The Study of Focus Markers in the Persian Dialects of Khorasan

This study is an attempt to overview the focus marker in some Persian dialects of Khorasan (including the three Khorasan provinces). As it is known, there are different ways of focalization in various languages including syntactical, morphological, and phonetic strategies. One of the morphological tools that is used in Persian language is /ke/ that appears after the constituent under emphasis. In modern Persian, /ke/ can make any constituent focalized. This study intends to discover whether there is any similar focus tool in Persian dialects of Khorasan. In case the answer would be positive, the research will investigate whether there are any other functions along with the focus markers or not. “Focus” has been either considered as an instrument to signify or emphasize something or used as an informative focus being assumed as the equivalent of "rheme" and it is defined as “a part of a theorem that cannot be assumed at the time of speech .The focus is that portion of a proposition which cannot be taken for granted at the time of speech. It is the unpredictable or pragmatically non-recoverable element in an utterance” (Lambrecht, 1994, p. 207). Jackendoff (1972, p. 16) believed that “focus is the information in the sentence that is assumed by the speaker not to be the same for him and the hearer". Various categories of focus have been offered. For instance, argument focus, predicate focus and sentence focus are some categories that have been offered in the scope of focalization. The first one indicates that each argument in a sentence including subject, object, or oblique can be under focus, in the second one, the predicate is under focus and this type is claimed to be a universally unmarked type of focus correlating with the topic-comment structure as the unmarked pragmatic articulation (Lambrecht, 1994( while in the latter, the whole clause is emphasized. Contrastive and informative focuses are presented in terms of communication. The first one is marked, has a particular nature, and is not necessarily present in each sentence while the second one contains new information. By new, it does not mean that it has not been indicated before, but the speaker present it in a way that is not retrievable out of the context or situation (Halliday, 1967, p. 204). The study investigated the Persian dialects of Khorasan within descriptive-analytic methodology, also the history of Persian language was sought to find out the etymology of these markers. In order to check the similarity of the Persian dialects of Khorasan with other Iranian dialects, the data drawn from the Khorasani dialects were compared with other Iranian dialects. The data gathering process was carried out via the students’ theses investigating these dialects and the speakers of these dialects who were the university students studying linguistics. In this part, the data were collected from these dialects including Raghei, Geziki, Birjandi, Bejestani, Gonabadi, Sabzevari, Adkani, Tabasi, Taibadi, Sedeh, Kakhki, and Khafi and then they were analyzed. The dialects of Sabzevari, Taibadi, Adkani, and Khafi showed that only one marker is used in all these functions that is /ke/ even though the focus /ke/ in khafi is different from the non-focus /ke/ in terms of phonology. These are the first category of dialects. Research on Raghei, Kakhki, Tabasi, Bejestani, Geziki, and Sedeh showed that there are two different markers for focus and non-focus functions. The focus marker is derived from “xwad” (self) while /ke/ is used in relative and complementary pronouns. These are the second category of dialects. Comparing these data with the other ones collected from the other Iranian dialects such as Hawrami, Laki, Ilami Kurdish, Kalhuri, Lori Salas, Lori Khoram Abad showed that there are focus and non-focus marker differences in the same way as the second type of Khorasani dialects. Although in some of these dialects, there is no marker for non-focus functions, such as relative pronoun and complementizer, but the absence of these markers is again a sign of distinction if to be compared with the presence of it. The Ilami Kurdish dialect was the only one different from others. Although it has two focus markers of /ke/ and /xu/ but in some focus positions, both of them were legible to be used and in non-focus functions, only /ke/ can be used. By studying the Iranian dialects, we can come to this conclusion that these dialects such as the second category of Khorasani dialects employ /xwad/ “self” (that used to be the focus pronoun and adverb of middle age) as a focus marker after undergoing grammaticalization and /ke/ preserved its function of middle age. On the other hand, the dialects of first category like standard Persian probably under the influence of colloquial Persian use /ke/ in all different functions. That is, the function of /ke/ has been extended and turned into a focus marker. There are some samples in Sedeh that shows the intermediate stage of these changes because /xo/ was used both as focus pronoun and focus marker (instead of /ke/). Also, Ilami Kurdish could be an indication of the middle stage because /ke/ and /xu/ were both used as a focus marker in most cases and /xu/ were used just in a few parts; there were also no focus marker as /ke/. In addition, as relative pronoun and other functions, just /ke/ is used. It seems that the situations observed in sedeh and Ilami Kurdish confirms the assumption of historical change. This also proves the assumption of the effect of the standard language on Khorsani dialects that /xo/x/ were put aside as focus markers and /ke/ was used like the standard Persian. In terms of geography, the second category of dialects was seen in south Khorsan as well as the cities or the suburbs of Tabas, Gonabad, Bejestan, Birjand, Ghayen, and Ferdows. Thus, the distribution is meaningful in terms of geography.