Focus excluding alternatives: Conjoint/disjoint marking in Makhuwa

A prevalent definition of focus is that of alternative semantics: focus evokes a set of alternatives that are relevant for the interpretation of the sentence. This paper examines a focus marking mechanism in the Bantu language Makhuwa-Enahara. Of two alternating verb forms in this language (named conjoint and disjoint), the conjoint verb form evokes and excludes alternatives for the referent of the element directly following the verb. The different grammaticality judgements for the conjoint form with focus particles ‘even’ and ‘only’, with quantifiers and in alternative questions, as well as the use of the conjoint form in contrastive, selective and corrective environments suggests that the element following the conjoint verb form may be interpreted as exhaustive (excluding all alternatives) but must at least form a proper subset (excluding some alternatives). Analyses like underspecifiation of the focus interpretation or a predicative procedure face difficulties, and hence it is concluded that it is possible to encode in the grammar the notion of focus as excluding alternatives.