Hi—
\placeinitial seems to fail when there is a footnote in the paragraph. At
least

\startparagraph
\placeinitial \input ward \footnote{A footnote.}
\stopparagraph


only works when the footnote is commented out.

I am running lmtx [ConTeXt  ver: 2023.06.22  LMTX  fmt: 2023.6.26]

Alan