Association with Foci

Abstract

Association with focus has, since Jackendoff's (1972) dissertation, been the object of intense study.Most researchers, however, have concentrated on explaining the semantic variability of only and even, whose truth conditions vary with the position of focus.I take as my starting point another property of associating expressions.Both only and even restrict the distribution of focus, a property that, I argue, they share with a range of other lexical items.But, while only and even take a single argument and require there to be a focus somewhere inside that argument, expressions like adversative but and let alone take two arguments, thereby associating with two foci.

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