- Oxford Handbooks in Linguistics
- The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure
- Abbreviations
- The Contributors
- Introduction
- Alternative Semantics
- Givenness
- (Contrastive) Topic
- Question-based Models of Information Structure
- Information Structure and the Landscape of (Non-)at-issue Meaning
- Information Structure and Presupposition
- Information Structure: A Cartographic Perspective
- Nuclear Stress and Information Structure
- Focus Projection Theories
- Constraint Conflict and Information Structure
- Focus Sensitive Operators
- Quantification and Information Structure
- Contrast: Dissecting an Elusive Information-structural Notion and its Role in Grammar
- Verum Focus
- Predicate Focus
- Information Structure and Discourse Particles
- Ellipsis and Information Structure
- Word Order and Information Structure
- Dislocations and Information Structure
- Discourse-configurationality
- On the Expression of Focus in the Metrical Grid and in the Prosodic Hierarchy
- Focus, Intonation, and Tonal Height
- Second Occurrence Focus
- Information Structure and Language Change
- Information Structure and Language Comprehension: Insights from Psycholinguistics
- Information Structure and Production Planning
- Information Structure in First Language Acquisition
- Towards a Neurobiology of Information Structure
- Corpus Linguistics and Information Structure Research
- Syntactic and Prosodic Reflexes of Information Structure in Germanic
- Syntactic and Prosodic Effects of Information Structure in Romance
- Discourse Functions: The Case of Hungarian
- Information Structure in Modern Greek
- Information Structure in Slavic
- Topic and Focus Marking in Chinese
- Information Structure in Japanese
- Information Structure in Asia: Yongning Na (Sino-Tibetan) and Vietnamese (Austroasiatic)
- Information Structure in Bantu
- Information Structure in Sign Languages
- References
- Subject Index
- Language Index
- Oxford Handbooks in Linguistics
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter aims to shed light on a phenomenon first described as verum focus by Höhle. He characterizes its semantic effect as emphasizing the expression of truth of a proposition. In German, the phenomenon typically appears in the left periphery of main and embedded clauses. Höhle relates it to a linguistic object VERUM occuring in the syntactic/semantic structure of clauses. After presenting several approaches which make crucial use of VERUM, the concept of truth and its linguistic realization in clausal structures is discussed. This leads to a perspective that connects verum focus to the part of the sentence that spells out the intention of the sentence meaning: the sentence mood. This line of reasoning intends to promote the view that verum focus can be derived from the systematic interaction of sentence mood with the regular properties of focus assignment.
Keywords: polarity focus, information structure, sentence mood, sentential force, truth, verum
Horst Lohnstein is Full Professor and Director of the Institute of Linguistics at the University of Wuppertal. His research focuses on the left sentence periphery and the principles of syntactic and semantic structure building from which the intentional and illocutionary meaning components are derivable in a compositional fashion.
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- Oxford Handbooks in Linguistics
- The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure
- Abbreviations
- The Contributors
- Introduction
- Alternative Semantics
- Givenness
- (Contrastive) Topic
- Question-based Models of Information Structure
- Information Structure and the Landscape of (Non-)at-issue Meaning
- Information Structure and Presupposition
- Information Structure: A Cartographic Perspective
- Nuclear Stress and Information Structure
- Focus Projection Theories
- Constraint Conflict and Information Structure
- Focus Sensitive Operators
- Quantification and Information Structure
- Contrast: Dissecting an Elusive Information-structural Notion and its Role in Grammar
- Verum Focus
- Predicate Focus
- Information Structure and Discourse Particles
- Ellipsis and Information Structure
- Word Order and Information Structure
- Dislocations and Information Structure
- Discourse-configurationality
- On the Expression of Focus in the Metrical Grid and in the Prosodic Hierarchy
- Focus, Intonation, and Tonal Height
- Second Occurrence Focus
- Information Structure and Language Change
- Information Structure and Language Comprehension: Insights from Psycholinguistics
- Information Structure and Production Planning
- Information Structure in First Language Acquisition
- Towards a Neurobiology of Information Structure
- Corpus Linguistics and Information Structure Research
- Syntactic and Prosodic Reflexes of Information Structure in Germanic
- Syntactic and Prosodic Effects of Information Structure in Romance
- Discourse Functions: The Case of Hungarian
- Information Structure in Modern Greek
- Information Structure in Slavic
- Topic and Focus Marking in Chinese
- Information Structure in Japanese
- Information Structure in Asia: Yongning Na (Sino-Tibetan) and Vietnamese (Austroasiatic)
- Information Structure in Bantu
- Information Structure in Sign Languages
- References
- Subject Index
- Language Index
- Oxford Handbooks in Linguistics
