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BEEN THERE, MARKED THAT: A THEORY OF SECOND OCCURRENCE FOCUS
Daniel Buering
University of California--Los Angeles
Friday, November 10, 3:30 PM MJH Rm 126
Sentence (1) illustrates `second occurrence focus' (2OF). The object DP `vegetables' is the semantic focus of `only' in both
(1a) and (1b). As expected, it is accented in (1a), but, surprisingly, it is not in (1b) (when read as a continuation of
(1a)), where the only pitch accent is on `Paul'. Intuitively this is possible because the DP `vegetables', although a focus
in both sentences, is repeated in (1b) (whence the
name):
(1) a. Everyone already knew that Mary only eats [vegetables]_{F}
b. Even [Paul]_{F} knew that Mary only eats [vegetables]_{2OF}.
Recent work (Beaver et al 2004, a.o.) has shown, however, that 2OFi, though unaccented, are nevertheless prosodically
prominent, mostly through lengthening. I will present a novel account of focus representation and realization that predicts
the different realizations of these foci, and also ties them in with a more general theory of free focus. The account blends
together elements of the theories of Rooth
(1992) and Schwarzschild (1999), and is embedded within a prosodic theory of prominence as advocated in Truckenbrodt (1999)
and my own earlier work.
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