Obliques and the initial syntactic position

This article discusses the informative function of obliques in first position within the sentence showing that in addition to being Topic, they can also be Focus constituents. We present data from a corpus of spoken Italian and examine the different types of focused obliques in initial position. An analysis of the prosodic characteristics of these constituents in different syntactic positions enables us to present a new principle governing the relation between the syntactic sequence and the information value of elements within the sentence

Linguistic typology and language theory: The various faces of syntax

In this paper we discuss what syntax is today on the basis of all the theoretical and typological insights achieved so far; we also aim at proposing universals of sentence construction based on all the empirical research that has specifically been devoted to the syntax of the world’s languages. We show that a good way of doing syntax today is simply to sum up the results of both formal and typological approaches. Basically we need to maintain the distinction between a configurational and non-configurational way of constructing the sentence and abandon the idea that variation pertains primarily to morphology. As a matter of fact, sentence construction is constrained by pragmatic principles according to which either we have the SVO structure corresponding to the Given – New sequence, or apparent free word order corresponding to a [+ Prominent] – [- Prominent] pragmatic sequence

Linguistic data as complex items

The article discusses the problematic relationship between linguistic data and theories. First it presents data as characterized by different forms of internal and external complexity. Then it shows special kinds of data, such as empty categories, as an example of ‘theory-laden’ data, and clitics as examples of interface or cross-level items. Finally it discusses data according to the twentieth century distinction between competence and performance. Throughout the article interest for the richness and diversity of linguistic data is considered methodologically relevant for linguistics both in comparative and in one-language studies of data. It is the author’s belief that, to take into account the complexity of linguistic data, theoretical linguistics should rely less on overly-rigid architectures in order to allow diversity as much as regular behavior of data to emerge. Finally it is suggested that one way to make theories more flexible is offered by optimality theory. Only by adopting this line of research can theoretical approaches allow both universal and language-specific aspects of language to coexist and be accounted for