«Inversion» as focalization and related questions

• Autores: Adriana Belleti
• Localización: Catalan working papers in linguistics, ISSN 1132-256X, Nº 7, 1999, págs. 9-46
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The main empirical area studied in this article concerns so called subject "inversion" structures. The proposal is put forth that the postverbal subject is licensed in the specifier of a low Focus projection, internal to the functional clausal architecture. Focus is considered a morphosyntactic feature giving rise to its own projection and constituting a regular checking domain. Consequences of the hypothesis are investigated for other structures assumed to involve the same process of clause internal focalization such as: structures containing "emphatic" pronouns, structures undergoing complement reordering, unaccusative structures. Some speculative remarks are also made on the so called process of "marginalization" which is taken to constitute a case of clause internal "topicalization"; the process is also assumed to be involved in interrogative structures necessarily requiring a postverbal subject which displays behaviors different from the focalized postverbal subject of declarative sentences.