Focus in Ecuadorian Quechua

This paper provides a brief description of how pragmatically marked focus is encoded in Ecuadorian Quechua. 1 While this is a preliminary study based on data from one speaker, this variety of Quechua is under-documented, and this in-progress study is a contribution nonetheless Clauses with focus reveal pragmatic nuances that differ from other clause types. 2 I will illustrate the effects of focus by contrasting focused and unfocused sentences. Marked focus can occur in two different scopes. If the entire clause is focused, the scope is truth-value focus. 3 Example (1) shows an unfocused sentence, while (2) asserts the truth-value of the focused statement.