Huomiokohde

Huomiokohde, literally "attention target," is a term used in Finnish linguistics and discourse analysis to describe the element of a clause that is being highlighted or given focus in a conversation or text. It refers to the part of the sentence that the speaker intends the listener to pay particular attention to, often because it carries new, contrastive, or information-critical content.

In information-structure analyses, huomiokohde is closely related to focus. It can be realized in several ways, including prosody (emphasizing a syllable or word with intonation), word order, or syntactic devices such as focus constructions and clefting. In Finnish, the exact realization depends on context and discourse goals, and a given sentence may mark the huomiokohde differently across different utterances and speakers.

The huomiokohde is distinct from the topic of a sentence. The topic concerns what the sentence is about, while the huomiokohde concerns what the speaker wants to highlight as new, important, or contrastive in that particular utterance. Nevertheless, the same linguistic material can function as both topic and huomiokohde depending on how it is framed.

Example: in the neutral statement "Minä ostin uuden auton," the focus or huomiokohde can be on "uuden auton" if the speaker intends to emphasize it, which may be realized through contrastive stress: "Minä ostin uuden AUTON." Alternatively, a cleft or other focus strategy can mark the same element as the huomiokohde.

See also: information structure, focus, topic, Finnish grammar.