Focusing on unlikely accented nominals: context, alternatives and implied expectations  

Oleh:

Gillingham, Gwendolyn

Jenis: Article from Proceeding
Dalam koleksi: Proceedings of the 23rd Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference, held at the University of California, Santa Cruz, May 3 - 5, 2013, page 174–193.
Topik: Pronominal Reference; Prosody; Accented Pronouns; Focus
Fulltext: 3682-7329-1-PB(9).pdf (154.07KB)

Isi artikel

In English, accenting a pronoun occasionally switches its reference relative to an unaccented pronoun: (1) John pushed Bill and... a. he fell. b. HE j=#b b=# j fell. However, accent does not always have this effect; it is not licit in (2) below: (2) John bought Bill a drink and then... a. he went home. b. # HE went home. j=?b This paper argues that the felicity of the accent in (1b) is dependent on a presupposition of relative unlikelihood, which is unful?lled in (2b). The presence of this accent is due to a focus-sensitive operator, Op , which presupposes the existence of a more likely alternative to the asserted one. The reference and the distribution of accented pronouns is due to the satisfaction of this presupposition. Op unlikely not only accounts for accents on pronouns, but also on coreferential nouns and other types of constituents as well. Finally, this operator also accounts for the distribution of accent and unlikelihood associated with other focus-sensitive constructions.

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