Chapter 11
Information structure in the Neo-Aramaic dialect of Telkepe
This paper describes the expression of information structure in the North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic dialect of Telkepe, a town in northern Iraq. Based on the author’s fieldwork data, it looks at the various ways in which information structure is given linguistic expression in the dialect, in particular indexing on the verb, differential object flagging, word order, and the position of the nuclear stress. It is then shown that the findings for Telkepe provide supportive evidence for some of the universals of information structure proposed by Gundel (1988).
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Concepts in information structure
- 3.Indexing of topical objects on the verb
- 4.Flagging of topical objects
- 5.Word order and intonation in relation to information structure
- 5.1Expression of topics
- 5.2Expression of focus
- 5.3Sentence-focus structures
- 6.Summary and conclusions
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Acknowledgements
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Notes
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Abbreviations
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References
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