Syntactic devices expressing focus in English and Kurdish: A comparative study

Abstract

Languages can have different devices to express different types of information such as focus, in which certain elements in a sentence are given a special prominence to represent the most important new information in that sentence. Hence, the present paper deals with syntactic aspects of focus in English and Kurdish. The study comprises three chapters. Chapter one is devoted to the analysis and discussion of syntactic aspects of focus in English. It covers different devices that are used to express focus in English including: passsivization, cleft constructions, topicalization, postponement, extraposition and existential construction. Chapter two presents an analaysis of Kurdish Syntactic focus. It explores Syntactic devices in Kurdish to express focus which include: Interrogtaive and Exclamative sentences, complements, passivization and topicalization. Chapter three conducts a comparative analysis of syntactic focus in English and Kurdish and highlights some points of similarity and difference between the two languages. Finally, the most important findings of the paper are presented.