LING830 Syntax III: Focus

Instructor: Satoshi Tomioka

Fall, 2018

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Overview

1. Pre-requisite

Graduate Level Syntax and Phonology. Semantics will definitely help but not
necessary.

2. Course Requirement

I Reading assignments
I Class presentations
I Final paper: This requirement can be waived if you are writing two or
more papers (including a QP) this semester or trying to finish your
prospectus. You must ask your academic advisor to email me to confirm
that. If you are taking this course as a pass-fail (i.e., you are taking it
beyond 51 credits), you are also exempt from the paper requirement.

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Objectives

Topics covered in this class:

I Overview
I Prosodic Effects of Focus
I Focus Movement (covert or overt)
I Association with Focus
I Focus and Wh-interrogatives
I Focus and Ellipsis
I Focus and Scalar Implicatures

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Schedule

Dates Topics Reading

8/28 Introduction Krifka and Musan (2012), Rooth (1992)
Schwarzschild (1999)
9/4, 11 Prosody Féry (2017, Ch 6), Wagner (2017),
Ishihara (2011)
Beaver et al. (2007), Baumann (2014)
9/14 (2:30) Praat Workshop I
9/18 Focus Movement (Surface) Prince (1981), Szendröi (2006), Rizzi (2004)
9/21 (2:30) Praat Workshop I
9/24, 10/2 Focus Movement (LF) Kratzer (1991), Wagner (2006), Krifka (2006),
Erlewine and Kopek (2018)
10/9, 10/16 Focus in Interrogatives Krifka (2001), Beck (2006), Tomioka (2007),
Han and Romero (2002)
10/23, 30, 11/6 Focus in Ellipsis Heim (1997), Merchant (2001)
Hiraiwa and Ishihara (2012)
11/6 Election Day (NO CLASS)
11/13 Focus and Scalar Implicature TBA
11/27, 12/5 TBA (experimental papers) TBA

A few more readings will be added. If you know any good experimental papers on focus, please let
me know.

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Reading I

Baumann, Stefan (2014), “Second Occurence Focus.” In Caroline Féry and Shinichiro Ishihara,
eds., The Handbook of Information Structure, Oxford University Press.
Beaver, David I, Brady Clark, Edward Stanton Flemming, T Florian Jaeger, and Maria Wolters
(2007), “When semantics meets phonetics: Acoustical studies of second-occurrence focus.”
Language 83(2): 245–276.
Beck, Sigrid (2006), “Intervention Effects Follow From Focus Interpretation.” Natural Language
Semantics 14(1): 1–56.
Erlewine, Michael Yoshitaka, and Hadas Kotek (2018), “Focus Association by Movement:
Evidence from Tanglewood.” Linguistic Inquiry 49(3): 441–463.
Féry, Caroline (2017), Intonation and Prosodic Structure. Cambridge University Press.
Han, Chung-Hye, and Maribel Romero (2002), “Ellipsis and Movement in the Syntax of
Whether/Q. . . or Questions.” In Proceedings of NELS 32, Amherst: GLSA.
Heim, Irene (1997), “Predicates or Formulas? Evidence from Ellipsis.” In Aaron Lawson and Enn
Cho, eds., Proceedings of SALT VII, Cornell University: CLC Publications, pp. 197–221.
Hiraiwa, Ken, and Shinichiro Ishihara (2012), “Syntactic Metamorphosis: Cleft, Sluicing, and
In-situ Focus in Japanese.” Syntax 15: 142–180.
Ishihara, Shinichiro (2011), “Japanese Focus Prosody Revisited: Freeing Focus from Prosodic
Phrasing.” Lingua 121: 1870–1889.
Kratzer, Angelika (1991), “The representation of focus.” In Arnim von Stechow and Dieter
Wunderlich, eds., Semantics: An international handbook of contemporary research, Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, pp. 825–834.
Krifka, Manfred (2001), “For a structured meaning account of questions and answers.” Audiatur
vox sapientia. a festschrift for arnim von stechow 52: 287–319.

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Reading II

Krifka, Manfred (2006), “Association with focus phrases.” The architecture of focus 82: 105.
Krifka, Manfred, and Renate Musan (2012), “Information structure: Overview and linguistic
issues.” In The Expression of Information Structure, de Gruyter, pp. 1–44.
Merchant, Jason (2001), The Syntax of Silence: Sluicing, Islands, and the Theory of Ellipsis.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Prince, Ellen F (1981), “Topicalization, focus-movement, and Yiddish-movement: A pragmatic
differentiation.” In Annual meeting of the berkeley linguistics society, vol. 7, pp. 249–264.
Rizzi, Luigi (2004), “Locality and Left Periphery.” In Adriana Belletti, ed., Structures and Beyond:
The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, Oxford: Oxford University Press, vol. 3, pp. 223–251.
Rooth, Mats (1992), “A theory of focus interpretation.” Natural Language Semantics 1(1):
117–121.
Schwarzschild, Roger (1999), “Givenness, avoid F and other constraints on the placement of
accent.” Natural Language Semantics 7(2): 141–177.
Szendröi, Kriszta (2006), “Focus movement (with special reference to Hungarian).” The Blackwell
companion to syntax : 272–337.
Tomioka, Satoshi (2007), “Pragmatics of LF Intervention Effects: Japanese and Korean
Wh-interrogatives.” Journal of Pragmatics 39(9): 1570–1590.
Wagner, Michael (2006), “Association by movement: evidence from NPI-licensing.” Natural
Language Semantics 14(4): 297–324.
Wagner, Michael (2017), “Prosodic Focus.” Ms. McGill University.

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Information Structure

What is Information Structure

It sounds like structure of information, but it isn’t. It is about linguistic (often

structural) manifestations of informational statuses of message content. A
sentence α and α’ may have the same semantic content (= the truth
condition), but the two sentences may be structurally different because of their
information-structure-related differences.

(1) a. I like doughnuts.

b. Doughnuts, I like

The two sentences above, which have the same truth condition, also have the
same linguistic ingredients, but they are ‘packaged’ differently. And the
difference is obviously pragmatic, and information structure theory aims to
capture a phenomenon of this kind.

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Information Structure - Focus

Critically important for information structure is the notion of Common Ground

(CG), which we briefly discussed in connection with presuppositions. It is a
collection of knowledge (could be factually incorrect) that is shared by the
conversation participants. As the conversation progresses, CG is constantly
updated.

A: Who did Maria introduce to her parents?

B: She introduced Chris to them.

B’s sentence, when accepted, updates the CG, which now contains the
proposition that Maria introduced Chris to her parents. But the central part of
the newly added information is Chris. In other words, the NP Chris is the locus
of new information in B’s sentence. In terms of the information structure of the
sentence, the NP is the focus of the sentence, and it is grammatically marked
with stress.

(2) a. She introduced [Chris]Focus to them.

b. She introduced CHRIS to them.

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Information Structure - Focus

Focus as the locus of new information is a popular idea. The new/old

information is a packaging issue. In other words, it does not affect the truth
condition but changes the ’felicity’ condition.

Who introduced Chris to Anna?

(3) a. MARIA introduced Chris to Anna.
b. #Maria introduced CHRIS to Anna.
c. #Maria introduced Chris to ANNA.
The last two sentences are not *false* but are just inappropriate as an answer
to the question ‘Who introduced Chris to Anna?’.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0zvGVYva8M

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Information Structure - Focus

So far, we have seen cases where the notion of focus is purely pragmatic and
does not affect truth conditions. The following constitute a minimal pair.

(4) a. Chris only smokes CIGARS after dinner.

b. Chris only smokes cigars after DINNER.

Chris smokes cigarettes after every meal. He also smokes cigars after dinner,
but that is the only time he smokes cigars. Under this situation, (4b) is true
but (4a) is false. Here is another example:

(5) a. If Chris married ANNA, he would inherit a lot of money.

b. If Chris MARRIED Anna, he would inherit a lot of money.

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Information Structure - Focus

So, focus is sometimes merely pragmatic and other times semantic. How do we
reconcile this apparent contradiction?

Krifka and Musan suggest, following Mats Rooth (1992), that the
pragmatic-semantic distinction isn’t really about focus itself. What focus does
in all cases is to generate alternatives.

(6) When a sentence S, whose meaning is α, contains a focused expression

XP whose denotation is β, then, the context must furnish β’ such that
β’ is of the same semantic type of β and β’ 6= β and α’, which is
exactly like α except that β is replaced with β’

Example:

(7) a. MARIA introduced Chris to Anna.

b. The focus on MARIA → {Maria, Bertha, Carla}
c. {Maria introduced Chris to Anna, Bertha introduced Chris to Anna,
Carla introduced Chris to Anna}

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Information Structure - Focus

Pragmatic Constraint on Focus: The focus set - the set of alternative sentences
- must be relevant in the context.

The general idea of what a question means: a question denotes a set of

propositions that constitute possible answers to that question.
Example:

(8) a. Who introduced Chris to Anna?

b. A set of propositions of the form ‘x introduced Chris to Anna’.
c. If there are three possible candidates for the introducer...
{Maria introduced Chris to Anna, Bertha introduced Chris to Anna,
Carla introduced Chris to Anna}

Thus, the presence of the question ‘who introduced Chris to Anna’ makes the
focus set relevant, as the meaning of the question is practically identical to the
focus set.

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Information Structure - Focus

Another environment: Correction

(9) A: Bertha introduced Chris to Anna.

B: No! MARIA introduced Chris to Anna.

The focus set of B’s utterance is a set of propositions of the form ‘x introduced
Chris to Anna’, and A’s sentence denotes one of such propositions.

(10) a. Pragmatic Constraint on Focus: The focus set - the set of

alternative sentences - must be relevant in the context.
b. A focus set of a sentence S, F/S, is relevant in the context C iff
There is a set of propositions F’ in C, such that F/S ⊆ F’ in C or
There is a proposition p in C, such that p ∈ F/S and p 6= the
denotation of S

What about the case of only where focus makes a truth conditional difference?

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Information Structure - Focus

What focus does remains the same: generate alternatives. However, *how the
focus set is used* is different when only is present. To keep the story simple,
let us treat only as a sentential operator.
(11) k only S k = 1 iff k S k = 1 and for all p’ such that p’ ∈ F/S and p’ 6=
k S k, p’ = 0
(12) a. k only [S Chris smokes CIGARS after dinner k = 1
b. iff Chris smokes cigars after dinner and for all p’ such that p’ ∈
{Chris smokes cigars after dinner, Chris smokes cigarettes after
dinner, Chris smokes cigarillos after dinner} and p’ 6= k Chris
smokes cigars after dinner k, p’ = 0
c. iff Chris smokes cigars after dinner and Chris smokes neither
cigarettes or cigarillos after dinner.
(13) a. k only [S Chris smokes cigars after DINNER] k = 1
b. iff Chris smokes cigars after dinner and for all p’ such that p’ ∈
{Chris smokes cigars after dinner, Chris smokes cigars after lunch,
Chris smokes cigars after breakfast} and p’ 6= k Chris smokes cigars
after dinner k, p’ = 0
c. iff Chris smokes cigars after dinner and Chris does not smoke cigars
after breakfast or lunch.
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Information Structure - Focus

What is happening with only: The focus set is used as a restriction on the
quantificational domain. While a domain can be restricted pragmatically, the
effect of the restriction is often semantic (i.e., it affects the truth condition of
the sentence).

(14) a. Every student must attend the meeting.

b. Every student (in this class) must attend the meeting.
c. Every student (in the ling and cog sci program) must attend the meeting.

We know that the unexpressed restrictions above are added pragmatically, but
the results are semantic – the sentences have different truth conditions. We
can think focus in the same way. It is essentially pragmatic but can affect truth
conditional meanings via the process of domain restriction.

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Focus, Implicature, and Presupposition

Focus also interacts with two of the well-known pragmatic concepts:

implicature and presupposition.

(15) MARIA introduced Chris to Anna.

The non-focused portion of the sentence - ‘introduced Chris to Anna’ -

corresponds to old information, and old information is, not surprisingly, closely
tied to the notion of presupposition. If a presupposition is understood to be a
sentence meaning that is already shared by all the conversation participants at
the time of some utterance, it is indeed old information.
Old information, or givenness, is often indicated by the lack of prosodic
prominence or perhaps more aggressively compressed prosody. Sometimes, old
information is indicated by the absence from the audible structure - a
phenomenon called ellipsis.

(16) a. Who introduced Chris to Maria?

b. MARIA introduced Chris to Anna.
c. MARIA did.

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Focus, Implicature, and Presupposition

A tricky case: Second Occurrence Focus

(17) a. Anna only reads ROMANCE novels.

b. BELLA also only reads romance novels.

1. The VP ‘only reads romance novels’ is repeated, so it corresponds to old,

given information.
2. The VP is therefore prosodically reduced.
3. It can even elide; Bella, too is a possible continuation that means the
same.
4. However, the focus on romance must be calculated for the meaning of
only.

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Focus, Implicature, and Presupposition

Focus and Scalar Implicature

Suppose that there are four students who took the exam: Anna, Bertha, Carla,
and Dana.
Who passed the exam?

(18) a. [ANNA and CARLA]Focus did.

b. Anna and Carla are the only people who passed. Thus, Bertha
and Dana failed.

(18b) is called ‘exhaustive’ implicature, and it is generated via the ‘standard’

recipe of scalar implicature.

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Focus, Implicature, and Presupposition

(19) a. The speaker said Anna and Carla passed.

b. However, there are stronger, more informative propositions that
could have been asserted: Anna, Bertha and Carla passed, Anna,
Carla, and Dana passed. There must be a reason for the speaker
not asserting them.
c. It is reasonable that the speaker did not assert either of those
propositions because she does not believe that either of them is
true.
d. And it can further be assumed that the speaker knows the outcome
of the exam for everyone.
e. Then, it follows that the speaker believes that it is false that Bertha
or Dana passed. Thus, the speaker’s utterance implicates that
Anna and Carla were the only people who passed.

It is an implicature, not entailment, because it can be cancelled.

(20) ANNA and CARLA passed. And DANA passed as well, but barely.

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