FOCUS PROJECTION IN BULGARIAN ENGLISH FROM AN EMPIRICAL PERSPECTIVE: COMPARISON WITH BRITISH ENGLISH

Abstract

This paper investigates focus projection in Bulgarian English from an empirical perspective. The term Bulgarian English is used to refer to a variety of English spoken by English teachers who were born and have lived in Sofia, and have Bulgarian as their mother tongue and English as a foreign language. The introductory section views focus projection as a natural phenomenon in language. The literature overview pays attention to major studies dealing with focus projection in English. The next section presents an experiment which has two main tasks: first, to test whether focus projection exists in Bulgarian English, and second, if projection is found, to study its behaviour. The concluding section analyses the results of the experiment in comparison with British English.