From a.rosta@ntlworld.com Mon Aug 13 18:16:04 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: a.rosta@ntlworld.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_1); 14 Aug 2001 01:16:04 -0000 Received: (qmail 53474 invoked from network); 14 Aug 2001 01:16:03 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l7.egroups.com with QMQP; 14 Aug 2001 01:16:03 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mta05-svc.ntlworld.com) (62.253.162.45) by mta1 with SMTP; 14 Aug 2001 01:16:03 -0000 Received: from andrew ([62.255.40.56]) by mta05-svc.ntlworld.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.00 201-229-121) with SMTP id <20010814011601.MSKO20588.mta05-svc.ntlworld.com@andrew> for ; Tue, 14 Aug 2001 02:16:01 +0100 To: Subject: focus (was: RE: [lojban] ka + makau (was: ce'u (was: vliju'a Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 02:14:20 +0100 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 In-Reply-To: From: "And Rosta" Xod: > On Fri, 10 Aug 2001, And Rosta wrote: [...] > > What exactly {kau} does is unclear. With non-Q + kau, kau is a > > focus marker. I don't yet understand whether with Q-kau it is > > only (a) a focus marker, only (b) an indicator of an indirect > > question, with no logical properties of its own, or (c) both > > (a-b). > > How do we define focus? I know what you mean, but can we define it? A notional definition, or a logical definition? Notionally, it's the key bit of information, the foregrounded bit. A helpful way to think about it is this: If you answer a question using a full sentence, the bit of the answer that supplies the key information is the focus. "Who did you give the book to?" -- "I have the book to John" -- "John" is focus. I don't think the 'keyness' and emphasizing nature of focus can be captured logically, but it is plausible (but far from certain, in my inestimable opinion) that focus necessarily involves abstracting the nonfocused portion of the bridi into a single property, which is then predicated of the focus. --And.