⋯ For a child knows that logic and meaning are only nothing nothing screening ⋯
— F. Pessoa
Abstract
We propose an analysis ofonly in terms of event semantics. This approach allows a unified treatment of a wide range of cases in whichonly is associated with focused expressions of different categories. Section 1 is devoted to a preliminary discussion of some problems that a good analysis ofonly should solve. In section 2 we concentrate on sentences in which the focused expression is a NP. In section 3 we show how our analysis can be extended to other categories. Finally, section 4 contains some remarks on related topics, such as scalarity and exhaustiveness.
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Bonomi, A., Casalegno, P. Only: Association with focus in event semantics. Nat Lang Seman 2, 1–45 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01255430
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01255430