Impossible Presuppositions. On factivity, focus, and triviality

This paper analyzes certain restrictions on polarity focus marking in clauses embedded under emotive factive predicates. It argues that these restrictions arise because this configuration leads to a systematic presupposition failure in virtue of its focus value, which I call impossible presupposition. The main argument offered here supporting this approach involves some novel asymmetries with factive clauses in predicate doubling construction in Spanish. From a theoretical perspective, the larger agenda of this article is to provide new evidence that certain types of ungrammaticality are due to semantic-pragmatic factors, namely, logical triviality.

‘Not’ in focus:

This paper investigates the interaction of focus and negation in the Bantu language Zulu (Nguni; S42). I discuss four strategies that are used to negate transitive sentences in Zulu. The default strategy, in which an object marker is added to the negated verb, expresses polarity focus by dislocating the object-marked object from the VP-focus domain. In the second strategy, no object marker occurs, and focus falls on the object or the VP. I show that in this strategy, negation typically associates with the focus and is not part of the presupposition, and I argue that this is responsible for a (hitherto unexplained) additional contrastive inference that speakers report with this negation strategy. The third strategy, a cleft, is used to remove the focused object from the scope of negation; as a result, negation can associate with the presupposition. In the fourth strategy, the object noun loses its augment and is interpreted as a negative polarity item (NPI). Based on a proposal by Lahiri (1998), I argue that in negated sentences with NPI-objects, focus is placed on an implicit cardinality predicate which is associated with the semantic representation of the indefinite NPI-object.

Verum accent IS VERUM, but not always focus

This paper studies the occurrence of verum accent in declaratives and polar interrogatives. Verum accent exhibits two kinds of interpretational effect: (i) it requires an epistemic conflict across sentence types and (ii) it may also convey a negative speaker bias in polar interrogatives. We argue that the former effect is due to a presuppositional VERUM operator and that the latter effect arises from the possibility of said operator carrying polarity focus. Our proposal implies that verum accenting and polarity focus are two distinct phenomena that interact in interesting ways.

V-stranding ellipsis and verbal identity

This paper shows that the identity condition that characterizes V-stranding ellipsis is not verbal and does not only characterize syntactic heads. In some contexts, this type of ellipsis can strand phrasal material distinct from verbs that complies with the identity condition. The kind of contexts in which this can be attested are contexts in which ellipsis elides a TP licensed by a polarity focus head Σ0. This finding has important theoretical consequences for the explanation of the identity condition in V-stranding ellipsis, as it cannot be captured by current theories that put down identity to the special status of head movement in grammar.