Predicting contrast in sentences with and without focus marking

Abstract

How do we know when a contrast is coming? This study explores the prediction of parallel contrastive phrases, especially NPs, in sentences with and without overt focus marking. A written sentence-completion questionnaire with clauses followed by the conjunction “but” compared unmarked initial clauses to ones with the focus marker “only” on the subject or object. Both conditions with “only” elicited more contrasts overall than the condition without focus marking, and many of the contrasts were with the focus-marked NP. While the baseline (no-only) condition had full clauses for half of the completions, subject focus increased clausal completions and object focus increased negative ellipsis completions (“not”+NP structures), both changes in syntax which make a contrast with the marked NP easy. The production of negative ellipsis sentences primarily in the object-focus condition suggests that the object bias of these sentences in comprehension could relate to their being used more frequently with this meaning. Finally, the overall pattern of results shows that overt marking of contrastive focus increases continuations with contrasts, and the conjunction “but” does not reliably predict explicitly-stated contrasts within a sentence without overt focus marking.

The role of non-connective discourse cues and their interaction with connectives

“…For instance, they can be substituted by "alternative lexicalizations" (Prasad et al 2008) such as "that is largely due to", which encode the meaning of the relation (causality, in this case). Other cues include focus markers for contrast relations (Carlson 2014), complementizers for consequence (Rohde et al 2017) or verb tense for temporality (Grisot 2018). Das and Taboada (2018) provide a comprehensive corpus study of discourse cues or "signals" (in their terminology), covering features such as polarity, tense, reference, semantic relations and many others.…”

Resolving ambiguous polarity stripping ellipsis structures in Persian

“…Similarly, the location of focus-sensitive particles like only also appear to affect the preferred contrast, suggesting that implicit indicators of focus likewise guide comprehension (assuming that such particles assign narrow focus and nuclear stress to their right-adjacent constituent, e.g., Büring & Hartmann 2001; but see also Harris & Carlson 2017 for complications). In a written completion study on negative stripping ellipsis, Carlson (2014) found that the location of only strongly influenced whether participants completed fragments like (12) with a Subject or Object contrast remnant.…”

Previsão de contraste em sentenças com advérbio focalizador e clivagem em Português Brasileiro

“…Esta dissertação investiga o processamento de sentenças com o advérbio focalizador 'só' e de sentenças clivadas totais, no Português Brasileiro. Pesquisas anteriores (CARLSON, 2015;FILIK et al, 2009;LIVERSEDGE et al, 2002;PATERSON et al, 1999), na área da Psicolinguística, mostram a influência de 'só' e de estruturas clivadas no foco da sentença, durante o processamento, bem como a previsão de contraste e exaustividade (CARLSON, 2014;DRENHAUS et al, 2011) provocada por tais marcadores. A pesquisa em questão foi desenvolvida na área da Psicolinguística Experimental (LEITÃO, 2008;TRAXLER, 2012;WARREN, 2013) e teve como objetivo investigar se e de que maneira essas diferentes estratégias de marcação de foco (KISS, 1998;ROOTH, 1992) influenciariam o processamento das sentenças coordenadas que viriam depois das que continham os marcadores de foco.…”

“…Para isso, foram conduzidos dois experimentos de completação de sentenças. No primeiro experimento, baseado em Carlson (2014), abordou-se a partícula focalizadora 'só', cujo escopo variava entre sujeito e objeto da sentença, como em: 1) 'Na terça-feira, só o caixa ajudou o vendedor na loja, mas...' / 'Na terça-feira, o caixa ajudou só o vendedor na loja, mas...'. No segundo experimento, com sentenças clivadas totais, as estruturas variavam entre clivadas de sujeito e clivadas de objeto: 2) 'Ontem, foi a Thaís quem salvou o Leonardo de se afogar no mar, e...' / 'Ontem, foi o Leonardo quem a Thaís salvou de se afogar no mar, e...'.…”

“…

This dissertation investigates the processing of sentences with the focus particle 'só' ('only') and it-clefts, in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Previous research (CARLSON, 2015;FILIK et al, 2009;LIVERSEDGE et al, 2002;PATERSON et al, 1999), in the area of Psycholinguistics, shows the influence of 'só' and clefting structures in the focus of the sentence during processing, as well as the prediction of contrast and exhaustiveness (CARLSON, 2014;DRENHAUS et al, 2011) caused by such markers. This research was developed in the area of Experimental Psycholinguistics (LEITÃO, 2008;TRAXLER, 2012;WARREN, 2013) and aimed to investigate whether and how these different focus marking strategies (KISS, 1998;ROOTH, 1992) influence the processing of upcoming coordinate sentences.

…”