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Articles • Alfa, Rev. Linguíst. (São José Rio Preto) 59 (1) • Jan-Apr 2015 • https://doi.org/10.1590/1981-5794-1502-3   copy

DIVERSE EXHAUSTIVENESS EFFECTS IN CLEFT SENTENCES: A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY1 1 We thank the feedback given to preliminary versions of this work by the audiences of the 10th CELSUL Meeting, held in October of 2012 in Cascavel (PR, Brazil), and of the UFRGS Seminar of Linguistic Theory and Analysis, meeting of May 2013. We are fully responsible, however, for any mistakes remaining. The work by the first author was funded by a PIBIC grant from UFRGS-CNPq, period of March 2012 to March 2013; and the work by the second author, by a research grant from CNPq, period of March 2011 to March 2014 (Process Nr. 31160/2010-7).

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In this article, we show that cleft sentences may have “exhaustiveness effects” quite different from the “identification by exclusion” – which is the effect usually discussed by the literature (ATLAS; LEVINSON, 1981ATLAS, J.; LEVINSON, S. It-clefts, informativeness, and logical form: radical pragmatics. In: COLE, P. (Ed.). Radical Pragmatics. Nova Iorque: Academic, 1981. p.1-61.; HORN, 1981HORN, L. Exhaustiveness and the semantics of clefts. In: BURKE, V. A.; PUSTEJOVSKY, J. (Eds.) Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the North-East Linguistic Society (NELS), vol.11. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1981. p.125-142.; KISS, 1998KISS, K. É. Identificational focus and information focus. Language, Washington, v.74, n.2, p.245-273, 1998.; WEDGWOOD; PETHŐ; CANN; 2006; BÜRING; KRIZ, 2013BÜRING, D.; KRIZ, M. It’s that, and that’s it! Exhaustivity and homogeneity presuppositions in clefts (and definites). Semantics & Pragmatics, [s.l.], v.6, n.6, p.1-29, 2013. Disponível em: <http://homepage.univie.ac.at/daniel.buring/phpsite/content/allpapers.html#clefts>. Acesso em: 8 jan. 2015.
http://homepage.univie.ac.at/daniel.buri... ). To show this, we present a detailed study of cases in which we test the contextual effects triggered by clefts found in Brazilian magazines and newspapers. Our testing tools are modifiers that the literature associates with exhaustiveness, such as only and and nobody else (ATLAS; LEVINSON, 1981ATLAS, J.; LEVINSON, S. It-clefts, informativeness, and logical form: radical pragmatics. In: COLE, P. (Ed.). Radical Pragmatics. Nova Iorque: Academic, 1981. p.1-61.; HORN, 1981HORN, L. Exhaustiveness and the semantics of clefts. In: BURKE, V. A.; PUSTEJOVSKY, J. (Eds.) Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the North-East Linguistic Society (NELS), vol.11. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1981. p.125-142.), and exactly and precisely (MENUZZI; ROISENBERG, 2010a). On the basis of such tests, we conclude that “exhaustiveness effects” involve various types of inferences about the structure of the domain of the discourse referents, and may modify such a structure in many different ways. This result, we believe, puts into a new perspective many of the questions about the semantics and the pragmatics of clefts, in particular whether “exhaustiveness effects” are conventionalized pragmatic inferences (such as a presupposition, or a generalized implicature), or particularized implicatures.

Cleft sentences; Exhaustiveness effects; Identification by exclusion; Contextual set of alternatives; Pragmatic inferences

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E-mail: alfa@unesp.br
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