7. An experimental investigation of focus.
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Christine M. Andrew
Abstract
In the present experimental study, subjects were asked for direct judgements of the importance of words in a set of twenty sentences which varied systematically according to voice, dative position, and location of contrastive stress. These three sentence properties were considered to have possible focus roles. The results indicated that front-shifting, as occurs in passivization or dative movement, is a focus device, as is contrastive stress.
Abstract
In the present experimental study, subjects were asked for direct judgements of the importance of words in a set of twenty sentences which varied systematically according to voice, dative position, and location of contrastive stress. These three sentence properties were considered to have possible focus roles. The results indicated that front-shifting, as occurs in passivization or dative movement, is a focus device, as is contrastive stress.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
-
PART I: THEORETICAL BASES FOR EXPERIMENTAL LINGUISTICS (editorial introduction)
- 1. On paraphrase. 21
- 2. What is structural ambiguity? 35
- 3. On theories of focus. 55
- 4. Preliminaries to the experimental investigation of style in language. 65
- 5. English pluralization: A testing ground for rule evaluation. 81
-
PART II: EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS (editorial introduction)
- 1. Grammatical properties of sentences as a basis for concept formation. 121
- 2. Grammatical voice and illocutionary meaning in an aural concept formation task. 141
- 3. Grammatical simplicity or performative efficiency? 157
- 4. A performative definition of sentence relatedness. 175
- 5. Paraphrase relationships among clefted sentences. 185
- 6. The recognition of ambiguity. 203
- 7. An experimental investigation of focus. 215
- 8. A discriminant function analysis of co-variation of a number of syntactic devices in five prose genres. 231
- 9. Rule learning and the English inflections (with special emphasis on the plural). 247
- 10. Perceptual dimensions of phonemic recognition. 273
- Epilogue 293
- Bibliography 309
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
-
PART I: THEORETICAL BASES FOR EXPERIMENTAL LINGUISTICS (editorial introduction)
- 1. On paraphrase. 21
- 2. What is structural ambiguity? 35
- 3. On theories of focus. 55
- 4. Preliminaries to the experimental investigation of style in language. 65
- 5. English pluralization: A testing ground for rule evaluation. 81
-
PART II: EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS (editorial introduction)
- 1. Grammatical properties of sentences as a basis for concept formation. 121
- 2. Grammatical voice and illocutionary meaning in an aural concept formation task. 141
- 3. Grammatical simplicity or performative efficiency? 157
- 4. A performative definition of sentence relatedness. 175
- 5. Paraphrase relationships among clefted sentences. 185
- 6. The recognition of ambiguity. 203
- 7. An experimental investigation of focus. 215
- 8. A discriminant function analysis of co-variation of a number of syntactic devices in five prose genres. 231
- 9. Rule learning and the English inflections (with special emphasis on the plural). 247
- 10. Perceptual dimensions of phonemic recognition. 273
- Epilogue 293
- Bibliography 309
