Focus feature percolation: Evidence from Tundra Nenets and Tundra Yukaghir

• Main Authors: Matic, D., Nikolaeva, I.
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: Strong Island; nenets; Tundra; Yukaghir
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0024-3257-0; http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0024-3259-C

Two Siberian languages, Tundra Nenets and Tundra Yukaghir, do not obey strong island constraints in questioning: any sub-constituent of a relative or adverbial clause can be questioned. We argue that this has to do with how focusing works in these languages. The focused sub-constituent remains in situ, but there is abundant morphosyntactic evidence that the focus feature is passed up to the head of the clause. The result is the formation of a complex focus structure in which both the head and non head daughter are overtly marked as focus, and they are interpreted as a pairwise list such that the focus background is applicable to this list, but not to other alternative lists