objectespecially

Objectespecially is a term used in linguistics to describe a type of object-focused emphasis in clauses. Coined to capture a pattern where the direct object is marked as especially salient within an event described by the sentence, the term denotes a dimension of information structure rather than a fixed morphosyntactic category. The coinage blends "object" and "especially" to signal that emphasis targets the object rather than the subject or the whole clause.

In practice, objectespecially can be realized through prosody, word order, or dedicated focus markers, depending on the language. In languages with overt focus particles, a device preceding or surrounding the object draws attention to it; in English and other languages, the emphasis often appears via increased stress or contrastive intonation, sometimes accompanied by coincident context or discourse focus.

Examples are typically presented without prescriptive rules, but common realizations include phrases like I want THAT book, where "that book" carries heightened prominence; and in languages with clitics or particles, objectespecially markers may attach to the object phrase.

In linguistic research, objectespecially is discussed as part of broader information-structure phenomena such as focus, contrast, and topic marking. It is used as a descriptive label for cross-linguistic patterns rather than a unified grammatical category.

Applications include annotation schemes for corpora and modeling in natural language processing, where recognizing object-focused emphasis can improve parsing, dialogue understanding, and translation. Some scholars view objectespecially as a useful heuristic, while others argue for integrating it into general theories of focus and information structure.