Focus, sensitivity, and the currency of the question

Abstract

According to Beaver and Clark (2008), a closed class of items, primarily particles like even or only, are systematically sensitive to focus, encoding a dependency on the Current Question (the CQ). This theory appears to give wrong predictions for exclusive particles like only in some cases where intuitively, what the particle associates with is not the (only) constituent in focus, – something else can be in focus instead or as well, even it itself. I conclude that while both focus itself and exclusive particles always address a Question, they do not always address the same.