Two kinds of focus constructions in K’iche’

Abstract

Based on original fieldwork data, I argue for a difference in meaning between two focus constructions in K’iche’ (Mayan). In particular, I show that the interpretation of focus constructions with aree ‘FOC’ gives rise to existence and exhaustivity implications (the latter when they are used as answers), both of which do not necessarily arise from the interpretation of focus constructions without aree. I discuss how to analyze these implications and review previous approaches to similar phenomena. I also develop a dynamic account that captures the empirical generalizations I propose.

It's Not What You Expected! The Surprising Nature of Cleft Alternatives in French and English

“…Finally, it is worth noting that there is evidence that in certain languages, clefts or other intuitive contrastive focus constructions do not always lead to the exclusion of alternatives; the strength of the exhaustive inference can in fact be modulated by the context. This has been argued, for instance, for clefts in St'át'imcets (Salish; Thoma, 2009) and French (Destruel and DeVeaugh-Geiss, 2018), for focus movement structures in K'ichee' which are arguably clefts (Mayan; Yasavul, 2013), and for non-cleft focus movement structures in Tangale (Chadic; Zimmermann, 2011) which, Zimmerman argues, still show signs of being contrastive in an important sense. Thus, if we want to retain the idea that clefts (and other focus movement constructions) are inherently contrastive, then these data suggest that defining contrast in terms of exclusion of alternatives may also miss the mark.…”