 2011 for a similar point for American Sign Language).
3.3.3.4 Contrastive focus
Previous research on focus in German Sign Language has noted that contrastive focus is marked mainly by head nods (Waleschkowski 2009). Happ & Vorköper (2014: 402–403) also report that the non-manual marking for information and contrastive focus is the same and thus is achieved by nods (except for pseudo-clefts which are described above). This only partly matches with my own obser-vations.
12This difference is also mirrored in constituent order in the examples.
Figure 3.3: The non-manuals used with contrastive focus. Signers in the top row of the figure are from Baden-Württemberg, signers in the bottom row are from Bavaria.
With contrastive focus I found a unique bundle of non-manual markers that consist either of the head tilted backward and raised eyebrows or of a forward head-bow or chin-down with furrowed brows. The question of which of these non-manuals are used is subject to dialectal variation. While signers from Baden-Württemberg systematically used head-tilts and eyebrow-raises, the chin-down pattern was used by the Bavarian signers. This is shown in Figure 3.3. In both cases, the non-manuals accompany the whole constituent being contrasted.
Contrastive focus can stayin-situin DGS, but can also be moved into a clause-initial position. Glossed examples are shown in (46). The contrastive focus non-manuals are glossed ‘contr’.
(46) a. A: Paul bought beer yesterday.
B: yesterday otto beer buycontr
B:‘It was Otto who bought the beer yesterday.’
Figure 3.4: An example of the use of signing space for contrasts.
b. A: Paul bought beer yesterday.
B:otto yesterday beer buycontr
B:‘It was Otto who bought the beer yesterday.’
Future research will have to check if there is a difference – maybe in exhaustive-ness – between moved andin-situcontrastive focus. If this is not the case, one could assume that movement in thein-situcases only takes place at LF.
Taken together, contrastive focus is marked non-manually with the whole head and, in line with the bodily mapping hypothesis, with the eyebrows, al-though there is geographical variation with contrastive focus marking.
3.3.3.5 Shoulder positions for contrasts
As has been reported for other sign languages, contrastive focus is sometimes additionally marked by using the shoulders and locations in signing space. When two referents are contrasted, one is signed on one side on the body and the item to be contrasted on the other side. This is exemplarily shown in Figure (3.4).
The example in the figure shows a sentence in which a vase is contrasted with a plate. While the signer locates the vase to his left in the example, the plate is located to his right. This is also mirrored by shoulder movement. This kind of opposition, however, is found in many other constructions, including plain coordination.
Taken together, the structure of the focus phrase could be modeled in the way shown in (47) if one allows heads to be right-branching. The other option would be to assume a left-headed focus phrase and additional XP movement into a higher specifier position.
(47) FocP
SpecFocP Foc
IP Foc°
The landing site for contrastive focused material in the model in (47) would then be SpecFocP and the landing site for focus doubles would be Foc°. Evidence for this structure comes from the fact that it is possible to combine contrastive focus and focus doubling within the same clause, as shown in (48).
(48) A: Did Paul buy the beer yesterday?
B:indexcontr2should beer buy shouldfoc
B:‘It was you who should have bought the beer!’
Future research could determine if and how it is possible to combine the different topics and contrastive focus with carefully constructed contexts. My preliminary impression from interviewing my consultants, however, is that it is – similar to English – not possible or at least very unnatural to combine one of the two topic expressions with contrastive focus in one clause.