Focus

Focus markers
béı	focus and emphasis
kú	focus
máo	… also; … as well; … additionally
tó	only …; … exclusively
júaq	even …

More on this in the refgram
Syntax: Focus

Focus is a device for highlighting new and important information. In English, focus is often represented by emphasis or by word order. In Toaq, we have the luxury of tagging phrases with little markers like kú, known as focus markers, conveying the function and relevancy of the phrase with respect to the whole clause. Let’s look at how.

béı – the emphasis marker

The easiest focus marker to explain, and the perfect one to bootstrap your understanding with. béı’s function is to emphasize the phrase and to deny any suggestion to the contrary. We’re sitting in a café and you say:

Ma cho súq nóqse po káfe suqbo?
Do you like the taste of your coffee?

But it’s not coffee you’re drinking. Your order was different. This is where béı comes in – it serves to correct or contrast information. So you say back:

Haqsue jí béı báq chaı da!
I ordered tea!
It’s tea that I ordered – not something else that you may have implied!

Another example to hammer this idea in:

A: Do súq jí túpa shı ba.
Give me the pot [not pots].

B: Kéo tı sá tupa bẹıpuq nírıaq.
But there are multiple pots in here.

A: Sıanha, jé hao súq bẹ́ıtuq hao ba.
Never mind, so get me all of them [instead]. (Literally: Do stuff with all of the stuffs. How poetic indeed.)

Here we see B denying A’s claim that there’s one contextually relevant pot (because the kitchen had multiple in store), and then A also walking back the specifics of their request by instead asking for all of the pots and not [the] one. This is to highlight the fact that béı doesn’t need to target insinuations of the other person’s – they can equally well apply to something you yourself may earlier have implied to be the case. The sentences also demonstrate the use of the prefix form, beı-:

Focus markers vs. focus marker prefixes

Every focus marker has a homophonous prefix form: beı- for béı, to- for tó, etc. The only difference focus marker prefixes offer is that they act on just the word they’re attached to, whereas plain focus markers act on the entire following phrase. For instance, note the contrast between:

Jıbo béı túq nıu nıtı.
It’s all the plants here that are mine, (and not the wrapped gifts, for example)

Jıbo bẹ́ıtuq nıu nıtı.
It’s all the plants here [– not just some –] that are mine.

Jıbo túq nıu bẹınıtı.
It’s here [– not elsewhere –] that every plant there is mine.

Jıbo túq bẹınıu nıtı.
All of the plants here are mine. (These are plants, not flowers like you said.)

kú – the plain focus marker

kú is subtler. You might already use something like Toaq kú speaking English in your day-to-day life without realizing, by modulating the tone of your voice. All kú does is point at the information that’s new or relevant or makes the point of what you’re saying. One way to think about this is: there’s an implicit question you’re answering. What is that question asking for? That’s what kú is meant to show. The standard demonstration for this is one in which we emphasize different words in the same sentence and observe the results:

What are you up to? –
Chum som jí ní kompıuta.
I’m fixing this computer. (No special focus put on anything.)

Who’s fixing this computer? –
Chum som kú jí ní kompıuta.
It’s me who’s building the computer.

What are you working on fixing? –
Chum som jí kú ní kompıuta.
It’s this computer that I’m fixing.

What are you doing to the computer?
Chum kụsom jí ní kompıuta.
It’s fixing that I’m doing to this computer.

What is this thing you’re fixing?
Chum som jí ní kụkompıuta.
This thing is a computer that I’m fixing.

(This one is hard to phrase in English, so beware:) At what stage are you fixing this computer? Started, doing, done?
Kụchum som jí ní kompıuta.
It’s in the process of fixing the computer that I am.

kú vs. béı, again

Remember that kú merely points at information‚ whereas béı points and contrasts. This might be a nuanced distinction, but observe how it manifests in this example:

What are you having?
Chụmchuq jí kú báq maoja.
I’m eating a banana. (I’m answering your question and highlighting the actual answer.)

Chụmchuq jí béı báq maoja.
It’s a banana that I’m eating and not something else. Perhaps you very often see me eating apples, but today is not an apple day and I’m pointing this out to you.

“Focus adverbials”, or spicy markers

Let’s look at máo, tó, and júaq. Officially they’re called focus adverbials but you shouldn’t think of them as being any distinct from the other two.

Remember the emphasis exercise we did a while ago? A key observation in the case of adverbs like as well and only is that they target whatever in the sentence is emphasized. Observe:

• I only know his boyfriend. (Ambiguous.)
• I only know his boyfriend. (I haven’t really talked to him much.)
• I only know his boyfriend. (His friends and acquaintances, I don’t really know those.)

tó moves around the sentence in the same vein:

Zao jí tó máıgaq hobo dâ.
I only know his boyfriend, not the other people you’ve mentioned.

Tọzao jí máıgaq hobo dâ.
I only know his boyfriend, he and I don’t text.

Zao jí máıgaq tọhobo dâ.
I only know his boyfriend – I don’t know who your partner is, for example.