Gutzmann, Daniel. 2010. Betonte Modalpartikeln und Verumfokus. In: Hentschel, Elke & Harden, Theo (ed.): 40 Jahre Partikelforschung. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. 119–138.
Abstract
Stressed modal particles (MPs) have always been somehow mysterious because (i) it is expected that they should not be able to be stressed in the first place, and because (ii) it is not clear what the contribution of this stress is, and because (iii) it remains unclear whether stressed MPs are the same MPs as their unstressed variants or whether they are distinct MPs of their own. This paper suggests that an answer to these question lies in a connection between MPs and verum focus (Höhle 1992). The starting point is the observation that stressed MPs cannot occur in sentences which already exhibit verum focus. I argue that the contribution of a stressed modal particles consists the contribution of its unstressed variant plus the contribution of verum focus. In order to illustrate this connection, I describe how their interaction can be captured in a multidimensional semantics and, to further illustrate their relation, look at the interaction between these two phenomena with sentence mood.