Subject: focus (was: RE: [lojban] ka + makau (was: ce'u (was: vliju'a

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 02:14:20 +0100

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.