The syntax of focus in Caucasian Urum

Caucasian Urum is an Anatolian variety of Turkish spoken in the Small Caucasus in Georgia, which shows crucial influences from its contact language Russian, especially in the syntax and the lexicon. One result of this language contact is that both OV and VO orders can occur in similar discourse contexts. This paper examines the effect of focus on word order preferences in Caucasian Urum in comparison to its substrate language Turkish and its contact language Russian. The results of the semi-naturalistic speech production study reveal several interesting differences between the three object languages. One major finding is that the position of foci in Urum is far more flexible than in Turkish and Russian, which implies that the change in the Urum word order led to an extension of the information structural possibilities of the language. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.