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.…
Verfasserangaben: | 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 |
Titel des übergeordneten Werks (Englisch): | Semantics and pragmatics |
Untertitel (Englisch): | an experimental investigation of (non‑)exhaustivity in clefts |
Verlag: | Linguistic Society of America |
Verlagsort: | Washington |
Publikationstyp: | Wissenschaftlicher Artikel |
Sprache: | Englisch |
Jahr der Erstveröffentlichung: | 2018 |
Erscheinungsjahr: | 2018 |
Datum der Freischaltung: | 14.03.2022 |
Freies Schlagwort / Tag: | anaphoric existence presupposition; definite pseudoclefts; es-clefts; exhaustivity; experimental study |
Band: | 11 |
Seitenanzahl: | 44 |
Fördernde Institution: | German Research Foundation (DFG)German Research Foundation (DFG) |
Organisationseinheiten: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik |
DDC-Klassifikation: | 4 Sprache / 41 Linguistik / 410 Linguistik |
Lizenz (Englisch): | Creative Commons - Namensnennung 3.0 Unported |