Contrastiveness in Information Structure, Alternatives and Scalar Implicatures is a collection of 19 papers including selected papers from the CIL (International Congress of Linguists) 18 workshop and symposium held in Seoul (21–26 July 2008) and invited papers contributed by Krazter & Shimoyama, Krifka & Keshet. Edited by Chungmin Lee, Ferenc Kiefer & Manfred Krifka, the 19 papers of this volume are classified into four parts.

The first part is made up of six chapters, mainly discussing related issues on information structure, such as contrastiveness in contrastive topic and contrastive focus , along with topic and focus and interpretation of some discourse particles in Hungarian and Russian.

First, constrastiveness features and implicatures in topic are discussed. Chungmin Lee in Chapter 1 explores contrastive topic (CT) and contrastive focus (CF) and their alternatives through Question Under Discussion (QUD) (Roberts Reference Roberts2012) (see examples (1)–(2)). At present, there are two views of CT: one takes CT as an information-structured discourse-regulating device and the other analyzes CT as a focus-sensitive operator.

Katsuhiko Yabushita in Chapter 2 argues that both views have empirical problems. Thus, Lee proposes that CT but not ‘list CT’ has unresolved sub-questions and is claimed to generate conventional scalar implicatures, which are not cancelable. In the dynamic partition semantics of questions and answers, Yabushita analyzes the implicational/presuppositional features of CT as conversational implicatures deriving from the reasons why the speaker opts to answer the sub-question instead of the QUD. Possible reasons are the speaker’s lack of information, secrecy, or specification of the postive and negative instances to an interrogative question. Robert van Rooij & Katrin Schulz in Chapter 4 argue that topical accent in CT invokes extra implicature and then can account for the scope-inversion data (Büring Reference Büring1997).

Second, alternatives in CF and structural focus are explored. Yabushita in Chapter 2 argues that CF is induced by a disjunctive alternative question (ALT-Q) based on immediately relevant alternatives and has an exhaustivity condition that only one disjunct holds. CF, in parallelism to ALT-Q offers a solution to the problem of suspension of scalar implicatures in downward entailment contexts such as antecedents of conditionals.

Katalin É Kiss proposes a new theory of structural focus based on Hungarian data. It is claimed that structural focus in Hungarian is derived via focus movement for the purpose of establishing a specificational predication construction, but not for stress–focus correspondence principle or checking the exhaustive identification feature theory. In the specificational predication, the subject is an open sentence, determining a set and associated with an existential presupposition, and the predicate is the focus-moved constituent, identifying the set referentially. The referential identification of the set determines the exhaustive listing of its members. Therefore, the exhaustive feature of the focus is not asserted but entailed. Kiss further claims that the specificational predicate–subject predication does not correlate with either the new–given information division or the focus–background stress pattern of the sentence.

Third, discourse particles of Hungarian csak (see examples in (3)) and Russian -to, and ved’ (see examples in (4)) are investigated.

Beáta Gyuris in Chapter 5 points out that the necessary and sufficient condition for the use of csak is the adversative context. The semantic change of csak from the exclusive particle to the discourse particle can be explained by semantic reanalysis due to pragmatic overload. Svetlana McCoy-Rusanova in Chapter 6 shows that -to, and ved’ each evokes an alternative set. The particle -to evokes a set of questions and the other two particles, a closed set of two propositions with exclusive polarity values. In the end, McCoy-Rusanova offers a promising analysis of how presuppositions or implicatures contributed by individual particles are combined to explain connotations which arise in utterances with multiple particles.

Part II is made up of seven chapters on problems of semantic interpretation of quantificational expression with indeterminate pronouns, polarity, licensing problems and implicatures with Japanese, Korean, French, German, English and Italian data.

Chapter 7, by Angelika Kratzer & Junko Shimoyama, addresses the quantificational system in Japanese making use of indeterminate pronouns, which take on existential, universal, interrogative, negative polarity or free-choice interpretations depending on what operator they associate with. Such systems are claimed to constitute a unified class cross-linguistically. Comparing German indefinite irgendein with Japanese indeterminate pronouns, Angelika Krazter & Junko Shimoyama work to explain the semantic differences in the Hamblin semantics framework.

Chapters 8–11 discuss polarity-related issues mainly focusing on polarity-sensitive items as well as their licensing conditions. Jinyoung Choi shows that Korean polarity-sensitive items do not necessarily involve the indefinite root amwu-, which Choi argues to be the morphological incarnation of proper domain widening. Choi further argues that ‘domain-not-widening’ is more essential to create polarity sensitivity. The free choiceness in Korean is derived from two types of particles: the scalar focus particle -lato and the disjunctive particle -na. The two particles are different in orientations of free choiceness, quantificational force and scalarity, but similar in that their free choice effects is not cancelable. Dongsik Lim further claims that -lato can be decomposed into the covert exclusive particle (similar to English merely) and the additive particle -to (similar to English also). The difference between -lato and German auch nur or Italian anche solo lies in that -to in -lato introduces an additive presupposition weaker than English also, German auch in auch nur and Italian anche in anche solo.

Chapters 9 and 11 address licensing problems in polarity items. Yoonhee Choi & Chungmin Lee explore the nature of licensing predicates in expletive negation (ExN) and the role of ExN in Korean, Japanese and French, respectively, while Mingya Liu investigates the pragmatic licensing possibility of polarity items in addition to downward monotonicity and anti-additivity. Choi & Lee argue that ExN-licensing predicates are a subcase of nonveridicality invoking polarity alternatives (p and ${\sim}\text{p}$ ) of an embedded complement. However, not all nonveridical predicates license ExN. In order to solve this overgeneration problem, Choi & Lee restrict ExN-licensing predicates to the neg-raisers or the neg-raiser holders in their lexical meaning. In terms of the undergeneration problem posed by the fact that epistemic predicates in Korean and Japanese are not veridical but can license ExN, Choi & Lee propose an analysis of veridicality-suspension by the question complementizer.

Mingya Liu argues that polarity items can be pragmatically licensed in addition to downward monotonicity and anti-additivity. Negative polarity items (NPIs) can be licensed both in and outside the focus of only. Liu further claims that only is semantically conjunctive, which can not only license NPIs by its exclusive entailment (Horn’s inert entailment) but also license positive polarity items (PPIs) by its prejacent entailment. Thus, Liu argues that it is the contradictory monotonicity properties within an only sentence that pose a challenge for the NPI theories. As to positive polarity items, Liu argues that they can co-occur with the anti-additive quantifier ‘no N’ if intonation or enriched context makes it a contrastive negation or denial. In the end, Liu suggests that future research should focus on the question of how the presence of polarity items in discourse affects sentence processing and reasoning.

Chapter 12, by Uli Sauerland, and Chapter 13, by Ezra Keshet, examine the challenges against a Gricean account of implicatures due to the Hurford’s constraint datum (Hurtford Reference Hurtford1974, Gazdar Reference Gazdar1979) and the free choice datum (Kamp Reference Kamp1973), and the standard Horn-Scale analysis of scalar implicatures.

The volume’s third part comprises four chapters discussing quantificational expressions with implicatures such as Lawrence R. Horn on almost with scalar implicatures, Jae-Il Yeom on numerals, Chidori Nakamura on -mo and numerals with scalar implicatures, and Leah R. Paltiel-Gedalyovich & Jeannette Schaeffer on experimental study on scale and non-scale words in Hebrew child language.

Horn focuses on the proximal and polar components of almost, barely and other proximatives and proposes a combination of assertability and entailment. Yeom discusses how numerals get the meaning of ‘at least’ or ‘at most’. Taking a pragmatic approach, Yeom shows that numerals neither constitute a semantic scale nor have the meaning of ‘at least’ or ‘at most’, just like other scalar terms. But only when a numeral is in the scope of a quantifier will the numeral get such a reading. Two kinds of scalarity are involved in interpreting numerals: the basic scalarity among numerals and the scalarity of unlikelihood. The former scalarity is relevant to the maximal numbers of elements involved and the latter scalarity is determined by the background knowledge. In cases where there is no explicit quantification, a universal quantifier over epistemic alternatives is provided by the support conditions of a statement.

Nakamura presents how the ‘many’ and ‘few’ interpretations of numerals with Japanese focus particle mo are reduced to a single conventional implicature of mo. The ‘numeral-classifier-mo’ is divided into two syntactic categories: pre-case mo and post-case mo. In both cases, the scope of mo, which determines the increasing or decreasing monotonicity, determines an interpretation of either ‘many’ or ‘few’. Nakamura also claims that the nature of ‘unlikeliness’ given by mo can be explained in terms of probability and the set of alternatives of quantities.

Paltiel-Gedalyovich & Schaeffer report adult and child knowledge of the generalized scalar implicature (GCI) of disjunction, the non-scalar ‘Allover’ GCI and the particularized non-contrast implicature. The contributions of scales, generalizations and relational complexity to the developmental difficulty of phenomena at the semantic–pragmatic interface are discussed. Results show that children aged nine lack knowledge of the scalar GCI of disjunction and the non-contrast particularized scalar implicature (PCI), while children aged five understand the ‘Allover’ GCI. Therefore, Paltiel-Gedalyovich & Schaeffer draw the conclusion that the late acquisition can be explained not by the scales or the contrast of GCI and PCI but by the complexity of implicature calculation.

The fourth part of the volume comprises two chapters, written by Manfred Krifka, on negated questions as degeneration of an assertion speech act, and by Shinichiro Ishihara, on the intonation of question speech acts in Tokyo Japanese.

Krifka discusses polarity questions with high/outer negation in speech act theory. He claims that such question is actually a REQUEST operation by the speaker to refrain from performing a certain speech act, that is, the degeneration of the speech act. In contrast, Ishihara presents an experimental study on the intonation patterns of wh- and Yes/No-questions in Tokyo Japanese. The experimental results show that the wh-question exhibits a peak pitch contour realized by focal rise or an $\text{F}_{0}$ -prominence on the wh-phrase, while the Yes/No-question displays an $\text{F}_{0}$ -prominence on the verb. Ishihara further claims that both prominences are focus-oriented and the prosodic effects of focus and givenness are independent.

In sum, this volume provides readers with comprehensive and insightful viewpoints about core issues of contrastiveness in information structure, alternatives, polarity, and scalar implicatures. Besides, papers in this volume indicate that interface study on semantics and pragmatics may lead to a better understanding of information structure. Furthermore, cross-linguistic data including Korean, Russian, Hungarian, and Tokyo Japanese make a great contribution to deepen typological studies on information structure and related issues.