Kamali and Krifka (“K&K”) propose an analysis of focus and contrastive topic in declaratives and in questions, based on data from Turkish, within the framework of commitment space semantics (Krifka 2015). Turkish is relevant because focus and contrastive topic are marked differently from one another in polar questions: prosodically and with a segmental morpheme -mI for focus, only prosodically for contrastive topic (Kamali and Büring 2011). And while focus and contrastive topic have been studied in detail in declaratives, they have received less attention in other types of sentences. This is a gap that K&K propose to fill. The task of accounting for the morphophonological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties of focus and contrastive topic is by no means an easy challenge and the authors are able to cover the empirical ground that they set out to cover, and they do so in a technically elegant way (albeit one with a learning curve). This commentary is thereby less of a rebuttal than an extension of K&K’s system to novel cases and an exploration of the consequences of doing so. I concentrate on an asymmetry in K&K’s treatment of focus and contrastive topic, which is that the former is handled in situ, while the latter involves movement. The first observation that I make is that expressions of many syntactic categories and semantic types may be contrastive topic marked (adjectives, sentences, etc.). All such expressions have to be moved, and the resulting structures, interpreted. While this is technically feasible, not all contrastive topic marked expressions move, and moreover, we would need a very flexible semantics for contrastive topic for the composition to work out. The second question that I raise is whether this asymmetry has to be that way, especially given evidence (and K&K’s assumptions) that it might rather be contrastive topic that should be treated in situ in Turkish, and focus through movement. Indeed, contrastive topic
{"title":"Should I move for focus or for contrastive topic?","authors":"Deniz Özyıldız","doi":"10.1515/tl-2020-0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/tl-2020-0004","url":null,"abstract":"Kamali and Krifka (“K&K”) propose an analysis of focus and contrastive topic in declaratives and in questions, based on data from Turkish, within the framework of commitment space semantics (Krifka 2015). Turkish is relevant because focus and contrastive topic are marked differently from one another in polar questions: prosodically and with a segmental morpheme -mI for focus, only prosodically for contrastive topic (Kamali and Büring 2011). And while focus and contrastive topic have been studied in detail in declaratives, they have received less attention in other types of sentences. This is a gap that K&K propose to fill. The task of accounting for the morphophonological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties of focus and contrastive topic is by no means an easy challenge and the authors are able to cover the empirical ground that they set out to cover, and they do so in a technically elegant way (albeit one with a learning curve). This commentary is thereby less of a rebuttal than an extension of K&K’s system to novel cases and an exploration of the consequences of doing so. I concentrate on an asymmetry in K&K’s treatment of focus and contrastive topic, which is that the former is handled in situ, while the latter involves movement. The first observation that I make is that expressions of many syntactic categories and semantic types may be contrastive topic marked (adjectives, sentences, etc.). All such expressions have to be moved, and the resulting structures, interpreted. While this is technically feasible, not all contrastive topic marked expressions move, and moreover, we would need a very flexible semantics for contrastive topic for the composition to work out. The second question that I raise is whether this asymmetry has to be that way, especially given evidence (and K&K’s assumptions) that it might rather be contrastive topic that should be treated in situ in Turkish, and focus through movement. Indeed, contrastive topic","PeriodicalId":46148,"journal":{"name":"Theoretical Linguistics","volume":"46 1","pages":"89 - 102"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/tl-2020-0004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44436555","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Some questions and thoughts on foci and contrastive topics in Turkish questions","authors":"J. Kornfilt","doi":"10.1515/tl-2020-0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/tl-2020-0002","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46148,"journal":{"name":"Theoretical Linguistics","volume":"46 1","pages":"73 - 79"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/tl-2020-0002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47806068","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
I found this to be an interesting and thought-provoking paper providing a very thorough analysis of the interpretation of focus and contrastive topic marking in questions and assertions couched in the framework of commitment spaces. In this commentary, I would like to discuss a few points that drew my attention, not because of any specific problem they pose, but rather because I think this framework, as presented by Kamali and Krifka (henceforth K&K) in this paper, opens up new avenues for research on topics related to the role of additive particles, differences between presuppositions and post-suppositions, the criteria used to judge competition between question forms and the implications of CT-marking on wh-phrases.
{"title":"Additional questions on contrastive topics","authors":"A. Nicolae","doi":"10.1515/tl-2020-0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/tl-2020-0003","url":null,"abstract":"I found this to be an interesting and thought-provoking paper providing a very thorough analysis of the interpretation of focus and contrastive topic marking in questions and assertions couched in the framework of commitment spaces. In this commentary, I would like to discuss a few points that drew my attention, not because of any specific problem they pose, but rather because I think this framework, as presented by Kamali and Krifka (henceforth K&K) in this paper, opens up new avenues for research on topics related to the role of additive particles, differences between presuppositions and post-suppositions, the criteria used to judge competition between question forms and the implications of CT-marking on wh-phrases.","PeriodicalId":46148,"journal":{"name":"Theoretical Linguistics","volume":"46 1","pages":"81 - 87"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/tl-2020-0003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47976602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Much recent research has recognized the importance of focus and contrastive topic in assertions for discourse coherence. However, with few exceptions, it has been neglected that focus and contrastive topic also occur in questions, and have a similar role in establishing coherence. We propose a framework of dynamic interpretation based on the notion of Commitment Spaces that show that a uniform interpretation of focus and contrastive topic is possible. The algebraic representation format is rich enough so that a separate introduction of discourse trees is not necessary. The paper discusses these phenomena for Turkish, a language with an explicit focus marker for polar and alternative questions, which distinguishes focus from contrastive topic.
{"title":"Focus and contrastive topic in questions and answers, with particular reference to Turkish","authors":"Beste Kamali, M. Krifka","doi":"10.1515/tl-2020-0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/tl-2020-0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Much recent research has recognized the importance of focus and contrastive topic in assertions for discourse coherence. However, with few exceptions, it has been neglected that focus and contrastive topic also occur in questions, and have a similar role in establishing coherence. We propose a framework of dynamic interpretation based on the notion of Commitment Spaces that show that a uniform interpretation of focus and contrastive topic is possible. The algebraic representation format is rich enough so that a separate introduction of discourse trees is not necessary. The paper discusses these phenomena for Turkish, a language with an explicit focus marker for polar and alternative questions, which distinguishes focus from contrastive topic.","PeriodicalId":46148,"journal":{"name":"Theoretical Linguistics","volume":"46 1","pages":"1 - 71"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/tl-2020-0001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41751676","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Themain concept that guides through this commentary is exhaustivity associated with focus. Although this issue is not central to the authors’ analysis, I believe that it leads to intriguing and puzzling questions that are worth considering. In their discussion in 4.3, Kamali and Krifka (henceforth, K & K) analyze focus exhaustivity by using the notion of ‘denegation’, the speech act version of negation. Informally speaking, the denegation of a speech act a is the refraining from engaging a. What is not clear to me is whether denegation is strong enough to guarantee the exhaustivity effect of focus. To illustrate this point, let us compare the two focalization strategies: focus and contrastive topic.
{"title":"Exhaustivity of focus and anti-exhaustivity of contrastive topic","authors":"Satoshi Tomioka","doi":"10.1515/tl-2020-0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/tl-2020-0007","url":null,"abstract":"Themain concept that guides through this commentary is exhaustivity associated with focus. Although this issue is not central to the authors’ analysis, I believe that it leads to intriguing and puzzling questions that are worth considering. In their discussion in 4.3, Kamali and Krifka (henceforth, K & K) analyze focus exhaustivity by using the notion of ‘denegation’, the speech act version of negation. Informally speaking, the denegation of a speech act a is the refraining from engaging a. What is not clear to me is whether denegation is strong enough to guarantee the exhaustivity effect of focus. To illustrate this point, let us compare the two focalization strategies: focus and contrastive topic.","PeriodicalId":46148,"journal":{"name":"Theoretical Linguistics","volume":"46 1","pages":"123 - 132"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/tl-2020-0007","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44254398","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Focus and contrastive topic: More questions, and answers","authors":"Beste Kamali, M. Krifka","doi":"10.1515/tl-2020-0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/tl-2020-0009","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46148,"journal":{"name":"Theoretical Linguistics","volume":"46 1","pages":"141 - 157"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/tl-2020-0009","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44151871","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Our target article (henceforth W&B) proposed a diachronic connection between a structural property of grammars and particular sociohistorical situations: all else being equal, we predict that in sociohistorical situations in which adult L2 learners are particularly dominant quantitatively or qualitatively, uninterpretable features will typically be lost. W&B outlines a research programme rather than a full-fledged knockdown argument, and we thank BIBERAUER, VAN GELDEREN and YANOVICH for reading it in the spirit it was intended and raising important issues in their commentaries. For space reasons we cannot respond to all of these, of course. In Section 2, we address questions of innateness. In Section 3 we discuss the characterization of (un)interpretability. Section 4 addresses the specific issues to do with our analysis of negation. Section 5 revisits the contact scenarios involved. Finally, Section 6 concludes the paper.
{"title":"Interpreting (un)interpretability","authors":"G. Walkden, Anne Breitbarth","doi":"10.1515/tl-2019-0022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/tl-2019-0022","url":null,"abstract":"Our target article (henceforth W&B) proposed a diachronic connection between a structural property of grammars and particular sociohistorical situations: all else being equal, we predict that in sociohistorical situations in which adult L2 learners are particularly dominant quantitatively or qualitatively, uninterpretable features will typically be lost. W&B outlines a research programme rather than a full-fledged knockdown argument, and we thank BIBERAUER, VAN GELDEREN and YANOVICH for reading it in the spirit it was intended and raising important issues in their commentaries. For space reasons we cannot respond to all of these, of course. In Section 2, we address questions of innateness. In Section 3 we discuss the characterization of (un)interpretability. Section 4 addresses the specific issues to do with our analysis of negation. Section 5 revisits the contact scenarios involved. Finally, Section 6 concludes the paper.","PeriodicalId":46148,"journal":{"name":"Theoretical Linguistics","volume":"45 1","pages":"309 - 317"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/tl-2019-0022","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45627785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract In this paper, I discuss differences between representational change (i. e. in formal features and structures involved in grammatical competence) and change in quantitative patterns (i. e. in the quantitative properties of the language system in use), as relevant to my approach to incrementation. My approach differs from the standard variationist sociolinguistic approach because I argue that representational Language processing differences between children and adults could also contribute, but I set these aside here. Note that Biberaurer (this volume) also considers these relevant factors to the role of children in change. input-divergence Input-divergence (Cournane 2017) is used very broadly, as a way to capture any child language properties that deviate from the input model the child learns from. This includes what we standardly call child “errors”, without using that term, which assumes that there is a fixed target when learning a language and interim analyses are wrong. Rather “errors” are only such in comparison to the input/intake grammars, so I opt to call these “input-divergent” properties. along the child learning path contributes to quantitative differences between children and older speakers, most importantly the input speakers. In this way, the Inverted U Model (IUM) for incrementation offers an initial sketch of a linking theory between (a) child developmental findings for competence-related changes over acquisitional time in the individual, and (b) the change-in-progress phenomenon of incrementation which describes how usage rates for innovative variants advance relative to conservative variants in speakers in the community over generational time. Maximize Minimal Means (MMM), this volume similarly attributes a principled, creative role in change to the child-learner, offering a linking theory between (a), and (c), discrete changes in representations between grammars in historical time, grounded in Minimalism. I’ll also respond to Westergaard’s (this volume) argument that the IUM’s reliance on child overgeneralization conflicts with a set of linguistic phenomena for which directional, child-driven changes have been proposed, namely syntactic changes characterized by economy or simplification. In syntax, relative to common language change pathways (e. g. biclausal>monoclausal reanalyses), children typically acquire the (potentially) innovative grammatical structure earlier than the conservative one as they develop complexity (e. g. they develop from monoclausal>biclausal). It is indeed not clear how these child interim syntactic structures relate to overgeneralization, if at all. Rather, syntactic innovations are typically attributed to economy principles, and syntactic learning is sometimes characterized as conservative, also not obviously related to overgeneralization. I’ll show that neither economy in change nor child conservativity in syntactic development directly undermine the proposed model, as both are concerned with
{"title":"Grammatical representations versus productive patterns in change theories","authors":"Ailís Cournane","doi":"10.1515/tl-2019-0023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/tl-2019-0023","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this paper, I discuss differences between representational change (i. e. in formal features and structures involved in grammatical competence) and change in quantitative patterns (i. e. in the quantitative properties of the language system in use), as relevant to my approach to incrementation. My approach differs from the standard variationist sociolinguistic approach because I argue that representational Language processing differences between children and adults could also contribute, but I set these aside here. Note that Biberaurer (this volume) also considers these relevant factors to the role of children in change. input-divergence Input-divergence (Cournane 2017) is used very broadly, as a way to capture any child language properties that deviate from the input model the child learns from. This includes what we standardly call child “errors”, without using that term, which assumes that there is a fixed target when learning a language and interim analyses are wrong. Rather “errors” are only such in comparison to the input/intake grammars, so I opt to call these “input-divergent” properties. along the child learning path contributes to quantitative differences between children and older speakers, most importantly the input speakers. In this way, the Inverted U Model (IUM) for incrementation offers an initial sketch of a linking theory between (a) child developmental findings for competence-related changes over acquisitional time in the individual, and (b) the change-in-progress phenomenon of incrementation which describes how usage rates for innovative variants advance relative to conservative variants in speakers in the community over generational time. Maximize Minimal Means (MMM), this volume similarly attributes a principled, creative role in change to the child-learner, offering a linking theory between (a), and (c), discrete changes in representations between grammars in historical time, grounded in Minimalism. I’ll also respond to Westergaard’s (this volume) argument that the IUM’s reliance on child overgeneralization conflicts with a set of linguistic phenomena for which directional, child-driven changes have been proposed, namely syntactic changes characterized by economy or simplification. In syntax, relative to common language change pathways (e. g. biclausal>monoclausal reanalyses), children typically acquire the (potentially) innovative grammatical structure earlier than the conservative one as they develop complexity (e. g. they develop from monoclausal>biclausal). It is indeed not clear how these child interim syntactic structures relate to overgeneralization, if at all. Rather, syntactic innovations are typically attributed to economy principles, and syntactic learning is sometimes characterized as conservative, also not obviously related to overgeneralization. I’ll show that neither economy in change nor child conservativity in syntactic development directly undermine the proposed model, as both are concerned with","PeriodicalId":46148,"journal":{"name":"Theoretical Linguistics","volume":"45 1","pages":"287 - 297"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/tl-2019-0023","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42526122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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