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Identificational Focus Versus Information Focus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

Katalin É. Kiss
Katalin É. Kiss*
Affiliation:
Linguistic Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
*
Linguistic Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest I, Színház utca 7-9 H-1250 Budapest PF. 19, Hungary [ekiss@nytud.hu]
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Abstract

This article argues that identificational focus, which expresses exhaustive identification and occupies the specifier of a functional projection, must be distinguished in language description from information focus, which conveys new information and involves no syntactic reordering. The properties of the two types of focus are established on the basis of Hungarian and English material. It is argued that the cleft constituent is the realization of identificational focus in English. Only-phrases are analyzed as identificational foci carrying an evaluative presupposition. The feature specification of identificational focus is shown to be subject to parametric variation: the focus operators of various languages are specified for the positive value of either or both of the features [+exhaustive] and [+contrastive].

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 74 , Issue 2 , June 1998 , pp. 245 - 273
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 by Linguistic Society of America

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