Intervention Effects and Topic Interpretation
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- ISBN 9781041219972
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 31 Aug 2026
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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This book provides a new take on the longstanding puzzle of intervention effects in questions whereby specific scopal expressions block the interpretation of wh-elements when they occupy a particular position in the semantic representation.
Its central argument is that intervention effects are not a homogeneous phenomenon with a uniform underlying structure mapped to a single interpretive mechanism. Rather, they have distinct sources—a distinction that, to date, has not been systematically made in the study of intervention. The work distinguishes two types of intervention: one stemming from focus-based interpretation failure and another rooted in topicality constraints. Consequently, it proposes a new typology that clarifies the field and paves the way for future cross-linguistic research.
Semanticists, syntacticians, pragmatics researchers, and experts in logic and the philosophy of language will find this book illuminating.
Dawei Jin graduated from the State University of New York at Buffalo with a PhD in linguistics. He is Associate Professor at the Center for International Chinese Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He is interested in the syntax-semantics interface and, in particular, in how contradiction arises as meaning builds up and its implications for the issue of ungrammaticality.
