Focus–cleft merger

This proposal, which may colloquially be termed the kü proposal, wishes to merge three features of the language:

• Focus markers, like kú (pure focus), máo ‘also’ and tó ‘only’.
• Clefts using nä, like Máoja nä chuq jí hóa ‘I eat the bananas’.
• Topic phrases, introduced by bï, like Báq maoja bï, he bu cho jí hóa ‘As far as bananas go, I don’t like them’.

Focus marker clefts

We’ll be assuming the Simple Focus proposal applies. It makes all focus markers always bear , displacing the complex and incomplete rules found in the refgram. It also frees for us, which will be useful right below:

Essentially, allow focus kü phrase, with exactly the same semantics as kú focus nä phrase. hóa is still bound in case of a noun phrase. Examples examples:

Máoja kü chuq jí hóa

[= Kú máoja nä chuq jí hóa]

[= Chuq jí kú máoja]

‘It is the banana I’m eating’

Báq kanı tö deq peo hóa ní chuao

[= Tó báq kanı nä deq peo hóa ní chuao]

[= Deq peo tó báq kanı ní chuao]

‘Only rabbits can slip through this hole’

Ní chuao tö deq peo báq kanı hóa

[= Tó ní chuao nä deq peo báq kanı hóa]

[= Deq peo báq kanı tó ní chuao]

‘It is just this hole that rabbits are able to pass’

He râo báq kıachaq bëı loı jí tú

[= He, ꝡä béı râo báq kıachaq nä loı jí tú]

‘It’s on Mondays (not on some other implied occasion / under some other implied condition) that I hate everything’

The win from this is that you get to combine focus and clefting, bringing the focused material to the front. This operation would remain optional, i.e., Chuq jí kú máoja would still remain in the language for you to use.

The focus marker bí

The idea is to take the generic pattern above, flip it, and apply it to bï:

topıc bï phrase → bí topıc nä phrase phrase … bí topıc …

For instance:

Báq maoja bï, he bu cho jí hóa ‘As for bananas, I don’t like them’

Bí báq maoja nä he bu cho jí hóa ‘ibid.’

He bu cho jí bí báq maoja ≈ ‘I don’t like bananas, if we’re speaking of bananas’

(Note that there is no semantic difference between these three forms – we’re just trying to demonstrate what this newborn bí means by reflecting it in the translation.)

The win here, in turn, is that we now get to topicalize any part of the sentence in afterthought, including at the far end of the sentence (as in the example – bí báq maoja came in at the veeery end). In addition, we may now topicalize any grammatical structure that kú can: he bı̣maı jí tó báq leuq ‘I love – as far as love/loving goes – queers and no others’.

Also note that this would extend bï’s range to adverbials. The official preference for AdverbialP in CompTopicP would be for it to mean something different than what nä does. In our proposal, we have to give bí/bï equal rights, so semantically we may assume that clause … bí phrase … actually compiles down to what would officially be phrased as

phrase bï, phrase nä clause.

In other words, the focused (or should I say topicked?) clause is reasserted (kept intact), but also raised/copied as the topic. So for Fa jí bí râo níchaq, instead of ‘As for [something being] today, I go’ (see reference), we should expect ‘As for [something being] today, I go today’.