Focus intervention effects revisited: A semantics-pragmatics approach
Linmin Zhang
May 2023
 

(Focus) intervention effects have been a hot topic in formal linguistics for decades. In this paper, I propose that both focus items and wh-items work in a way similar to definite determiner 'the' and modified numerals. Specifically, all these items (i) first introduce discourse referents and (ii) then bring post-suppositions, i.e., relativized maximality/definiteness tests that need to be checked in a delayed way, at the sentential level. As a consequence, when focus items and wh-items appear together, relativized maximality/definiteness cannot be satisfied, resulting in meaning triviality for focus items. In contrast to the degraded pattern 'only ... wh', which has no felicitous interpretation at all, the acceptable pattern 'wh ... only' is still left with an absolute interpretation for the focus item, due to wh-movement and the sorting-key-status of the wh-item.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/007298
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: Japanese/Korean Linguistics 30
keywords: wh-questions, focus, intervention effects, dynamic semantics, post-suppositions, semantics
previous versions: v1 [May 2023]
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