Discourse-Related Features and Functional Projections

by Cruschina, Silvio

• ISBN13: 9780199759606
• ISBN10: 019975960X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-03-07
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

In this volume Silvio Cruschina uses a comparative analysis to determine the syntax of the functional projections associated with discourse-related features, and to account for the marked word orders found in Romance-particularly in the fronting phenomena. Several language-specific analyses of discourse-related phenomena have been proposed in the literature, including studies on the notions of topic and focus in Romance, but the lack of a uniform definition of these notions, together with different assumptions in relation to the triggering features, has led to the perception that the Romance languages show many distinct and heterogeneous properties with respect to dislocation and fronting constructions. This volume is intended to complement the existing literature by integrating recent work on the topic and by emphasizing original and unifying reflections that combine and coordinate diverse elements. Cruschina's investigations clarify fundamental notions such as topic, focus, and contrast, drawing on new data from Sicilian, Sardinian, and other Romance varieties.

Author Biography

Silvio Cruschina is Research Associate at University of Manchester.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xi
Abbreviations	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 3
Definition and Implementation	p. 9
The Definition of Topic and Focus, and the Boundary between Pragmatics and Syntax	p. 9
Topic and Focus: Relational and Referential Givenness-Newness	p. 10
Focus Types	p. 13
Information Focus and Contrastive Focus	p. 17
Topic Types	p. 18
Linguistic Realization of Information Structure in Sicilian	p. 21
Syntactic Extraposition	p. 22
Focus Fronting	p. 24
The Cartographic Project	p. 26
The Cartographic Approach and me Minimalist Program	p. 27
The Syntax of Peripheral Positions: Criteria as Triggers for Movement and Discourse-Related Features	p. 30
Cartographic Peripheries vis-à-vis Minimalist Edge Positions	p. 32
Word Order in Sicilian	p. 37
Introduction	p. 37
Syntactic Extraposition	p. 39
CLRD and Marginalization	p. 42
CLLD and Simple Preposing	p. 46
The Position of the Subject	p. 47
Focus Fronting	p. 51
Verb in Final Position	p. 52
FF as Quantificational Movement	p. 54
The Syntax and Pragmatics of FF	p. 56
The Relevance of the Fronted Focus	p. 57
Syntactic Categories	p. 60
Sentence Types	p. 69
Focus Fronting in Embedded Clauses	p. 74
The Exhaustive and Contrastive Interpretations of FF	p. 76
FF and Exhaustivity	p. 77
FF and Contrast	p. 81
Summary	p. 83
Focus Fronting in Romance: A Comparison	p. 85
Introduction	p. 85
Contrastive Focus and the Notion of Contrast	p. 86
Contrast as an Independent Information Structure Notion	p. 86
Hierarchy of Contrast	p. 89
Metalinguistic Correction	p. 90
Focus Positions and Parametric Variation in Romance	p. 94
Focus Fronting and Contrast	p. 94
Non-Contrastive FF in Sicilian and in Sardinian	p. 99
Mirroring Sicilian and Sardinian: The Case of Turinese	p. 102
Adjacency to the Verb	p. 104
CFocP and IFocP: Two Distinct Projections in the Left Periphery	p. 106
Cross-Linguistic Correlation between Adjacency and Interpretation of the Focus	p. 109
Other Types of FF	p. 111
QP-Fronting	p. 111
Unexpected New Information: Mirative Fronting	p. 117
Neapolitan and Triestino	p. 125
Focus Fronting in Medieval Romance	p. 128
Fronting in Old Italian	p. 128
Medieval Sicilian and Sardinian	p. 130
Summary	p. 134
Parallels between Wh and Focus	p. 136
Introduction	p. 136
Wh and Focus: Grounds for the Proposed Parallelism	p. 137
Interpretive and Distributional Analogies	p. 137
Movement and Operator-Properties	p. 140
Wh and Focus: Syntactic Problems	p. 142
The Adjacency Requirement	p. 143
Extraction across Weak Islands	p. 144
Structural Analysis	p. 146
Further Evidence for the IFoc vs. CFoc Distinction	p. 147
Interpretive Differences	p. 148
Prosodic Differences	p. 150
Syntactic Differences	p. 151
D-linkedandNon-D-linkedWh-Phrases	p. 156
D-linkedWh-Phrases Are Not Topics	p. 157
Correspondence between Focus Categories and Wh-Types	p. 160
Typology and Distribution of Focus	p. 164
Focus and Whin situ	p. 165
A Typology of Focus-Movement	p. 167
Left Peripheries	p. 168
Discourse-Related Features and Focus Functional Projections	p. 170
Feature Checking and Criteria! Freezing	p. 174
Summary	p. 176
Information Structure in Yes/No-Questions	p. 178
Introduction	p. 178
Marking Yes/No-Questions in Sicilian	p. 179
The Interrogative Particle chi	p. 182
Distribution within the Left Periphery of the Sentence	p. 188
Interpretation Associated with chi	p. 192
Word Order in Yes/No-Questions	p. 196
The Extension of the Focus	p. 198
Focus Fronting	p. 203
Syntactic Extraposition	p. 206
Interrogative Particles and Word Order in Romance	p. 209
Catalan que	p. 210
Central and Southern Italian che	p. 211
Sardinian a	p. 215
Summary	p. 216
Conclusions	p. 218
References	p. 221
Language Index	p. 241
Subject lndex	p. 243
Name Index	p. 248
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