Emilie Destruel

A Cross-Linguistic Study of the Non-at-issueness of Exhaustive Inferences

Several constructions have been noted to associate with an exhaustive inference, notably the English it-cleft, the French c’est-cleft, the preverbal focus in Hungarian and the German es-cleft. This inference has long been recognized to differ from exhaustiveness associated with exclusives like English only. While previous literature has attempted to capture this difference by debating whether the exhaustiveness of clefts is semantic or a pragmatic phenomenon, recent studies such as (Velleman et al. 2012, Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistics Theory (SALT) 22, pages 441–460) supplement the debate by proposing that the notion of at-issueness is the culprit of those differences. In light of this notion, this paper reconsiders the results from previous experimental data on Hungarian and German (Onea and Beaver 2011, Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 19, pages 342–359; Xue and Onea 2011, Proceedings of the ESSLLI 2011 Workshop on Projective Meaning, Ljubljana, Slovenia) and presents new data on English and French, showing that the “Yes, but” test used in these four languages to diagnose the source of the exhaustive inference (semantics vs. pragmatics), in fact diagnoses its status (at-issue vs. non-at-issue). We conclude that the exhaustiveness associated with clefts and cleft-like constructions is not at-issue, or in other words, exhaustiveness it is not the main point of the utterance.

The acquisition of Focus in L2 Spanish

This paper examines the strategies used by speakers of Spanish as a second language (L2) for marking Information Focus, a phenomenon found at the syntax–discourse interface. Sorace and colleagues have proposed the Interface Hypothesis, according to which the syntax–discourse interface poses unique challenges for bilinguals (Sorace, 2011). With respect to Spanish, there exists a gap between the theoretical and empirical literatures on Focus realization; the former suggests that Focus must appear in sentence-final position, yet recent experimental work challenges this claim, showing that Focus commonly remains in situ. Using a speeded production task, we compared the response patterns of L2 Spanish speakers to that of natives in order to bring additional evidence to bear on the debate. Results revealed an asymmetry: L2 learners converged with native speakers on Subject Focus but not on Object Focus, where proficiency mediated overall divergences, indicating a change toward more nativelike Focus-marking strategies over time. We discuss our findings in light of the Interface Hypothesis and existing theories of Focus marking in Spanish.