The Grammar of Focus (Linguistik Aktuell Linguistics Today)

375 Pages·2004·1.07 MB·English

by  Georges Rebuschi

THE GRAMMAR OF FOCUS
LINGUISTIK AKTUELL
This series provides a platform for studies in the syntax,
semantics, and pragmatics of the Germanic languages
and their historical developments.
The focus of the series is represented by its German title
Linguistik Aktuell (Linguistics Today).
Texts in the series are in English.
Series Editor
Werner Abraham
Germanistisch Instituut
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Oude Kijk in ’t Jatstraat 26
9712 EK Groningen
The Netherlands
E-mail: [email protected]
Advisory Editorial Board
Guglielmo Cinque (University of Venice)
Günther Grewendorf (University of Stuttgart)
Liliane Haegeman (University of Geneva)
Hubert Haider (University of Salzburg)
Christer Platzack (University of Lund)
Ian Roberts (University of Stuttgart)
Ken Safir (Rutgers University, New Brunswick NJ)
Höskuldur Thráinsson (University of Iceland, Reykjavik)
Lisa deMena Travis (McGill University)
Sten Vikner (University of Stuttgart)
C. Jan-Wouter Zwart (University of Groningen)
Volume 24
Georges Rebuschi and Laurice Tuller (eds)
The Grammar of Focus
THE GRAMMAR
OF FOCUS
Edited by
GEORGES REBUSCHI
University of Paris III - Sorbonne nouvelle
LAURICE TULLER
University of Tours
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM / PHILADELPHIA
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8 American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Grammar of Focus / edited by Georges Rebuschi, Laurice Tuller.
p. cm. -- (Linguistik aktuell / Linguistics today, ISSN 0166-0829; v. 24)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Rebuschi, Georges. II. Tuller, Laurice. III. Series: Linguistik aktuell ; Bd. 24.
P299.F63673 1999
415--dc21 99-22380
isbn 90 272 2745 4 (eur) / 1 55619 908 2 (us) (Hb; alk. paper) CIP
© 1999 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other
means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O.Box 75577 · 1070 AN Amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · P.O.Box 27519 · Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 · USA
Table of Contents
The Grammar of Focus: An Introduction 1
GeorgesRebuschiandLauriceTuller
Aspects of the Syntax of Focus in Portuguese 23
ManuelaAmbar
Bound Focus or How can Association with Focus be Achieved
without Going Semantically Astray? 55
JosefBayer
Are There Cleft Sentences in French? 83
AnneClech-Darbon,GeorgesRebuschi&AnnieRialland
Focus Structure and Scope 119
NomiErteschik-Shir
The Interaction between Focus and Tone in Bantu 151
LarryHyman
The Syntax of the P-Focus Position in Turkish 179
SarahD.Kennelly
Word Order and Focus Positions in Universal Grammar 213
AyeshaKidwai
Focus in Wolof: A Study of What Morphology May Do to Syntax 245
AlainKihm
Focus in Somali 275
JacquelineLecarme
Focus in Basque 311
JonOrtizdeUrbina
vi TABLEOFCONTENTS
Focus and Arabic Clefts 335
JamalOuhalla
Index 361
List of Contributors 365
The Grammar of Focus
An Introduction*
Georges Rebuschi Laurice Tuller
UniversityofParisIII University ofTours
“Thereisnoreasontosupposethatasatisfactorycharacterizationoffocusand
presupposition can be given in purely grammatical terms, but there is little
doubt that grammatical structure plays a part in specifying them.” Chomsky
(1970:footnote22)
1. PreliminaryRemarks
The grammar of focus has been studied in generative grammar from its incep-
tion. It has been the subject of intense, detailed cross-linguistic investigation for
over 20 years, particularly within the Principles and Parameters framework,
resulting in a large body of empirical and theoretical contributions which cover
a wide variety of languages and types of focus. It is appropriate at this point,
therefore, to take stock. Appraisal at this particular point is all the more legiti-
mate because it comes at a time of general evaluation of the results of the
profoundactivitythathascharacterizedthePrinciplesandParametersframework.
This general assessment has produced a radical new direction within that
framework. How does this bear on our understanding of the grammar of focus?
Howdoesthegrammaroffocushelpusdeterminethevalidityofthisnewvision
of syntactic theory? What, old or new, focus problems remain to be solved?
Thecoreinnovationofthereformulationofsyntactictheoryproposedbythe
Minimalist Program is that, aside from economy principles, syntactic structures
areentirelydeterminedbyconstraintsonthetwointerfacelevelsPFandLF.The
2 GEORGESREBUSCHIANDLAURICETULLER
number of levels of syntactic representation is reduced to this minimal number
because this is what is imposed by the interaction between the language faculty
andothercognitivesystems:the‘articulatory-perceptual’systemontheonehand
and the ‘conceptual-intentional’ system on the other. The constraints themselves
are minimal in that they are limited in scope to those imposed by the require-
mentsoftheseperformancesystems.Sincetheformoflinguisticrepresentations
at the interfaces is relevant only to the performance systems (the cognitive
systems which touch the language faculty), the minimal assumption is that the
output of the language faculty contains what is relevant to these systems, and
nothing else. All syntactic computation is reduced on this basis to checking of
features so that the only elements remaining in the interface representations are
thosethatareinterpretabletotherelevantcognitivesystem.Allfeaturesthenare
either plus or minus interpretable to the performance systems. So, for example,
categorical features are presumably used by the ‘conceptual-intentional’ system
and thus are LF [+interpretable], whereas Case features are not and thus are LF
[−interpretable].Phonologicalfeatures,ontheotherhand,areclearlyPF[+interpret-
able], etc.
One of the consequences of this (ambitious) research program is therefore
thatthepertinencetotheperformancesystemsofvariousfeaturesthathavebeen
argued to be part of the language faculty must be carefully (re)evaluated. The
feature [+Focus] is one of these. Indeed, the grammatical phenomena related to
focusinterpretationconstituteaparticularlyfertiledomainofinvestigation.Focus
has a discourse function, but is unquestionably a product of grammar. Its
grammaticalmanifestationmaybephonological,morphological,orsyntactic,and
thereisevidenceinmanylanguagesthatitisquantificational.Itwouldthusseem
to be related to various “components” of grammar. The question of where the
processesleading to itsinterpretationtake placeis thuscentral. Focus, fromthis
perspective, provides a test case for the proper characterization of the interface
levels, whether or not the specific tenets of Minimalism are accepted.
An appraisal of the grammar of focus is the purpose of this collection of
papers, which grew out of the 1996 Paris workshop of the same name. This
introductorychapteraimstoprovideanoutlineforthisassessment.Westartwith
an overview of the evolution of the study of focus in generative grammar. The
reader will observe that we do not attempt to impose a definition of focus here.
Indeed, it is our feeling that the syntactic feature focus may be interpreted
diVerently in diVerent languages, and, furthermore that its status is largely
dependentontheparticularstateofsyntactictheorywithinwhichitisembedded.
THEGRAMMAROFFOCUS 3
Our goal here is to illustrate some of this theory dependent variation by placing
the study of focus in its historical context within generative grammar. This
overview is followed by a recapitulation of the principal issues associated with
focus that have been raised over the years, how they are addressed by the
contributorstothisvolume,andwhatwebelievethesecontributionshavehelped
to forward. The filling in of this sketch is what the remaining chapters of this
book are all about.
2. OverviewoftheEvolutionoftheStudyofFocusintheGenerative
Tradition1
2.1 If we momentarily accept to define ‘focus’ as ‘prosodic salience at the
sentential level’, we can safely say that, although the word itself was not used,
the very notion of focus was already on the agenda in LSLT (Chomsky [1955]
1975:445–448), where examples like (1) were discussed:
(1) a. He did/does come
b. *He did/does come
As Chomsky notes (on p. 446), do “must occur with heavy stress”, a property it
does not usually have in other positions (i.e. in interrogative or negative senten-
ces),andwhichitdoesnotsharewithotherauxiliaries,whichdonotnormally
carry such heavy stress — at least if contrastive stress, whose status is
declared “unclear” (ibid., footnote 11) is left aside; hence the introduction of a
morpheme“Ac[for]accentuation”amongtheprimes,which,ifselected,willtrigger
Do-supportjustasnotwill,forinstance.(InChomsky1957,§7.1,Ac,despitethe
wary note cited above, is redefined as “a morpheme A of contrastive stress”.)
Sincethemainconcernwasform,andgiventhestateoftheartinlinguistic
semantics at that time, it was only too natural not to ask what possible signifie’
A(c) had — obviously, it did not denote anything. However, it is now possible
to ask rather, “What is the contribution of A(c) to the overall meaning of the
sentence?” — and to answer, “It underscores whatever is in its scope, thereby
excluding alternatives” (this is what will later on be known as the Exhaustive
List eVect). If a lexical item is in its scope, then other lexical items will be
excluded, but if the item in its scope is the (future) functional head I0, then it is
thepositivecharacter oftheassertionthat is underlined,herebyexcluding doubt
or negation (see Selkirk 1995 for a fairly similar characterization). Hence A(c)