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

Abstract

Abstract 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.