{"id":3621,"date":"2012-02-06T05:00:53","date_gmt":"2012-02-06T09:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/?p=3621"},"modified":"2012-02-06T00:42:30","modified_gmt":"2012-02-06T04:42:30","slug":"3621","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2012\/02\/06\/3621\/","title":{"rendered":"Linguistics Colloquium 2\/10 - David Beaver"},"content":{"rendered":"

Speaker: David Beaver (University of Texas, Austin)
\nTime: Friday 2\/10 3:30 PM
\nLocation: 32-141
\nTitle: IT-constructions<\/p>\n

Abstract:<\/p>\n

\n

Within the context of a broader project concerning what speakers take to be at-issue, I will present an analysis of the semantics and discourse function of a large range of constructions that I refer to as Inquiry Terminating (IT) constructions. In English, these include it-clefts and exclusives such as “only”, “just”, and “mere(ly)”. I claim that despite their many differences, such constructions cross-linguistically have much in common: they are always focus-sensitive or focus markers, they have a uniform semantics (modulo differences related to syntactic category), and as a discourse function they are always used to mark that a proposition provides a complete answer to what the speaker takes to be the current question.<\/p>\n

The similarity of a cleft sentence of the form “It’s X that Ys” to a sentence “only X Ys”, with the exclusive “only” is easily seen: in both cases X is realized with an intonational focus, and both constructions are used when X Ys and nothing else does. Yet cleft sentences and exclusive sentences have many differences. Some of these are shown in the following minimal pairs, each of which shows a contrast in acceptability when an exclusive is replaced by a cleft.<\/p>\n

1a) Not only did Kai laugh, but Irene laughed too.
\n1b) # It wasn’t Kai who laughed, but Irene laughed too.<\/p>\n

2a) Mary ate pizza and she only ate pizza.
\n2b) # Mary ate pizza and it was pizza she ate. (cf. Horn 1981)<\/p>\n

3a) Kai: Only David laughed.
\nIrene: # Yes, and Brady laughed too.<\/p>\n

3b) Kai: It was David who laughed.
\nIrene: Yes, and Brady laughed too.<\/p>\n

I aim to account for the main similarities and differences between the meanings of clefts and exclusives, the interaction both types of construction have with focus, and a puzzling range of further data, including evidence drawn from experiments that I’ve been conducting with colleagues on IT-constructions in English, French, German, and Hungarian. I’ll then compare with other accounts, showing e.g. that a recent proposal for the meaning of clefts due to Buring can be subsumed under the current account in all the cases where it works, but not where it doesn’t.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speaker: David Beaver (University of Texas, Austin) Time: Friday 2\/10 3:30 PM Location: 32-141 Title: IT-constructions Abstract: Within the context of a broader project concerning what speakers take to be at-issue, I will present an analysis of the semantics and discourse function of a large range of constructions that I refer to as Inquiry Terminating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-talks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3621"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3625,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3621\/revisions\/3625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}