Focus Particles in the Romance and Germanic Languages Corpus-based and Experimental Approaches

Abstract

This special issue of Linguistik online is devoted to a specific class of function words, to which the English literature refers as focus particles/focus adverbs (following e.g. König 1991). Focus particles have been defined as an autonomous category only in the last 40 years (cf. the pioneer works by Altmann 1976, 1978 and Jacobs 1983 on German Gradpartikeln, followed mainly by Nølke 1983 on French adverbes paradigmatisants, Moser 1992 on English and König 1991 on English and German focus particles/adverbs; for Italian, see the studies of Ricca 1999 as well as Andorno 2000 on avverbi focalizzanti/focalizzatori). Typically, three types of focus particles are distinguished: additive, restrictive and scalar. The prototypical members of the additive, restrictive and scalar focus particles class are E. also/only/even, G. auch/nur/sogar, I. anche/solo/persino, Fr. aussi/seulement/même etc. The