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Prosody–Syntax Interaction in the Expression of Focus

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Abstract

Constraints on prosodic and syntactic well-formedness conflict with each other. This is particularly evident in the expression of new information focus, where the best prosodic position for main stress does not necessarily match the best syntactic position for the constituent being focused. Since focus must be stressed, either stress or the focused constituent must abandon their best position, violating either the syntactic or the prosodic constraints responsible for it. This paper argues for an optimality theoretic analysis of this conflict, showing how different focus paradigms reflect different rankings of the relevant syntactic and prosodic constraints. As we will see, only an optimality analysis can account for the paradigm of Italian focus while maintaining the kind of prosodic theory of main stress emerged from prosodic studies in the last two decades. Furthermore, the analysis extends naturally to focus paradigms in English, French, and Chichewa with no need for language-specific parametric devices. The conflicting nature of prosodic and syntactic constraints determines a complex crosslinguistic typology from a single set of universal constraints with interface conditions kept to an absolute minimum.

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  1. Italian Department, University College London, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT, London, UK

    Vieri Samek-Lodovici

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Correspondence to Vieri Samek-Lodovici.

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This work was made possible by a Research Leave grant awarded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB, UK). It immensely profited from discussions with Valentina Bianchi, Daniel Büring, Peter Culicover, Laura Downing, Caroline Fery, Mirco Ghini, Jane Grimshaw, Robert Ladd, Aditi Lahiri, Alan Prince, Ken Safir, Hubert Truckenbrodt and Sten Vikner. Special thanks for comments and insights are also due to Peter Ackema, Philippa Cook, Gisbert Fanselow, Caroline Heycock, Hans-Martin Gartner, Geraldine Legendre, Ad Neeleman, Paul Smolensky, Antonella Sorace, Sabine Zerbian, as well as audiences at Rutgers University, ZAS Berlin, University of Potsdam, University College London, University of Edinburgh, SOAS (London), University of Stuttgart, University of Frankfürt, CUNY, Universitá di Venezia and Universitá per Stranieri di Siena. I am also very grateful to my informants Birgit Alber, Isabelle Barriere, Cecile De Cat, Elisabeth Kley, Geraldine Legendre, Aditi Lahiri, Elisa Marroni, Sophie Mesplede, Phaedra Royle, Hubert Truckenbrodt, Roberto Zamparelli.

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Samek-Lodovici, V. Prosody–Syntax Interaction in the Expression of Focus. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 23, 687–755 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-004-2874-7

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