Interdisciplinary Colloquium
Prof. Roni Katzir, Tel Aviv University
As part of the department’s weekly research colloquium,
held every Thursday from 16:15 to 17:45 in the Webb Building (Room 103),
the following lecture by Prof. Roni Katzir from Tel Aviv University will take place:
Against LF representation of focus
Abstract:
According to a common view, the correlation of sound and meaning in focus dependencies is mediated
syntactically. In “Kim (only) spoke to [the new SECRETARY]”, for example, a syntactic feature F on [the new
secretary] leads to prosodic prominence on ‘secretary’ on the one hand and to a special semantic meaning
on the other hand, which accounts for the ability of the sentence to felicitously answer the question “Who
did Kim speak to?” and to its exhaustive inference that Kim didn’t speak to the dean. I will argue against
this view and in favor of an unmediated alternative, one with neither syntactic nor semantic representation
of focus, where pragmatic reasoning applies directly to prosodic highlighting.
All are welcome!
