The Focus Function(s) of=purain Kokama-Kokamilla Discourse

Bibliographic Data

ID4560774
AuthorsRosa Vallejos Yopán (corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume75
Issue3
Pages399-432
Publication date2009-07-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of American Linguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-7071 • E-ISSN: 1545-7001
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/605418
OpenAlexW2044998902
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited1

Focus subtypes can be characterized according to scope and pragmatic (e.g., [non]‐contrastive) information. While the existence of strategies dedicated to code scope seems clear, the existence of grammar dedicated to pragmatic contrast is in dispute (Lambrecht 1994 and Myhill and Xing 1996). Some models propose that contrast is expressed in sentence grammar (Dik et al. 1981 and Watters 1979); others argue that contrast belongs to conversational implicature (Lambrecht 1994). Kokama‐Kokamilla, an Amazonian language, has constructions that clearly distinguish focus subtypes according to both parameters. More specifically, this study examines the distribution of the clitic =pura. While this morpheme is an important cue to identifying pragmatically marked sentences, by itself it cannot be associated with specific subtypes of focus. It is the interaction of =pura with constituent order and prosody that produces formal distinctions for coding narrow vs. broad and contrastive vs. noncontrastive focus

Clitic · Contrast (vision · Focus (optics · Grammar · Implicature · Information Structure · Linguistics · Morpheme · Physics · Pragmatics · Prosody · Sentence · Word order · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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