Additive particles, prosodic structure and focus sensitivity in Hungarian

Abstract

Abstract The main aim of this article is to investigate the prosody-information structure interface in the analysis of the Hungarian additive particle is ‘also, too’. We present a prosodic study of narratives, collected through guided elicitation, and provide a prosodic basis for a focus-based analysis of is. Standard formal semantic approaches to the interpretation of additive particles regard additive particles as focus sensitive, hence the associate of the particle is focal and the focus interpretation (in terms of alternatives) is a significant part in its semantics. This view is considered crosslinguistically valid, although the discussion mostly concerns English. In Hungarian, the focus sensitivity of the additive particle is not directly transparent and needs more elaboration. In the relevant literature, the issue of focus marking with respect to the additive particle is has been insufficiently studied or merely stipulated. In this article, we argue for the importance of a more elaborate study of the prosody-information structure interface in the analysis of Hungarian additive particles. Accordingly, we provide data and its analysis to support our core argument and claims. Our study contributes to the overall understanding and analysis of is and to the general claims about focus marking and focus types in Hungarian. We aim to complement the standard semantic analyses by providing a prosodic analysis supporting the focus-sensitive analysis of is instead of merely stipulating an association with focus. On a more general level, we show that the various readings of additive particles can be explained by taking the prosodic patterns of the relevant constructions into account.