TY - CHAP
T1 - The Syntax of Mirative Focus Fronting
T2 - Evidence from French
AU - Authier, J. Marc
AU - Haegeman, Liliane
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - Cruschina (2009, 2011) argues against the general claim (cf. Rizzi 1997) that focus fronting is possible only when associated with contrast and proposes, based on data from Sicilian and Sardinian, that corrective focus (CFoc) fronting and mirative focus (MFoc) fronting target distinct left periphery projections. One of the goals of this paper will be to provide independent evidence for this claim drawn from French, a language which we will show only allows MFoc fronting. A second goal will be to provide a much-needed semantic characterization of MFoc. We will show that while MFoc fronting constructions and wh-exclamatives pattern alike in terms of information structure, the former differ semantically from the latter in having what Nouwen and Chernilovskaya (2015) call an e-level rather than an i-level expressive content.
AB - Cruschina (2009, 2011) argues against the general claim (cf. Rizzi 1997) that focus fronting is possible only when associated with contrast and proposes, based on data from Sicilian and Sardinian, that corrective focus (CFoc) fronting and mirative focus (MFoc) fronting target distinct left periphery projections. One of the goals of this paper will be to provide independent evidence for this claim drawn from French, a language which we will show only allows MFoc fronting. A second goal will be to provide a much-needed semantic characterization of MFoc. We will show that while MFoc fronting constructions and wh-exclamatives pattern alike in terms of information structure, the former differ semantically from the latter in having what Nouwen and Chernilovskaya (2015) call an e-level rather than an i-level expressive content.
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U2 - 10.1007/978-3-030-11006-2_3
DO - 10.1007/978-3-030-11006-2_3
M3 - Chapter
AN - SCOPUS:85070200962
T3 - Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory
SP - 39
EP - 63
BT - Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory
PB - Springer Science and Business Media B.V.
ER -