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 - TY - JOUR A1 - De Veaugh-Geiss, Joseph P. T1 - nà-cleft (non-)exhaustivity BT - variability in Akan JF - Glossa : a journal of general linguistics N2 - This paper presents two experimental studies on the exhaustive inference associated with focus-background na-clefts in Akan (among others, Boadi 1974; Duah 2015; Grubic & Renans & Duah 2019; Titov 2019), with a direct comparison to two recent experiments on German es-clefts employing an identical design (De Veaugh-Geiss et al. 2018). Despite the unforeseen response patterns in Akan in the incremental information-retrieval paradigm used, a post-hoc exploratory analysis reveals compelling parallels between the two languages. The results are compatible with a unified approach both (i) cross-linguistically between Akan and German; and (ii) cross-sententially between na-clefts (a na P, 'It is a who did P') and definite pseudoclefts, i.e., definite descriptions with identity statements (Nipa no a P ne a, 'The person who did P is a') (Boadi 1974; Ofori 2011). Participant variability in (non-)exhaustive interpretations is compatible with discourse pragmatic approaches to cleft exhaustivity (Pollard & Yasavul 2016; De Veaugh-Geiss et al. 2018; Titov 2019). KW - Akan KW - nà-clefts KW - definite pseudoclefts KW - exhaustivity KW - experimental studies Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.5698 SN - 2397-1835 VL - 6 IS - 1 PB - Open Library of Humanities CY - London ER - TY - THES A1 - De Veaugh-Geiss, Joseph P. T1 - Cleft exhaustivity T1 - Exhaustivität in Spaltsätzen BT - a unified approach to inter-speaker and cross-linguistic variability BT - ein einheitlicher Erklärungsansatz für die individuelle und cross-linguistische Variabilität N2 - In this dissertation a series of experimental studies are presented which demonstrate that the exhaustive inference of focus-background it-clefts in English and their cross-linguistic counterparts in Akan, French, and German is neither robust nor systematic. The inter-speaker and cross-linguistic variability is accounted for with a discourse-pragmatic approach to cleft exhaustivity, in which -- following Pollard & Yasavul 2016 -- the exhaustive inference is derived from an interaction with another layer of meaning, namely, the existence presupposition encoded in clefts. N2 - In dieser Dissertation wird eine Reihe von experimentellen Studien vorgestellt, die zeigen, dass die Exhaustivitätsinferenz englischer 'it'-Spaltsätze mit Fokus-Background-Gliederung und ihrer Gegenstücke in den Sprachen Akan, Französisch und Deutsch weder robust noch systematisch ist. Die individuelle und cross-linguistische Variabilität wird mit einer diskurspragmatischen Analyse der Spaltsatz-Exhaustivität erklärt, in der -- nach Pollard & Yasavul 2016 -- die Exhaustivitätsinferenz aus einer Interaktion mit einer anderen Bedeutungsebene abgeleitet wird, und zwar mit der in Spaltsätzen enthaltenen Existenzpräsupposition. KW - experimental studies KW - German KW - French KW - English KW - Akan KW - clefts KW - definite pseudoclefts KW - exhaustive inference KW - anaphoric existence presupposition KW - predicate interpretation (distributive vs. non-distributive) KW - variability KW - experimentelle Studien KW - Deutsch KW - Französisch KW - Englisch KW - Akan KW - Spaltsätze KW - definite Pseudospaltsätze KW - Exhaustivitätsinferenz KW - anaphorische Existenzpräsupposition KW - Prädikatsinterpretation (distributiv vs. nicht-distributiv) KW - Variabilität Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-446421 ER -