Cover not available
Part of
Approaches to Hungarian: Volume 16: Papers from the 2017 Budapest Conference
Edited by Veronika Hegedűs and Irene Vogel
[Approaches to Hungarian 16] 2020
► pp. 207–230

(Non-)exhaustivity in focus partitioning across languages

| Universität Potsdam
| Universität Potsdam
| Universität Graz
| Universität Graz
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.
Keywords: clefts, definite pseudoclefts, Hungarian focus, exhaustivity, experimental evidence, semantics-pragmatics interface
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
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 8 April 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/atoh.16.10zim
References (51)
References
Abrusán, Márta. 2016. Presupposition cancellation: Explaining the ‘soft–hard’ trigger distinction. Natural Language Semantics 24. 165–202. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Balogh, Kata. 2009. Theme with variations. A context-based analysis of focus. PhD thesis. Universiteit van Amsterdam.
Beaver, David I. & Brady Z. Clark. 2008. Sense and sensitivity. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brody, Michael. 1990. Some remarks on the focus field in Hungarian. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 2. 201–225.Google Scholar
Büring, Daniel. 2016. Unalternative semantics. In Sarah D’Antonio, Mary Moroney & Carol Rose Little (eds.), Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 25. 550–575. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Büring, Daniel & Manuel Križ. 2013. It’s that, and that’s it! Exhaustivity and homogeneity presuppositions in clefts (and definites). Semantics and Pragmatics 6(6). 1–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Delin, Judy. 1992. Properties of it-cleft presupposition. Journal of Semantics 9. 289–306. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Destruel, Emilie & Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss. 2019. (Non-)Exhaustivity in French c’est-Clefts. In Christopher Pinon (ed.), Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 12 (EISS 12). Paris: CSSP.Google Scholar
Destruel, Emilie, Dan Velleman, Edgar Onea, Dillan Bumford, Jingyang Xue, & David Beaver. 2015. A cross-linguistic study of the non-at-issueness of exhaustive inferences. In Florian Schwarz (ed.), Experimental perspectives on presuppositions, 135–156. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
De Veaugh-Geiss, Joseph P., Malte Zimmermann, Edgar Onea & Anna-Christina Boell. 2015. Contradicting (not-)at-issueness in exclusives and clefts: An empirical study. In Sarah D’Antonio, Mary Moroney & Carol Rose Little (eds.), Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 25. 373–393. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Veaugh-Geiss, Joseph P., Swantje Tönnis, Edgar Onea & Malte Zimmermann. 2017. An experimental investigation of (non-)exhaustivity in es-clefts. In Rob Truswell (ed.), Sinn und Bedeutung 21 (SuB 21). University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar
. 2018. That’s not quite it: An experimental investigation of (non-)exhaustivity in clefts. Semantics & Pragmatics 11(3). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
É. Kiss, Katalin. 1987. Configurationality in Hungarian. Dordrecht: Reidel. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1998. Identificational focus versus information focus. Language 74. 245–273. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1999. The English cleft construction as a focus phrase. In Lunella Mereu (ed.), Boundaries of morphology and syntax, 217–229. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2015. Grammaticalized backgrounding: Preliminary version of grammaticalized backgrounding. In Johan Brandtler, David Håkansson, Stefan Huber & Eva Klingvall (eds.), Discourse and grammar: A Festschrift in honor of Valéria Molnár, 193–214. Lund University.Google Scholar
É. Kiss, Katalin & Lilla Pinter. 2014. Identificational focus revisited: The issue of exhaustivity. Paper presented at Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS) 50.
Erteschik-Shir, Nomi. 1997. The dynamics of focus structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Geurts, Bart & Rob van der Sandt. 2004. Interpreting focus. Theoretical Linguistics 30. 1–44. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grubic, Mira. 2015. Focus and alternative sensitivity in Ngamo (West Chadic). PhD thesis. Universität Potsdam.
Güldemann, Tom. 2016. Maximal backgrounding = focus without (necessary) focus encoding. Studies in Language 40(3). 551–590. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heim, Irene. 1982. The semantics of definite and indefinite noun phrases. PhD thesis. Amherst: University of Massachusetts.
Horn, Laurence R. 1981. Exhaustiveness and the semantics of clefts. In North Eastern Linguistic Society (NELS) 11, 125–142. Amherst: University of Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Horn, Laurence R. 2016. Information structure and the landscape of (non-)at-issue meaning. In Caroline Féry & Shinichiro Ishihara (eds.), The Oxford handbook of information structure, 108–127. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Horváth, Julia. 2010. "Discourse-Features", syntactic displacement and the status of contrast. Lingua 120. 1346–1369. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Junghanns, Uwe. 1997. On the so-called èto-cleft construction. In Martina Lindseth & Steven Franks (eds.), Proceedings of the sixth annual workshop on formal approaches to Slavic linguistics, 166–190. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Kamp, Hans & Uwe Reyle. 1993. From discourse to logic. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Kenesei, István. 1986. On the logic of word order in Hungarian. In Werner Abraham & Sjaak de Meij (eds.), Topic, focus and configurationality, 143–159. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2006. Focus as identification. In Valéria Molnár & Susanne Winkler (eds.), The architecture of focus, 137–168. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kimmelman, Vadim. 2009. On the interpretation of èto in so-called èto-clefts». In Gerhild Zybatow, Uwe Junghanns, Denisa Lenertová & Petr Biskup (eds.), Studies in formal Slavic phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and information structure: Proceedings of FDSL 7, 319–329. Frankfurt: Lang.Google Scholar
Krifka, Manfred. 2008. Basic notions of information structure. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 55. 243–276. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Onea, Edgar. 2007. Exhaustivity, focus and incorporation in Hungarian. In Maria Aloni, Paul Dekker & Floris Roelofsen (eds.), Proceedings of the Sixteenth Amsterdam Colloquium, 169–174. University of Amsterdam.Google Scholar
. 2016. Potential questions at the semantics-pragmatics interface. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2019. Exhaustivity in it-clefts. In Chris Cummins & Napoleon Katsos (eds.), The Oxford handbook of experimental semantics and pragmatics. Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Onea, Edgar & David I. Beaver. 2009. Hungarian focus is not exhausted. In Ed Cormany, Satoshi Ito & David Lutz (eds.), Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 19. 342–359. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Percus, Orin. 1997. Prying open the cleft. In Kiyomi Kusumoto (ed.), Proceedings of the North Eastern Linguistic Society (NELS) 27. 337–351.Google Scholar
Pollard, Carl & Murat Yasavul. 2016. Anaphoric it-clefts: The myth of exhaustivity. Proceedings of the Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS) 50.
Reeve, Matthew. 2012. Clefts and their Relatives. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Craige. 2012. Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. Semantics and Pragmatics 5. 1–69. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rooth, Mats. 1996. Focus. In Shalom Lappin (ed.), The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory, Oxford: Blackwell. 271–297.Google Scholar
Saah, Kofi Korankye. 1994. Studies in Akan syntax, acquisition, and sentence processing. PhD thesis, University of Ottawa.
Schwarz, Florian. 2009. Two types of definites in natural language. PhD thesis, Amherst: University of Massachusetts.
Schwarzschild, Roger. 1999. Givenness, avoidF and other constraints on the placement of accent. Natural Language Semantics 7(2). 141–177. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sgall, Petr, Eva Hajičová & Jarmila Panevová. 1986. The meaning of the sentence in its semantic and pragmatic aspects. Edited by Jacob L. Mey. Dordrecht: Reidel – Prague: Academia.Google Scholar
Simons, Mandy, David Beaver, Judith Tonhauser & Craige Roberts. 2010. What projects and why. In Nan Li & David Lutz (eds.), Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 20. 309–327. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Szabolcsi, Anna. 1981. Compositionality in focus. Folia Linguistica 15. 141–161. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1994. All quantifiers are not equal: The case of focus. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 42. 171–187.Google Scholar
Tonhauser, Judith, David Beaver, Craige Roberts & Mandy Simons. 2013. Towards a taxonomy of projective content. Language 89(1). 66–109. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Velleman, Dan, David Beaver, Emilie Destruel, Dylan Bumford, Edgar Onea & Elizabeth Coppock. 2012. It-clefts are IT (Inquiry Terminating) constructions. In Anca Chereches (ed.), Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 22. 441–460.Google Scholar
Wedgwood, Daniel, Gergely Peth & Ronnie Cann. 2006. Hungarian ‘focus position’ and English it-clefts: The semantic underspecification of ‘focus’ readings. Ms., University of Edinburgh.
Zimmermann, Malte. 2016. Cross-linguistic variability (and uniformity) in focus-background partitioning. Presentation at KNAW Colloquium ‘Language Variation in Action’. Amsterdam, 19 February 2016.
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Liu, Ying & Gong Cheng
2023. 再談漢語「是」字句及幾類相關結構的語義. Language and Linguistics. 語言暨語言學 24:3 ► pp. 469 ff. DOI logo
Onea, Edgar
2022. Answering overt wh-questions. Journal of Uralic Linguistics 1:2 ► pp. 154 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.