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Focus

Focus

Focus

Linguistic, Cognitive, and Computational Perspectives
Peter Bosch, Institute for Logic and Linguistics, IBM Germany
Rob van der Sandt, Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, The Netherlands
April 2011
Paperback
9780521168502
NZD$75.95
inc GST
Paperback
inc GST
Hardback

    This book presents a collection of papers on the issue of focus in its broadest sense. While commonly being considered as related to phenomena such as presupposition and anaphora, focusing is much more widely spread, and it is this pervasiveness that this collection addresses. The volume explicitly aims to bring together theoretical, psychological, and descriptive approaches to focus, at the same time maintaining the overall interest in how these notions apply to the larger problem of evolving some formal representation of the semantic aspects of linguistic content. The contributed papers to this volume have been reworked from a selection of original work presented at a conference held in 1994 in Schloss Wolfsbrunnen in Germany.

    • Contains many key contributors, many of them CUP or CSLI authors
    • Result of extremely successful conference, but the papers are completely re-worked to give a coherent volume

    Product details

    April 2011
    Paperback
    9780521168502
    388 pages
    229 × 152 × 22 mm
    0.57kg
    Available

    Table of Contents

    • List of contributors
    • Preface Peter Bosch and Rob van der Sandt
    • Part I. SURFACE REALISATION OF FOCUS:
    • 1. Contrastive stress, contrariety and focus Kees van Deemter
    • 2. The processing of information structure Carsten Günther, Claudia Maienborn, and Andrea Schopp
    • 3. On the limits of focus projection in English Carlos Gussenhoven
    • 4. Informational autonomy Joachim Jacobs
    • 5. Subject-prodrop in Yiddish Ellen F. Prince
    • Part II. SEMANTIC INTERPRETATION OF FOCUS PHENOMENA:
    • 6. What is the alternative? The computation of focus alternatives from lexical and sortal information Peter I. Blok and Kurt Eberle
    • 7. The treatment of focusing particles in underspecified discourse representations Johan Bos
    • 8. Topic Daniel Büring
    • 9. Focus with nominal quantifiers Regine Eckardt
    • 10. Topic, focus and weak quantifiers Gerhard Jäger
    • 11. Focus, quantification, and semantics-pragmatics issues Barbara H. Partee
    • 12. Association with focus or association with presupposition Mats Rooth
    • Part III. The Function of Focus in Discourse:
    • 13. Discourse and the focus/background distinction Nicholas Asher
    • 14. Domain restriction Bart Geurts and Rob van de Sandt
    • 15. On different kinds of focus Jeanette K. Gundel
    • 16. Stressed and unstressed pronouns: complementary preferences Megumi Kameyama
    • 17. Discourse linking and discourse subordination Kjell Johan Sæbø
    • 18. Position and meaning: time adverbials in context Henrietta de Swart
    • Name index
    • Subject index.
      Contributors
    • Peter Bosch, Rob van der Sandt, Kees van Deemter, Carsten Günther, Claudia Maienborn, Andrea Schopp, Carlos Gussenhoven, Joachim Jacobs, Ellen F. Prince, Peter I. Blok, Kurt Eberle, Johan Bos, Daniel Büring, Regine Eckardt, Gerhard Jäger, Barbara H. Partee, Mats Rooth, Nicholas Asher, Bart Geurts, Jeanette K. Gundel, Megumi Kameyama, Kjell Johan Sæbø, Henrietta de Swart