Formal and discourse-pragmatic properties of the Yukagir focus system
are re-examined on the basis of recently collected data. Its basic nom
inal focus construction has arisen as a result of the grammaticalizati
on of a cleft-like structure and of the partial integration of a sente
nce-level constructional focus into the clause-internal syntax of Yuka
gir. It thus shares essential syntactic features with functionally sim
ilar constructions found in many other languages and presents some int
eresting data for the cross-linguistic investigation of grammaticaliza
tion of discourse-sensitive syntactic phenomena. The focus-marking str
ategy in Yukagir is shown to be applied independently of any text-indu
ced 'status' of the focused constituent. Its function is to present an
NP as (a part of) the assertion of the sentence and to separate the a
ssertion from the presupposed and background material, in the case of
both narrow (contrastive or completive) focus on the NP and of a broad
er scope of assertion including the verb, in particular for the encodi
ng of so-called thetic sentences.