focmulkind

Focmulkind is a term used in linguistic theory to denote a hypothetical grammatical category that merges focus marking with kind-level information on noun phrases. It is proposed to mark not only which element is in focus, but also the kind or class to which that element belongs, within the same grammatical marker or closely linked elements.

The name focmulkind is a portmanteau drawn from focus, multiplicity or kind, and kind terms. The concept appears in speculative discussions about how languages encode attention to a class of referents and how such encoding might interact with other grammatical features like number, definiteness, or classifier systems.

In proposed accounts, a focmulkind marker can be realized as a suffix, clitic, or separate particle and may co-occur with other markers such as determiner or case. The hallmark idea is that the marker simultaneously signals focus and a generic or specific kind of noun, rather than just signaling the identity of a referent. This can influence word order, scope of attention in discourse, and interpretation of the noun phrase.

Usage and interpretation are highly speculative and subject to cross-linguistic variation. Some typological sketches imagine agglutinative or isolating languages where a single morpheme or particle carries both focus and kind information, while others treat focmulkind as a theoretical construct to model interactions between attention in discourse and categorization of referents.

See also: focus, typology, evidentiality, classifiers, kind terms.