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<Paper uid="C96-1073">
  <Title>Focus and Higher-Order Unification</Title>
  <Section position="6" start_page="433" end_page="434" type="concl">
    <SectionTitle>
6 Conclusion
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> In this paper, we have argued that Higher-Order Unification provides an adequate tool for computing Focus Semantic Values. To this end, we have considered data which is viewed as a test-bed for focus theory and shown that, whilst existing theories either under-generate, over-generate or are methodologically unsatist%ctory, the ttOU approach yields a simple and transparent analysis.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> There appear to be two main reasons for this.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2">  l,'irst, the HOU analysis makes minimal assumptions about the role syntax is called to play in determining the I&amp;quot;SV. lit is detined on a purely semantic level in the sense that unification operates on semantic representations, and relies neither on quantifier raising, nor on a rule-to-rule definition of the FSV. As we have seen, this type of approach is a plausible way to avoid undergeneration. null Second, the HOU approach permits an equational analysis which can naturally be Nrther constrained by additional equations. The interest of such an approach was illustrated in our treatment of SOEs which we characterise as involving two phenomena: the computation of an I&amp;quot;SV, and the resolution of a &amp;'accented anaphor. Not only did we show that this analysis is methodologically and empirically sound, we also showed that it finds a natural realisation in the equational framework of IIOU: each linguistic phenomena is characterised by some equation(s) and the equations may mutually constrain each other. For instance, in the case of SOEs, we saw that the equations characterising the deaccented anaphor help determine the unidentified FSV of the utterance containing the unmarke(I focus.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> Clearly, our approach extends to cases of a(tverbial quantification. For lack of space we could not develop the theory here; let us just point out that yon Fintel's criticism (von Fintel, 1995) of semantic approaches to tbcus, also applies to Krifka's Structured Meanings analysis, but not to the ItOU approach presented here. Von Fintel points out that in certain cases of adverbial quantification, a focus operator associates with an unmarked tbcus and dots not associate with a marked tbcus occurring in its scope - as should be clear fl'om this article, this is unproblematic for our analysis.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> Of course, there art still many open issues.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> First, how does the proposed analysis interact with quantification? Second, how does it extend to a dynamic semantics (e.g. Discourse Representation Theory)'?</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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