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Focus and contrastive topic in questions and answers, with particular reference to Turkish Abstract: Much recent research has recognized the importance of focus and contrastive topic in assertions for discourse coherence. However, with few exceptions, it has been neglected that focus and cont...

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  • focus and contrastive topic in questions and answe
  • 1 introduction focus in answers and in question
  • extending this approach to contrastive topics in p

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Theoretical Linguistics 2020; 46(1-2): 1–71



Beste Kamali* and Manfred Krifka*
Focus and contrastive topic in questions
and answers, with particular reference
to Turkish
https://doi.org/10.1515/tl-2020-0001

Abstract: Much recent research has recognized the importance of focus and
contrastive topic in assertions for discourse coherence. However, with few
exceptions, it has been neglected that focus and contrastive topic also occur
in questions, and have a similar role in establishing coherence. We propose a
framework of dynamic interpretation based on the notion of Commitment
Spaces that show that a uniform interpretation of focus and contrastive
topic is possible. The algebraic representation format is rich enough so that
a separate introduction of discourse trees is not necessary. The paper dis-
cusses these phenomena for Turkish, a language with an explicit focus
marker for polar and alternative questions, which distinguishes focus from
contrastive topic.


1 Introduction: Focus in answers – and
in questions?
The role of focus marking in answers to constituent questions is well-known.
The general observation is that the wh-constituent corresponds to the focus of
the congruent answer (Paul 1880). Intonationally marked focus exponents are
capitalized in all examples.

(1) a. A: Who played cards? b. A: What did Ali play?
B: ALİF played cards. B: Ali played CARDSF.

In the familiar framework of Alternative Semantics (Rooth 1992), this relation is
captured in the following way: Questions denote sets of propositions, answers




*Corresponding authors: Beste Kamali, Universität Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany,
E-mail:
Manfred Krifka, Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS), Berlin, Germany;
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany, E-mail:

,2 Beste Kamali and Manfred Krifka



with focus come with a set of alternative meanings generated by the focus, and
the meaning of the question and the alternatives of the answer have to corre-
spond to each other. This is illustrated in (2), where〚α〛is the regular denota-
tion of α, and〚α〛F is the set of alternative denotations; we use φxy for the
proposition “x played y (yesterday)”, a and m to stand for the persons Ali and
Merve, c and d to stand for cards and domino, and ALT(x) for the set of
alternatives to x.

(2) 〚who played cards?〛 〚ALİF played cards.〛 = φac
= {φxc | x∈PERSON} 〚ALİF played cards.〛F = {φxc | x∈ALT(a)}

For question-answer congruence, the regular denotation of the answer must be
an element of the question meaning, and the question meaning and the answer
alternatives must correspond to each other (we suggest that the latter is a
subset of the former, hence ALT(a) ⊆ PERSON, the set of alternatives of Ali
are persons).1
Polar questions are interpreted in Alternative Semantics, following Hamblin
(1973), as sets of propositions, one being the negation of the other. As before, a
congruent answer must be an element of the question meaning; focus is not
required in this analysis.

(3) 〚Did Ali play cards?〛 〚(Yes), Ali played cards.〛
= {φac, ¬φac} = φac

Focus also occurs in questions, e. g. in polar questions as in (4)(a); in (b), focus
is made particularly evident by a cleft construction.

(4) a. Did ALİF play cards?
b. Was it ALİF who played cards?

Assuming that focus creates alternatives, we end up with the following inter-
pretation of focus in polar questions:

(5) 〚Did ALİF play cards?〛 = {φac, ¬φac}
〚Did ALİF play cards?〛F = {{φxc, ¬φxc} | x∈ALT(a)}




1 For Rooth (1992), the set of alternatives is the set of all meanings of the type of the item
in focus, hence he proposes that the question meaning is a subset of the set of alternative
answers.

, Focus and contrastive topic in questions 3


The resulting focus meaning is a set of sets of propositions. This correctly
preserves what is predicted by the ordinary meaning, that the assertions of the
propositions ‘Ali played cards’ and ‘Ali didn’t play cards’ are appropriate
answers. But it is unclear what the alternatives contributed by focus on Ali
correspond to. It is also unclear why the answer Yes, Ali played cards is
complete, whereas the answer No, Ali didn’t play cards is felt to be incomplete.
In order to model this effect we would have to assume that the focus meaning
(5)(b) somehow presupposes that at least one of the alternative polar questions
are answered in the positive. But notice that we cannot even determine which
of the two propositions is the “positive” one, as propositions are just sets of
possible worlds.
Theories of answers to questions also have looked at contrastive topics, as in
(6). Contrastive topics (CT), hereafter subscripted by C, are realized by raising
accent and optionally also by morphosyntactic markers such as the as … for
phrase. They signal that the answer is not complete; here, it is left open what
Merve played.

(6) A: What did Ali and Merve play?
B: ALİC played CARDSF. / As for ALİC, he/HEC played CARDSF.

Büring (1997, 2003) and Kadmon (2001) have developed a representation where
CT in answers introduces second-order alternatives, resulting in yet another
level of interpretation,〚.〛CT.

(7) 〚As for AliC, he played CARDSF〛 = φac
〚As for AliC, he played CARDSF〛F = {φay | y∈ALT(c)}
〚As for AliC, he played CARDSF〛CT = {{φxy | y∈ALT(c)} | x∈ALT(a)}

In this analysis, the CT meaning is a set of sets of propositions like {{‘Ali played
cards’, ‘Ali played domino’, … }, {‘Merve played cards’, ‘Merve played domino’,
… }, … }. Büring argues that such meanings are appropriate if the context
contains a set of question meanings that correspond to the elements of the CT
meaning of the answer, that is, the meaning of constituent questions like What
did Ali play? and What did Merve play?, which can be seen as spelling out the
superordinate question Who played what? Hence, just as the F meaning of an
assertion can be seen as spelling out the immediate question, the CT meaning
can be seen as spelling out the superordinate question within a theory of
questions under discussion (QUDs) such as Roberts (1996).
Now, we find contrastive topics also in questions, for example in polar
questions:

, 4 Beste Kamali and Manfred Krifka



(8) A: Did Merve play cards?
B: Yes, she played CARDSF.
A: And did ALİC play cards? / And as for ALİC, did HEC play cards?
B: No, ALİC played DOMINOF.

Extending this approach to contrastive topics in polar questions, we obtain the
following result for the contrastive topic question in the third line:

(9) 〚As for AliC, did he play CARDSF?〛 = {φac, ¬φac}
〚As for AliC, did he play CARDSF?〛F = {{φay, ¬φay} | y∈ALT(c)}
〚As for AliC, did he play CARDSF?〛CT = {{{φxy, ¬φxy} | y∈ALT(c)} | x∈ALT(a)}

The CT meaning is a set of sets of sets of propositions, here {{{φac, ¬φac}, {φad,
¬φad}}, {{φmc, ¬φmc}, {φmd, ¬φmd}}, … }. The elements of this set are polar
questions with focus, e. g. Was it CARDS that Ali played?, {{φac, ¬φac}, {φad,
¬φad}}. We would expect that these questions are also subordinate to a super-
ordinate question, just as in the CQ case, but now this question is difficult to
formulate. Constant (2014) suggests that contrastive topics in such questions
suggest sister questions, such as Was it CARDS that Merve played? and remarks
that this would require a different pragmatics from the interpretation of asser-
tions with contrastive topics (cf. Constant 2014 p. 69 f.). Notice that the proposed
meanings for contrastive topics in polar questions in (9) are similar to the
meanings of focus in polar questions suggested in (5), which is a problem
because their expression and use are different.
Our goal is to develop a theory that is able to explain the similarities and
differences of focus and contrastive topic in assertions and in polar questions
and other questions (where focus in polar questions has not been discussed
prominently so far). The simplest assumption would be that focus and contras-
tive topic make the same meaning contribution to assertions and questions.
Such a theory should assign a function to focus and contrastive topic that is
common to both sentence types, and derive any differences from the nature of
assertion and polar questions. A theory of this sort is Commitment Space
Semantics, as proposed in Krifka (2015).
To show this, we will switch to our main object language, Turkish. This is
because Turkish has a dedicated focus marker in polar questions, and a rather
clear distinction between focus and contrastive topics in polar questions. In
contrast, English lacks a clear and obligatory marker of focus, and the differ-
entiation between focus and contrastive topics in questions is often quite
unclear, indeed conflated in the systematically ambiguous Did ALİ play cards?
(cf. Constant 2014). In Section 2, we will present the relevant facts about Turkish.

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