There is a tradition in focus particle research (cf., e.g., Jacobs 1983, Dimroth 1998) to assume that one may learn all there is to know about the prototypical properties of the various subclasses of focus particles by restricting oneself to the prototypical members of these classes, i.e. by focusing on nur, sogar, auch if one's object language is German or only, even, and too (or also) for the case of English focus particles. In our paper we will challenge this approach.

From a methodological point of view, it seems reasonable to assume that one has to know the complete lexical field (or subclass of focus particles, in this case) before being able to judge whether or not a certain lexical element indeed shows all prototypical properties of the subclass, on the one hand, and which of the properties of the lexical element chosen is prototypical for its class, and which is idiosyncratic, on the other. We will illustrate this by scrutinizing the syntactic and semantic properties of a number of elements of one such subclass, to wit, the restrictive focus particles in Dutch, of which alleen (`only') is the most common element, in order to be able to judge which properties of alleen should be considered prototypical.

References

Dimroth, Christine. 1998. Fokuspartikeln und Informationsgliederung im Diskurs. FU Berlin dissertation.

Jacobs, Joachim. 1983. Fokus und Skalen. Zur Syntax und Semantik der Gradpartikeln im Deutschen. Tübingen: Niemeyer.