The linguistic realization of focus in Uyghur: can the two focusing strategies be used interchangeably?

Abstract

Abstract Focus is a universal category of information structure. However, focus is encoded by different focus marking strategies in world languages such as prosodic, morphological, or syntactic marking. In addition to the cross-linguistic perspective distinctions, one-to-one mapping is not observed in the coding of focus in individual languages. In contrast to the view that argues there is one-to-one mapping between focus and immediately preverbal position in Uyghur, this paper will argue that in-situ focus is also possible. In other words, it will be claimed that there are two focusing devices in Uyghur, syntactic and prosodic. The two focusing strategies can be used interchangeably, with some limitations in the distribution of non-focal elements, and these can encode different pragmatic focus subtypes.