TY  - JOUR
A1  - Zimmermann, Malte
T1  - Wird Schon Stimmen!
BT  - A Degree Operator Analysis of Schon
JF  - Journal of semantics
N2  - The article puts forward a novel analysis of the German modal particle schon as a modal degree operator over propositional content. The proposed analysis offers a uniform perspective on the semantics of modal schon and its aspectual counterpart meaning ‘already’: Both particles are analyzed as denoting a degree operator, expressing a scale-based comparison over relevant alternatives. The alternatives are determined by focus in the case of aspectual schon (Krifka 2000), but are restricted to the polar alternatives p and ¬p in the case of modal schon. Semantically, modal schon introduces a presupposition to the effect that the circumstantial conversational background contains more factual evidence in favor of p than in favor of ¬p⁠, thereby making modal schon the not at-issue counterpart of the overt comparative form eher ‘rather’ (Herburger & Rubinstein 2014). The analysis incorporates basic insights from earlier analyses of modal schon in a novel way, and it also offers new insights as to the underlying workings of modality in natural language as involving propositions rather than possible worlds (Kratzer 1977, 2012).
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffy010
SN  - 0167-5133
SN  - 1477-4593
VL  - 35
IS  - 4
SP  - 687
EP  - 739
PB  - Oxford Univ. Press
CY  - Oxford
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  -