Syntactic Features of Focus in Old Uyghur Narrative Text: A Case Study of J?taka of the Good and Bad Prince

Abstract

Focus is realized through different linguistic devices in different languages. These linguistic devices include accenting, syntactic reordering, and other morphological marking devices. This article investigates different focus structures and their syntactic reflexes in the “J?taka of the Good and Bad Prince” as a case study for the Old Uyghur narrative texts. In the paper, we argue that the location of the focused constituent within the narrative text, as well as the definition of all the constituents that might be interpreted as focused, is predictable on the basis of the syntax of the text language. The basic idea tested on basis of data taken from J?taka of the Good and Bad Prince is that the preverbal position is the default position to host the focus. Except for the subject constituents, other constituents are realized in-situ focus, the subject constituents are moved to the default position to be marked as focus.