“Exclusivity” and quantifier float in bakari

This paper presents a descriptive study that analyzes the semantic meaning of Toritate focus particle bakari. Previous studies reported that, although bakari expresses exclusivity, it is characterized by the fact that it permits non-applicable cases, thereby drawing the conclusion that the meaning of bakari is not exclusivity. This paper argues that bakari does indeed denote “exclusivity” as bakari is supported by the phenomenon that non-applicable cases are unacceptable when bakari co-occurs with floating quantifiers. Considering existing research on this subject, the following was observed. Even though the subjective set, as established by the speaker’s past experiences to interpret the meaning of bakari, may not be consistent with the real world, the number of events that form the said set match the number of real-world events when bakari co-occurs with floating quantifiers due to the characteristics of floating quantifiers. In such cases, bakari does not permit non-applicable cases. The interpretation that permits non-applicable cases applies to situations where the set established by the speaker is fixed at a narrower range than the real world, and the non-applicable cases exist outside the set. We thus conclude that bakari denotes “exclusivity” that does not permit non-applicable cases.

The Finnish exclusive-negative construction ei…ku(i)n in the network of exclusion expressions

This paper shows that Finnish has the option of expressing ‘only’-like exclusive meaning with a clausal construction, here called the Exclusive-Negative Construction, ENC. It is similar to the better-known French ne…que construction but differs from it at many points where Finnish and French grammar differ, especially in the way negation is expressed in the two languages. The Finnish ENC contains overt negation, which accounts for its somewhat narrower distribution than the alternative option, the use of the focus particle vain/vaan ‘only’. Adopting the Construction Grammar framework, the paper argues that the ENC is a simple clausal construction with the idiosyncrasy of mixed polarity, a formal division of the clause into a negative and affirmative part. Derivation from an underlying comparative is rejected, but it is shown that the ENC has associations to more explicit ways of expressing exclusion. These conclusions receive support from dialectal and other non-standard data. Kokkuvõte. Maria Vilkuna: Soome keele välistav-eitav konstruktsioon ei...ku(i)n välistust väljendavate keeleliste vahendite võrgustikus. Artiklis näidatakse, et soome keeles võib väljendada välistavat tähendust (nagu ainult) lausekonstruktsiooniga, mida artiklis nimetatakse välistavaks-eitavaks konstruktsiooniks (the Exclusive-Negative Construction, ENC). See sarnaneb prantsuse keele konstruktsiooniga ne...que, ent erineb sellest mitmes aspektis, kus soome ja prantsuse keel üldiseltki erinevad, eriti mis puudutab eituse väljendamise viise kahes keeles. Soome konstruktsioon sisaldab eksplitsiitset eitust, mis seletab seda, miks konstruktsiooni kasutusala on mõnevõrra kitsam kui selle alternatiivil, fookuspartiklil vain/vaan ‘ainult’. Kasutades konstruktsioonigrammatika raamistikku, näidatakse artiklis, et ENC on lausekonstruktsioon, mille eripäraks on kahetine polaarsus: konstruktsioon jaotub vormiliselt eitavaks ja jaatavaks osaks. Väidetakse, et konstruktsioon ei ole tuletatud komparatiivikonstruktsioonist, kuid on seotud eksplitsiitsemalt välistust väljendavate vahenditega. Neid järeldusi toetavad murrete ja muu mittestandardse keelekasutuse andmed.

‑kin-liitteen semantiikasta ja diskursiivisista tehtävistä

Abstrakti. Artikkelissa tarkastellaan ‑kin-liitteen sisältäviä nominaalisia ilmauksia, yhtäältä pronomineja, joissa ‑kin on sananmuodon kiinteä osa, ja toisaalta NP=kin-rakennetta, joissa ‑kin on itsenäiseen nominiin liitetty fokuspartikkeli. Lähtökohtana on oletus, että pro-sanoilla jokin, kukin, mikin on referentiaalisesti jotakin yhteistä NP=kin-rakenteen kanssa. ‑kin-liitteisiä pronomineja kuvataan selauksen käsitteen (rans. parcours, eng. scanning) avulla. Selaus tarkoittaa kielellistä operaatiota, jossa jonkin luokan jäseniä käydään läpi pysähtymättä yhdenkään niistä kohdalle. Yksinkertaisten pronominien (jokin, kukin) lisäksi huomio kohdistuu kahdesta pro-sanasta muodostuvaan distributiiviseen rakenteeseen milloin mikin ja sen diskursiivisiin käyttöihin. Artikkelissa esitetään, että selauksen käsite valottaa myös NP=kin-rakenteen merkitystä. ‑kin-partikkeli konstruoi NP:n tulkinnan taustalle luokan, jonka puitteissa sen tarkoite rinnastuu toisiin samankaltaisessa asemassa oleviin tarkoitteisiin. Tässä tapauksessa selausoperaatio ei koske NP:n referenssin rakentumista, vaan se vaikuttaa NP:n tarkoitteen statukseen osallistujana lausuman ilmaisemaan predikaatioon. ‑kin merkitsee, että tarkoitteeen ja predikaation suhde ei ole ainutkertainen. Selausoperaatiosta seuraa erilaisia tulkintoja sen mukaan, miten ‑kin-partikkelin konstruoima luokka muodostuu, ja aktivoiko partikkeli lausuman tulkinnassa yhden vai useamman fokuksen. Abstract. Outi Duvallon: On the semantics and discourse functions of the Finnish clitic ‑kin. This paper presents a study on two kinds of nominal expressions containing the morpheme ‑kin, the pronouns composed of a stem (jo‑, ku‑, mi‑) and the suffix ‑kin, and the NP=kin construction in which ‑kin is a clitic focus particle attached to an independent noun. The starting point is the assumption that the pronouns with the suffix ‑kin have something in common with the NP=kin construction with respect to their referential properties. The analysis is based on the concept of scanning (Fr. parcours), defined as designating an operation that consists in going through items of a class without stopping at anyone. In addition to the simple pronouns jokin ‘something’, kukin ‘each one’, attention is paid to the two-part expressions with distributive meaning, such as milloin mikin ‘at different times, different things’. The paper aims to show that the concept of scanning makes it also possible to shed light on the meaning and discourse functions of the NP=kin construction. Kokkuvõte. Outi Duvallon: Liite ‑kin semantikast ja diskursiivsetest funktsioonidest. Artiklis vaadeldakse kaht tüüpi kin-liidet sisaldavaid nominaalseid väljendeid: asesõnu, kus ‑kin on sõnavormi osa, ning NP=kin konstruktsioone, kus ‑kin on iseseisva nimisõnaga liidetud fookuspartikkel. Lähtutakse eeldusest, et asesõnad jokin, kukin, mikin on referentsiaalselt mingis osas NP=kin konstruktsiooniga sarnased. Kin-liitelisi asesõnu analüüsitakse skaneerimise mõiste abil (pr. parcours, ingl. scanning). Skaneerimine tähistab tegevust, mille käigus vaadeldakse järjestikku mingi klassi liikmeid, ühelgi eraldi peatumata. Lisaks lihtasesõnadele (jokin, kukin) pööratakse tähelepanu kahest asesõnast koosnevale distributiivse tähendusega väljendile milloin mikin ja selle kasutusele diskursuses. Artiklis näidatakse, et skaneerimise mõiste võimaldab heita valgust ka NP=kin konstruktsiooni tähendusele ja diskursiivsetele funktsioonidele.

How focus particles and accents affect attachment

This project shows that focus and information structure, as indicated by the focus particle “only” and pitch accents, influence syntactic attachment, in contrast to the well-known effects of prosodic boundaries on attachment. One written questionnaire, one completion study, and several auditory questionnaires show that the position of “only” strongly affects attachment preferences in ambiguous sentences, while contrastive pitch accents have smaller effects. The two types of focus marking do not interact but independently impact attachment. These results support a modified version of the Focus Attraction Hypothesis, with ambiguous material drawn to attach to the most important information in a sentence. This research shows that information structure can affect sentence structure as well as discourse coherence.

The effect of focus and the focus particle samo on the exclusion of contextual alternatives in Serbian

The goal of this paper is to investigate the relationship between focus and the inferences that listeners derive from utterances. While the function of focus is to generate a set of alternatives to the focused element, it can also evoke the implicature that the statement does not hold for the contextual alternatives, which is referred to as exhaustive meaning. Whether focus is exhaustive is a matter of cross-linguistic variation. This paper aims to assess exhaustive inferences in Serbian triggered by focus in situ marked by prosodic prominence and in the preverbal position, canonical sentences with neutral intonation, and the exclusive particle samo ‘only’. The participants were presented with the recorded test items, after which they were asked to express their judgement about the possibility of the contextual alternatives using a scale. The results indicated that there was no interpretative difference regarding exhaustive meaning between the sentences with the focused words marked with prosodic prominence and those with unmarked intonation. However, the sentences with the preverbal focused target word were judged as significantly more exhaustive than the canonical sentences with default intonation. Finally, the sentences with the focus particle samo were interpreted mostly as not allowing other contextual interpretations.

Catalan focus markers as discourse particles

In this paper, we investigate focus markers in Catalan that can take on discourse-particle readings. We focus on two Catalan elements that have not been studied from a formal linguistics perspective so far: the focus adverb precisament ‘precisely’ and the focus particle també ‘also’. We demonstrate that these elements feature interpretations that we identify as a type of meaning familiar from discourse particles in languages other than Catalan. After having outlined the basic distribution and interpretative effects of these particles, we analyze the semantics and pragmatics of precisament and també within a probabilistic argumentative framework, and we then conclude the paper by comparing the observations and analyses we have pointed out for Catalan to other languages that feature a discourse-particle reading of similar focus markers.

Scalar Inferences in the Acquisition of Even

Scalar inferences are ubiquitous in human reasoning. Correspondingly, language has many means of expressing and encoding them. One of these means is the focus particle even, which utilizes scalar inferences to signal the pragmatic status of asserted content as noteworthy. The vehicles that even employs to signal noteworthiness are scalar likelihood inferences. A peculiarity of these inferences is that they are presuppositional in nature (not-at-issue) and yet, they are responsive to the polarity of the sentence expressing the proposition whose likelihood is signaled. This property raises intricate questions about what learners might expect scalar operators of this sort to look like (initial hypothesis space) as well as what type of evidence and learning strategies they have access to as they figure out the specific properties of even in adult English. This paper presents a detailed study of this development, combining data from a series of comprehension experiments and corpus studies. We find that children are sensitive to the basic scalar nature of even much earlier than previous literature has claimed. We additionally find, however, that children sometimes exhibit non-adult-like responses to even sentences, which we argue provide insight into their developing grammar. On this view, the child grammar offers a larger option space for even than the adult grammar. Becoming adult-like, in turn, involves eliminating some of these options, namely those that are underutilized in production due to their limited conversational value.