Cover not available

In:Approaches to Hungarian: Volume 16: Papers from the 2017 Budapest Conference
Edited by Veronika Hegedűs and Irene Vogel
[Approaches to Hungarian 16] 2020
► pp. 73–96

Get fulltext
PDF logo with download linkDownload Chapter PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Chapter EPUB

Contextual triggers of the Hungarian pre-verbal focus structure

A guided production study

 | Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences | Department of Cognitive Sciences, Budapest University of Technology and Economics
 | Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
 | Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences | Department of Cognitive Sciences, Budapest University of Technology and Economics
Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 8 April 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/atoh.16.04kal
Abstract
The study uses a novel experimental method to investigate contextual factors claimed in the theoretical literature to license the use of Hungarian pre-verbal focus. These factors are: (i) identification, (ii) contrast, (iii) availability of a set on which the focus operates and (iv) whether this set is explicit or implicit. We tested the effects of these factors using online surveys in which respondents read short texts describing a context and saw a cloud of randomly arranged words. The experimental task was to create sentences that naturally fit the context by clicking the words in the cloud. Results show that narrow identification and contrast reliably predict the use of pre-verbal focus as does the availability of a set regardless of explicitness.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Hungarian: A free word-order language
    • 1.2Accounts of word order: Discourse configurationality
    • 1.3The structures investigated in the present study
    • 1.4What is Focus?
    • 1.5Contextual factors commonly associated with preVf and neutral sentences
      • 1.5.1Identification
      • 1.5.2Contrast
    • 1.6The goal of the present study, hypotheses
  • 2.Experiments
    • 2.1Experiment 1
      • 2.1.1Participants
      • 2.1.2Procedure
      • 2.1.3Materials
      • 2.1.4Predictions
      • 2.1.5Results
      • 2.1.6Discussion
    • 2.2Experiment 2
      • 2.2.1Participants
      • 2.2.2Procedure
      • 2.2.3Materials
      • 2.2.4Predictions
      • 2.2.5Results
      • 2.2.6Discussion
  • 3.General discussion
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgement
  • Notes
  • References
References (33)
References
Aronoff, Mark & Janie Rees-Miller (eds.). 2017. The handbook of linguistics. Wiley, Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brassai, Sámuel. 1852. Tapogatódzások a magyar nyelv körül [Exploring the Hungarian Language]. Pesti Napló 802.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1860. A magyar mondat [The Hungarian Sentence]. Magyar Akadémiai Értesítő. A széptudományi Osztály közlönye 1. 279–399.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1885. A mondat dualismusa [The dualism of the sentence]. Értekezések a Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Nyelv- és Széptudományi Osztály Köréből 12.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brody, Mihály & Kriszta Szendrői. 2010. Exhaustive focus is an answer. Unpublished Manuscript. [URL].
Davies, Jason. 2013. d3-cloud. [URL]
Destruel, Emilie J. & Leah Velleman. 2014. Refining contrast: Empirical evidence from the English it-cleft. Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 10. 197–214.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Drummond, Alex. 2010. Ibex (Internet Based Experiments). [URL]
É. Kiss, Katalin. 1995. Discourse configurational languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1998. Identificational focus versus information focus. Language 72(2). 245–273. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2002. The syntax of Hungarian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. A pioneering theory of information structure. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 55. 23–40. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gussenhoven, Carlos. 2004. The phonology of tone and intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael. 1967. Notes on transitivity and theme in English: Part 2. Journal of linguistics 3(2). 199–244. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hamblin, Charles L. 1973. Questions in montague English. Foundations of language 10(1). 41–53.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Káldi, Tamás, Anna Babarczy & Ágnes Bende-Farkas. 2016. Hungarian focus: Presuppositional content and exhaustivity revisited Language and Linguistic structure. In Joseph Edmonds, Michaela Martinková & Marketa Janebova (eds.), Proceedings of the Olomouc Linguistics Colloquium 2016. Olomouc: Palacký University Olomouc.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Káldi, Tamás & Anna Babarczy. 2017. A kontextus hatása a magyar preverbális fókusz értelmezésére: egy szemmozgás-követéses vizsgálat [The effect of context on the interpretation of the Hungarian pre-verbal focus: an eye-tracking study] In Zoltán Bánréti & István Kenesei (eds.), Általános Nyelvészeti Tanulmányok. XXIX, 99–126. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018. Linguistic exhaustivity inference is context dependent: A visual-world eye-tracking study on Hungarian focus. Acta Linguistica Academica 65(4). 547–595. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kálmán, László. 1985. Word order in neutral sentences. In István Kenesei (ed.), Approaches to Hungarian 1, 13–23. Szeged: JATE.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kenesei, István. 2006. Focus as identification. In Valéria Molnár & Susanne Winkler (eds), The architecture of focus, 137–168. Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krifka, Manfred. 1992. A framework for focus-sensitive quantification. Semantics and Linguistic Theory 2. 215–236. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. For a structured meaning account of questions and answers. In Caroline Féry & Wolfgang Strenfeld (eds.), Audiatur Vox Sapientiae: A Festschrift for Arnim von Stechow (Studia grammatica, Band 52), 287–319. De Gruyter Akademie Forschung.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. Basic notions of information structure. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 55(3–4), 243–276. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miller, Jim. 2006. Focus. In Keith Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of language and linguistics (2nd ed.), 511–518. Elsevier. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Molnár, Valéria. 2002. Contrast – from a contrastive perspective. Language and Computers 39(1), 174–161.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Roberts, Craige. 1996. Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. In Jae-Hak Yoon & Andreas Katjol (eds.), Working Papers in Linguistics-Ohio State University Department of Linguistics 49, 91–136. Columbus: The Ohio State University Department of Linguistics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rooth, Mats. 1985. Association with focus. Ph.D. thesis. Massachussets Institute of Technology.
. 1992. A theory of focus interpretation. Natural Language Semantics 1(1). 75–116. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Selkirk, Elisabeth. 1984. Phonology and syntax. Cambridge: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2002. Contrastive FOCUS vs. presentational focus: Prosodic evidence from right node raising in English. In Bernard Bel & Isabelle Marlin (eds.), Speech Prosody 2002: Proceedings of the First International Speech Prosody Conference, 643–646. Laboratoire Parole et Langage, Université de Provence.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Skopeteas, Stavros & Gisbert Fanselow. 2011. Focus and the exclusion of alternatives: On the interaction of syntactic structure with pragmatic inference. Lingua 121(11). 1693–1706. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Surányi, Balázs. 2011. A szintaktikailag jelöletlen fókusz pragmatikája [The pragmatics of syntactically unmarked focus]. In Huba Bartos (ed.), Általános Nyelvészeti Tanulmányok 23, 281–313. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zimmermann, Malte. 2008. Contrastive focus and emphasis. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 55. 347–360. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Káldi, Tamás, Ágnes Szöllösi & Anna Babarczy
2021. Hungarian Structural Focus: Accessibility to Focused Elements and Their Alternatives in Working Memory and Delayed Recognition Memory. Frontiers in Psychology 12 DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 1 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue