semantics the dynamics of focus structure nomi erteschik - shir ( ben - gurion university of the negev ) ; the dynamics of focus structure ; isbn : 0-521 - 59217 - 8 ; hardback , 6 x 9 , 294 pp . ; publisher : cambridge university press ; $ 64 . 95 ; all modes of perception ( vision , hearing , etc . ) are organized into foreground or focus and background constituents . natural language sentences are no different . this book explores the role of focusing in natural language sentences and the role of this basic cognitive mechanism in explaining sentence stress , meaning and structure . the result is an innovative view of our linguistic competence . ; contents : introduction ; 1 . the interpretation of f-structure ; 2 . reference and coreference ; 3 . negation , questions and contrast ; 4 . the phonological interpretation f-structure ; 5 . scope and r-dependencies ; 6 . i - dependencies in da s-structure ; conclusion ; references ; index of names ; index of subjects . order info : http : / / www . cup . org / order . html focus and natural language processing : linguistic , cognitive , and computational perspectives focus and natural language processing : linguistic , cognitive , and computational perspectives ; isbn : 0-521 - 58305 - 5 ; hardback , 6 x 9 , c . 300 pp . ; p . bosch , ed . ( institute for logic and linguistics , ibm , germany ) ; publisher : cambridge university press ; $ 59 . 95 ; this books presents a collection of papers on the issue of focus in its broadest sense . while commonly considered as being related to phenomena such as presupposition and anaphora , focusing is much more widely spread , and it is this pervasiveness that the current collection addresses . the work loosely originates from a conference held in 1994 in schloss wolfsbrunnen in germany , although only a small subpart of the proceedings papers presented are included here . the contributed papers have been reworked for the current volume to present a coherent study of the subject . ; contents : introduction ; part 1 ; intonation and syntax ; 1 ; contrastive stress , contrariety and focus ; 2 ; the processing of information structure in synphonics ; 3 ; focus and sentence accents in english ; 4 ; informational autonomy ; 5 ; focus and operator scope in german ; 6 ; subject - prodrop in yiddish ; 7 ; remarks on intonation and " focus " ; part 2 ; semantics ; 8 ; what is the alternative ? ; 9 ; topic ; 10 ; focus with nominal quantifiers ; 11 ; dependencies in focus-structure ; 12 ; topic , focus and negation ; 13 ; topic , focus and weak quantifiers ; 14 ; focus , quantification , and semantics-pragmatic issues ; 15 ; association with focus or association with presupposition ? ; 16 ; time adverbials in sentence and discourse ; part 3 ; discourse ; 17 ; focusing particles and ellipsis resolution ; 18 ; discourse and the focus / background distinction ; 19 ; on different kinds of focus ; 20 ; stressed and unstressed pronouns : complementary preferences ; 21 ; frame shifts : indefinite reference to familiar referents ; 22 ; discourse linking and discourse subordination ; 23 ; domain restriction ; 24 ; updates , files and focus-ground ; order info : http : / / www . cup . org / order . html