Simple Focus

Simple Focus is a simplifying reform of how focus particles work in Toaq Delta.

Official rules

More on this in the refgram
Syntax: Focus

Officially, focus particles "steal the tone" of heads they attach to:

(181) Chuq jí béı shamu.
(No,) it was the apple that I ate.

(183) kû rao kíachaq
on Monday

Does sentence (181) focus just "apple", or "the apple"? There is a paragraph saying

When attached to a head, the entire phrases projected by the head receives focus.

But then in this example, focus is attached to a V, and yet it isn't the whole VP that receives focus:

(182) Leo kụrıatua jí héqma.
I'm trying to open the container.

Simplified rules

• Attaching a focus prefix ku- to a single word always focuses just that word.
• Placing a focus word kú before a head always focuses the whole phrase that it projects.
  • This means kú sá hao and kú râo níchaq and kú ꝡä nuo jí focus that whole constituent.
• There is no tone-stealing. You'll never see kû or kü or ku.

Examples:

Chuq jí béı ké shamu.
(No,) it was the apple that I ate.
béı precedes a determiner ké, so the whole DP is focused.

Chuq jí ké bẹıshamu.
(No,) it was the apple that I ate.
beı- is prefixed onto shamu, so just that verb is focused.

Chuq jí bẹ́ıshamu.
(No,) it was the apple that I ate.
Again, beı- is prefixed onto shamu. The result is wrapped in .

Chuq jí bẹ́ıke shamu.
(No,) it was the apple that I ate.
beı- is prefixed onto ké, so just the determiner is focused (e.g. the apple as opposed to an apple).

Leo kụrıatua jí héqma.
I'm trying to open the container.
ku- is prefixed onto rıatua, so just the verb is focused.

kú râo kíachaq
on Monday
kú precedes the Adjunct head , so the AdjunctP râo kíachaq is focused.

kụ̂rao kíachaq
on Monday
ku- is prefixed onto the verb rao, so just that verb is focused. The result is wrapped in .

Dua nháo kú ꝡä chıeche jí.
(No,) she knows that I'm a student.
kú precedes the complementizer ꝡä, so the entire CP is focused.

Dua nháo kụ̈ꝡa chıeche jí.
(No,) she knows that I'm a student.
ku- is prefixed onto ꝡä, so just the complementizer is focused (e.g. that I'm a student as opposed to whether I am one).

What about V?

If we follow the rule about kú to its logical conclusion, we end up with kú verb meaning something a little surprising — it's probably unintuitive if you don't know Toaq syntax.

Leo kú rıatua jí héqma.
I'm trying to open the container.
kú precedes the verb rıatua, so the VP rıatua … héqma is focused.

It's good to have an interpretation for this placement, but it might be better to limit the placement of kú to only those heads/phrases that have more obvious boundaries.