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The Connection Between Focus and Implicatures: Investigating Alternative Activation Under Working Memory Load

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Book cover Linguistic and Psycholinguistic Approaches on Implicatures and Presuppositions

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Pragmatics, Language and Cognition ((PSPLC))

Abstract

The function of focus is to activate alternatives which are used to compute the inferences arising from an utterance. The present research examines the relationship between the activation of alternatives and the computation of implicatures from an online language processing perspective. In particular, the authors test the activation of alternatives under working memory load, comparing intonational focus (different accent types: H* and L+H*) and overt focus operators (only and also). Their data show that contrastive focus intonation (L+H*) does not help alternative access under working memory load while it has been found to facilitate alternative access without a concurrent working memory task in Gotzner et al. (Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Cognitive Science Society, Austin, TX, 2013, pp 2434–2440). In the case of the focus particle only alternatives are grammatically required and listeners showed an increased processing difficulty in accessing alternatives mentioned in the context. The authors discuss the implications of these findings on the role of focus intonation in activating alternatives and inference processing. In particular, they argue that part of the processing cost observed in implicature computation is due to the need to activate and contextually restrict a set of alternatives.

The data presented in this chapter are part of the dissertation by the first author (see Chap. 6 in Gotzner 2015). This research was supported by the DFG as part of the SFB 632 “Information Structure.” Nicole Gotzner is currently supported by the Xprag.de Initiative.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Such a mechanism would be consistent with the theoretical framework of Chierchia (2013), which assumes that (i) focus activates alternatives and (ii) once alternatives are activated they have to be consumed by either an overt or covert operator (e.g., only).

  2. 2.

    Note that early theories like Groenendijk and Stokhof (1984) postulated a pragmatic exhaustivity operator while more recent theories by Chierchia, among others, assume that implicatures are a grammatical phenomenon.

  3. 3.

    Such a difference was for example observed in the prosodic study by Krahmer and Swerts (2001).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Leibniz Center Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin, Germany

    Nicole Gotzner

  2. Humboldt University Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Katharina Spalek

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  1. Nicole Gotzner
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  2. Katharina Spalek
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS), Berlin, Germany

    Salvatore Pistoia-Reda

  2. University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy

    Filippo Domaneschi

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Gotzner, N., Spalek, K. (2017). The Connection Between Focus and Implicatures: Investigating Alternative Activation Under Working Memory Load. In: Pistoia-Reda, S., Domaneschi, F. (eds) Linguistic and Psycholinguistic Approaches on Implicatures and Presuppositions. Palgrave Studies in Pragmatics, Language and Cognition. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50696-8_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50696-8_7

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