Theoretical background

Rooth Jackendoff mentioned that “focus” is a theoretical notion which is used to account for the correlation between certain prosodic patterns and pragmatic and semantic effects. The focus structure of a sentence would result in a partitioning of the sentence into a focused part and a background part, which is generally assumed to be one aspect of its grammatical structure, with both giving a phonological and a semantic interpretation. Focus particles can be distinguished between their quantificational use and their scalar use. The interpretation of focus with the focus particle is generally termed as “focus association” in Barbara H. Partee, and these focus particles are generally regarded as focus-sensitive particles. “Association with focus” becomes a term referring to the phenomena that there is variation in the truth condition of sentences according to the location of focus in the sentence. The syntax-semantics mapping of focus is a central part of focus representation and interpretation.