The interpretation and distribution of temporal focus particles

Abstract

Among the scalar usages of only, there is one that has a temporal dimension. In Carla understood the problem only on Sunday, for instance, Sunday is considered late for Carla to have understood the problem. In this paper, we explore the interpretation and distribution of temporal only along with other focus particles that permit a temporal reading. We focus on the Dutch counterpart of temporal only, pas (see Barbiers 1995). This particle is formally distinct from both exclusive only (alleen) and non-temporal scalar only (maar). We concentrate on two core issues. The first concerns the observation that temporal focus particles systematically support two modes of interpretation, a purely temporal one and a lack-of-progress reading. The latter is found in an example like Billy has only read three books (so far), which implies that three is a low number of books for Billy to have read at the reference time. The second issue concerns ‘Barbiers’s Generalization,’ the requirement that temporal focus particles immediately c-command the category they interact with. We propose a semantic analysis that captures these observations, building on previous work by König (1979, 1981), Löbner (1989), Krifka (2000) and Klinedinst (2004), among others.