TY  - JOUR
A1  - Zimmermann, Malte
A1  - De Veaugh-Geiss, Joseph P.
A1  - Tönnis, Swantje
A1  - Onea, Edgar
T1  - (Non-)exhaustivity in focus partitioning across languages
JF  - Approaches to Hungarian
N2  - We present novel experimental evidence on the availability and the status of exhaustivity inferences with focus partitioning in German, English, and Hungarian. Results suggest that German and English focus-background clefts and Hungarian focus share important properties, (É. Kiss 1998, 1999; Szabolcsi 1994; Percus 1997; Onea & Beaver 2009). Those constructions are anaphoric devices triggering an existence presupposition. EXH-inferences are not obligatory in such constructions in English, German, or Hungarian, against some previous literature (Percus 1997; Büring & Križ 2013; É. Kiss 1998), but in line with pragmatic analyses of EXH-inferences in clefts (Horn 1981, 2016; Pollard & Yasavul 2016). The cross-linguistic differences in the distribution of EXH-inferences are attributed to properties of the Hungarian number marking system.
KW  - clefts
KW  - definite pseudoclefts
KW  - Hungarian focus
KW  - exhaustivity
KW  - experimental evidence
KW  - semantics-pragmatics interface
Y1  - 2020
VL  - 16
PB  - John Benjamins
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  - 
TY  - GEN
A1  - Zimmermann, Malte
A1  - De Veaugh-Geiss, Joseph P.
A1  - Tönnis, Swantje
A1  - Onea, Edgar
T1  - (Non-)exhaustivity in focus partitioning across languages
T2  - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2  - We present novel experimental evidence on the availability and the status of exhaustivity inferences with focus partitioning in German, English, and Hungarian. Results suggest that German and English focus-background clefts and Hungarian focus share important properties, (É. Kiss 1998, 1999; Szabolcsi 1994; Percus 1997; Onea & Beaver 2009). Those constructions are anaphoric devices triggering an existence presupposition. EXH-inferences are not obligatory in such constructions in English, German, or Hungarian, against some previous literature (Percus 1997; Büring & Križ 2013; É. Kiss 1998), but in line with pragmatic analyses of EXH-inferences in clefts (Horn 1981, 2016; Pollard & Yasavul 2016). The cross-linguistic differences in the distribution of EXH-inferences are attributed to properties of the Hungarian number marking system.
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 724 
KW  - clefts
KW  - definite pseudoclefts
KW  - Hungarian focus
KW  - exhaustivity
KW  - experimental evidence
KW  - semantics-pragmatics interface
Y1  - 2020
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-524677
SN  - 1866-8364
VL  - 16
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - De Veaugh-Geiss, Joseph P.
A1  - Toennis, Swantje
A1  - Onea, Edgar
A1  - Zimmermann, Malte
T1  - That’s not quite it
BT  - an experimental investigation of (non‑)exhaustivity in clefts
JF  - Semantics and pragmatics
N2  - We present a novel empirical study on German directly comparing the exhaustivity inference in es-clefts to exhaustivity inferences in definite pseudoclefts, exclusives, and plain intonational focus constructions. We employ mouse-driven verification/falsification tasks in an incremental information-retrieval paradigm across two experiments in order to assess the strength of exhaustivity in the four sentence types. The results are compatible with a parallel analysis of clefts and definite pseudoclefts, in line with previous claims in the literature (Percus 1997, Buring & Kriz 2013). In striking contrast with such proposals, in which the exhaustivity inference is conventionally coded in the cleft-structure in terms of maximality/homogeneity, our study found that the exhaustivity inference is not systematic or robust in es-clefts nor in definite pseudoclefts: Whereas some speakers treat both constructions as exhaustive, others treat both constructions as non-exhaustive. In order to account for this unexpected finding, we argue that the exhaustivity inference in both clefts and definite pseudoclefts-specifically those with the compound definite derjenige - is pragmatically derived from the anaphoric existence presupposition that is common to both constructions.
KW  - experimental study
KW  - exhaustivity
KW  - es-clefts
KW  - definite pseudoclefts
KW  - anaphoric existence presupposition
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.11.3
SN  - 1937-8912
VL  - 11
PB  - Linguistic Society of America
CY  - Washington
ER  -