@article{ZimmermannDeVeaughGeissToennisetal.2020,
  author    = {Zimmermann, Malte and De Veaugh-Geiss, Joseph P. and T{\"o}nnis, Swantje and Onea, Edgar},
  title     = {(Non-)exhaustivity in focus partitioning across languages},
  series = {Approaches to Hungarian},
  volume    = {16},
  journal   = {Approaches to Hungarian},
  publisher = {John Benjamins},
  address   = {Amsterdam},
  pages     = {24},
  year      = {2020},
  abstract  = {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, ({\´E}. 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; B{\"u}ring \& Križ 2013; {\´E}. 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.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{DeVeaughGeissToennisOneaetal.2018,
  author    = {De Veaugh-Geiss, Joseph P. and Toennis, Swantje and Onea, Edgar and Zimmermann, Malte},
  title     = {That's not quite it},
  series = {Semantics and pragmatics},
  volume    = {11},
  journal   = {Semantics and pragmatics},
  publisher = {Linguistic Society of America},
  address   = {Washington},
  issn      = {1937-8912},
  doi       = {10.3765/sp.11.3},
  pages     = {44},
  year      = {2018},
  abstract  = {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.},
  language  = {en}
}
@misc{ZimmermannDeVeaughGeissToennisetal.2020,
  author    = {Zimmermann, Malte and De Veaugh-Geiss, Joseph P. and T{\"o}nnis, Swantje and Onea, Edgar},
  title     = {(Non-)exhaustivity in focus partitioning across languages},
  series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe},
  volume    = {16},
  journal   = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe},
  issn      = {1866-8364},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-52467},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-524677},
  pages     = {26},
  year      = {2020},
  abstract  = {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, ({\´E}. 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; B{\"u}ring \& Križ 2013; {\´E}. 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.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{SchreiberOneaGaspar2021,
  author    = {Schreiber, Alexander and Onea G{\´a}sp{\´a}r, Edgar},
  title     = {Are narrow focus exhaustivity inferences Bayesian inferences?},
  series = {Frontiers in psychology / Frontiers Research Foundation},
  volume    = {12},
  journal   = {Frontiers in psychology / Frontiers Research Foundation},
  publisher = {Frontiers Research Foundation},
  address   = {Lausanne},
  issn      = {1664-1078},
  doi       = {10.3389/fpsyg.2021.677223},
  pages     = {19},
  year      = {2021},
  abstract  = {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.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{ZimmermannOnea2011,
  author    = {Zimmermann, Malte and Onea, Edgar},
  title     = {Focus marking and focus interpretation},
  series = {LINGUA},
  volume    = {121},
  journal   = {LINGUA},
  number    = {11},
  publisher = {ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV},
  address   = {AMSTERDAM},
  issn      = {0024-3841},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.lingua.2011.06.002},
  pages     = {1651 -- 1670},
  year      = {2011},
  abstract  = {The languages of the world exhibit a range of formal phenomena (e.g. accenting, syntactic reordering and morphological marking) that are commonly linked to the information-structural notion of focus. Crucially, there does not seem to be a one-to-one mapping between particular formal features (focus marking devices) and focus, neither from a cross-linguistic perspective, nor within individual languages. This raises the question of what is actually being expressed if we say that a constituent is focused in a particular language, and whether, or to what extent, the same semantic or pragmatic content is formally expressed by focus-marking across languages. This special issue addresses the question of focus and its grammatical realization from a number of theoretical and empirical perspectives. In this introductory article we elaborate on this question by making an explicit proposal about what we take to be the correct way of thinking about the information-structural category of focus and its formal realization. In the first part, we introduce a unified semantico-pragmatic perspective on focus in terms of alternatives and possible worlds. In the second part, we present a cursory cross-linguistic overview of focus marking strategies as found in the languages of the world. Finally, in the third part, we discuss the connection between the notion of focus, different pragmatic uses of focus and different focus marking strategies employed in the grammars of natural languages. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.},
  language  = {en}
}