The focus constituent is focus-marked and precedes the verb, whereas non-focused constituents can follow the verb (subject as afterthought). The following sentence is the answer to the question 'What did Joachim cook?'. In all these cases, the marking of noun and verb indicates that the focus constructions must have emerged from cleft-constructions (hence the alternative glossing in the following examples with 3SG and SR). Sentences marked with respect to focus generally have a smaller potential for inflection than neutral sentences. Therefore, some grammatical categories (like optative, imperative) which are expressed by suffixation can not be realised when the sentence is marked with respect to focus. Questions which are asking for the subject or direct object need to be focus-marked, while the answers can be focused or neutral. To mark the questions, the allomorphs "-na" (masc.) and "-lak" (fem.) are used for focus marking. Inanimate referents are always marked with "-na". This can be explained by assuming that the question words used to be marked twice with the demonstrative pronouns "-(a)n" (masc.) and "-(a)t" (fem.), which due to phonological processes evolved to the current focus suffixes. (6) kada-an > kadan > kadan-an > kadana   (7) kada-at > kadat > kadat-at > kadalat > kadalak   If it is not asked for the subject or the direct objec, another possibility is a neutral question. In negated sentences, focus marking causes extraordinary structures. The negation particle "ana" which is placed before the verb receives a congruency marker. The following examples illustrate this with focus on the subject. In sentences, in which the predicate is negated, the negation is carried out periphrastically with "-lapman" 'without'.