What Counts, Volume 36: Focus and Quantification

By Elena Herburger

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. 36

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 026258185X
• ISBN13: 9780262581851
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: MIT Press
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher