In linguistics, focus (abbreviated ) is a grammatical category that conveys the part of the sentence that contributes new, non-derivable, or contrastive information. In the English sentence "Mary only insulted BILL", focus is expressed prosodically by a pitch accent on "Bill", which identifies him as the only person whom Mary insulted. By contrast, in the sentence "Mary only INSULTED Bill", the verb "insult" is focused and thus expresses that Mary performed no other actions towards Bill. Focus is a cross-linguistic phenomenon and a major field of study in linguistics. Research on focus spans numerous subfields including phonetics, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics.

Functional approaches

Information structure has been described at length by a number of linguists as a grammatical phenomenon. Lexicogrammatical structures that code prominence, or focus, of some information over other information has a particularly significant history dating back to the 19th century. Recent attempts to explain focus phenomena in terms of discourse function, including those by Knud Lambrecht and Talmy Givón, often connect focus with the packaging of new, old, and contrasting information. Lambrecht in particular distinguishes three main types of focus constructions: predicate-focus structure, argument-focus structure, and sentence-focus structure. Focus has also been linked to other more general cognitive processes, including attention orientation.

In such approaches, contrastive focus is understood as the coding of information that is contrary to the presuppositions of the interlocutor. The topic–comment model distinguishes between the topic (theme) and what is being said about that topic (the comment, rheme, or focus).

Formalist approaches

Standard formalist approaches to grammar argue that phonology and semantics cannot exchange information directly (See Fig. 1). Therefore, syntactic mechanisms, including features and transformations, include prosodic information regarding focus that is passed to the semantics and phonology. thumb|right|Fig. 1 The Y-Model of Syntax, Semantics and Phonology Focus may be highlighted prosodically, syntactically or both, depending on the language. In syntax, this can be shown by assigning focus markers, as shown in (1), or by preposing as shown in (2):

:(1) I saw [JOHN] <sub>f</sub>.

:(2) [JOHN] <sub>f</sub>, I saw.

In (1), focus is marked syntactically with the subscripted ‘f’, which is realized phonologically by a nuclear pitch accent. Clefting induces an obligatory intonation break. Therefore, in (2), focus is marked via word order and a nuclear pitch accent.

In English, focus also relates to phonology and has ramifications for how and where suprasegmental information, such as rhythm, stress, and intonation, is encoded in the grammar, and in particular intonational tunes that mark focus. Speakers can use pitch accents on syllables to indicate what word(s) are in focus. New words are often accented while given words are not. The accented word(s) forms the focus domain. However, not all of the words in a focus domain need be accented. (See for rules on accent placement and focus-marking). The focus domain can be either broad, as shown in (3), or narrow, as shown in (4) and (5):

:(3) Did you see a grey dog or a cat? I saw [a grey DOG] <sub>f</sub>.

:(4) Did you see a grey dog or a grey cat? I saw a grey [DOG] <sub>f</sub>.

:(5) Did you see a grey dog or a black dog? I saw a [GREY] <sub>f</sub> dog.

The question/answer paradigm shown in (3)–(5) has been utilized by a variety of theorists to illustrate the range of contexts where a sentence containing focus can be used felicitously. Specifically, the question/answer paradigm has been used as a diagnostic for what counts as new information. For example, the focus pattern in (3) would be infelicitous if the question was ‘Did you see a grey dog or a black dog?’.

In (3) and (4), the pitch accent is marked in bold. In (3), the pitch accent is placed on dog but the entire noun phrase a grey dog is under focus. In (4), the pitch accent is also placed on dog but only the noun dog is under focus. In (5), pitch accent is placed on grey and only the adjective grey is under focus.

Historically, generative proposals made focus a feature bound to a single word within a sentence. Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle formulated a Nuclear Stress Rule that proposed there to be a relation between the main stress of a sentence and a single constituent. Since this constituent is prominent sententially in a way that can contrast with lexical stress, this was originally referred to as "nuclear" stress. The purpose of this rule was to capture the intuition that, within each sentence, there is one word in particular that is accented more prominently because of its importance, which is said to form the nucleus of that sentence.

thumb|right|Left periphery structure, according to Rizzi (1997)

Focus was later suggested to be a structural position at the beginning of the sentence (or on the left periphery) in Romance languages such as Italian, as the lexical head of a Focus Phrase (or FP, following the X-bar theory of phrase structure). Jackendoff, Selkirk, Krifka, Schwarzschild Krifka, claim that there are lexical items and construction specific-rules that refer directly to the notion of focus. Dryer, Kadmon, Marti, Roberts, Vallduvi, and Williams argue for accounts in which general principles of discourse explain focus sensitivity. defines given as "anaphorically" recoverable, while new is defined to be "textually and situationally non-derivable information". To illustrate that point, consider the following discourse in (12) and (13):

:(12) Why don't you have some French TOAST?

:(13) I’ve forgotten how to MAKE French toast.

In (13), the verb make is not given by the sentence in (12). It is discourse new. Therefore, it is available for accentuation. However, toast in (13) is given in (12). Therefore, it is not available for accentuation. As previously mentioned, pitch accenting can relate to focus. Accented words are often said to be in focus or F-marked often represented by F-markers. The relationship between accent placement is mediated through the discourse status of particular syntactic nodes. The percolation of F-markings in a syntactic tree is sensitive to argument structure and head-phrase relations. Accent placement is determined by a set of violable, hierarchically ranked constraints as shown in (24):

:(24)

::a. GIVENness: A constituent that is not F-marked is given.

::b. Foc: A Foc-marked phrase contains an accent

::c. AvoidF: Do not F-mark

::d. HeadArg: A head is less prominent than its internal argument.

The ranking Schwarzschild and Boersma that more fluidly accounts for how speakers accent words in discourse.

See also

  • Information structure
  • Topic–comment
  • Topic-prominent language
  • Question under discussion
  • Squiggle operator

Notes

References

  • Cinque, Guglielmo (1993). "A null theory of phrase and compound stress". Linguistic Inquiry 24: 239–267.
  • Neeleman, Ad and Tanya Reinhart (1998). "Scrambling and the PF-Interface". In The Projection of Arguments, CSLI Publications, 309–353.
  • Ocampo, Francisco (2003). "On the notion of focus in spoken Spanish: An empirical approach". In Theory, Practice, and Acquisition, ed. by Paula Kempchinsky and Carlos-Eduardo Pineros. Sommerville: Cascadilla Press, 207–226.
  • Pereltsvaig, Asya (2002). "Topic and focus as linear notions: evidence from Russian and Italian". Proceedings of the Conference on the Interaction between Syntax and Pragmatics at UCL.
  • Szendrői, Kriszta (2004). 'Focus and the interaction between syntax and pragmatics'. Lingua 114(3), 229–254.
  • Xu, Y., C. X. Xu and X. Sun (2004). 'On the temporal domain of focus'. In Proceedings of International Conference on Speech Prosody 2004, Nara, Japan: 81–84.