Phrasal prominences do not need pitch movements: postfocal phrasal heads in Italian

Informationally Given phrases following an instance of focus are generally realized in a compressed pitch range and are assumed to lack prosodic prominences above the word level. In this paper, we address the question of the metrical representation of postfocal constituents in Tuscan Italian. The results of a production experiment show that, despite their being realized with a low and flat F0 contour, postfocal constituents are not extrametrical, but are phrased and assigned metrical prominences of phrasal level. The impact of our results on the prosodic representation of Italian is discussed

Can the metrical structure of Italian motivate focus fronting?

This paper addresses the issue of the interplay between discourse-related properties, syntax, and prosody in Italian. How this interplay between prosody, syntax, and information structure is to be conceptualized is lively debated in the literature. The theoretical relevance of this issue is not marginal, because it gives rise to several core questions with regard to the architecture of the grammar. According to the cartographic approach (Rizzi 1997; Cinque and Rizzi 2008; and much related work), discourse-related properties are encoded as active features in the syntax, and focus fronting is an instance of feature-driven syntactic movement. Reinhart (1995, 2006) proposes a radically different view: focus and d-linking are encoded at PF (Phonetic Form). Building on Reinhart\u27s work, Szendr?i (2001, 2002) develops a model in which PF information is directly available at the conceptual-intentional interface. Under this approach, discourse-related phrasal movement is not feature driven, but takes place to repair potential mismatches at the PF-LF interface. Focus movement in Italian is analyzed as prosodically motivated by the need to align focus with main prominence and to destress given information (in the sense of Schwarzschild 1999). The key component of this analysis is that postfocal elements in Italian are extraprosodic and destressed. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we want to address the issue of the metrical representation of postfocal and given constituents in Italian. Second, we want to ascertain on empirical grounds the prosodic assumptions underpinning the stress-based approach to focus movement. On the basis of a production experiment, we propose an analysis of the metrical structure of Italian according to which phrasing and head assignment apply exhaustively. We show that postfocal elements, though given, are assigned phrase-level metrical heads by virtue of default syntax-prosody mapping rules. Accordingly, we claim that Italian fails to destress given information, and that rightmostness of prosodic heads is violated when focus does not occurs in sentence-final position: postfocal constituents are neither extraprosodic nor destressed. These conclusions strongly undermine the stress-based approach. On the basis of a comprehension experiment, we further support the validity of our analysis showing that the distribution of phrase-level metrical heads and boundaries in postfocal contexts are used by listeners in sentence comprehension

Postverbal subjects and nuclear pitch accent in Italian wh-questions

Peer reviewe

The syntactic and prosodic effects of long-distance wh-movement in Italian

Peer reviewe

Focus in wh-questions : Evidence from Italian

This paper addresses two long-standing issues concerning focus: first, the question of whether the focal interpretation is directly read off the prosodic structure of a sentence, or it is rather mediated by a [focus] feature encoded in the syntactic representation; second, whether interrogativewh-phrases are inherently endowed with a [focus] feature. We provide evidence from two prosodic experiments on directwh-questions in Italian, showing that the Nuclear Pitch Accent (NPA) and main stress fall on the lexical verb, without a concomitant focal interpretation of the latter. Furthermore, we show that NPA assignment is sensitive to the derivational history of thewh-phrase under short-distance vs. long-distance extraction. We account for the observed NPA distribution in terms of a [focus] feature which is bundled with the [wh] in direct questions, and is specified on each phase head that hosts in its edge one link of thewh-chain. Thus, v degrees is specified for the feature bundle {wh, focus} and attracts the assignment of the NPA, which is then realized on the lexical verb. Our findings, thus, cast doubt on the direct association between prosodic prominence and a focal interpretation.Peer reviewe

Syntactic and prosodic effects of long-distance wh-movement in Italian

In this paper we discuss postverbal subjects in Italian direct wh-questions. We show that, in this context, subject inversion is not determined by the information-structural, semantic, or pragmatic conditions that rule ‘free’ subject inversion in declarative clauses: it is rather the consequence of a purely syntactic mechanism, namely, successive cyclic wh-movement, which directly affects the syntactic position of the subject, as well as the prosody of the sentence (in particular, the distribution of the nuclear pitch accent). We propose that the movement of the wh-element to the local CP inhibits the position SubjP, which hosts preverbal subjects in Italian. This syntactic restriction, we argue, is due to a case of relativized minimality: given that the preverbal subject would count as an intervener that blocks wh-movement, SubjP is not projected in the syntactic structure of wh-questions and the subject must obligatorily occur postverbally

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

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements