Document Type : Research

Authors

• Sa'eed Moharrami Gheydari ¹
• Mohammad Reza Oroji ²
• Houman Bijani ¹

¹ Department of English and Linguistics, Zanjan Branch, Islamic Azad university, Zanjan, Iran

² department of linguistics, Zanjan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Zanjan, Iran

Abstract

Focalization is making a constituent prominent in a sentence. Contrastive focus is done by three different tools, namely, phonetic, syntactic, and morphological. In terms of phonetics, each constituent can be contrastively focalized in situ by receiving a heavy/tonic stress in a way that it can be prominent compared by other constituents in the same sentence. With regards to syntax, scrambling can pre-pose a constituent to the beginning of a sentence to make it more prominent. As far as morphology is concerned, constituents can receive a focus marker to become prominent in situ. In this research, an attempt was made to probe into focalization in Azeri Turkish, Zanjan dialect. It was shown that All three tools are operant in Azeri Turkish. Constituents in Azeri Turkish can be prominent in situ either by receiving a heavy stress or by receiving a focus marker ‘ki’ or ‘dA’. The results also illustrated ‘Ki’ attaches to any constituent and makes it focalized/prominent. Superficially, the ‘ki’ bearing constituent was sometimes preposed to the beginning of the sentence and as Karimi (2005) and Rizzi (1996) claimed, it moved to the spec-Foc Phrase. However, in line with Oroji (2012) and Adrang (2019), it was concluded that since focalization in Azeri Turkish happens in situ, its movement to the beginning of the sentence was just for topicalization. Thus, topics might contain focus as well. It was also shown that only contrastive focus pertained to movement. That is, constituents can be preposed via scrambling to become more prominent.

Keywords

• Azeri Turkish
• contrastive focus
• focalization
• information focus
• topicalization

Main Subjects

• Language and linguistics