Discourse configurationality in Finnish and Hungarian

Focus marking and focus interpretation

“…First, in languages that allow for different grammatical realizations of focus, there hardly ever is a strict one-to-one correspondence between a particular grammatical realization of a focus, say in a particular syntactic position, and a particular type of focus, say contrastive or information focus. This state of affairs is observed, for instance, in Finnish (Finno-Ugric, Uralic), which has a clearly identifiable contrast position in the left periphery of the clause (Vallduví and Vilkuna, 1998), but which allows for contrastively focused elements to be realized in situ nonetheless (Molná r and Jä rventausta, 2003). Moreover, Hartmann and Zimmermann (2007a) show that the sentence-initial ex situ focus position in Hausa (Chadic, Afroasiatic) can be occupied by expressions interpreted as information foci (e.g., in answers to whquestions) and contrastive foci (e.g., in corrections) alike, and, vice versa, in situ expressions can be interpreted both as information and contrastive foci, depending on the particular context.…”

Contrastive focus and emphasis

“…and its being grammatically marked, or emphasized, in languages as diverse as Finnish and Hausa (Molnár-Järventausta 2003;Hartmann-Zimmermann 2007). While information foci in answers to wh-questions are typically unmarked, they can sometimes be marked as well.…”

Acquiring Complex Focus-Marking: Finnish 4- to 5-Year-Olds Use Prosody and Word Order in Interaction

“…Non-contrastive narrow focus can be marked by prosody alone in unmarked word order (Välimaa-Blum 1988, p. 75; Vainio and Järvikivi 2007). Also, contrastively focused subjects and objects can appear in SVO sentences with appropriate prosody, although it is not clear whether prosodic and word order marking are completely equivalent, especially for contrastive subjects (Heinämäki, 1982; Vallduví and Vilkuna, 1998; Kaiser, 2000; Molnár and Järventausta, 2003; Kaiser, 2006; Karlsson, 2008). At least in written language, use of the contrast position seems relatively rare: A corpus study of about 10,000 sentences found that 49% of the sentences had SVX order (where X stands for any non-subject NP, including objects), while SXV and XSV order occurred for only 1 and 3%, respectively (Hakulinen and Karlsson, 1995, p. 311).…”

“…For generative accounts of Finnish discourse configurationality, also see Holmberg et al (1993); Kaiser (2000, 2006); Holmberg and Nikanne (2002); Molnár and Järventausta (2003). …”