The focus sensitivity of sentence adverbs

This paper discusses the focus sensitivity of modal and evaluative sentence adverbs as probably, maybe and unfortunately, surprisingly. Using ways of testing on different linguistic levels, we claim that they are focus sensitive by the mechanism of free association with focus (cf. Beaver & Clark 2008). A short semantic analysis of the two classes of adverbs is given to explain differences they reveal in the tests. Finally, the notion of focus sensitivity in general is examined and different ways of deducing focus sensitive interpretations are compared.