The Non-At-Issue Meaning of German bloß and nur Introduction

The Non-At-Issue Meaning of German bloß and nur
Introduction. The meaning of an utterance can be divided into different components, for
instance into an at-issue (AI) and a non-at-issue (NAI) meaning (e.g., Potts 2005). While the
AI content is the main point of the utterance and addresses the Question-under-Discussion
(Simons et al. 2011, Tonhauser 2012), the NAI content is usually not the main meaning
contribution of the utterance (Büring 2012).
Sentences containing the focus sensitive particle bloß (only) (1a) can be divided into an
asserted meaning component (1b) and a presupposed one (1c) (cf. Rooth 1992; Horn 1996).
The asserted meaning comprises the exclusion of alternatives (e.g., the skirt, the shoes),
while the presupposed meaning component comprises the only-less sentence, that is, the
prejacent (for other analyses see Beaver & Clark 2008, among others). We will refer to the
asserted meaning as the AI meaning and to the presupposed meaning as the NAI meaning.
(1) a. Maria soll bloß das Kleid kaufen.
'Maria should only buy the dress.'
b. Assertion: Maria should buy nothing else but the dress (AI meaning)
c. Presupposition: Maria should buy the dress (NAI meaning)
A special property of bloß is that besides its function as a focus particle, it also functions as a
modal particle. Thus, sentence (1a) is ambiguous between the focus particle and the modal
particle reading (2a). If bloß is a modal particle, the AI meaning is the prejacent (2b), while
the NAI meaning (a conventional implicature, cf. Kratzer 1999, 2004; Gutzmann, 2013) is the
specific meaning contribution of the modal particle, namely the speaker attitude towards the
proposition (2c). In the case of bloß in this kind of imperative sentence, the attitude of the
speaker can be described as being eager after Maria buying the dress.
(2) a. Maria soll bloß das Kleid kaufen.
'Maria should really buy the dress.'
b. Assertion: Maria should buy the dress (AI meaning)
c. Conventional implicature: Speaker is eager after Maria buying the dress (NAI meaning)
While bloß as a focus particle conveys its characteristic meaning at the AI meaning
dimension, bloß as a modal particle does so at the NAI meaning dimension. Thus, we refer
to the focus particle meaning of bloß as the AI meaning and to the modal particle meaning as
the NAI meaning.
While AI meanings are assumed to be truth-conditional, NAI meanings are assumed to be
independent of any truth-conditional content (Potts 2005). This independency of the NAI
meaning is evidenced by psycholinguistic data on parantheticals, which show that they are
treated independently from the AI meaning as if they were a separate speech act (Dillon et
al. 2013). Our first question is whether this division of the AI and NAI content can be made
visible by means of psycholinguistic methods in the case of the particle bloß. If the AI
meaning of bloß as a focus particle affects the propositional content of the utterance, while
bloß as a modal particle conveys an independent meaning in addition to the propositional
content, we expect that the latter leads to higher processing costs than the former.
A German equivalent of bloß is nur. It is assumed that bloß and nur as modal particles are
broadly exchangeable (Thurmair 1989). However, when it comes to imperative sentences,
one difference occurs (Thurmair 1989, Bayer & Obenaur 2011): While nur has a summoning
interpretation, bloß has an admonitory one. Furthermore, the expressive meaning of bloß in
imperatives is stronger than of nur (Thurmair 1989), indicating that the expressive use is
more easily noticeable in bloß than in nur. Our second question is whether it is indeed the
case that bloß is more expressive than nur and whether this difference also shows up in
interrogative sentences. If the expressive meaning of bloß is stronger than of nur, we expect
that bloß has a preferred NAI meaning which is stronger activated than in the case of nur.
Experiment 1 was a word-by-word self-paced reading experiment. We created twenty
sentence quartets comprising of sentences with two passages. The first passage provided a
contextual trigger and the second one an ambiguous minimal pair containing the particle bloß
(3a, 3c) or nur (3b, 3d). The contexts triggered the AI meaning (3a, 3b) or the NAI meaning
(3c, 3d). Sixty German native speakers participated in the experiment.
3a
3b
3c
3d
Hanna hätte sich viel mehr leisten können,
‘Hanna was able to afford much more,’
Jetzt ist Hanna mal wieder total pleite,
‘Hanna is completely broke again,’
warum hat sie bloß das Kleid gekauft?
‘why did she only buy the dress?’
warum hat sie nur das Kleid gekauft?
‘why did she only buy the dress?’
warum hat sie bloß das Kleid gekauft?
‘why did she buy the dress (I am wondering)?’
warum hat sie nur das Kleid gekauft?
‘why did she buy the dress (I am wondering)?’
The statistical analysis refers to the last four critical words, comprising the particle and the
three following words. There was a marginally significant interaction of meaning (AI/NAI) X
particle (bloß/nur) (β = 0.028, SE = 0.02, t = 1.81, p = .0695): Against our expectations,
reading times were shorter if the context triggered the NAI meaning, indicating that the AI
meaning lead to higher processing costs. However, this only holds for bloß; there was no
difference if the context triggered the AI or the NAI meaning of nur. The results indicate that
bloß has a preferred NAI meaning. The expressive reading is more easily noticeable than the
one of nur, since the difference between the AI and NAI meaning found for bloß did not show
up for nur.
A reason for the reversed effect could lie in the preceding triggering context. Bloß as a focus
particle excludes alternatives to the referent (e.g., the dress) (Rooth 1992). As soon as bloß
with its focused constituent is detected, the reader has to recall information of the preceding
context which invites the existence of such alternatives. This recall hampers sentence
processing. Although the AI and NAI meaning have an anaphoric relation to preceding
information, a recall of a particular set need not be performed for the NAI meaning. For the
NAI meaning, it is rather necessary to recall information of the common ground. Furthermore,
psycholinguistic work has shown that focus particles even activate sets of alternatives that
are not contextually encountered (Gotzner et al. in revision).
Experiment 2 was an auditory passage completion experiment. We used the same
sentences of Experiment 1, except that the disambiguating context appeared after the
ambiguous minimal pair. Prior to the context, the ambiguity was resolved by prosodic means.
While the whole sentence had a neutral intonation, the AI meaning was indicated by a
nuclear pitch accent on the focused constituent that the particle associates with (e.g., Kleid)
(4a, 4b), and the NAI meaning by a verum focus (4c, 4d) (capital letters indicate sentence
stress). The two passages were presented separately. First, participants listened to the first
passage which comprised the minimal pair, disambiguated by intonation. Subsequently, they
saw the second passage which comprised the two contexts triggering the AI (4a/b) and the
NAI meaning (4c/d). These contexts appeared simultaneously on a screen and participants
had to decide which of the two contexts best completed the auditory presented first passage
of the sentence.
We predicted that verum focus is unambiguous for the NAI meaning of bloß and nur, and
therefore should lead to 100% correct answers in the NAI condition. The pitch accent on
KLEID signals the AI meaning, but is still ambiguous between the AI and the NAI meaning.
Therefore, we predicted 50% correct answers in the AI condition. Furthermore, we predicted
that the NAI meaning is chosen more often in the bloß than in the nur condition. Thirty
German native speakers participated in the experiment.
4a
4b
4c
4d
Warum hat Hanna bloß das KLEID gekauft,
Warum hat Hanna nur das KLEID gekauft,
Warum HAT Hanna bloß das Kleid gekauft,
Warum HAT Hanna nur das Kleid gekauft,
sie hätte sich viel mehr leisten können.
jetzt ist sie mal wieder total pleite.
The statistical analysis revealed a main effect of meaning (AI/NAI) (β = 3.17, SE = 0.48, t =
6.5, p < .001): As expected, the NAI meaning lead to more correct answers (87%) than the
AI meaning (38%), indicating that verum focus disambiguated the minimal pair, while the
nuclear pitch accent was still ambiguous. There was a main effect of particle (bloß/nur) (β =
1.1, SE = 0.39, t = 2.8, p < .004): Nur lead to more correct answers (68%) than bloß (58%).
Furthermore, there was an interaction of meaning X particle (β = -1.61, SE = 0.7, t = -2.4, p =
.015): As expected, after hearing the AI-intonation, participants gave more correct answers in
the nur-condition (48%) than in the bloß-condition (33%). After hearing the NAI-intonation,
participants gave more correct answers in the bloß-condition (93%) than in the nur-condition
(76%). This indicates a clear preference for the NAI meaning of bloß, which was not present
for nur. As in Experiment 1, the results speak in favour of a stronger expressivity of bloß
relative to nur.
Discussion. We found processing differences between the AI and NAI meaning of German
bloß which support the existence of two different meaning representations. If a context
preceded the ambiguous sentence containing the particle, the AI meaning was more costly
(Experiment 1). These higher processing costs might reflect additional processing steps that
emerge if the propositional meaning of the sentence is analysed and evaluated against a
preceding context. These processing steps are not necessary as soon as the NAI meaning of
bloß is activated. However, a comparison of bloß and nur shows that the two particles
behave quite differently, in that the difference between the AI and NAI meaning only occurs
for bloß and not for nur. That bloß shows a stronger preference for the NAI meaning
compared to nur was also shown in Experiment 2, where the meaning was not triggered by a
context but by a specific intonation. It should be mentioned that these differences cannot be
due to meaning frequency differences: In a prior corpus study, we found no differences
between the frequency of bloß and nur occurring with their AI meaning (68% versus 67%)
and their NAI meaning (8% versus 8%).
We conclude that the NAI meaning with its expressive flavour gets stronger activated in the
case of bloß compared to nur. This difference shows up in interrogative sentences (not only
in imperative sentences, as claimed in the literature), and can be observed cross-modally in
reading and listening tasks.
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