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When Data Challenges Theory: Unexpected and paradoxical evidence in information structure
Edited by Davide Garassino and Daniel Jacob
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 273] 2022
► pp. 183–202

The curious case of the rare focus movement in French

 | Université de Caen Normandie
The existence of the left-periphery accounts for the availability of Hanging Topics, Dislocations, and Focus across languages. However, cross-linguistic persistence does not exclude differential rates of realization. Focus movement seems common in Italian (Bianchi 2013); it is rare in French, and restricted to only some of its varieties. The reason for the low rate of Focus movement in French relates to its competition with clefts. This is accounted for by the language’s prosodic constraints. French demonstrably disfavors pre-verbal stress, which discourages pre-verbal Focus movement, and favors the post-verbal focused phrase of clefts. Structural properties of languages account for the variable currency of cross-linguistically stable configurations.
Keywords: focus movement, French, clefts, prosodic constraints, corpus-driven analysis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Focus movement configurations: Properties and currency
  • 3.The interpretation of focus movement
  • 4.Conclusive discussion
  • Acknowledgement
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 22 February 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.273.06lar
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Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Garassino, Davide
2022. Translation as a source of pragmatic interference?. In When Data Challenges Theory [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 273], ► pp. 272 ff. DOI logo
Garassino, Davide & Daniel Jacob
2022. Introduction. When data challenges theory. In When Data Challenges Theory [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 273], ► pp. 2 ff. DOI logo
Lahousse, Karen
2022. Is focus a root phenomenon?. In When Data Challenges Theory [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 273], ► pp. 148 ff. DOI logo
Lombardi Vallauri, Edoardo
2022. Distinguishing psychological Given/New from linguistic Topic/Focus makes things clearer. In When Data Challenges Theory [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 273], ► pp. 40 ff. DOI logo

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