Manfred Krifka

		  Humboldt Universität zu Berlin &
	   Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Berlin

  Question-Answer Congruence and the Proper Representation of Focus

One of the typical usages of focus is to mark the congruence of an
answer to a question, such as 

       When will Fritz go to Potsdam?
       Fritz will go to Potsdam TOMORROW

, where the focused item "tomorrow" corresponds to the question
constituent "when". 

In this talk I will review a number of arguments centering aroung
congruent question-answer relations that have informed us about the
nature and proper representation of focus. In particular, I will argue
for a structured meaning approach for focus, and for a distinction
between focus and focus phrases. 


Krifka, Manfred (2001), For a structured account of questions and
  answers, in Caroline Féry & Wolfgang Sternefeld, Audiatur vox
  sapientiae. A Festschrift for Achim von Stechow, Berlin,
  Akademie-Verlag, 287-319.

Krifka, Manfred (2006). Association with focus phrases. In V. Molnar &
  S. Winkler (eds.), The Architecture of Focus, Berlin: Mouton de
  Gruyter.

Krifka, Manfred (to appear), The semantics of questions and
  the focusation of answers, in Chungmin Lee, Matthew Gordon & Daniel
  Büring, Topic and focus: A cross-linguistic perspective, Dordrecht,
  Kluwer, 139-151.