Scrambling as verum focus

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_article_1076
dc.title	Scrambling as verum focus. German ‘Scrambling’ meets Romance ‘Anaphoric Anteposition’
dc.contributor.author	Cognola Federica
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing
dc.type	Research Article
dc.language.iso	en
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/riviste/annali-di-ca-foscari-serie-occidentale/2017/1/scrambling-as-verum-focus/
dc.description.abstract	In this paper I demonstrate that in Mòcheno, a German dialect spoken in Northern Italy, scrambling, i.e. the movement of any constituent above sentential adverbs and below the finite verb, is permitted like in Continental Germanic languages. Unlike in these languages, however, leftward movement is not triggered by specificity or scope-fixing (A-scrambling) or by the need to check any topic or contrastive/new-information focus discourse-features (A’-scrambling). By relying on information structure, the syntax of modal particles and the distribution of scrambling in sentences with fronted operators, I provide evidence that scrambling in Mòcheno triggers a verum focus reading on the truth value of the sentence and involves a type of focus movement to a FocusP in CP. That scrambling can be associated with verum focus is a unicum among Continental Germanic languages, which I show follows from a reanalyis of the properties of Germanic focus scrambling under the influence of Romance anaphoric anteposition.
dc.relation.ispartof	Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie occidentale
dc.relation.ispartof	Vol. 51 \| September 2017
dc.issued	2017-09-28
dc.dateAccepted	2016-07-11
dc.dateSubmitted	2016-04-12
dc.identifier.issn
dc.identifier.eissn	2499-1562
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.identifier.doi	10.14277/2499-1562/AnnOc-51-17-12
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Emphatic focus
dc.subject	Emphatic focus
dc.subject	Information structure
dc.subject	Information structure
dc.subject	Modal particles
dc.subject	Modal particles
dc.subject	Verb Second
dc.subject	Verb Second

Research Article
open access peer reviewed

Scrambling as verum focus

German ‘Scrambling’ meets Romance ‘Anaphoric Anteposition’

Federica Cognola Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia

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abstract

In this paper I demonstrate that in Mòcheno, a German dialect spoken in Northern Italy, scrambling, i.e. the movement of any constituent above sentential adverbs and below the finite verb, is permitted like in Continental Germanic languages. Unlike in these languages, however, leftward movement is not triggered by specificity or scope-fixing (A-scrambling) or by the need to check any topic or contrastive/new-information focus discourse-features (A’-scrambling). By relying on information structure, the syntax of modal particles and the distribution of scrambling in sentences with fronted operators, I provide evidence that scrambling in Mòcheno triggers a verum focus reading on the truth value of the sentence and involves a type of focus movement to a FocusP in CP. That scrambling can be associated with verum focus is a unicum among Continental Germanic languages, which I show follows from a reanalyis of the properties of Germanic focus scrambling under the influence of Romance anaphoric anteposition.

Published

Sept. 28, 2017

Accepted

July 11, 2016

Submitted

April 12, 2016

Language

Keywords: Emphatic focus • Verb Second • Modal particles • Information structure

permalink http://doi.org/10.14277/2499-1562/AnnOc-51-17-12

Copyright: © 2017 Federica Cognola. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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