On Prosodic Signalling of Focus in Tundra Yukaghir

Literature on the morphological marking of focus pays little or no attention to the relationship between prosody and morphology. Tundra Yukaghir (TY) is an excellent testing field for this relationship. The main topic of this paper is the question whether the morphologically marked focus carries prosodic prominence realised with changes in pitch. It also deals with the prosodic relationship between words with and without explicit morphological focus marking. In order to answer these questions, an experiment was devised. During a fieldtrip we recorded question-answer pairs with ten types of focus, five without contrast and five with contrast: 1) on S, 2) on O, 3) on obliques, 4) on V, 5) on the whole sentence. In this way, we recorded 33 Q–A pairs with four speakers of TY, i. e. 132 pairs, 264 sentences. The analysis of these sentences shows that the speakers of TY pronounce morphologically marked foci with a prominent falling pitch movement; the same intonational contour is the main marker of focus with those words which do not carry morphological focus marking. Prosodic prominence is thus characteristic for all types of foci in this language, as the sole marker of focus when morphological marking is zero, and as the additional marker with morphologically marked foci.