Daniel Gutzmann (Mainz)
Modal Particles, stress, and sentence mood
A use-conditional approach

Stressed modal particles (MPs) have always been somehow mysterious because (i) it is expected that they should not be able to be stressed in the first place, and because (ii) it is not clear what the contribution of this stress is, and because (iii) it remains unclear whether stressed MPs are the same MPs as their unstressed variants or whether they are distinct MPs for their own.

This talk explores whether there is a connection between MPs and verum focus (Höhle 1992) that may provide a solution to these riddles. The starting point is the observation that stressed MPs cannot occur in sentences which already exhibit verum focus. In a context, in which the addressee has said (1), either verum focus (2) or a stressed MP is licensed (3), but not both (4).

(1) A:  David smells as if he is a zombie.

(2) S:  David IST ein Zombie.
        David is   a  zombie
        'David IS a zombie.'
    S': Ich denke, DASS David ein Zombie ist.
        I   think  that David  a  zombie  is
        'I think THAT David is a zombie.'

(3) S:  David ist  JA  ein Zombie.
        David is   MP  a   zombie
        'David is JA a zombie.'      
    S': Ich denke, dass David JA  ein Zombie ist.
        I   think  that David MP  a   zombie  is
        'I think that David is JA a zombie.'
               
(4) S:  *David IST JA  ein Zombie.
         David is  MP   a   zombie
        “David IS JA a zombie.”
    S':  *Ich denke, DASS David JA ein Zombie ist.
         I    think  that David MP a   zombie is
        'I think THAT David is JA a zombie.'

Data like this suggests that there is a close connection between stressed MPs and verum focus. The aim of this talk is to explicate this connection. My hypothesis is that the contribution of a stressed modal particles is nothing more than the contribution of its unstressed variant plus the contribution of verum focus.

In order to illustrate this, I look at the interaction between these two phenomena with sentence mood, because both verum and MPs are closely related to the sentence mood operators of the sentence in which the occur. Following Truckenbrodt (2006a,b), the different sentence moods are composed out off deontic and epistemic operators. Furthermore, with Romero & Han (2004), I assume that verum focus realizes a verum operator that attaches to the epistemic sentence mood operator. In contrast, an MP like ja adds an independent condition to the overall meaning of the sentence. Now, in the case of stressed JA, verum attaches not to any sentence mood operator but to ja itself.

Given this assumptions, I could account for the observation that stressed MPs are impossible if there is already verum focus present in a sentence. Furthermore, the different interpretation of (2) and (3) can be accounted for.

To provide a more explicit formalization of the idea that JA is just ja plus verum, and to extend the analysis to other MPs and sentence types, I make use of a logic that – adapting some of the tools developed in Potts 2005 – formalizes Kaplan’s (1999) idea of introducing use conditions into semantic theory.

Concluding the talk, I show how this way of thinking about the meaning of verum and MPs can make the right predictions regarding the question of which MPs can be stressed and which cannot.


References

• Höhle, Tilman N. (1992): “Über Verum-Fokus im Deutschen”. In: Jacobs, Joachim, ed. (1992): Informationsstruktur und Grammatik. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. 112–141.
• Kaplan, David (1999): “The meaning of ouch and oops. Explorations in the theory of meaning as use”. 2004 version. Unpubl. ms. Los Angeles: University of California.
• Potts, Christopher (2005): The Logic of conventional implicature. (Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 7). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Romero, Maribel & Chung-hye Han (2004): “On negative yes/no questions”. In: Linguistics and Philosophy 27. 609–658.
• Truckenbrodt, Hubert (2006a): “On the semantic motivation of syntactic verb movement to C in German”. In: Theoretical Linguistics 32.3. 257–306. url: http://www2.sfs.uni-tuebingen.de/~hubert/Home/papers/V-to-C.pdf
• Truckenbrodt, Hubert (2006b): “Replies to the comments by Gärtner, Plunze and Zimmermann, Portner, Potts, Reis, and Zaeferer”. In: Theoretical Linguistics 32.3. 387–410.