Focus, Topic & Information Structure by Silvio Cruschina
Focus is a key notion to understand processes of syntactic and prosodic readjustments in Romance... more Focus is a key notion to understand processes of syntactic and prosodic readjustments in Romance. Since, prosodically, it must be the most prominent constituent in the sentence, focus associates with the nuclear pitch accent, which may be shifted from its default rightmost position when the syntactic position of the focus also changes. The application of specific syntactic operations depends both on the size and on the subtype of focus, although not always unambiguously. Subject inversion characterizes focus structures where the domain of focus covers either the whole sentence (broad-focus) or a single constituent (narrow-focus). Presentational constructions distinctively mark broad focus, avoiding potential ambiguity with an SVO structure where the predicate is the focus and the subject is interpreted as topic. In narrow-focus structures, the focus constituent typically occurs sentence-final (postverbal focalization), but may also be fronted (focus fronting) depending on the specific interpretation associated with the focus. Semantically, focus indicates the presence of alternatives, and the different interpretations arise from the way the set of alternatives is pragmatically exploited, giving rise to a contextually open set (information focus), to contrast or correction (contrastive or corrective focus), or to surprise or unexpectedness (mirative focus). Whether a subtype of focus may undergo fronting in a Romance language is subject to variation. In most varieties it is indeed possible with contrastive or corrective focus, but it has been shown that focus fronting is also acceptable with non-contrastive focus in several languages, especially with mirative focus. Finally, certain focus-sensitive operators or particles directly interact with the narrow-focus constituent of the sentence and their association with focus has semantic effects on the interpretation of the sentence.
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In Expressive Meaning across Linguistic Levels and Frameworks, Andreas Trotzke & Xavier Villalba (eds), 86-107. Oxford: Oxford: University Press, 2021
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Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, 1–29, 2021
Topic and topicalization are key notions to understand processes of syntactic and prosodic readju... more Topic and topicalization are key notions to understand processes of syntactic and prosodic readjustments in Romance. More specifically, topicalization refers to the syntactic mechanisms and constructions available in a language to mark an expression as the topic of the sentence. Despite the lack of a uniform definition of topic, often based on the notions of aboutness or givenness, significant advances have been made in Romance linguistics since the 1990s, yielding a better understanding of the topicalization constructions, their properties, and their grammatical correlates. Prosodically, topics are generally described as being contained in independent intonational phrases. The syntactic and pragmatic characteristics of a specific topicalization construction, by contrast, depend both on the form of resumption of the dislocated topic within the clause and on the types of topic (aboutness, given, and contrastive topics). We can thus distinguish between hanging topic (left dislocation) (HTLD) and clitic left-dislocation (ClLD) for sentence-initial topics, and clitic right-dislocation (ClRD) for sentence-final dislocated constituents. These topicalization constructions are available in most Romance languages, although variation may affect the type and the obligatory presence of the resumptive element. Scholars working on topic and topicalization in the Romance languages have also addressed controversial issues such as the relation between topics and subjects, both grammatical (nominative) subjects and 'oblique' subjects such as dative experiencers and locative expressions. Moreover, topicalization has been discussed for medieval Romance, in conjunction with its alleged V2 syntactic status. Some topicalization constructions such as subject inversion, especially in the non-null subject Romance languages, and Resumptive Preposing may indeed be viewed as potential residues of medieval V2 property in contemporary Romance.
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Rivista di Grammatica Generativa / Research in Generative Grammar (RGG) 41: 1–37, 2019
In this paper, I propose that the exhaustive interpretation associated with Hungarian Focus Front... more In this paper, I propose that the exhaustive interpretation associated with Hungarian Focus Fronting (FF) is a conventional implicature that belongs to the non-at-issue dimension of meaning and that is directly responsible for the syntactic displacement of the focus constituent. Following a cartographic approach, I defend the view that the interface properties that result from FF, including the associated implicatures at the semantic level, are directly encoded in the syntax in the form of active syntactic features which drive the movement of sentential constituents to dedicated functional projections. In the case of FF, more specifically, these features trigger syntactic movement and generate the relevant implicature. This proposal is based on the observation that, despite being a prominent one-and perhaps the most prominent-the exhaustive reading is not the only possible interpretation that can be associated with FF in Hungarian. Other meanings can be associated with FF in the relevant contexts and under the appropriate conditions, for example, a mirative import of surprise and unexpectedness that need not be exhaustive. From a crosslinguistic viewpoint, moreover, this account provides an explanation for the fact that the exhaustive reading associated with FF, especially in answers to questions, appear to be a language specific property of Hungarian.
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Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 6(1): 3: 1-30, 2021
The most debated syntactic reflex that is typically associated with contrast is the movement of a... more The most debated syntactic reflex that is typically associated with contrast is the movement of a contrastive constituent to a dedicated, left-peripheral position. For Italian and Spanish, it has been claimed that focus fronting (FF) must be sanctioned by a contrastive interpretation of the focus, while non-contrastive focus generally occurs postverbally (see, e.g., Rizzi 1997; Zubizarreta 1998; Belletti 2004; López 2009). Only sentences with a postverbal focus are thus judged as pragmatically felicitous answers to the corresponding wh-questions. Some scholars, however, have recently reported different views and data, showing that non-contrastive preverbal foci are indeed accepted by native speakers in answers to wh-questions. In this paper, I argue that a solution to this problem can be found if the binary distinction between contrastive and non-contrastive focus is abandoned, and different 'degrees' or 'types' of contrastive focus are identified, depending on the way the set of alternatives is pragmatically exploited (Krifka 2007; Cruschina 2012). I show that languages are syntactically sensitive to specific types of focus with which special operations (e.g. FF) associate. Following Bianchi, Bocci & Cruschina (2015; 2016), I then argue that FF is in fact triggered not by contrast per se, but by the conventional implicature that is associated with a specific type of focus.
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In Per una prospettiva funzionale sulle costruzioni sintatticamente marcate / Pour une perspective fonctionnelle sur les constructions syntaxiquement marquées, Anna-Maria De Cesare & Mervi Helkkula (eds). Special issue of Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 120: 247–267. , 2019
L'associazione tra contrasto e costruzioni marcate è stata oggetto di diversi studi che hanno mos... more L'associazione tra contrasto e costruzioni marcate è stata oggetto di diversi studi che hanno mostrato come in diverse lingue, tra cui l'italiano e lo spagnolo, una interpretazione contrastiva possa attivare un ordine non canonico con un costituente focale (focus contrastivo) all'inizio di frase, in posizione preverbale. In assenza di contrasto, per esempio in risposta ad una domanda parziale, sembra invece che questa anteposizione focale risulti pragmaticamente infelice. A partire da questa osservazione, si è arrivati a formulare la generalizzazione che in italiano e in spagnolo il contrasto costituisce un requisito necessario a legittimare l'anteposizione focale. Tale generalizzazione è stata tuttavia messa in discussione da una serie di lavori che, sulla base di metodi diversi, hanno mostrato che l'anteposizione focale è accettata anche in assenza di contrasto, con il cosiddetto focus informativo. La soluzione che proponiamo per riconciliare queste due posizioni contrastanti si basa sulla necessità di abbondonare una definizione binaria di contrasto e di distinguere diverse categorie di contrasto e quindi diversi tipi di focus. Gli obiettivi di questo contributo sono pertanto due: da una parte, tracciare una tipologia del contrasto e del focus a partire dagli aspetti funzionali e interpretativi; dall'altra, definire quali tipi di focus possono associarsi con l'anteposizione focale.
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In Italianistica 2.0. Tradizione e innovazione: Atti del XII Congresso degli Italianisti della Scandinavia, Helsinki–Tallinn, 13-14 giugno 2019, pp. 51–66. , 2020
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Probus, 2019
In Romance, Focus Fronting (FF) is generally related to a contrastive or corrective function. In ... more In Romance, Focus Fronting (FF) is generally related to a contrastive or corrective function. In this paper, I show that Spanish may resort to FF to express a special evaluative meaning, namely, a mirative (conventional) impli-cature of surprise and unexpectedness. Mirative FF is problematic for the traditional analyses of FF because it is not necessarily contrastive and does not guarantee the traditional articulation of the sentence into a new and a given part. The results of a syntactic experiment on the distribution and interpretation of FF in European Spanish show that speakers accept FF not only in the corrective but also in the mirative context. The acceptability of mirative FF thus proves that FF in Spanish is not exclusively limited to contrast or linked to information-structural requirements such as the new-old information distinction. FF may also be used to express a mirative implicature that requires a set of focal alternatives in order to be interpreted correctly.
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This paper discusses the fronting of a focal constituent to a clause-initial position which, in v... more This paper discusses the fronting of a focal constituent to a clause-initial position which, in various languages, is associated with an import of unexpectedness. We provide prosodic and syntactic evidence from Italian showing that this phenomenon has distinctive grammatical properties with respect to other instances of ‘focus fronting’. We argue that the fronted constituent bears narrow focus, and that the unexpectedness import conveys that the asserted proposition is less likely than at least one distinct focus alternative (cf. Grosz 2011). We characterize this import as a conventional implicature, and we argue that likelihood is interpreted with respect to an informative modal base and a stereotypical ordering source which are shared by the conversational community, thus allowing the negotiation of a shared evaluation. In order to incorporate evaluative meanings in the discourse context, we adopt and extend the componential view of the context proposed by Farkas & Bruce (2010).
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In this paper we analyse polar questions characterized by the fronting of a focal constituent, as... more In this paper we analyse polar questions characterized by the fronting of a focal constituent, as attested in Sicilian, Sardinian, Italian, Bulgarian, Russian. Taking Sicilian as our case study, we reject the hypothesis that the ‘open polarity’ of the question obtains via movement of a polarity operator from within the sentence radical, and we argue that the Polar Question operator must be directly inserted on top of the compositional structure. As for the interpretive import of Focus fronting, we show that it does not affect the question denotation, but rather it contributes non-at-issue content: either a mirative conventional implicature – whereby the questioned proposition is unexpected as compared to other more likely alternatives – or a ‘double-checking’ presupposition, whereby it is presupposed that one in a set of contextually relevant alternatives is true.
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In: Aboh Enoch, Jeannette Schaeffer & Petra Sleeman (eds). Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2013: selected papers from 'Going Romance' Amsterdam 2013, 3-19. John Benjamins., 2015
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In many languages, including Romance and German, Focus Fronting
(FF) is generally associated with... more In many languages, including Romance and German, Focus Fronting
(FF) is generally associated with an emphatic intonation and interpretation, so that
sentences hosting FF are often indiscriminately mistaken for exclamative clauses. In
this paper we demonstrate that, despite its special interpretive and prosodic properties,
FF is a syntactic construction that is independent from illocutionary force and from
clause-typing since it typically marks declaratives, but may also be found in
interrogative and exclamative clauses. An interpretation of surprise and unexpectedness
is present in these structures with FF, which we thus call Mirative Focus Fronting
(MFF). On the basis of criteria such as presuppositionality and the position of the
prosodic main prominence, we show, on the one hand, that in non-interrogative
contexts, sentences featuring MFF have in fact an assertive force and are therefore
genuine declaratives; on the other, a special type of Focus Fronting must be identified
which occurs in genuine exclamatives (hence the name Exclamative Focus Fronting,
EFF), but which is associated with a special prosodic pattern and is limited to specific
types of constituents (mostly, scalar adjectives and adverbs).
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This paper sets out a comparison between modern and old Italo-Romance varieties with the aim of u... more This paper sets out a comparison between modern and old Italo-Romance varieties with the aim of understanding the mechanisms that characterize the syntactic operations associated with the information structure of the sentence, as well as identifying their triggering factors. In particular, this study concentrates on the process of focalization and the movement operations related to it: constituent fronting and verb movement. In light of the synchronic variation found in modern Italo-Romance varieties, it is argued that most of the properties generally attributed to a V2 system found in the languages in question are instead associated with discourse-related features and functional projections. A distinction between a higher, left peripheral FocP and a lower, clause-internal FocP provides the basis for an account of both synchronic and diachronic variation, the analysis of which rests on a correlation between word order changes in diachrony, discourse-related features, and functional projections.
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Romance languages make use of topicalisation as a grammatical strategy to mark [Àfocus] constitue... more Romance languages make use of topicalisation as a grammatical strategy to mark [Àfocus] constituents, typically under Clitic Left Dislocation (CLLD) and Clitic Right Dislocation (CLRD). As a distinctive property, topicalisation involves clitic resumption (CR) of the dislocated constituent in Italian, as well as in other Romance languages (French, Spanish, Catalan). However, a great deal of variation is found in regard to the actual realisation of the resumptive clitic, which is traditionally explained by assuming that CR is optional. In Italian, CR of topic constituents proves to be optional with all phrases, except with direct objects and partitive complements. By contrast, the presence of a resumptive clitic is strictly required in all dislocation structures involving verbal arguments in other Romance varieties, such as Catalan and Sicilian. The aim of this paper is to identify the syntactic properties and the pragmatics characterisation of dislocation constructions lacking CR, and to account for the apparent optionality and the variation found across Romance. We claim that there are no optional nor null clitics, and that non-resumed dislocation actually corresponds to structures other than CLLD/CLRD, as suggested by the fact that the constructions lacking CR exhibit a wide range of syntactic differences with respect to the clitic-resumed counterparts.
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This paper focuses on the syntactic role of the features related to discourse and information str... more This paper focuses on the syntactic role of the features related to discourse and information structure. I argue that discourse-related features are encoded in syntax, projecting their own phrase structure, and are fundamental in accounting for cross-linguistic variation. Languages differ in the morphological realisation of the discourse-related features (i.e. whether they have topic and focus markers), in the extent to which they exhibit word order alternations and whether they employ syntactic operations which are strictly dependent on the discourse/informational properties of the sentence, as well as in the distinction between different information-structure categories characterised by different grammatical properties. All these differences can be reduced to the syntactic role of discourse-related functional projections, in particular to the overt realisation of their heads and to the kind of movement they trigger, obeying the rigid hierarchical constraints of a uniform functional clause structure, and univocally specifying interpretive instructions to the interfaces. Under this view, this paper offers an analysis of dislocation and fronting phenomena in Romance, which entails that variation in these processes is correlated with the activation and the attraction properties of the functional projections encoding information-structure distinctions.
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Focus, Topic & Information Structure by Silvio Cruschina
(FF) is generally associated with an emphatic intonation and interpretation, so that
sentences hosting FF are often indiscriminately mistaken for exclamative clauses. In
this paper we demonstrate that, despite its special interpretive and prosodic properties,
FF is a syntactic construction that is independent from illocutionary force and from
clause-typing since it typically marks declaratives, but may also be found in
interrogative and exclamative clauses. An interpretation of surprise and unexpectedness
is present in these structures with FF, which we thus call Mirative Focus Fronting
(MFF). On the basis of criteria such as presuppositionality and the position of the
prosodic main prominence, we show, on the one hand, that in non-interrogative
contexts, sentences featuring MFF have in fact an assertive force and are therefore
genuine declaratives; on the other, a special type of Focus Fronting must be identified
which occurs in genuine exclamatives (hence the name Exclamative Focus Fronting,
EFF), but which is associated with a special prosodic pattern and is limited to specific
types of constituents (mostly, scalar adjectives and adverbs).
(FF) is generally associated with an emphatic intonation and interpretation, so that
sentences hosting FF are often indiscriminately mistaken for exclamative clauses. In
this paper we demonstrate that, despite its special interpretive and prosodic properties,
FF is a syntactic construction that is independent from illocutionary force and from
clause-typing since it typically marks declaratives, but may also be found in
interrogative and exclamative clauses. An interpretation of surprise and unexpectedness
is present in these structures with FF, which we thus call Mirative Focus Fronting
(MFF). On the basis of criteria such as presuppositionality and the position of the
prosodic main prominence, we show, on the one hand, that in non-interrogative
contexts, sentences featuring MFF have in fact an assertive force and are therefore
genuine declaratives; on the other, a special type of Focus Fronting must be identified
which occurs in genuine exclamatives (hence the name Exclamative Focus Fronting,
EFF), but which is associated with a special prosodic pattern and is limited to specific
types of constituents (mostly, scalar adjectives and adverbs).
Contrasting the respective focus structure, we then offer a semantic explanation of the two types of subject inversion: in why-questions a narrow focus is semantically motivated and, thus, possible, whereas in the other wh-questions the presence of a narrow focus would yield a clash in the calculation of question-answer congruence. We finally propose an implementation of this asymmetry in cartographic terms.