Exhaustivity of Focus

Abstract

Wee, Hae-Kyung. 2002. Exhaustivity of Focus. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 27-4, 617-639. While the idea of exhaustivity for a focused constituent has existed for a long time in the research on focus (cf. Chomsky 1971, Szabolcsi 1981, 1983), many modern researchers e.g., Rooth (1985, 1992), Krifka (1991, 1992), Partee, Hajicova, and Sgall (1998) etc., regard exhaustivity as a potential implicature but not as part of its truth-conditions. É Kiss (1998) explicitly argues that English prosodic focus does not express exhaustivity, while cleft constructions do, by applying exhaustivity tests to focus constructions. First, this paper objects to this position and argues for the contrary by showing that a particular type of focus actually does pass the exhaustivity tests. Second, this paper provides a sketch of a semantic analysis that can account for the exhaustivity involved with this type of focus. Finally, this paper shows that the presupposed exhaustivity associated with focus or cleft sentences is not the same as the asserted exhaustivity conveyed by lexical expressions such as 'only' or 'nothing but'. It is concluded that the long lasting intuition about the exhaustivity of focus is actually on the right track to a substantial degree. (Ewha Womans University)