On the acquisition of focus in Hungarian

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Absztrakt

Recent theoretical and empirical research has been focused on the exhaustive interpretation of the Hungarian preverbal focus construction. Views are divided if the exhaustivity is determined by a syntactic-semantic operator or if it can be attributed to pragmatic factors. Here, I attempt to test Reinhart’s (2006) Interface Theory of Focus which claims that focus is not syntactically encoded but it is identified at the interface. I conducted two child acquisition experiments since children have limitation of cognitive resources. Therefore, their performance was expected to be affected. It was found that in non-exhaustive context children did almost like adults when interpreting focus constructions with ‘only’ but they had significantly lower adult-like rejection rates in case of preVf. These data indeed suggest that Reinhart’s (2006) theory that focus is coded at the interface is right.

Leírás
Kulcsszavak
acquisition, interface theory, preverbal focus, focus
Forrás