More or less final version. To appear in Natural Language Semantics. According to the alternative semantics for focus, the semantic reflex of intonational focus is a second semantic value, which in the case of a sentence is a set of propositions. We examine a range of semantic and pragmatic applications of the theory, and extract a unitary principle specifying how the focus semantic value interacts with semantic and pragmatic processes. A strong version of the theory has the effect of making lexical or construction-specific stipulation of a focus-related effect in association with focus constructions impossible. Furthermore, while focus has a uniform import, the sources of meaning differences in association with focus are various.

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We present an algorithm for simultaneously constructing both the syntax and semantics of a sentence using a Lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammar (LTAG). This approach captures naturally and elegantly the interaction between pragmatic and syntactic constraints on descriptions in a sentence, and the inferential interactions between multiple descriptions in a sentence. At the same

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Explaining speakers' choice of which items to emphasize or de-emphasize intonationally has been an important topic in theoretical linguistics, as well as in applications such as speech synthesis, where accent decisions affect the naturalness as well as interpretation. Heretofore, most researchers have assumed that detailed syntactic, semantic, and discourse-level information must be available in order for accent assignment to be predicted successfully. However, a series of recent experiments on corpora of recorded (read) speech and spontaneous (elicited) speech suggest that it is indeed possible to model human accent strategies with fair success (80-98% correct) for unrestricted text --- with only the tools for automatic text analysis currently available. The algorithm developed from these experiments is currently used to assign pitch accent in the Bell Laboratories Text-to-Speech System.

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For many linguists interested in pragmatics, including the Prague School theorists,

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this paper, I speculate that sloppy non-pronominals are impossible in ellipsis because ellipsis is at least partially sensitive to the representation of information, perhaps to syntax. The "the same is true of ---" construction is semantically mediated, and so allows for sloppy nonpronominals. Let us now look at an analogues of the representations above with prosodic redundancy marking, rather than ellipsis or the same is true of construction. Consider first an example with a pronominal in the potentially sloppy posi- 2