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Abstract:
Languages of the Kalahari Basin contact area share a feature whereby
a special type of particle occurs in clause-second position, often after the S/A
constituent. Previous accounts have used a wide range of labels such as declarative,
indicative, emphatic nominative, or topic, which point to a diverse but
insufficiently understood functional array of this particle type. We address the
phenomenon from a discourse-oriented and comparative perspective by exploring
relevant cases in languages of three different families: Northern Khoekhoe
of Khoe-Kwadi, Nǁng of Tuu, and Ju of Kxʼa. We conclude that the particles are
involved in a network of constructions spanning such diverse domains as nonverbal
predication, focus, entity-central theticity, declarative, and possibly even
differential S/A marking. The last two functions that relate to sentence types and
grammatical relations, respectively, and (may) no longer display a marked information
structure (IS) configuration, emerge from the overuse of thetic particle
constructions and thus are the result of so-called “depragmaticization”.
