Focus in Aghem

Aghem focus marking has long been noted by researchers as an unusual phenomenon, both descriptively and theoretically. The main descriptive generalization is that focus expression in Aghem is intimately connected with the immediate postverbal position, which, since the pioneering work of Watters (1979) and Hyman (1979a), has been known under the abbreviation IAV (immediately after the verb). To illustrate, compare the baseline sentence in (1), where the focus is either on the entire verb phrase or on the object (narrow focus), with (2a), where the narrowly focused subject appears in the IAV, and (2b), where the focused adjunct instead appears in the IAV: