Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

4.6 Contrastive/identificational focus and the thetic/categorical
opposition
Given the fact that the example in the previous section is unique among *XP nam bi-√
constructions in a number of respects, it obviously cannot serve as a model for
interpreting the other exemplars, but it does at least raise the issue of the
thetic/categorical opposition and its relation to contrastive focus. Since all of the
examples of the *XP nam bi-√ construction necessarily represent examples of contrastive
focus, I turn initially to a further explication of contrastive focus, followed by a
discussion of the interactions between contrastive focus and the thetic/categorical
opposition.
Kiss (1998) argues that there are two basic types of focus: identificational focus and
informational focus. Identificational focus, which I have generally termed contrastive
focus above, can be distinguished from informational focus on the basis of both
morphosyntactic and semantic criteria. The semantic criteria have been outlined in some
detail above, but in terms of morphosyntax, identificational focus regularly moves the
focused constituent to the left periphery or puts it into some other distinctive syntactic
configuration such as the copular construction in Sumerian. In the two pairs of examples
that follow, from Greek (41) and Finnish (42) respectively, constituents under
identificational focus appear in bold, while items bearing informational focus are in
capitals (Kiss 1998, 246, ex. 2 and 3).
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