New information focus provides new information in the form of a single constituent. This kind of focus is also called identificational focus, or narrow focus. The focused element in TİD may occupy different positions in a sentence. It can occur in the sentence-initial position.
yesterday[focus], chıld garden ball play
‘The child played ball in the garden yesterday.’
(Makaroğlu 2012: 67)
The focused element may also occur in the sentence-final position.
chıld garden ball play yesterday[focus]
‘The child played ball in the garden yesterday.’
(Makaroğlu 2012: 67)
In both of these sentences, the salient part that the signer conveys is ‘yesterday’.
The answer to a wh-question which asks for the identification of a particular entity or state of affairs, such as ‘What did the man kick?’, contains a constituent which carries new information focus. Clefted constituents in a wh-cleft also carry new information focus. ball below is new information.
man footCL(6):‘kıck’ round_obj.CL(/):‘go’ ıx3a what ball
‘What the man kicked (and as a consequence went) was a ball.’
(adapted from Kayabaşı in progress)
Self-corrective focus occurs in narrative discourse where the signer confuses the referents and self-corrects. These are typically marked prosodically with closed-eyes, raised eye-eyebrows, and optionally, a change in head position mostly actualized as a head-shake - the latter two of which correlate with the non-manual marking of negation in TİD (Gökgöz 2011). Corrective focus below is on cat.
ce
br
man CL(B):‘use_stetoscope’ cat CL(B):‘use_stetoscope’
‘The man… no, the cat is using the statoscope.’
(Gökgöz in progress)