Focus and givenness across the grammar

Christopher Tancredi

doi:10.1007/978-3-662-48119-6_15

Focus and givenness across the grammar

Christopher Tancredi

Institute of Cultural & Linguistic Studies

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Abstract

This paper takes seriously the idea that a single expression can be simultaneously marked as given and as a focus, and works out some of the consequences of that assumption. I adopt Katz and Selkirk’s (2011) suggestion that givenness is the flip side of newness rather than of focus, and argue that neither Rooth’s semantics of focus nor Schwarzschild’s analysis of givenness is by itself sufficient to account for a range of novel observations. I then show how both analyses can be maintained provided that the syntactic and phonological assumptions about focus/givenness marking and pitch accent assignment are appropriately revised.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence - JSAI-isAI 2014 Workshops, LENLS, JURISIN, and GABA, Revised Selected Papers
Editors	Tsuyoshi Murata, Koji Mineshima, Daisuke Bekki
Publisher	Springer Verlag
Pages	200-222
Number of pages	23
ISBN (Print)	9783662481189
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-48119-6_15
Publication status	Published - 2015
Event	6th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, JSAI 2014 - Kanagawa, Japan Duration: 2014 Oct 27 → 2014 Oct 28

Publication series

Name	Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume	9067
ISSN (Print)	0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)	1611-3349

Other

Other	6th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, JSAI 2014
Country/Territory	Japan
City	Kanagawa
Period	14/10/27 → 14/10/28

Keywords

Focus
Givenness
Newness
Pitch accents

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Theoretical Computer Science
Computer Science(all)

Access to Document

10.1007/978-3-662-48119-6_15

Cite this

Tancredi, C. (2015). Focus and givenness across the grammar. In T. Murata, K. Mineshima, & D. Bekki (Eds.), New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence - JSAI-isAI 2014 Workshops, LENLS, JURISIN, and GABA, Revised Selected Papers (pp. 200-222). (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics); Vol. 9067). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-48119-6_15

Focus and givenness across the grammar. / Tancredi, Christopher.
New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence - JSAI-isAI 2014 Workshops, LENLS, JURISIN, and GABA, Revised Selected Papers. ed. / Tsuyoshi Murata; Koji Mineshima; Daisuke Bekki. Springer Verlag, 2015. p. 200-222 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics); Vol. 9067).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Tancredi, C 2015, Focus and givenness across the grammar. in T Murata, K Mineshima & D Bekki (eds), New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence - JSAI-isAI 2014 Workshops, LENLS, JURISIN, and GABA, Revised Selected Papers. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), vol. 9067, Springer Verlag, pp. 200-222, 6th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, JSAI 2014, Kanagawa, Japan, 14/10/27. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-48119-6_15

Tancredi C. Focus and givenness across the grammar. In Murata T, Mineshima K, Bekki D, editors, New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence - JSAI-isAI 2014 Workshops, LENLS, JURISIN, and GABA, Revised Selected Papers. Springer Verlag. 2015. p. 200-222. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)). doi: 10.1007/978-3-662-48119-6_15

Tancredi, Christopher. / Focus and givenness across the grammar. New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence - JSAI-isAI 2014 Workshops, LENLS, JURISIN, and GABA, Revised Selected Papers. editor / Tsuyoshi Murata ; Koji Mineshima ; Daisuke Bekki. Springer Verlag, 2015. pp. 200-222 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)).

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Focus and givenness across the grammar

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Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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