In order to investigate the empirical properties of focus, it is necessary
to diagnose focus (or: "what is focused") in particular linguistic
examples. <br>It is often taken for granted that the application of one
single diagnostic tool, the so-called question-answer test, which
roughly says that whatever a question asks for is focused in the
answer, is a fool-proof test for focus. <br>This paper investigates one
example class where such uncritical belief in the question-answer test
has led to the assumption of rather complex focus projection rules: in
these examples, pitch accent placement has been claimed to depend on
certain parts of the focused constituents being given or not. <br>It is
demonstrated that such focus projection rules are unnecessarily
complex and in turn require the assumption of unnecessarily
complicated meaning rules, not to speak of the difficulties to give a
precise semantic/pragmatic definition of the allegedly involved
givenness property. <br>For the sake of the argument, an alternative
analysis is put forward which relies solely on alternative sets
following Mats Rooth's work, and avoids any recourse to givenness.<br>
As it turns out, this alternative analysis is not only simpler but also
makes in a critical case the better predictions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:Potsdam/oai:kobv.de-opus-ubp:869 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Kasimir, Elke |
| Contributors | Sonderforschungsbereich 632 Informationsstruktur <Potsdam> |
| Publisher | Universität Potsdam, Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät. Institut für Linguistik / Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft |
| Source Sets | Potsdam University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632. - Vol. 3 |
| Rights | http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/doku/urheberrecht.php |
Page generated in 0.002 seconds