Focus and Focus Structures in the Romance Languages

The archived version is a draft of a chapter/article that has been accepted for publication by Oxford University Press in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics.Peer reviewe

Gone unexpectedly : Pseudo-coordination and the expression of surprise in Sicilian

Peer reviewe

Setting the boundaries : Presentational ci-sentences in Italian

Peer reviewe

Focus Fronting in Spanish : Mirative implicature and information structure

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) implicature 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.Peer reviewe

Language contact and morphological competition : Plurals in central Sicily

This paper explores the effects of language contact in the nominal morphology of central Sicilian dialects. In particular, this study is concerned with the contact-induced changes related to the distribution of three plural formatives that give rise to competition between different inflectional classes with respect to a number of lexemes. It is shown that sociolinguistic factors such as speaker age account for the distribution of the competing plural forms and the high degree of variation. As a consequence, a slow and gradual change is leading to the disappearance of the plural form that has no equivalent in the contact language, that is, in Italian.Peer reviewe

Topicalization in the Romance Languages

Peer reviewe

Syntactic movement and focus-associated implicatures in Hungarian

Peer reviewe

The classification of Sicilian dialects : Language change and contact

Peer reviewe

Focalization and Word Order in Old Italo-Romance

En aquest article es comparen varietats d’italo-romànic modern i antic amb l’objectiu d’entendre els mecanismes que caracteritzen les operacions sintàctiques associades amb l’estructura informativa de la frase, així com identificar els factors que les desencadenen. En concret, aquest estudi se centra en els processos de focalització i les operacions de moviment que s’hi relacionen: el moviment a la perifèria esquerra i el trasllat del verb. Atesa la variació dialectal de l’italo-romànic modern, argumento que la major part de les propietats que generalment s’atribueixen al sistema SFoc a les llengües en qüestió s’han d’associar en realitat amb trets relacionats amb el discurs i amb les projeccions funcionals. La distinció entre un SFoc més alt, a la perifèria esquerra, i un SFoc més baix, intern a la frase, proporciona la base per explicar la variació sincrònica i diacrònica, l’anàlisi de la qual reposa en canvis en l’ordre de paraules en la diacronia, trets relacionats amb el discurs i les categories funcionals.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