The Syntax of Topic, Focus, and Contrast: An Interface-based Approach

✍ Scribed by Ad Neeleman (editor); Reiko Vermeulen (editor)

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2012
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 316
• Series: Studies in Generative Grammar [SGG]; 113
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book addresses how core notions of information structure (topic, focus and contrast) are expressed in syntax. The authors propose that the syntactic effects of information structure come about as a result of mapping rules that are flexible enough to allow topics and foci to be expressed in a variety of positions, but strict enough to capture certain cross-linguistic generalisations about their distribution. In particular, the papers argue that only contrastive topics and contrastive foci undergo movement and that this is because such movement has the function of marking the scope of contrast. Several predications are derived from this proposal: such as that a focus cannot move across a topic – whether the latter is in situ or not. Syntactic and semantic evidence in support of this proposal is presented from a wide range of languages (including Dutch, English, Japanese, Korean and Russian) and theoretical consequences explored. The first chapter not only outlines its theoretical aims, but also provides an introduction to information structure. As a consequence, the book is accessible to advanced students as well as professional linguists.

✦ Table of Contents

Chapter 1. The Syntactic Expression of Information Structure
Chapter 2. Towards a Unified Encoding of Contrast and Scope
Chapter 3. Word Order Variation and Information Structure in Japanese and Korean
Chapter 4. Encoding Focus and Contrast in Russian
Chapter 5. Against FP Analyses of Clefts
Chapter 6. Focus Movement Can be Destressing, but it Need not Be
Chapter 7. Types of Focus and their Interaction with Negation
Chapter 8. Concluding Remarks
References
Index