Pragmatic factors in the processing of Mandarin focus intervention effects

Abstract An in-situ wh -question is generally considered degraded if the wh -phrase is preceded by a focus phrase, a phenomenon known as ‘focus intervention effects’. In syntax and semantics, focus intervention effects have been considered crucial evidence for various grammatical approaches to wh -in-situ questions. However, the degradedness of sentences involving focus intervention effects has long been disputed, especially in the face of pragmatic manipulations on wh -phrases and focus phrases. The present study reports three experiments probing the role of two pragmatic factors in focus intervention effects: the givenness of a focus phrase and the linguistic informativity of a wh -phrase, using both acceptability judgment and self-paced reading tasks. The experimental results show that linguistic informativity does not influence focus intervention effects, whereas focus givenness leads to a facilitation effect in both tasks. However, the facilitation does not completely eliminate focus intervention effects. Based on these findings, we reaffirm the relevance of grammatical approaches to focus intervention effects developed in the syntax and the semantics tradition while also acknowledging the partial role of pragmatics.