Contextual triggers of the Hungarian pre-verbal focus structure
A guided production study
Tamás Káldi | Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences | Department of Cognitive Sciences, Budapest University of Technology and Economics
Levente Madarász | Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Anna Babarczy | Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences | Department of Cognitive Sciences, Budapest University of Technology and Economics
The study uses a novel experimental method to investigate contextual factors claimed in the theoretical literature to license
the use of Hungarian pre-verbal focus. These factors are: (i) identification, (ii) contrast, (iii) availability of a set on
which the focus operates and (iv) whether this set is explicit or implicit. We tested the effects of these factors using
online surveys in which respondents read short texts describing a context and saw a cloud of randomly arranged words. The
experimental task was to create sentences that naturally fit the context by clicking the words in the cloud. Results show that
narrow identification and contrast reliably predict the use of pre-verbal focus as does the availability of a set regardless
of explicitness.
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2021. Hungarian Structural Focus: Accessibility to Focused Elements and Their Alternatives in Working Memory and Delayed Recognition Memory. Frontiers in Psychology 12
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