Word order and its Relation to Information Structure in the Gilaki (Lahijani) Dialect

The current research examines the word order and the application of the topic and focuses on the Lahijani dialect with emphasis on the discourse functions such as the speaker, listener, and context. This study is based on the framework proposed by Erteschik-Shir (2007) and Whaley (1997). The objective is to know what the word order is in this dialect and how it interacts with information structure. To gather the data, native speakers’ conversations have been recorded for 8 hours (800 sentences). Data analysis shows that Lahijani is a verb-final language (with a high frequency of SOV order) with a free word order. It is a non-configurational language. Four types of topics have been determined, such as; stage, permanently and temporarily, null (topic-drop), and multiple topics. In Lahijani, every sentence must have at least one topic to be interpreted. Topic as given information tends to appear both clause initially and finally. Two types of foci as new information are determined: contrastive and restrictive focus. Context determines whether a constituent is a topic or focus; both can be contrastive. Therefore, Lahijani has both flexible word order and flexible information structure notions (as marked forms) in which both syntactic elements and information structures can be moved freely by speakers’ pragmatic intention. Thus, the main factor for this flexibility is the speakers’ pragmatic intention.