The Interaction of Focus, Givenness, and Prosody: A Study of Italian Clause Structure

This book provides an in-depth investigation of contrastive focalization in Italian, showing that its syntactic expression is systematically affected by the syntactic expression of discourse-givenness. The proposed analysis disentangles the properties genuinely associated with contrastive focalization from those determined by the most productive operations affecting discourse given phrases at the right periphery, namely right dislocation and marginalization. On this basis, it shows that in the default case contrastive focalization occurs in situ and that instances of left-peripheral focalization only arise when focus obligatorily evacuates a larger right-dislocating phrase, giving rise to a distribution of leftward-moved foci that generalizes well beyond the cases examined in Rizzi (1997) and most literature since. In its final chapter, the book examines the syntax–prosody interface, showing how focalization in situ and other key properties follow from the prosodic constraints governing stress placement, thus reinterpreting and extending Zubizarreta’s (1998) analysis of p-movement and the role of prosody in shaping syntax. Overall, this book offers an evidence-backed radical departure from current views of focalization based on a fixed focus projection at the left periphery of the clause. It also provides the most comprehensive study of Italian marginalization and right dislocation available to date

Towards a Fine-Grained Theory of Focus

This paper investigates the roles of focus, arguing that such a notion is too wide and can be applied to several phenomena. I show that focus needs to be further specified for (at least) another feature and is therefore made of smaller primitive traits. These can combine to create bundles of features, which give rise to the several types of foci we know. Moreover, these features are subject to parametrization and can thus account for cross-linguistic differences

Discourse effects on older children’s interpretations of complement control and temporal adjunct control

The reference of understood subjects (ecs) in complement control (John persuaded Peteri eci to read the book) and temporal adjunct control (Johni tapped Peter while eci reading the book) has long been described as restricted to the object and subject of the main clause respectively. These restrictions have shaped the grammatical targets proposed for children, most of whom are reported as having acquired both sub-types by seven. Using three picture-selection tasks, 76 children’s (34 girls; aged 6;9-11;8) interpretations of the ecs were tested. Task 1 established their base-line preferences. Task 2 weakly cued the ecs towards an alternative referent and Task 3 strongly towards an alternative referent. Complement control responses were consistent across all tasks but in adjunct control they shifted significantly towards the object in Task 3 – a pattern mirrored by 15 adults. Responses in adjunct control also exhibited a degree of fluctuation in the baseline condition that complement control did not. A follow-up study on adjunct control showed that neither children nor adults permitted an external-referent reading, even when strongly cued in that direction. Two alternative proposals are discussed: one in which the results are viewed solely as the product of a parser’s sensitivity to activation and another that proposes two possible structures for adjunct control; this permits the evident interpretation shift yet gives precedence to the highly preferred subject-oriented reading

Absence of Stress Culmination and Prosodic Phrasing

Current OT analyses of prosodic phrasing are unable to capture Chichewa’s prosody which under specific focus contexts appears to allow for multiple instances of prosodic culmination within a single prosodic phrase. As this paper shows, rather than providing a counter example to the universal validity of current prosodic constraints, Chichewa’s lack of culmination follows from them once Truckenbrodt’s StressXP constraint is generalized to intonational and utterance phrases. The same quest for universal validity also imposes a finer tuning of head-alignment constraints, which must become sensitive to the distinction between realized and unrealized head positions, and a weaker condition on the prosodic prominence of focus, which need only match the highest prominence available among the constituents in the focus domain rather than exceed it as currently maintained

The Interaction of Focus, Givenness, and Prosody: A Study of Italian Clause Structure

This book provides an in-depth investigation of contrastive focalization in Italian, showing that its syntactic expression is systematically affected by the syntactic expression of discourse-givenness. The proposed analysis disentangles the properties genuinely associated with contrastive focalization from those determined by the most productive operations affecting discourse given phrases at the right periphery, namely right dislocation and marginalization. On this basis, it shows that in the default case contrastive focalization occurs in situ and that instances of left-peripheral focalization only arise when focus obligatorily evacuates a larger right-dislocating phrase, giving rise to a distribution of leftward-moved foci that generalizes well beyond the cases examined in Rizzi (1997) and most literature since. In its final chapter, the book examines the syntax–prosody interface, showing how focalization in situ and other key properties follow from the prosodic constraints governing stress placement, thus reinterpreting and extending Zubizarreta’s (1998) analysis of p-movement and the role of prosody in shaping syntax. Overall, this book offers an evidence-backed radical departure from current views of focalization based on a fixed focus projection at the left periphery of the clause. It also provides the most comprehensive study of Italian marginalization and right dislocation available to date

On the prosody and syntax of DPs : Evidence from Italian noun adjective sequences

The opposition between N- and NP-raising is central to the debate about therepresentation of DPs, yet it often eludes syntactic testing. The two hypotheses are however distinguished by the prosodic phrasing they predict. This paper presents the results of an experiment designed to test the prosodic phrasing of Italian N-A and A-N sequences as signaled by the lengthening effects induced by prosodic boundaries. We show that A and N share the same phonological phrase and that under all models of syntax prosody mapping the attested phrasing requires N-raising. Finally, we propose an analysis reconciling N-raising with Cinque’s recent evidence for DP-internal phrasal movement