Information Structure and Focus

Focus marks the part of an utterance that introduces alternatives or new information, typically signalled by intonation or special constructions.

Definition

Focus is the information-structural marking of a constituent as evoking a set of relevant alternatives, often corresponding to new or contrastive information; information structure is the organization of an utterance with respect to such notions.

Scope

This topic covers focus as a core dimension of information structure: the way utterances highlight a constituent against a background, the alternatives that focus evokes, and its interaction with focus-sensitive operators such as 'only' and 'even'. It centres on Rooth's alternative semantics for focus, which assigns expressions an ordinary meaning and a set of focus alternatives, and on the broader typology of information-structural notions and their grammatical marking.

Core questions

• What does focus mark, and how is it expressed?
• How does focus introduce alternatives, and how do focus-sensitive operators use them?
• How is focus distinguished from givenness and topic?
• How is information structure realized across languages?

Key concepts

• focus and background
• focus alternatives
• focus-sensitive operators (only, even)
• question-answer congruence
• contrastive focus
• prosodic marking

Key theories

Alternative semantics for focus (Rooth)

Focus introduces, in addition to an expression's ordinary meaning, a focus semantic value: the set of propositions obtained by substituting alternatives for the focused element, which focus-sensitive operators and discourse congruence exploit.

Typology of information-structural notions (Krifka)

Information structure is organized by distinct notions of focus (alternatives), givenness (prior mention or salience), and topic (what the utterance is about), each with its own pragmatic effect.

History

The Prague School's theme-rheme distinction laid early groundwork for studying how utterances package information. Rooth's alternative semantics, developed from the late 1980s, gave focus a precise compositional treatment in terms of alternative sets, and later syntheses such as Krifka's clarified how focus relates to givenness and topic within a general theory of information structure.

Debates

Whether focus interpretation is unified or operator-specific

Whether a single alternative-based semantics can handle all uses of focus (association with operators, discourse congruence, contrast), or whether distinct mechanisms are needed for different focus phenomena.

Key figures

• Mats Rooth
• Manfred Krifka
• Jeanette Gundel

Seminal works

• rooth1992
• krifka2008

Frequently asked questions

How does focus interact with the word 'only'?

'Only' associates with focus: in 'John only introduced BILL to Sue' (focus on Bill), it asserts that of the relevant alternatives, John introduced no one but Bill to Sue; the focus determines which alternatives 'only' quantifies over.