That’s not quite it
- 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 theWe 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.…
Author details: | Joseph P. De Veaugh-GeissORCiDGND, Swantje Toennis, Edgar OneaORCiDGND, Malte ZimmermannORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.11.3 |
ISSN: | 1937-8912 |
Title of parent work (English): | Semantics and pragmatics |
Subtitle (English): | an experimental investigation of (non‑)exhaustivity in clefts |
Publisher: | Linguistic Society of America |
Place of publishing: | Washington |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Year of first publication: | 2018 |
Publication year: | 2018 |
Release date: | 2022/03/14 |
Tag: | anaphoric existence presupposition; definite pseudoclefts; es-clefts; exhaustivity; experimental study |
Volume: | 11 |
Number of pages: | 44 |
Funding institution: | German Research Foundation (DFG)German Research Foundation (DFG) |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik |
DDC classification: | 4 Sprache / 41 Linguistik / 410 Linguistik |
License (English): | Creative Commons - Namensnennung 3.0 Unported |