Broad and and narrow focus

Another way of analyzing the linguistic function of tonicity involves the notion of focus: the concentration of attention on a particular part of the message. When we utter a stretch of speech (an IP), we can either bring everything into fucus (broad focus), or we can focus selectively on one part of it (narrow focus). The part of the IP is placed in focus is called the focus domain. The nucleus marks the end of a focus domain.

Maximally broad focus means that the focus domain is the whole IP: everything in the IP is brought into focus. We would use broad focus, for example, in answer to the question What happened?

To give a stretch of utterance broad focus, we use neutral tonicity. The nucleus goes on the last lexical item:

In narrow focus only part of what we say is brought into focus. For example, if we asked a question, and in our answer we repeat part of the material from the question, then that old information will usually not be brought into focus. That is, the lexical items in the old information will not be accented. The nucleus shows where the focus domain ends.

All five versions of the answer have narrow focus. The focus domain is just the item Mary. The intonation indicates that we are concentrating attention on the relevant part (Mary), and not on the old, given, repeated material that follows Mary in the longer versions.

The nucleus tells us where the focus domain ends, and the onset may tell us where it begins (though not very reliably: see

). Consider these two possible 'turns' in a conversation: Both might elicit the answer The nucleus and nuclear tone could be the same, but the focus domains in the two cases would be different: in (i) it is drives a Ford Fiesta, but in (ii) just a Ford Fiesta. You cannot tell this from the intonation, only from the context. The focus is ambiguous