Page 455 - A GRAMMAR OF BHOJPURI _ PhD Dissertation 2020 TU

ɡʌcʰiɑ
ɡɑcʰ-iɑ

tree-DEF
'the tree'
In (42a-d), there are demonstrative adjectives ई /i/ 'this', ऊ /u/ 'that (VIS)', and

हऊ /ɦʌu/ 'that (INVIS)' that restrict neutrality of any गाछ /ɡɑcʰ/ 'tree' in (41a-c).
Likewise, in (42d) the definitizer -इआ /-iɑ/ stands for definiteness of the tree

equivalent to the English definite article 'the'.

Similarly, the adjective is also suffixed with definitizer for definiteness, as shown
in (43a-b):
(43) a. लाल घर

lɑl ɡ ̈ ʌr

red house
'a red house' (06.032)

b. ललका घर
lʌlkɑ ɡ ̈ ʌr
lɑl-kɑ ɡ ̈ ʌr

red-DEF house

'the red house' (06.033)
12.2.3 Contrastive focus, reference and topicality

a) Reference and topicality
Reference denotes here semantic reference, i.e., whether a referent does or
does not refer to some entity established verbally in the universe of discourse. Thus

semantice reference is a narrower subcase of the pragmatics of topicality that means
primarily two pragmatic aspects of reference: referential accessibility (anaphoric) and

thematic importance (cataphoric).
b) Referentiality and contrast

Both cleft-focus and Y-movement tend to apply primarily to highly topical,
anaphorically accessible arguments. Semantically the NP under contrastive focus may

be either definite-referential or generic, but not referential-indefinite (Sun and Givón,
1985). So, these constructions are not used to introduce new participants into the
discourse. Bhojpuri discourse uses both, generic and definite-referential but bars

referential-indefinite, as shown in (44a-c):

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