This paper develops an account of the German discourse particle denn that captures the meaning contribution of this particle in polar questions, wh-questions, and certain conditional antecedents in a unified way. It is shown that the behavior of denn exhibits an asymmetry between polar and wh-interrogatives, which can be captured by treating the particle as sensitive to the property highlighted by its containing clause, in the sense of Roelofsen and Farkas (Language 91(2):359–414, 2015). In addition, the paper argues that highlighting-sensitivity should be incorporated in the account of another discourse particle, German uberhaupt, and discusses how the proposed account of discourse particle denn may be extended to also cover the use of denn as a causal conjunction.

中文翻译：

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Denn 作为高光敏感粒子

本文对德语话语助词 denn 进行了描述，以统一的方式捕捉了该助词在极地问题、wh 问题和某些条件先行词中的意义贡献。表明 denn 的行为表现出极性和 wh 疑问词之间的不对称性，可以通过将粒子视为对其包含子句突出显示的属性敏感来捕获，在 Roelofsen 和 Farkas 的意义上（语言 91(2) :359–414, 2015)。此外，该论文认为，应将突出敏感度纳入另一个语篇助词德语 uberhaupt 的说明中，并讨论了如何将所提出的对语篇助词 denn 的说明扩展到也涵盖使用 denn 作为因果连词。