Scholarlink

<p>I develop a framework for the compositional semantics of focus association that differs minimally from Rooth (Nat Lang Semant 1:75–116, 1992) in letting focus-sensitive operators optionally pass up evaluated focus alternatives. My proposal is informed by prior work on various complex constructions involving multiple alternative-sensitive operators and alternative sources—including multiple association with a single focus, multiple overlapping associations with separate foci, focus intervention effects in <i>wh</i>-questions, and focus association with <i>wh</i>-phrases—all of which I show can be accurately modeled in my framework. The framework allows us to maintain the idea due to Beck (Nat Lang Semant 14:1–56, 2006) that alternatives computed for the semantics of questions (Hamblin in Found Lang 10:41–53, 1973, a.o.)&#xa0;and of focus (Rooth in Association with focus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1985, a.o.)&#xa0;are formally the same objects, defusing the argument in Li and Law (Linguist Philos 39:201–245, 2016) against such unification.</p>

错误：搜索内容不能为空，请输入英文关键词
错误：关键词超出字数限制，请精简
高级检索

Focus intervention, multiple association, and the unity of focus and wh alternatives

  • 期刊论文

  • 出版模式：

    开放获取

  • 发表日期：

    2025年6月14日

查看全文
  • Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine

摘要

I develop a framework for the compositional semantics of focus association that differs minimally from Rooth (Nat Lang Semant 1:75–116, 1992) in letting focus-sensitive operators optionally pass up evaluated focus alternatives. My proposal is informed by prior work on various complex constructions involving multiple alternative-sensitive operators and alternative sources—including multiple association with a single focus, multiple overlapping associations with separate foci, focus intervention effects in wh-questions, and focus association with wh-phrases—all of which I show can be accurately modeled in my framework. The framework allows us to maintain the idea due to Beck (Nat Lang Semant 14:1–56, 2006) that alternatives computed for the semantics of questions (Hamblin in Found Lang 10:41–53, 1973, a.o.) and of focus (Rooth in Association with focus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1985, a.o.) are formally the same objects, defusing the argument in Li and Law (Linguist Philos 39:201–245, 2016) against such unification.