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Hungarian Pre-verbal Focus and Exhaustivity

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New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence (JSAI-isAI 2012)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 7856))

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Abstract

With respect to exhaustivity and focusing strategies Hungarian is a particularly interesting language. The most well-known characteristic of Hungarian is that it has a special position for the focused constituent directly in front of the finite verb. Hungarian uses both movement and intonation (accent) to mark focus. The focused constituent moves to a pre-verbal focus position that is often associated with an exhaustive/identificational semantics. According to several approaches, in Hungarian, focus marking by movement is primary, while the prosodic considerations are claimed to be secondary. There are two important questions about focusing in Hungarian. Firstly, an explanation of the focus movement is required, and secondly, in connection with this, we have to explain interpretational effects, with special attention to exhaustive listing. This paper investigates the semantic-pragmatic interpretation of structural focus in Hungarian an provides an analysis via obligatory implicatures.

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Balogh, K. (2013). Hungarian Pre-verbal Focus and Exhaustivity. In: Motomura, Y., Butler, A., Bekki, D. (eds) New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence. JSAI-isAI 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 7856. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39931-2_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39931-2_1

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-39930-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-39931-2

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