Sense and Sensitivity

ǆƉůŽƌĂƟŽŶƐŝŶ^ĞŵĂŶƟĐƐ ^ĞŶƐĞĂŶĚ^ĞŶƐŝƟǀŝƚǇ ,Žǁ&ŽĐƵƐĞƚĞƌŵŝŶĞƐDĞĂŶŝŶŐ ĂǀŝĚ/͘ĞĂǀĞƌĂŶĚƌĂĚǇ͘ůĂƌŬ “beaver” — 2008/5/19 — 16:57 — page i — #1 Sense and Sensitivity Sense and Sensitivity: How Focus Determines Meaning. David I . Beaver and Brady Z. Clark © 2008 David I. Beaver and Brady Z. Clark. ISBN: 978-1-405-11263-5 “beaver” — 2008/5/19 — 16:57 — page ii — #2 Explorations in Semantics Series Editor:SusanRothstein Editorial Board Ruth Kempson, King’s College, London Angelika Kratzer, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Manfred Krifka, Humboldt University; Zentrum fu¨rAllgemeineSprachwissenschaft (ZAS), Berlin Fred Landman, Tel Aviv University Luigi Rizzi, University of Siena Robert Stalnaker, Massachusetts Institute of Technology This exciting series features important new research by leading scholars in the field of semantics. Each volume focuses onatopicortopicscentraltothefield, including dynamic semantics, aspect, focus, anaphora, and type-shifting, and offers a pedagogical component designed to introduce the topics addressed and situate the new research in the context of the field and previous research. The presentational style emphasizes student accessibility without compromising the sophistication of the research involved. Explorations in Semantics is an excellent series for students and researchers in the field, as well as scholars in adjacent areas such as syntax, philosophy of language, and computational linguistics. 1 Compositionality in Formal Semantics: Selected Papers of Barbara H. Partee Barbara H. Partee 2 Structuring Events: A Study in the Semantics of Lexical Aspect Susan Rothstein 3 Indefinites and the Type of Sets Fred Landman 4 The Proper Treatment of Events Michiel van Lambalgen and Fritz Hamm 5 Sense and Sensitivity: How Focus Determines Meaning David I. Beaver and Brady L. Clark “beaver” — 2008/5/19 — 16:57 — page iii — #3 Sense and Sensitivity How Focus Determines Meaning David I. Beaver and Brady Z. Clark A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication “beaver” — 2008/5/19 — 16:57 — page iv — #4 This edition first published 2008 c 2008 David I. Beaver and Brady Z. Clark ! Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell. Registered Office John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom Editorial Offices 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell. The right of David I. Beaver and Brady Z. Clark to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authori- tative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Beaver, David I., 1966– Sense and sensitivity : how focus determines meaning / David Beaver and Brady Clark. p. cm. – (Explorations in semantics) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4051-1263-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-4051-1264-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Semantics. 2. Focus (Linguistics) 3. Pragmatics. 4. Discourse analysis. I. Clark, Brady. II. Title. P325.5.F63B43 2008 401 .43–dc22 2008002636 AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary. Set in 10/12.5 Palatino by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Singapore by Markono Print Media Pte Ltd 12008 “beaver” — 2008/5/19 — 16:57 — page v — #5 But stress clearly does in fact on many occasions make a difference to the speaker’s meaning [...] In accordance with the spirit of Modified Occam’s Razor, we might attribute conventional meaning to stress only if it is unavoidable. Thus we might first introduce a slight extension to the maxim enjoining relevance, making it apply not only to what is said but also to features of the means used for saying what is said. Herbert Paul Grice,1989,Further Notes on Logic and Conversation,p.51. Association with Focus is a Relevance implicature [...] Craige Roberts,2007,Information Structure in Discourse,handout, LSA Summer Institute, Stanford, p. 10. AWF [association with focus]inEnglishaswellasinHungarianisanislandsensitive syntactic process. Hans Bernhard Drubig,2000,Towards a a Typology of Focus and Focus Constructions,p.36. My general opinion about this doctrine is that it is a typically scholastic view, attributable, first, to an obsession with a few particular words, the uses of which are over-simplified, not really understood or carefully studied or cor- rectly described; and second to an obsession with a few (and nearly always the same) half-studied facts.[...]Itisessential,hereaselsewhere,toaban- don old habits of Gleichschaltung,thedeeplyingrainedworshipoftidy-looking dichotomies. John Langshaw Austin,1962,Sense and Sensibilia,p.3. “beaver” — 2008/5/19 — 16:57 — page vii — #7 Contents List of Figures x Preface xi 1Introduction 1 2IntonationandMeaning 7 2.1 Introduction 7 2.2 Focus 7 2.3 Intonational Phonology 10 2.4 Focus Projection 12 2.5 Questions and Focus 25 2.6 The Interpretation of Focus 28 2.7 Structuring Discourse with Questions 33 2.8 The Quasi/Free/Conventional (QFC) Model 40 2.9 Summary 43 3ThreeDegreesofAssociation:Quasi,Free,andConventional 44 3.1 Introduction 44 3.2 The First Degree: Quasi-Association 44 3.3 The Second Degree: Free Association 52 3.4 The Third Degree: Conventional Association 68 3.5 Summary 78 4CompositionalAnalysisofFocus 80 4.1 Introduction 80 4.2 Compositional Alternative Semantics 81 4.3 Structured Meanings 84 4.4 Focus with Events 87 4.5 Relating the Frameworks 91 “beaver” — 2008/5/19 — 16:57 — page viii — #8 viii CONTENTS 4.6 The President, the Boy Scouts, and a Trip to Tanglewood 95 4.7 Summary 115 5PragmaticExplanationsofFocus 117 5.1 Introduction 117 5.2 Accentless Focus 119 5.3 Association with Presupposition 121 5.4 Roberts’ Account of Focus Sensitivity 123 5.5 A Presuppositional Account of Focus Sensitivity 130 5.6 Summary 140 6SoftFocus:AssociationwithReducedMaterial 142 6.1 Introduction 142 6.2 Second Occurrence Focus: Background 143 6.3 Second Occurrence Focus: Experiments 145 6.4 Leaners: a Contrast 149 6.5 Leaners: an Events-based Analysis 154 6.6 Summary 158 7LackingFocus:ExtractionandEllipsis 160 7.1 Introduction 160 7.2 Extraction 161 7.3 Cross-linguistic Evidence on Extraction 166 7.4 Analyzing the Extraction Data 169 7.5 An Extraction Puzzle 174 7.6 Ellipsis 176 7.7 Analyzing the Ellipsis Data 178 7.8 An Ellipsis Puzzle 180 7.9 Summary 181 8MonotonicityandPresupposition 182 8.1 Introduction 182 8.2 Background on Monotonicity, NPIs, and PPIs 182 8.3 Polarity Item Licensing by only 184 8.4 Polarity Item Licensing by always 190 8.5 Monotonicity Inferences 192 8.6 A Formal Account of PI Licensing 197 8.7 Restrictions on PI Licensing by only 200 8.8 Association with Presupposition 204 8.9 What Does always Associate With? 208 8.10 Summary 211 “beaver” — 2008/5/19 — 16:57 — page ix — #9 CONTENTS ix 9Exclusives:FactsandHistory 212 9.1 Introduction 212 9.2 Positive and Negative Parts of Exclusive Meanings 214 9.3 The Prejacent Presupposition Theory 215 9.4 The Existential Presupposition Theory 218 9.5 The Implicational Presupposition Theory 223 9.6 Implicatures for Unembedded Exclusives 225 9.7 Denial Isn’t Just a River in Egypt 233 9.8 The Arroyo Tequila Test 238 9.9 Is the Prejacent Entailed? 244 9.10 Summary 246 10 Exclusives: a Discourse Account 248 10.1 Introduction 248 10.2 The Discourse Function of Exclusives 249 10.3 Examples of Scales 254 10.4 Formal Analysis 260 10.5 Unembedded Exclusives 264 10.6 Negated Exclusives and Other Embeddings 267 10.7 Association with Focus 272 10.8 NPI Licensing 276 10.9 Non-association with Presupposition 277 10.10 Summary 278 11 Conclusion 280 11.1 The Story so Far 280 11.2 What Isn’t (Conventionally) Focus Sensitive? 282 11.3 Generalizations from the QFC Model 283 11.4 Closing Remarks 285 Bibliography 287 Index 301 “beaver” — 2008/5/19 — 16:57 — page x — #10 Figures 1.1 Generic depiction of core grammar architecture 3 2.1 Pitch accents 11 3.1 Focus sensitivity of must 62 5.1 Initial DRS for (5.17) 131 5.2 Global accommodation (Gloss: Butch is awake, and if he is barking Mary

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