Optimization in Focus Identification

This chapter investigates which factors are involved in the identification of the focused expression with which a focus particle associates. If a hearer wishes to interpret a sentence containing a focus particle, one of the things she must do is identify the focused expression. Although we are concerned here with bound focus only (i.e., the focus with which a focus particle associates, in the terminology of Jackendoff, 1972), bound focus and free focus are traditionally considered to be essentially the same phenomenon. The dominant view seems to be that focus (bound or free) is an abstract feature on syntactic phrases which is marked by prosodic prominence.1 This abstract focus feature has certain effects either in semantics or in pragmatics, depending on the exact theoretical position. A grammaticalized account of focus such as the structured meaning approach (e.g., von Stechow, 1991; Krifka, 1991) puts much of focus into syntax and semantics. Degrammaticalized accounts of focus such as the alternative semantics approach of Rooth (1992) or the approach of von Fintel (1994), on the other hand, remove focus from the grammar and place it in pragmatics. Under a pragmatic approach, focus is assumed to signal the presence in the context of a certain kind of presupposition, to which focus particles might be anaphorically or presuppositionally related.