Talk:Focus (linguistics)
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This article suggests that Chomsky's treatment as one of the "early proposals". However, people worked on focus much earlier - for example Vilem Mathesius in 1930's used the notion psychological predicate. And I am sure he got that from some earlier work by some German linguist(s). Jirka6 19:55, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Some relevant stuff coming from Gbe languages:
- Focus is used to draw attention to a particular part of the utterance, to signify contrast or to emphasize something. Focus is expressed in Gbe languages by leftward movement of the focused element and by way of a focus marker wɛ́ (Gungbe, Fongbe), yé (Gengbe) or é (Ewegbe), suffixed to the focused element.
- àxwé yé Kòfí tù (house FOC Kofi build-PERF) Kofi built A HOUSE (Gengbe, focus) [source: Aboh 2004]
