Text

What Counts: Focus and Quantification

---

In What Counts, Elena Herburger considers the effects of focus on interpretation. She investigates how focus affects the pragmatics and truth conditions of a sentence by rearranging its quantificational structure.Adopting a neo-Davidsonian stance, Herburger claims that various pragmatic and truth-conditional effects of focus sustain a uniform explanation if focus is viewed as imposing structure on otherwise unrestricted quantification. Phenomena discussed include "free" focus, the interaction between focus and negation, the quantificational structure of adverbs of quantification, the semantics of only and even, and the differences between weak and strong determiners.One of Herburger's aims is to show that a simple semantics, without reliance on such notions as semantic presupposition, can account for the truth-conditional and pragmatic effects of focus. The book will be of interest to anyone exploring the syntax-semantics interface and current theories of quantification.Linguistic Inquiry Monograph No. 36OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

---

Availability

No copy data

Detail Information

Series Title

-

Call Number

-

Publisher

Cambridge : The MIT Press., 2000

Collation

1 online resource (x, 166 pages).

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

9780262275293

Classification

NONE

Content Type

text

Media Type

computer

Carrier Type

online resource

Edition

-

Subject(s)

Grammar, Comparative and general
Semantics.
Pragmatics.
Focus (Linguistics)

Specific Detail Info

-

Statement of Responsibility

By Elena Herburger

Other Information

Cataloger

jemadi

Source

https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/2568/What-CountsFocus-and-Quantification

Validator

jemadi

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/7201.001.0001

Journal Volume

-

Journal Issue

-

Subtitle

-

Parallel Title

-

Other version/related

File Attachment

Comments

---

You must be logged in to post a comment