(Non-)exhaustivity in focus partitioning across languages
We present novel experimental evidence on the availability and the status of exhaustivity inferences with focus partitioning in
German, English, and Hungarian. Results suggest that German and English focus-background clefts and Hungarian focus share
important properties, (É. Kiss 1998, 1999; Szabolcsi 1994; Percus
1997; Onea & Beaver 2009). Those constructions are anaphoric
devices triggering an existence presupposition. EXH-inferences are not obligatory in such constructions in English, German, or
Hungarian, against some previous literature (Percus 1997; Büring & Križ 2013; É. Kiss 1998), but in line with
pragmatic analyses of EXH-inferences in clefts (Horn 1981, 2016; Pollard & Yasavul 2016). The
cross-linguistic differences in the distribution of EXH-inferences are attributed to properties of the Hungarian number
marking system.
Article outline
- 1.Focus partitioning: A cross-linguistically unified discourse phenomenon
- 2.Focus partitioning: Morphosyntax and interpretation
- 3.Testing for EXH-inferences in an incremental information retrieval paradigm
- 3.1Experimental set-up
- 3.2Theoretical accounts and predictions for clefts and definite pseudoclefts
- 3.3Procedure
- 4.EXH-inference in German and English clefts: Results and analysis
- 4.1Results: A first look
- 4.2Post-hoc analysis: Different sub-groups
- 4.3Accommodating discourse antecedents (Pollard & Yasavul 2016)
- 5.Hungarian preverbal focus: Results and analysis
- 6.Outlook: Anaphoricity vs. EXH-inferences in focus partitioning
-
Notes
-
References
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