Focus interpretation is relational (but not stochastic)

Daniel BÜRING with Muriel Assmann, Izabela Jordanoska, Max Prüller (Universität Wien)

In this talk we present a formally explicit metrical and relational, theory of focus realization — i.e. the relation between prosodic structure and the generation of Roothian focus alternatives — in English, cashing out several advantages of this type of system suggested in Calhoun (2010) and works reported therein. While consonant with Calhoun 2010’s general line of argument, we argue a number of points pace that work, among them: 1) Apart from the ‘marked-unmarked’

opposition, there is an inherent asymmetry between weak and strong sisters, even under default stress assignment; this makes unnecessary any ‘constraint, requiring F-marked elements to align with nuclear accents’ (Calhoun 2010:12). 2) Non-default metrical structures obligatorily lead to focal interpretations (i.e. non-trivial alternatives), while default structures are literally completely neutral. 3) Non-default strong–weak assignment indeed marks the weak sister as background, but the strong sister as containing a focus (‘focal’), rather than being one. Our proposal fundamentally departs from, and improves on, existing formal approachesto focussing in English [10, 9, 8], but also, in terms of explicitness and coverage, on [5].

Additionally, unlike [5], we do not see the need for a stochastic component in the account, i.e. ‘expectations’ are a matter of grammatical default, rather than frequency of occurrence