Definiteness Marking on VPs/ TPs in Ga and Ngamo

Abstract

There is a growing body of cross-linguistic evidence that languages can mark events as definite (e.g. Baker and Travis, 1997, Iatridou, 2014, Larson, 2003, Hole, 2011, Onea, 2011). We contribute to this discussion by presenting original data from Ga (Kwa) and Ngamo (West-Chadic). Although both languages exhibit overt definiteness marking on VPs/TPs which is, at first glance, very similar, we argue that whereas Ngamo marks the topic situation, the situation that the utterance is about, as definite, Ga marks the event indicated by the verb as definite.