Left peripheral focus mismatches between syntax a

Authors: Gisbert Fanselow Denisa Lenertová

Publish Date: 2010/09/24

Volume: 29, Issue: 1, Pages: 169-209

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Abstract

In Czech German and many other languages part of the semantic focus of the utterance can be moved to the left periphery of the clause The main generalization is that only the leftmost accented part of the semantic focus can be moved We propose that movement to the left periphery is generally triggered by an unspecific edge feature of C Chomsky 2008 and its restrictions can be attributed to requirements of cyclic linearization modifying the theory of cyclic linearization developed by Fox and Pesetsky 2005 The crucial assumption is that structural accent is a direct consequence of being linearized at merge thus it is indirectly relevant for locality restrictions on movement The absence of structural accent correlates with givenness Given elements may later receive topic or contrastive accents which accounts for fronting in multiple focus/contrastive topic constructions Without any additional assumptions the model can account for movement of pragmatically unmarked elements to the left periphery ‘formal fronting’ Frey 2005 Crucially the analysis makes no reference at all to concepts of information structure in the syntax in line with the claim of Chomsky 2008 that UG specifies no direct link between syntax and information structureThis article is published under an open access license Please check the Copyright Information section for details of this license and what reuse is permitted If your intended use exceeds what is permitted by the license or if you are unable to locate the licence and reuse information please contact the Rights and Permissions team

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