The main goal of this paper is twofold. First, I argue that covert focus movement is not affected by island constraints, contrary to Erlewine and Kotek's (2018) proposal, while accepting the focus movement approach for interpretation. I demonstrate that this argument can be supported by contrastive fragment answers, stripping examples, and Tanglewood configurations involving island domains. I also present new empirical evidence for the argument that overt but not covert focus movement is island-sensitive, using examples including weak quantifiers such as 'mwuenka' (what, something) and 'nwukwunka' (who, someone) in Korean, which can receive focus. Secondly, I compare the semantic formulas of the English focus adverb 'only' and the contrastive focus operator (∅F) and demonstrate the process by which the interpretation of these focus operators is computed. Furthermore, I illustrate the semantic formulas of the two focus operators can successfully capture the difference and sameness in meaning between them.
1. Introduction
2. Island-sensitive Contrastive fragments
3. Evidence for Focus Movement
4. Semantics of Focus Operators
5. Focus-Movement and Island Sensitivity
6. Summary and Conclusion
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