Talk:Focus (linguistics)

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The earlier version of this article presented a false dichotomy between "generative" and "functionalist" approaches. Given that the brief characterization of the latter was not cited, it is hard to know what specifically the author meant to refer to as "functionalist," but the diversity and differences amongst theories of Focus amongst people who would not consider themselves "generative" (and only a few of whom would consider themselves "functionalist," whatever that is intended to mean) is probably greater than the difference between some of them and the kind of approach outlined in the article. Anyway, I have corrected this polemical gambit, added some actual citations, and removed the empty section 'Functional approaches' since it is highly unlikely that anyone would ever fill it in anyway.Davidjamesbeck (talk) 21:40, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

I think this article is also a bit disingenuous in suggesting that there is only one generative approach to Focus and that the view here is the consensus view. Certainly the definition of Focus that was given is not that found in a lot of generative work (e.g., the papers in and cited by papers in Camacho, et al 2010), and the structural treatments described here strike me as rather parochial, though I'll happily leave that for theory-insiders to decide. Davidjamesbeck (talk) 21:35, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Figure 2 is wrong; the denotation of Mary should be m not s. 75.94.0.140 (talk) 15:15, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the reference for Krifka is missing. I know there is a 2008 paper called 'Basic Notions of Information Structure' but the entry seems to be older than that. Any ideas? Thanks. Agnjeschka (talk) 11:11, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

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)


 * In addition, this article makes it seem like the notion of focus must be discussed from either a generative point of view or a functional point of view (by the way, the section for the functional point of view is currently hilarious, comprising nothing but the words "This section requires expansion."). This articles is neither a neutral nor an effective introduction to the notion of focus. 76.93.41.50 (talk) 20:53, 6 November 2009 (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 w&#603;&#769; (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]

&mdash; mark &#9998; 11:12, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Let's be honest, this article is terrible. First of all, topic and focus do not stem from or belong to generative approaches. I suggest deleting the whole thing and redirecting to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topic_and_comment That one can be fleshed out, sure, but it at least starts from the general, instead of being bald-faced excuse for a specific, over-detailed, non-consensus view. 188.238.173.145 (talk) 06:57, 7 March 2017 (UTC)