Diana Forker and Oleg Belyaev 11 Word order and focus particles in Nakh-Daghestanian languages 1 Introduction This paper offers an account of how information structure is expressed in the Nakh-Daghestanian languages. The focus of this paper is on word order and focus particles which can be regarded as the most important means of manipu- lating the information structure because they are to varying degrees employed in all languages of the family. Other means such as a special cleft-like focus con- struction (cf. Xaidakov 1986, Kazenin 2002), the opposition between certain verb forms (cf. Sumbatova 2004), the use of so-called ‘predicative particles’ (Kalinina & Sumbatova 2007), or intonation are either not very prominent or restricted to a subset of the languages. Nakh-Daghestanian languages are located in the eastern part of the Cauca- sian mountains. Most of the languages are found in Russia, but some speech communities live in Azerbaijan and Georgia. Only the larger languages (e.g. Chechen, Ingush, Avar, Lezgian) are regularly written. The majority of the Nakh-Daghestanian languages are oral languages used as primary means of everyday communication. Much of the data on which this paper is based comes from originally oral texts that have been collected and/or analyzed by the authors and thus lack references. All remaining examples originate from texts that have been published by other researchers. The aim of this paper is to present a typologically oriented study of the expression of topic and focus via word order and the use of particles. We employ the standard information structure-related terms – topic, focus1, contrast, prag- matic presupposition and assertion – that are widely accepted in typological and theoretical literature on information structure (cf. Vallduví 1992, Erteschik- Shir 1997, Krifka & Musan 2012 and many other works). Our specific understand- 1 An important issue that has been debated in recent literature is whether “focus” can be defined as a cross-linguistically valid notion at all (Matić & Wedgwood 2013). However, what- ever conclusion on this question is reached, it does not directly affect our use of the term in this paper, as we are dealing with a group of closely related languages, within which all of the IS terms we use are easily identifiable with particular pragmatic and structural configurations. Diana Forker, University of Bamberg and James Cook University Oleg Belyaev, Lomonosov Moscow State University and Sholokhov Moscow State University for the Humanities Brought to you by | Universitaet Bamberg Authenticated Download Date | 1/7/16 10:20 AM 240 Diana Forker and Oleg Belyaev ing of these terms is following Lambrecht (1994). We show that topics are placed at the edges of clauses, often depending on the activation status of the topical referent. Focus is usually verb-adjacent and can precede or occasionally follow the verb. Focus particles express narrow focus, which precedes the verb. They represent additional means of emphasizing single words within focused phrases. The paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we present a description of topic and focus positions and the impact of different words orders on the infor- mation structure of clauses. In Section 3 we give an account of the major focus particles. Section 4 analyzes the interaction of focus particles and focus marking by means of word order and Section 5 contains the conclusion. 2 Word order Nakh-Daghestanian languages are usually assumed to possess an unmarked SOV word order. While this order of constituents is indeed most frequently used, the ordering of constituents is not determined by grammatical relations, but by information structure. The reason why SOV word order is most common is that objects are typically focused and subjects are typically topics. When the situation is reversed, the object is placed before the subject (1). (1) Lezgian (Lezgic) (Haspelmath 1993: 301) rak č’exi xei-n swas [ajnise-di]FOC aqʰaj-na door big son-GEN bride Ajnise-ERG open-AOR ‘The door was opened by his older son’s wife Ajnise.’ The final position of the verb is a more strongly observed rule. However, there are no Nakh-Daghestanian languages where this is a strict rule; most languages allow postverbal placement of noun phrases at least in certain contexts (e.g., in direct speech), while some rather consistently place “old” topics postverbally (see Section 2.1). Word order is used to mark topic and focus; thetic (“all-new”) sentences are also characterized by a special word order. Predicate focus is marked by a special construction. Finally, left and right-dislocation with prono- minal doubling is also available. 2.1 Topic In all Nakh-Daghestanian languages, topic constituents are positioned at the edges of the clause. Clause-initial topics are common, though clause-final topics are also found. The distribution appears to be the following: highly activated Brought to you by | Universitaet Bamberg Authenticated Download Date | 1/7/16 10:20 AM Word order and focus particles in Nakh-Daghestanian languages 241 NPs (that represent “old” information, or protagonists) are placed at the right edge of the clause, while NPs with lesser degrees of activation are placed at the beginning of the clause (2). (2) Hinuq (Tsezic) [A story about a man whose wife died because of his fault.] hagoƛʼo-šid [hado rekʼwe]TOP ƛexwe-n Ø-aː-ho. at.that.time-ON this man(I) remain-UWPST I-cry-IPFV t’okʼaw cingi aqili=n y-iqʼe-n gom [haɬoy]TOP more then woman=ADD II-bring-UWPST be.NEG he.ERG ‘From that time on this man remained (alone) crying. He did not marry another woman.’ The same correlation is observed in Dargwa languages (3a, b). Sentence (3a) is the beginning of the text, where mother Khadizha and Arbakh are not activated (although they are assumed to be known to the speaker) and thus the coordinate NP referring to them stands at the beginning. In (3b), which directly follows (3a) in the text, the numeral k’ʷeːl ‘two’ referring to the topic is positioned at the right boundary of the clause (in both (3a) and (3b), the predicate is nominal and marked by the predicative enclitic =di, thus in (3b) the right boundary is every- thing after the first prosodic word). The fact that k’ʷeːl in (3b) is a topic follows from the fact that Khadizha and Arbakh are protagonists of the text and were also topics in the preceding sentence, thus in any conceivable sense of about- ness, (3b) is “about” them (the discourse continues describing their actions). (3) Icari (Dargwa) (Sumbatova & Mutalov 2003: 209) a. [di-la xadiža waba=ra hejk’ arbaχ=ra]TOP 1sg-GEN Khadizha mother=ADD dem Arbakh=ADD sːingli-la qːatːa-b diči-b=di Singli-GEN canyon-HPL[ESS] pasture-HPL[ESS]=PST ‘My mother Khadizha and Arbakh were at the pasture in the canyon of Singli.’ b. duklušː-i=di [k’ʷeːl=ra2]TOP ħaˤjwant-a-lla kalxuz-la shepherd-PL=PST two=ADD cattle-OBL.PL-GEN kolkhoz-GEN ‘The two were shepherds of the kolkhoz cattle’ 2 The additive clitic =ra is typically used with numerals and quantifiers in Icari and in other Dargwa varieties, and is not in this case related to topicality or other information structure notions. Brought to you by | Universitaet Bamberg Authenticated Download Date | 1/7/16 10:20 AM 242 Diana Forker and Oleg Belyaev Other languages that observe this distribution of old and new topics include Archi and Avar (Testelec 1998: 260). However, the placement of old topics at the right edge is hardly a strict rule. Each of the languages cited above allows old topics to also appear clause-initially (4). The placement of old topics is probably motivated by discourse prominence, protagonism or the degree of activation. The earlier a participant has been introduced as a topic, the higher the probability that it will be placed postverbally. (4) Archi (Lezgic) (http://www.philol.msu.ru/~languedoc/rus/archi/corpus.php, ex. 25.002) [Once upon a time there was a poor man.] [jamum-mi-n]TOP kummu-s cʼabu-s nac’ eχːu-li he-OBL-ERG eat.IV-INF drink-INF nothing IV.stay.PFV-CVB edi-li i-tʼu IV.AUX.PFV-CVB IV.AUX-NEG ‘He had nothing to eat or drink.’ It still needs to be clarified whether all Nakh-Daghestanian languages allow for postverbal topics. Judging from the available texts and grammars it seems that a few languages (e.g. Lezgian, Lak, Ingush in the verb-final construction, eventually Bagvalal, Tsakhur) do not generally admit clause-final topics, or, for that matter, postverbal constituents in general. However, in these languages, as well as in other Nakh-Daghestanian languages, postverbal constituents, regard- less of their information structure status, occur for other reasons: in direct speech constructions where the verb of speech follows the quote (5a), in “emphatic or emotional speech” (5b) (Haspelmath 1993: 300), or when the post- verbal NP is heavy. (5) a. Bagvalal (Andic) (Kibrik et al. 2001: 775) “čo=ʁala tak mala=di?” heƛ’igaʔišnik-šːu-r what=PRT so little=PRT say road.policeman-OBL.I-ERG ‘“Why so little (money)?” said the road policeman.’ b. Lezgian (Lezgic) (Haspelmath 1993: 300) paka hat-da kun či ǧil-e! tomorrow get-FUT 2pl 1pl.GEN hand-IN.ESS ‘Tomorrow you will fall into my hands!’ Brought to you by | Universitaet Bamberg Authenticated Download Date | 1/7/16 10:20 AM Word order and focus particles in Nakh-Daghestanian languages 243 Even though examples with postverbal topics are occasionally encountered in these languages, this is due to independent factors that are hardly related to information structure; in addition, the frequency of postverbal topics in these languages is in any case incomparable to their frequency in such languages as Dargwa and Archi.