Verum, focus, and certainty

Authors

  • Noa Bassel University of Massachusetts Amherst

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3765/18cddt86

Abstract

Verum Focus is known as a prosodic pattern that places stress on verbs or auxiliaries and conveys certainty in a statement’s truth value. Previous literature is conflicted as to whether the effect of certainty arrives from a covert ‘truth’ operator, and to what extent focus alternatives are involved in the process. I show that focus alternatives and covert operators are independent mechanisms in Verum Focus utterances, which jointly trigger an inference of speaker’s certainty through a scalar implicature.

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Published

2024-10-02

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Section

Articles