The Exhaustivity of Contrastive Focus is a Conversational Implicature

Mary Byram Washburnbyram@usc.eduhttp://www-scf.usc.edu/~byram/Elsi KaiserMaria Luisa ZubizarretaThe University of Southern California

CUSP 2012The Exhaustivity of Contrastive Focus is a Conversational ImplicatureWith many thanks to Elena Guerzoni!Contrastive focus seems exhaustiveThe intuition:1a) It was John who left the party early. b) [John]F left the party early.= only John left the party early (no one else left the party early)

This has led many people to include exhaustivity as part of the semantics of contrastive focus, especially it-cleftsFor it-clefts: Kiss 1998, Percus 1997For insitu contrastive focus: Svoboda & Materna 1987

Exhaustivity behaves like a conversational implicatureFelicitous in suspender clauses (Horn 1972)2a) It was a sandwich that Tom ordered, and possibly it was even a sandwich and a bagel that he ordered.2b) Tom ordered a [sandwich] F, and possibly, he even ordered a sandwich and a bagel.Fails to arise in downward entailing environments3) Context: George always leaves one cookie in the cookie jar.a) If it was George who stole the cookies, then there will be just one left, regardless of his accomplices.b) If [George]F stole the cookies, there will be just one left, regardless of his accomplices.Violations of exhaustivity are not processed the same as for onlyDrenhaus et al 2010Questionnaire study and ERP studyCompared exhaustive and non-exhaustive it-clefts to exhaustive and non-exhaustive only sentences in Germana) Exhaustive it-cleft:Es ist Maria, die das Klavier spielen kann und ausserdem noch die Geige sagte It is Mary who the piano play can and besides that also the violin saysIt is Mary who can play the piano and, additionally, also the violin, saysb) Non-exhaustive it-cleft:Es ist Maria, die das Klavier spielen kann und ausserdem noch Luise und Jana sagte It is Mary who the piano play can and besides her also Luise and Jana saysIt is Mary who can play the piano and, additionally, also Luise and Jana, saysc) Exhaustive only statementNur Maria kann das Klavier spielen und ausserdem noch die Geige sagteOnly Mary can the piano play and besides that also the violin saysOnly Mary can play the piano and, additionally, also the violin, saysd) Non-exhaustive only statementNur Maria kann das Klavier spielen und ausserdem noch Luise and Jana sagteOnly Mary can the piano play and besides that also Luise and Jana saysOnly Mary can play the piano and, additionally, also Luise and Jana, says

Violations of exhaustivity are not processed the same as for onlyDrenhaus et al 2010: resultsFor the QuestionnaireNon-exhaustive statements worse than exhaustive ones, but non-exhaustive it-clefts significantly better than non-exhaustive only1-6 where 1=bestExhaustive it-cleft: 2.4Non-exhaustive it-cleft: 2.8Exhaustive only: 2.6Non-exhaustive only: 3.7For the ERPExhaustive it-cleft vs. Non-exhaustive it-cleft: N400Pragmatic integration (not truth-conditional violation)Exhaustive only vs. Non-exhaustive only: P600Semantic processing

Exhaustivity is a scalar implicature? Maxim of Quantity & Maxim of Quality (Horn 1981)Any more informative statement that is not said must have been omitted because it is false.

3 premises:P1) A speaker utters the it-cleft or contrastive focus correctlyP2) Opinionate speaker: The speaker either believes that the it-cleft or utterance with contrastive focus is exhaustive or believes that it is not. (Fox 2007, Sauerland 2004, von Fintel and Heim 1999)P3) Relevance: The speaker believes that it is relevant if there are multiple items that are true of the utterance, one of which is the clefted or contrastively focused item(Gamut 1991, Atlas and Levinson 1981)The Current Study: goalsGoals:Determine if speakers of English find non-exhaustive contrastive focus to be ungrammatical in circumstances where a scalar implicature should fail to arise.Ungrammaticality is a hallmark of being a semantic propertyTest on:It-clefts (Exp. 1)Insitu contrastive focus (Exp. 2)

The Current Study: materialsThe last spoken sentence was always the same:Exp. 1: Yesterday, it was a sandwich that he orderedExp. 2: Yesterday, he ordered a [sandwich]F.Baseline:Exhaustive, Contrastive (exh, con) GrammaticalJane and Tom went to lunch. Tom ordered a sandwich. Later, Kevin remarks: I bet Tom ordered only a salad again, didnt he? Jane responds: No, he didnt.Exhaustive, Non-contrastive (exh, non-con) UngrammaticalJane and Tom went to lunch. Tom ordered a sandwich. Later, Kevin remarks: I bet Tom ordered only a sandwich again, didnt he? Jane responds: Yes, he did. The Current Study: materialsExp. 1: Yesterday, it was a sandwich that he orderedExp. 2: Yesterday, he ordered a [sandwich]F.Explicit Alternatives and Relevant AlternativesExplicit: strength of implicature = markedness (Horn 1981)Relevant: implicature fails to arise if more informative statement is irrelevantNon-exhaustive, Explicit, Irrelevant (nonexh, exp, rel)GrammaticalJane and Tom went to lunch. Tom ordered a sandwich, a bagel, and a donut. Later, Kevin remarks: I bet Tom ordered only a salad again, didnt he? Jane responds: He doesnt always order salads.Non-exhaustive, Explicit, Relevant (nonexh, exp, rel)UngrammaticalJane and Tom went to lunch. Tom ordered a sandwich, a bagel, and a donut. Later, Kevin remarks: I bet Tom ordered a salad again, didnt he? Jane responds: No, he didnt.The Current Study: materialsExp. 1: Yesterday, it was a sandwich that he orderedExp. 2: Yesterday, he ordered a [sandwich]F.Explicit Alternatives and Relevant AlternativesNon-exhaustive, Implicit, Irrelevant (nonexh, nonexp)GrammaticalJane and Tom went to lunch. Tom ordered a variety of lunch items. Later, Kevin remarks: I bet Tom ordered only a salad again, didnt he? Jane responds: He doesnt always order salads.Non-exhaustive, Implicit, Relevant (nonexh, nonexp, rel)UngrammaticalJane and Tom went to lunch. Tom ordered a variety of lunch items. Later, Kevin remarks: I bet Tom ordered a salad again, didnt he? Jane responds: No, he didnt.The Current Study: procedureParticipants read the paragraphs on a computer screen. Only one sentence visible at a time.Clicked spacebar to move to the next sentence.Final, experimental sentence presented audially.Native, female speaker of English

Participants judged final sentence.Asked to indicate how natural final sentence was in light of the previous context. (weird or bizarre also in instructions)1-6 nominal scale, 1=completely natural & 6 =completely unnaturalFillers:Pseudoclefts and insitu focus, with appropriate and inappropriate intonation (flat or emphasized) and placement (noun or verb)

The Current Study:experiment 1 results with it-cleftsNon-exhaustive it-clefts were not judged to be ungrammatical!Non-exhaustive it-clefts were not rated worst than exhaustive it-clefts. p>.05The Current Study:experiment 2 current results with insituNon-exhaustive insitu contrastive focus does not appear to be ungrammatical!The Current Study: discussionNon-exhaustive contrastive focus is not ungrammatical.Non-contrastive contrastive focus is ungrammatical.Rated worse than all other conditions, regardless of exhaustivity.No difference between exhaustive and non-exhaustive conditions.Implicit vs. Explicit alternatives did not make a difference.Strongest case of exhaustivity: explicitly mentioned alternativesRelevant vs. Irrelevant alternatives did not make a differenceTrend towards relevant alternatives being rated worse than irrelevant alternatives, but nowhere near significant.Could be a product of the sensitivity of the task.ImplicationsExhaustiveness in contrastive focus is a conversational implicature.Can be formally analyzed as a scalar implicature.Analyzing it as a scalar implicature accounts for more of the dataSuspender clauses, downward entailmentViolations are not processed like semantic violationsN400, not a P600Not considered as bad as a truly ungrammatical construction (indeed, perhaps not bad at all!)Accounts of contrastive focus, even of the it-cleft, should avoid using exhaustivity as part of its meaningIt is possible to include presentational clefts and identificational clefts within the same analysis.Works CitedAtlas, J.D. and Stephen C. Levinson. 1981. It-clefts, informativeness and logical form: Radical pragmatics. Radical Pragmatics, ed. Peter Cole. Academic Press Inc: New York, 1-61.Drenhaus, H., M. Zimmermann, S. Vasishth. 2010. Exhaustiveness effects in clefts are not truth-functional. Journal of Neurolinguistics. Doi: 10.1016/j.jneuroling.2010.10.004.Fox, Danny. 2007. Free choice and the theory of scalar implicatures. Presuppositionand implicature in compositional semantics, ed. Penka Stateva and Uli Sauerland.Palgrave-Macmillan.Gamut, L.T.F. 1991. Logic, Language and Meaning. University of Chicago Press. Green, M. and Jaggar, P. 2003. Ex-situ and In-situ Focus in Hausa: syntax, semantics and discourse. Research in Afroasiatic Grammar II. [CILT 241]. Ed. J. Lecarme. Amsterdam: John Benjamins: 187-213.Grice, H.P. 1975. Logic and Conversation. Syntax and Semantics. Ed. Peter Cole and Jerry Morgan. Vol. 3: Speech Acts. Academic Press: New York.Halvorsen, Per-Kristian. 1978. The Syntax and Semantics of Cleft Constructions. Ph D diss., Univ. of Texas at Austin. Hedberg, N. 1990. Discourse Pragmatics and Cleft Sentences in English. Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota. Hedberg, N. 2000. The Referential Status of Clefts. Language. 76:4, 891-920.Horn, L. 1972. On the Semantic Properties of Logical Operators in English. Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles.Horn, L. 1981. Exhaustiveness and the semantics of clefts. Proceeding of NELS 11, 125-142Works CitedKiss, . 1998. Identification Focus Versus Information Focus. Language 74:2, 245-273.Percus, O. 1997. Prying open the cleft. Northeast Linguistic Society 27, 337-351.Prince, E. F. 1978. A comparison of wh-clefts and it-clefts in discourse. Language 54, 883-906.Rooth, M. 1985. Association with Focus. Ph.D. diss., UMass, Amherst.Rooth, M. 1992. A Theory of Focus Interpretation. Natural Language Semantics 1, 75-116.Rooth, M. 1995. The generic book. The University of Chicago Press.Rooth, M.. 1996. On the interface principles for intonational focus. SALT VI. ed. Teresa Galloway and Justin Spence. Cornell University: Ithaca, NY, 202-226.Sauerland, U. 2004. Scalar Implicatures in Complex Sentences, Linguistics andPhilosophy 27, 367-391.Von Fintel, K. and Irene Heim. 1999. Pragmatics in Linguistic Theory. Class Notes. MIT.