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Association with Foci Association with Foci by Maziar Doustdar Toosarvandani A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Line Mikkelsen, Chair Professor Andrew Garrett Professor Johanna Nichols Professor Christopher Potts Spring 2010 Abstract Association with Foci by Maziar Doustdar Toosarvandani Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Berkeley Professor Line Mikkelsen, Chair Association with focus has, since Jackendoff’s (1972) dissertation, been the object of intense study. Most researchers, however, have concentrated on explaining the semantic variability of only and even, whose truth conditions vary with the position of focus. I take as my starting point another property of associating expressions. Both only and even restrict the distribution of focus, a prop- erty that, I argue, they share with a range of other lexical items. But, while only and even take a single argument and require there to be a focus somewhere inside that argument, expressions like adversative but and let alone take two arguments, thereby associating with two foci. Associating expressions, of both the one- and two-place varieties, have two things in common. First, they are crosscategorial in their syntax, taking arguments of a variety of different types. Second, they evoke multiple alternatives— different possible answer to a question. Together, these two independent properties of associating expressions interact with the question under discussion (Roberts 1996, 2004) to give rise to the restriction on the distribution of focus. My approach to association with focus departs from previous ones in important ways. Associating expressions neither make reference to focus in their lexical entry (Rooth 1985, 1992, 1996b) nor to the question under discussion (Beaver and Clark 2008), providing a more satisfying answer to the question of why only some expressions associate with focus. 1 Contents List of typographic conventions iii Acknowledgments iv 1 Introduction 1 2 A distributional restriction on focus 4 2.1 What is focus? ..................................... 4 2.2 The syntax of only and even ............................. 6 2.3 Second occurrence focus ............................... 9 2.4 Two-place associating expressions .......................... 12 2.5 A semantic typology ................................. 16 2.5.1 Additives ................................... 18 2.5.2 Adversatives ................................. 20 2.5.3 Exclusives .................................. 21 2.6 The big picture .................................... 22 3 The adversatives 24 3.1 Two types of but ................................... 25 3.2 The syntax of adversative but ............................. 27 3.3 A more abstract analysis ............................... 34 3.4 Evidence from Persian ................................ 36 3.5 Return of the puzzle .................................. 40 3.6 The negative element ................................. 42 3.7 The semantics of adversative but ........................... 44 3.7.1 Exhaustivity ................................. 46 3.7.2 Correction .................................. 49 3.7.3 Using adversative but ............................. 50 3.8 Summary ....................................... 51 4 The scalar additives 53 4.1 The syntax of let alone ................................ 54 4.2 The semantics of let alone .............................. 58 4.3 An informational asymmetry ............................. 59 4.4 Deriving the ‘second conjunct’ ............................ 62 i 4.5 Barely a problem ................................... 64 4.6 Letting negative polarity alone ............................ 68 4.6.1 Downward entailing environments ...................... 69 4.6.2 Flipping scales ................................ 71 4.6.3 Putting together the pieces .......................... 75 4.7 Extending the analysis to even ............................ 77 4.8 Summary ....................................... 79 5 A theory of association with focus 81 5.1 Where we were .................................... 81 5.2 Alternative semantics for focus ............................ 82 5.2.1 The classic Roothian picture ......................... 84 5.2.2 A structured approach ............................ 87 5.2.3 An ‘intermediate’ alternative ......................... 88 5.3 Questions under discussion .............................. 89 5.4 Groenendijk and Stokhof’s semantics for questions ................. 95 5.5 Deriving the semantic effects of focus ........................ 97 5.6 The adversatives’ distributional restriction on focus .................100 5.7 The scalar additives’ distributional restriction on focus ...............103 5.8 Getting focus smaller .................................104 5.9 Summary .......................................106 6 Conclusion 109 6.1 A look back ......................................109 6.2 Semantic theories ...................................110 6.3 Syntactic theories ...................................110 6.4 Pragmatic theories ..................................111 References 112 Bibliography 117 ii List of typographic conventions Interlinear glossing 1 first person M masculine 2 second person NEG negation 3 third person OBJ object marker ADJ adjectivizer PAST past tense F feminine PL plural IND indefinite SG singular Logical symbols logical conjunction ∧ logical disjunction ∨ material conditional → negation ¬ entailment ⇒ x,y set { } x,y ordered pair % & ∅ empty set set membership relation ∈ subset relation ⊆ interpretation function !"Variable conventions w,w),w)),... worlds (type s) x,y,z,... individuals (type e) p,q,r,... truth values (type t) p,q,r,... propositions (type s,t ) % & f ,g,h,... one-place functions on entities (type e,t ) % & f,g,h,... properties (type e, s,t ) % % && R,S,T,... two-place relations (type e, e,t ) % % && R,S,T,... intensional two-place relations (type e, e, s,t ) % % % &&& P,Q,R,... generalized quantifiers (type e,t ,t ) %% & & iii Acknowledgments I have been fortunate to present my work to audiences at the 2009 Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting in San Francisco, Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Cal- ifornia, Los Angeles, the University of Chicago, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, as well as numerous presentations in the Berkeley Syntax and Semantics Circle. Their questions and comments have spurred major changes in my thinking. I have also had fruitful exchanges, in per- son and by email, with Anastasia Giannakidou, Larry Horn, Michael Israel, Russell Lee-Goldman, John MacFarlane, Jason Merchant, Joey Sabbagh, and Osamu Sawada. Throughout my linguistics education, I have had the best teachers. My undergraduate advisor, Lise Dobrin, gave me an early appreciation for data and for integrating it with linguistic theory. Kyle Johnson asked me a bunch of hard questions about gapping my second year, and this thesis is in many ways a product of my attempts to answer them (though, in the end, I don’t think I do). Johanna Nichols has encouraged me to examine whether, and if so how, my claims extend to other languages. Chris Potts has been a constant source of inspiration, and without his probing questions, this thesis would not have been the same. Andrew Garrett has pushed me always to be a better linguist, challenging my assumptions and asking me for more and better data. My advisor Line Mikkelsen has, besides shaping this dissertation in content and form, mentored me intellectually, professionally, and personally, for which I am grateful. I owe a huge debt to my friends and my family. They have always believed in me, and without them I would not have finished graduate school. iv Chapter 1 Introduction When we are trying to understand the truth conditions of a sentence, we usually only have to consider the words it contains and how they are combined. For the most part, prosody— including stress and intonation— does not seem to matter. Association with focus, a phenomenon introduced to generative linguists by Jackendoff (1972), comes as something of a surprise, then.1 When a sentence contains an ASSOCIATING EXPRESSION, something like only or even, its truth conditions can vary with the position of focus. Since, in English, the canonical realization of focus is prosodic, the sentence’s meaning appears to change with just a change in intonation. Why do some lexical items associate with focus, but not others? This is the question I am trying to answer here. I start, though, with a different property of association with focus, one that is somewhat less conspicuous than the semantic interaction with focus. Jackendoff observes that only and even also restrict the distribution of focus. If only adjoins to the subject, then there must be a focus some- where inside the subject. If it adjoins to the verb phrase, there must be a focus somewhere inside the verb phrase. There are, I argue, more expressions that constrain the position of focus than first meets the eye. In particular, there is a class of lexical items that require the presence of two foci, one inside each of their syntactic sisters. These two-place associating expressions include adver- sative but (Anscombre and Ducrot 1977, Lang 1984:238–262, Horn 2001:402–413) and let alone (Fillmore, Kay, and O’Connor 1988). When adversative but coordinates two noun phrase subjects, there must be a focus inside each of these noun
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