Focus projection

Given that accent placement is mapped to information structure by regular rules, where information structure is a parsing of a sentence into ‘focused’ and ‘unfocused’ parts, the architectural question is whether the interpretation of accent placement is direct, or mediated by other systems. And given a representation of accent like that proposed in Liberman (1975), in which every pair of sisters is labelled as either ‘[weak strong]’ or ‘[strong weak]’, that question then becomes: can focus interpretation be reduced to interpreting [w s] and [s w] sister pairs, with nothing further involved? Otherwise put, is the locus of accent contrast, namely sisters, also the locus of the interpretation of that contrast? Williams (1997) suggested that it was, and presented the ‘Disanaphora Law’ and the ‘DOAP Law’ as an implementation of that view. In this chapter I will defend the theory further and widen its scope.

In a now standard line of theories of focus interpretation, such as that in Rooth (1992), the connection of accent to its interpretation occurs in two stages. First, syntactic constituents are identified as focuses on the basis of the location of accent prominences by rules of ‘focus projection’. These Focus-marked constituents are then subject to interpretation – in Rooth's theory according to principles stated in terms of the ‘alternative semantics’ of their ‘focus values’, principles determining such things as answerhood to questions, contrast, the interpretation of focus-sensitive adverbs, etc.:

1. (1) Classic theories: accent placement —–> focus —–> answerhood, contrast,…