Focus–cleft merger: Difference between revisions

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This {{proposal}}, which may colloquially be termed the {{class|kü}} proposal, wishes to merge two features of the language:
This {{proposal}}, which may colloquially be termed the {{class|kü}} proposal, wishes to merge these seemingly heterogeneous features together: [[focus, topic, cleft]]s. In short, it does this by allowing focus markers to conjugate into clefts ({{class|kú}} → {{class|kü}}), and then runs the logic the opposite way to arrive at {{t|bí}}.
* [[Focus marker]]s, which attach to words or phrases and which express a relation of the marked material with respect to the rest of the clause – e.g., {{t|kú}} highlights information that the listener should consider as new and important, {{t|tó}} states it is only this choice of value that satisfies the clause, etc. For instance, {{t|Chuq jí kú máoja}} would translate as ‘I am eating ''the banana''’ or ‘It is the banana that I’m eating’.
* [[Cleft]]s, or {{t|nä}} phrases, which allow one to place a noun phrase or an adverbial at the front of a clause, and in the former case refer back to the noun phrase with {{t|hóa}}, primarily for convenience and not for focus. For instance, {{t|Máoja nä chuq jí hóa}} is another way of saying {{t|Chuq jí máoja}} but possibly more convenient (especially if instead of {{t|máoja}} we’re dealing with a looong phrase).
* [[Topic|Topic phrases]], or {{t|bï}} phrases, which serve the opposite function to focus markers: they set the backdrop or context for the focused information. For instance, {{t|Báq maoja bï, bu cho jí hóa}} ‘As far as bananas go, I don’t like them’.
As a fun fact, the English construction found in ‘It is the banana that I’m eating’, which extracts ‘the banana’ to the front of the clause this way, is itself called a [[wikipedia:cleft|cleft (Wikipedia link)]]! You should see where we’re going with this.


==The tofu<ref>assuming the [[wikipedia:vegetarianism|vegetarianism]] proposal applies</ref> of the proposal==
== Focus marker clefts ==
:We’ll be assuming [[User:Lynn|Lynn]]’s [[Simple Focus]] proposal applies. (tl;dr, it makes all {{class|kú}} always bear {{done|2}}, displacing the complex and incomplete rules found in the refgram, and also makes some additional statements about the scope prefixes operate on, which is ''also'' irregular officially.) It also frees {{done|3}} for us, which will be useful right below:
We’ll be assuming the [[Simple Focus]] proposal applies. It makes all focus markers always bear {{done|2}}, displacing the complex and incomplete rules found in the refgram. It also frees {{done|3}} for us, which will be useful right below:


===The part where we let focus markers be clefts===
Essentially, allow {{t|{{small caps|focus}} {{class|kü}} {{small caps|phrase}}}}, with exactly the same semantics as {{t|{{class|kú}} {{small caps|focus}} nä {{small caps|phrase}}}}. {{t|hóa}} is still bound in case of a noun phrase. Examples examples:
Essentially, allow {{t|{{small caps|focus}} {{class|kü}} {{small caps|phrase}}}}, with exactly the same semantics as {{t|{{class|kú}} {{small caps|focus}} nä {{small caps|phrase}}}}. {{t|hóa}} is still bound in case of a noun phrase. Examples examples:


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:‘Only rabbits can slip through this hole’
:‘Only rabbits can slip through this hole’


:{{t|Ní chuao tö deq peo báq kanı hóa}}
:{{t|Ní chuao jüaq deq peo báq kanı hóa}}
:[= {{t|Tó ní chuao nä deq peo báq kanı hóa}}]
:[= {{t|Júaq ní chuao nä deq peo báq kanı hóa}}]
:[= {{t|Deq peo báq kanı tó ní chuao}}]
:[= {{t|Deq peo báq kanı júaq ní chuao}}]
:‘It is just this hole that rabbits are allowed to pass’
:‘It is even this hole that rabbits are able to pass’


:{{t|He râo báq kıachaq bëı loı jí tú}}
:{{t|He râo báq kıachaq bëı loı jí tú}}
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:‘It’s on Mondays (not on some other implied occasion / under some other implied condition) that I hate everything’
:‘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., {{t|Chuq jí kú máoja}} would still remain in the language for you to use.


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., {{t|Chuq jí kú máoja}} would still remain in the language for you to use. The minor downside is that the signposting particle that announces focus – in this case, {{t|kü}} – now comes ''after'' the focused material.
== The focus marker {{t|bí}} ==
 
===The part where we let topic phrases be a focus marker===
The idea is to take the generic pattern above, flip it, and apply it to {{t|bï}}:
The idea is to take the generic pattern above, flip it, and apply it to {{t|bï}}:


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In other words, the focused (or should I say topicked?) clause is reasserted (kept intact), but also raised/copied as the topic. So for {{t|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’.
In other words, the focused (or should I say topicked?) clause is reasserted (kept intact), but also raised/copied as the topic. So for {{t|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’.


====A technical aside owing to {{t|bï}}’s semantics====
== {{t|ná}} ==
: tl;dr: Officially, {{t|bï}} should only take definite references. I posit that this means that {{t|bï}}’s topic must be reducible to something like λ𝑥′. 𝑥′ = 𝑥 for some predetermined 𝑥 : e. The section aims to expand this notion to all plausible topic phrase types if {{t|bí}} is to be expected to make any sense.
One silly consequence of running the {{done|2}} ↔︎ {{done|3}} logic both ways is that we may arrive at {{t|ná}}. {{t|ná}}’s definition (denotation) would literally be “do nothing” (more formally, λ𝑓𝑥.𝑓𝑥), so what use could it have? The one use I can think of is grammatical clarity: you can use it like a spoken comma or bracket or fence/signpost to make your long sentences easier to stomach:
 
<blockquote><poem>
{{t|bï}} is restricted to definite references – cross-linguistically, topic phrases cannot include an indefinite referent (‘as for some crocheting’ only makes sense if we read ‘some’ as {{t|ké}}; as {{t|sá}} it is infelicitous). For this reason, we need to set down a definition of what it means for a noun phrase (and any other kind of phrase, given that {{t|bí}} would be allowed to attach to anything that {{class|kú}} can) to be “definite”. For this reason, we must stipulate that determiners which always denote a unique maximal reference, like {{t|ké}}, exophoric {{done|2}}, or experimental {{t|cúaq}} – are definite, but then outer quantification may be flaky:
{{t|Jeq suao {{orange|ná, ꝡé do súq jí hóa,}} {{green|ná, ꝡé do jí súq hóa}} da.}}
 
<i>{{orange|The things you’ve given me}} are equally important as {{green|the things I’ve given you}}.</i>
: ?{{t|Chı tú poq, ꝡä póq bï, mıe hóa}} ‘Every person thinks that as far as that person goes, they’re alive’
</poem></blockquote>
 
Should this be allowed? (You tell me.) After all, within the scope of the {{t|ꝡä}}, {{t|póq}} is a reified maximal reference. But then this would not stop us from saying things like
 
: ?{{t|Tú poq nä póq bï, mıe hóa}} ‘Every person, as far as that person goes, is alive’,
 
which, by rote function application (since that’s what {{t|nä}}’s denotation is for noun phrases), boils down to
 
: *{{t|Tú poq bï, mıe hóa}},
 
which is known to be illicit. (Remember that the English phrasing ‘As for every person, they’re alive’ is misleading here – it invokes {{t|túq}} semantics, not {{t|tú}}!) Also, this doesn’t shed light on non-NP usages like {{t|bí râo níchaq}}/{{t|râo níchaq bï}}. Conversely, we can’t just ban usages of anaphors or quantification seeing as the following examples are all validly definite:
 
: {{t|Báq mala juku <u>sâ kanı</u> bï, uhuı hóa}} ‘Ones who have ever hunted a rabbit are evil’ (the predicate ‘who have ever hunted a rabbit’ is fully self-contained and can be {{t|báq}}ed into a definite reference)
 
: {{t|Hú poq nä, ké paı <u>hôa</u> bï, jaq zuoıde hóa}} ‘That person, as for their friend, they’re really elegant’ (beta-reducing the {{t|nä}} away we see that {{t|Ké paı hû poq bï, jaq zuoıde hóa}} is similarly self-contained and passes)
 
Let’s therefore carve out some theory by saying that a focus marker acts on an ordered pair of some '''fragment''' 𝑓 of type 𝘢 and some '''completion''' 𝑐′ of type 𝘢 → clause such that 𝑐′(𝑓) = 𝑐, the original clause. In other words, 𝑐′ could be understood as a “clause with a hole”, or a lambda expression with the bound variable appearing in place of the focused fragment. With that in place, we may treat focus markers as typed as 𝘢 → (𝘢 → clause) → clause. In the case of the {{t|ná}}/{{t|nä}} marker/cleft, for DPs specifically, its denotation is plain function specification: ⟦{{t|nä}}⟧ ≔ λ𝑓. λ𝑐′. 𝑐′(𝑓)), whereas other clefts do more convoluted semanticky things (such as attaching presuppositions) before putting the two cloven parts back together into a full clause. With this in hand we may posit a definition for definiteness which states that
 
: a phrase is '''definite''' within the context of a root (!) clause 𝑐 if a fragment–completion pair (𝑓, 𝑐′) '''may''' be expressed where 𝑓 is not a function with codomain t.
 
The peculiar ''root'' clause restriction lets us escape the gotcha that this section was introduced with.
 
For instance, consider the following decomposition of a usage of ⟦bí⟧:
 
: ⟦{{t|Cho jí bí báq rua}}⟧ = ⟦{{t|bí}}⟧(⟦{{t|báq rua}}⟧)(λ𝑓. ⟦{{t|cho jí}} 𝑓⟧)
 
All fine and good, but ⟦{{t|báq rua}}⟧ is of type ⟨e, t⟩. For definiteness, which we may understand as “having one, unique, maximal reference”, we should not accept a function with domain e, but a value that’s itself of type e. So in our case, if we assume {{t|báq}} if we refactor our decomposition as
 
: ⟦{{t|bí}}⟧(⟦{{t|báq rua}}⟧)(λ𝑓. ⟦{{t|cho jí}} 𝑓⟧) = ⟦{{t|bí}}⟧(rua-kind)((λ𝑓. ⟦{{t|cho jí jéı}} 𝑓⟧) (''Note: this is quite scuffed. I don’t exactly know how to expo this properly. If you know what’s going on then please edit as you please'')
 
Notice how this overlaps with the [[determiner test]], which states that a <code>(c 1)</code>-frame predicate 𝑃 is a determiner in disguise iff for all predicates 𝑄, {{t|sá}} 𝑃 𝑄 = {{t|tú}} 𝑃 𝑄 = {{t|báq}} 𝑃 𝑄 = etc., which another way to word is to say that 𝑃 : e → (e → t) → t is rephrasable as some 𝑃′ : (e → t) → e, which takes a unary predicate (e → t) and derives from it a unique reference (e). {{t|báq}}, {{t|ké}}, {{t|hú}} all have this property, which is to say that we may speak of a ⟦{{t|báq}}⟧′(⟦{{t|rua}}⟧) : e, which in the explication above was glossed over as “rua-kind”.


==References==
==References==
<references/>
<references/>

Latest revision as of 19:08, 6 December 2023

This proposal, which may colloquially be termed the kü proposal, wishes to merge these seemingly heterogeneous features together: focus, topic, clefts. In short, it does this by allowing focus markers to conjugate into clefts (kú → kü), and then runs the logic the opposite way to arrive at bí.

Focus marker clefts

We’ll be assuming the Simple Focus proposal applies. It makes all focus markers always bear rising tone, displacing the complex and incomplete rules found in the refgram. It also frees glottal tone 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 jüaq deq peo báq kanı hóa
[= Júaq ní chuao nä deq peo báq kanı hóa]
[= Deq peo báq kanı júaq ní chuao]
‘It is even 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[1]. 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’.

ná

One silly consequence of running the rising tone ↔︎ glottal tone logic both ways is that we may arrive at ná. ná’s definition (denotation) would literally be “do nothing” (more formally, λ𝑓𝑥.𝑓𝑥), so what use could it have? The one use I can think of is grammatical clarity: you can use it like a spoken comma or bracket or fence/signpost to make your long sentences easier to stomach:

Jeq suao ná, ꝡé do súq jí hóa, ná, ꝡé do jí súq hóa da.
The things you’ve given me are equally important as the things I’ve given you.

References

  1. ↑ Hoemaı on Discord:
    [Whether an AdjunctP can be the topic is u]ndecided currently, but if yes, then its meaning would be "as for [it/something being] today, I go ...", and not "Today, I go" (Níchaq bï fa jí or Râo níchaq nä fa jí are the alternatives).
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