Topic, Focus, and Exhaustive Interpretation

Abstract

In this paper, we propose that a sentence like John $$:T$$ ate broccoli $$:F$$ should pragmatically be interpreted as follows: (a) Focus should be interpreted exhaustively; John ate only broccoli; (b) Topic must be interpreted exhaustively: Only John ate (only) broccoli; and (c) The speaker takes it to be possible (or even knows, if he is competent) that at least one alternative of the form x ate y not entailed by the sentence is true. It will be shown that in terms of this analysis we can also account for all the scope-inversion data of Büring (Linguist Philos 20: 175–194, 1997), without giving rise to some of the problems of the latter analysis.