Chapter published in:
When Data Challenges Theory: Unexpected and paradoxical evidence in information structureEdited by Davide Garassino and Daniel Jacob
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 273] 2022
► pp. 147–182
Is focus a root phenomenon?
Karen Lahousse | KU Leuven
This article argues that some types of syntactically
marked focus are root (main clause) phenomena in French. We show
that c’est (‘it is’) clefts, which explicitly mark
narrow new information focus, are root phenomena, in contrast with
il y a (‘there is’) clefts marking broad new
information focus and contrastive focus
c’est-clefts. Nominal inversion in French behaves
in the opposite way and is argued to be an ‘inverse root
phenomenon’. These observations are explained by Krifka’s (2017) notion of a
‘judge’, its relation to epistemic modality and the distinction
between assertive embedded clauses (in which root phenomena occur)
and non-assertive embedded clauses (in which root phenomena do not
occur).
Keywords: root phenomena, main clause phenomena, clefts, word order, information structure, epistemic modality
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Background
- 2.1Assertion and epistemic modality
- 2.2The concept of a judge
- 2.3Topics as root phenomena
- 2.3.1Different types of topics
- 2.3.2Predictions for focus
- 2.4Focus as a root phenomenon: Previous research and the goal of this paper
- 3.The distribution of three information-structural types of
c’est-clefts in French
- 3.1Three information-structural types of clefts
- 3.2Distribution of c’est-clefts in adverbial clauses
- 3.3Discussion: Contrastive focus and the concept of a judge
- 4.The distribution of il y a ‘there is’ clefts in
embedded clauses
- 4.1Introduction
- 4.2Information-structural types of il y a-clefts
- 4.3All-focus il y a-clefts inside embedded clauses: New data
- 4.4Broad vs narrow new information focus and the concept of a judge
- 5.Verb-subject word order in French: An inverse root phenomenon
- 5.1Introduction
- 5.2The distribution of VS in embedded clauses
- 5.3VS and the concept of a judge
- 6.Conclusion
-
Acknowledgments -
Notes -
References
Published online: 22 February 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.273.05lah
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.273.05lah
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