Focus and Focus Structures in the Romance Languages

Abstract

Focus is key to understanding processes of syntactic and prosodic readjustments in the Romance languages. Since, prosodically, it must be the most prominent constituent in the sentence, focus associates with the nuclear pitch accent, which may be shifted from its default rightmost position when the syntactic position of the focus also changes. The application of specific syntactic operations depends both on the size and on the subtype of focus, although not always unambiguously. Subject inversion characterizes focus structures where the domain of focus covers either the whole sentence (broad-focus) or a single constituent (narrow-focus). Presentational constructions distinctively mark broad focus, avoiding potential ambiguity with an SVO structure where the predicate is the focus and the subject is interpreted as topic. In narrow-focus structures, the focus constituent typically occurs sentence-final (postverbal focalization), but it may also be fronted (focus fronting), depending on the specific interpretation associated with the focus. Semantically, focus indicates the presence of alternatives, and the different interpretations arise from the way the set of alternatives is pragmatically exploited, giving rise to a contextually open set (information focus), to contrast or correction (contrastive or corrective focus), or to surprise or unexpectedness (mirative focus). Whether a subtype of focus may undergo fronting in a Romance language is subject to variation. In most varieties it is indeed possible with contrastive or corrective focus, but it has been shown that focus fronting is also acceptable with noncontrastive focus in several languages, especially with mirative focus. Finally, certain focus-sensitive operators or particles directly interact with the narrow-focus constituent of the sentence and their association with focus has semantic effects on the interpretation of the sentence.

The Realization of Information Focus in Catalan

“…All studies make use of the question-answer test, but different data are reported according to whether introspection or a quantitative analysis is used. On the one hand, those scholars who based their data on their own intuitions and introspection claim that information focus, including subjects, must appear in a postverbal position, at the end of the sentence, as shown in ( 23) and ( 24) (see e.g., Zubizarreta 1998;Ordóñez 2000;Büring and Gutiérrez-Bravo 2001;Gutiérrez-Bravo 2006, 2008López 2009;Cruschina 2022 on Romance, more generally). For example, Vallduví (2001) claims that (25A1) is much more neutral than (25A2), which conveys some added value.…”

Inférences au pays de la prosodie

“…dans la tradition d'alternatives de Rooth, 1992, cf. aussi Bocci, Bianchi & Cruschina, 2020Cruschina, 2022 ;Spalek & Oganian, 2019).…”

Mica preposing as focus fronting

“…In this case, its entry would be ⟦mica(x)⟧ f = {x, y, ...}. Under this light, the behaviour of mica can be compared to that of focus sensitive particles (Cruschina 2022).…”