A theory of focus interpretation

Abstract

According to the alternative semantics for focus, the semantic reflex of intonational focus is a second semantic value, which in the case of a sentence is a set of propositions. We examine a range of semantic and pragmatic applications of the theory, and extract a unitary principle specifying how the focus semantic value interacts with semantic and pragmatic processes. A strong version of the theory has the effect of making lexical or construction-specific stipulation of a focus-related effect in association-with-focus constructions impossible. Furthermore, while focus has a uniform import, the sources of meaning differences in association with focus are various.

For a Structured Meaning Account of Questions and Answers

“…Rooth (1992) For meanings α, ALT(α) stands for the alternatives of α. The alternatives can either be taken broadly (e.g., ALT(α) = all objects of the same type as α; this is the option that Rooth 1992 chooses), or restrictively (ALT(α) = the set of relevant alternatives in a particular context); they must contain at least two elements.…”

The basic variety (or: couldn’t natural languages be much simpler?)

“…This idea, which goes back to authors such as Weil, von der Gabelentz and Paul in the last century, can be made more precise in various ways. This has been done in recent work on focus in formal semantics (see, for example, von Stechow, 1991;Rooth, 1992 In (10a), the alternatives are the persons that could have stolen the bread -this is the topic, repeated in the answer by stole the bread -and the focus is the person specified by the NP the girl. In (10b), the topic is the set of things that the girl could have stolen, and the focus constituent the bread specifies one of them -the focus.…”

Information structure and its syntactic manifestation in Spanish: facts and proposals

“…(47) Juan has eaten x, where x is {rice, pasta, salad, broccoli...} The alternatives-view of focus, with its prominent role to contrastiveness, is associated to the work of Mats Rooth, and specifically to Rooth (1992), where he develops an integrated theory of focus interpretations. (48) reproduces Rooth's (1992: 86) first version of the focus interpretation principle, which will do for our purposes.…”

“…Consider the adverb solo 'only'; as noted in many works (eg., Rooth 1992, Kiss 1998, it imposes an exhaustive interpretation to the constituent: it introduces as part of the truth conditions of the clause that within the set of alternatives considered no other alternative can satisfy the open position.…”