TY - JOUR A1 - Akuoko Duah, Reginald T1 - Exhaustive Focus Marking in Akan JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - This paper reopens the discussion on focus marking in Akan (Kwa, Niger-Congo) by examining the semantics of the so-called focus marker in the language. It is shown that the so-called focus marker expresses exhaustivity when it occurs in a sentence with narrow focus. The study employs four standard tests for exhaustivity proposed in the literature to examine the semantics of Akan focus constructions (Szabolsci 1981, 1994; É. Kiss 1998; Hartmann and Zimmermann 2007). It is shown that although a focused entity with the so-called focus marker nà is interpreted to mean ‘only X and nothing/nobody else,’ this meaning appears to be pragmatic. KW - Akan KW - focus marker KW - cleft KW - exhaustivity KW - ex situ KW - in situ KW - subject/non-subject asymmetry Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-83748 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 IS - 19 SP - 1 EP - 28 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam 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 - 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 - Grubic, Mira A1 - Renans, Agata A1 - Duah, Reginald Akuoko T1 - Focus, exhaustivity and existence in Akan, Ga and Ngamo JF - Linguistics : an interdisciplinary journal of the language sciences N2 - This paper discusses the relation between focus marking and focus interpretation in Akan (Kwa), Ga (Kwa), and Ngamo (West Chadic). In all three languages, there is a special morphosyntactically marked focus/background construction, as well as morphosyntactically unmarked focus. We present data stemming from original fieldwork investigatingwhether marked focus/background constructions in these three languages also have additional interpretative effects apart from standard focus interpretation. Crosslinguistically, different additional inferences have been found for marked focus constructions, e.g. contrast (e.g. Vallduvi, Enric & Maria Vilkuna. 1997. On rheme and kontrast. In Peter Culicover & Louise McNally (eds.), The limits of syntax (Syntax and semantics 29), 79-108. New York: Academic Press; Hartmann, Katharina & Malte Zimmermann. 2007b. In place -Out of place: Focus in Hausa. In Kerstin Schwabe & Susanne Winkler (eds.), On information structure, meaning and form, 365-403. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.; Destruel, Emilie & Leah Velleman. 2014. Refining contrast: Empirical evidence from the English it-cleft. In Christopher Pinon (ed.), Empirical issues in syntax and semantics 10, 197-214. Paris: Colloque de syntaxe et semantique a Paris (CSSP). http://www.cssp.cnrs.fr/eiss10/), exhaustivity (e.g. E. Kiss, Katalin. 1998. Identificational focus versus information focus. Language 74(2). 245-273.; Hartmann, Katharina & Malte Zimmermann. 2007a. Exhaustivity marking in Hausa: A re-evaluation of the particle nee/cee. In Enoch O. Aboh, Katharina Hartmann & Malte Zimmermann (eds.), Focus strategies in African languages: The interaction of focus and grammar in Niger-Congo and AfroAsiatic (Trends in Linguistics 191), 241-263. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.), and existence (e.g. Rooth, Mats. 1999. Association with focus or association with presupposition? In Peter Bosch & Rob van der Sandt (eds.), Focus: Linguistic, cognitive, and computational perspectives, 232-244. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.; von Fintel, Kai & Lisa Matthewson. 2008. Universals in semantics. The Linguistic Review 25(1-2). 139-201). This paper investigates these three inferences. In Akan and Ga, the marked focus constructions are found to be contrastive, while in Ngamo, no effect of contrast was found. We also show that marked focus constructions in Ga and Akan trigger exhaustivity and existence presuppositions, while the marked construction in Ngamo merely gives rise to an exhaustive conversational implicature and does not trigger an existence presupposition. Instead, the marked construction in Ngamo merely indicates salience of the backgrounded part via a morphological background marker related to the definite determiner (Schuh, Russell G. 2005. Yobe state, Nigeria as a linguistic area. Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 31(2). 77-94; Guldemann, Tom. 2016. Maximal backgrounding = focus without (necessary) focus encoding. Studies in Language 40(3). 551590). The paper thus contributes to the understanding of the semantics of marked focus constructions across languages and points to the crosslinguistic variation in expressing and interpreting marked focus/background constructions. KW - focus KW - cleft KW - contrast KW - exhaustivity KW - existence presupposition KW - salience Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2018-0035 SN - 0024-3949 SN - 1613-396X VL - 57 IS - 1 SP - 221 EP - 268 PB - De Gruyter Mouton CY - Berlin ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Pfeil, Simone A1 - Genzel, Susanne A1 - Kügler, Frank T1 - Empirical investigation of focus and exhaustivity in Akan JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - It has been observed for many African languages that focussed subjects have to appear outside of their syntactic base position, as opposed to focussed objects, which can remain in-situ. This is known as subjectobject asymmetry of focus marking, which Fiedler et al. (2010) claim to hold also for Akan. Genzel (2013), on the other hand, argues that Akan does not exhibit a subject-object focus asymmetry. A questionnaire study and a production experiment were carried out to investigate whether focussed subjects may indeed be realized in-situ in Akan. The results suggest that (i) focussed subjects do not have to be obligatorily realized ex-situ, and that (ii) the syntactic preference for the realization of a focussed subject highly depends on exhaustivity. KW - Akan KW - focus KW - subjects KW - exhaustivity KW - in-situ Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-83774 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 IS - 19 SP - 87 EP - 109 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Renans, Agata A1 - De Veaugh-Geiss, Joseph P. T1 - Experimental Studies on it-Clefts and Predicate Interpretation JF - Semantics and pragmatics N2 - There is an ongoing discussion in the literature whether the series of sentences ‘It’s not α that did P. α and β did P.’ is acceptable or not. Whereas the homogeneity approach in Büring & Križ 2013, Križ 2016, and Križ 2017 predicts these sentences to be unacceptable, the alternative-based approach predicts acceptability depending on the predicate being interpreted distributively or non- distributively (among others, Horn 1981, Velleman et al. 2012, Renans 2016a,b). We report on three experiments testing the predictions of both types of approaches. These studies provide empirical data that not only bears on these approaches, but also allows us to distinguish between different accounts of cleft exhaustivity that might otherwise make the same predictions. The results of the three studies reported here suggest that the acceptability of clefts depends on the interpretation of the predicate, thereby posing a serious challenge to the homogeneity approach, and contributing to the ongoing discussion on the semantics of it-clefts. KW - it-clefts KW - exhaustivity KW - homogeneity KW - distributive,collective, and mixed predicates KW - distributive vs. non-distributive interpretation KW - experimental study Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.12.11 SN - 1937-8912 VL - 12 PB - Linguistic Society of America CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schreiber, Alexander A1 - Onea Gáspár, Edgar T1 - Are narrow focus exhaustivity inferences Bayesian inferences? JF - Frontiers in psychology / Frontiers Research Foundation N2 - In successful communication, the literal meaning of linguistic utterances is often enriched by pragmatic inferences. Part of the pragmatic reasoning underlying such inferences has been successfully modeled as Bayesian goal recognition in the Rational Speech Act (RSA) framework. In this paper, we try to model the interpretation of question-answer sequences with narrow focus in the answer in the RSA framework, thereby exploring the effects of domain size and prior probabilities on interpretation. Should narrow focus exhaustivity inferences be actually based on Bayesian inference involving prior probabilities of states, RSA models should predict a dependency of exhaustivity on these factors. We present experimental data that suggest that interlocutors do not act according to the predictions of the RSA model and that exhaustivity is in fact approximately constant across different domain sizes and priors. The results constitute a conceptual challenge for Bayesian accounts of the underlying pragmatic inferences. KW - pragmatics KW - Bayesian models KW - rational speech act models KW - implicatures KW - focus KW - exhaustivity Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.677223 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 12 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - THES A1 - Shipova, Evgeniya T1 - Formal analysis of èto-clefts in Russian: syntax and semantics T1 - Formale Analyse von èto-Clefts im Russischen: Syntax und Semantik N2 - Èto-clefts are Russian focus constructions with the demonstrative pronoun èto ‘this’ at the beginning: “Èto Mark vyigral gonku” (“It was Mark who won the race”). They are often being compared with English it-clefts, German es-clefts, as well as the corresponding focus-background structures in other languages. In terms of semantics, èto-clefts have two important properties which are cross-linguistically typical for clefts: existence presupposition (“Someone won the race”) and exhaustivity (“Nobody except Mark won the race”). However, the exhaustivity effects are not as strong as exhaustivity effects in structures with the exclusive only and require more research. At the same time, the question if the syntactic structure of èto-clefts matches the biclausal structure of English and German clefts, remains open. There are arguments in favor of biclausality, as well as monoclausality. Besides, there is no consistency regarding the status of èto itself. Finally, the information structure of èto-clefts has remained underexplored in the existing literature. This research investigates the information-structural, syntactic, and semantic properties of Russian clefts, both theoretically (supported by examples from Russian text corpora and judgments from native speakers) and experimentally. It is determined which desired changes in the information structure motivate native speakers to choose an èto-cleft and not the canonical structure or other focus realization tools. Novel syntactic tests are conducted to find evidence for bi-/monoclausality of èto-clefts, as well as for base-generation or movement of the cleft pivot. It is hypothesized that èto has a certain important function in clefts, and its status is investigated. Finally, new experiments on the nature of exhaustivity in èto-clefts are conducted. They allow for direct cross-linguistic comparison, using an incremental-information paradigm with truth-value judgments. In terms of information structure, this research makes a new proposal that presents èto-clefts as structures with an inherent focus-background bipartitioning. Even though èto-clefts are used in typical focus contexts, evidence was found that èto-clefts (as well as Russian thetic clefts) allow for both new information focus and contrastive focus. Èto-clefts are pragmatically acceptable when a singleton answer to the implied question is expected (e.g. “It was Mark who won the race” but not “It was Mark who came to the party”). Importantly, èto in Russian clefts is neither dummy, nor redundant, but is a topic expression; conveys familiarity which triggers existence presupposition; refers to an instantiated event, or a known/perceivable situation; finally, èto plays an important role in the spoken language as a tool for speech coherency and a focus marker. In terms of syntax, this research makes a new monoclausal proposal and shows evidence that the cleft pivot undergoes movement to the left peripheral position. Èto is proposed to be TopP. Finally, in terms of semantics, a novel cross-linguistic evaluation of Russian clefts is made. Experiments show that the exhaustivity inference in èto-clefts is not robust. Participants used different strategies in resolving exhaustivity, falling into 2 groups: one group considered èto-clefts exhaustive, while another group considered them non-exhaustive. Hence, there is evidence for the pragmatic nature of exhaustivity in èto-clefts. The experimental results for èto-clefts are similar to the experimental results for clefts in German, French and Akan. It is concluded that speakers use different tools available in their languages to produce structures with similar interpretive properties. N2 - Èto-Clefts (Spaltsätze) sind russische Fokuskonstruktionen mit dem Demonstrativpronomen èto 'dies' am Anfang: “Èto Mark vyigral gonku” ("Es war Mark, der das Rennen gewonnen hat"). Sie werden oft mit englischen it-Clefts, deutschen es-Clefts sowie den entsprechenden Fokus-Hintergrund-Strukturen in anderen Sprachen verglichen. In semantischer Hinsicht haben èto-Clefts zwei wichtige Eigenschaften, die für Clefts typisch sind: Existenzpräsupposition ("Jemand hat das Rennen gewonnen") und Exhaustivität ("Niemand außer Mark hat das Rennen gewonnen"). Die Exhaustivitätseffekte sind jedoch nicht so stark wie die Exhaustivitätseffekte in Strukturen mit dem Exklusiven "only" ("nur") und erfordern weitere Forschung. Gleichzeitig bleibt die Frage offen, ob die syntaktische Struktur von èto-clefts der biklausalen Struktur von englischen und deutschen Clefts entspricht. Es gibt Argumente für Biklausalität sowie für Monoklausalität. Außerdem gibt es keine Einigung hinsichtlich des Status von èto selbst. Schließlich wurde die Informationsstruktur von èto-Clefts in der vorhandenen Literatur kaum erforscht. Diese Forschung untersucht die informationsstrukturellen, syntaktischen und semantischen Eigenschaften russischer Clefts sowohl theoretisch (gestützt auf Beispiele aus russischen Textkorpora und Schätzungen von Muttersprachlern) als auch experimentell. Es wird bestimmt, welche gewünschten Änderungen in der Informationsstruktur Muttersprachler dazu motivieren, eine èto-Cleft und nicht die kanonische Struktur oder andere Fokusrealisierungswerkzeuge zu wählen. Neue syntaktische Tests werden durchgeführt, um Hinweise auf die Biklausalität oder Monoklausalität von èto-Clefts sowie auf die Basisgenerierung oder Bewegung des Cleft-Pivots zu finden. Es wird die Hypothese aufgestellt, dass èto eine bestimmte wichtige Funktion in Clefts hat, und sein Status wird untersucht. Schließlich werden neue Experimente zur Natur der Exhaustivität in èto-Clefts durchgeführt. Sie ermöglichen einen direkten sprachübergreifenden Vergleich unter Verwendung eines inkrementellen Informationsparadigmas mit Wahrheitswerturteilen. In Bezug auf die Informationsstruktur gibt diese Forschung eine neue Analyse, die èto-Clefts als Strukturen mit einer inhärenten Fokus-Hintergrund-Aufteilung präsentiert. Obwohl èto-Clefts in typischen Fokus-Kontexten verwendet werden, wurde es festgestellt, dass èto-Clefts (genauso wie russische thetische Clefts) sowohl Informationsfokus als auch kontrastiven Fokus ermöglichen. Èto-Clefts sind pragmatisch akzeptabel, wenn eine Einzelantwort auf die implizite Frage erwartet wird (z. B. "Es war Mark, der das Rennen gewonnen hat", aber nicht "Es war Mark, der zur Party kam"). Wichtig ist noch, dass èto in russischen Clefts weder einen Platzhalter noch leer ist, sondern ein Topikausdruck; èto zeigt Familiarität, die eine Existenzpräsupposition auslöst; èto bezieht sich auf ein konkretes Ereignis oder eine bekannte/wahrnehmbare Situation; schließlich spielt èto eine wichtige Rolle in der gesprochenen Sprache als Werkzeug für die Kohärenz und als Fokusmarker. In Bezug auf Syntax macht diese Forschung einen neuen Vorschlag für eine monoklasuale Struktur und zeigt Hinweise darauf, dass das Cleft-Pivot eine Bewegung in die linke periphere Position durchläuft. Èto wird als TopP analysiert. Schließlich wird in Bezug auf Semantik eine neuartige sprachübergreifende Bewertung russischer Clefts vorgenommen. Experimente zeigen, dass die Exhaustivitätsinferenz in èto-Clefts nicht robust ist. Die Teilnehmer verwendeten verschiedene Strategien zur Auflösung der Exhaustivität und fielen in 2 Gruppen: Eine Gruppe betrachtete èto-Clefts als exhaustiv, während eine andere Gruppe sie als nicht exhaustiv betrachtete. Daher gibt es Hinweise auf die pragmatische Natur der Exhaustivität in èto-Clefts. Die experimentellen Ergebnisse für èto-Clefts sind den experimentellen Ergebnissen für Clefts im Deutschen, Französischen und Akan sehr ähnlich. Es wird geschlossen, dass Sprecher verschiedene verfügbare Werkzeuge in ihren Sprachen verwenden, um Strukturen mit ähnlichen interpretativen Eigenschaften zu produzieren. KW - clefts KW - Russian KW - Spaltsätze KW - Russisch KW - exhaustivity KW - Exhaustivität KW - information structure KW - Informationsstruktur KW - focus KW - Fokus KW - biclausality KW - Biklausalität KW - familiarity KW - Familiarität KW - experimental studies KW - experimentelle Studien Y1 - 2024 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-630149 ER - 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 -