Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

(5) Gilgamesh and the Netherworld, Version A [1.8.1.4], ll. 254-277
254a. lu 2 dumu.ni 1.am 3 igi bi 2.du 8.am 3 (Gilgamesh:) Did you see a man who had
254b. igi bi 2.du 8.am 3
266
one son?
(Enkidu:) I saw such a man,
254c. a.na.gin 7 an.ak (Gilgamesh:) How does he fare?
255. œiß gag e 2.œar 8.a.na ab.du 3.a (Enkidu:) He weeps bitterly at the wooden
gig.ga i.i peg which was driven into his wall,
256a. lu 2 dumu.ni 2.am 3 igi bi 2.du 8.am 3 (Gilgamesh:) Did you see a man who had
256b. igi bi 2.du 8.am 3
two sons?
(Enkidu:) I saw such a man.
256c. a.na.gin 7 an.ak (Gilgamesh:) How does he fare?
257. sig 4 2.a al.tuß ninda al.gu 7.e (Enkidu:) He sits on a couple of bricks,
eating bread,
This is certainly an interesting passage from a number of perspectives—note that the
question and the answer in (254a) and (254b) as well as (256a) and (256b) are each, at
least in orthographic terms, identical in form—but the frequent use of the copula in such
a passage prevents any clear demarcation of focus and presupposition in the passage. In
the following section, I turn to a particular morphosyntactic environment, namely the
*XP nam bi-√ construction, so as to demarcate focus and presupposition with some
precision. The relevance of this particular construction is that, in this environment, the
focused constituent regularly occurs in the middle of two well-demarcated,
presuppositional constituents: the possessive pronoun topic-marking construction to its