Separating “Focus Movement” from Focus
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Julia Horvath
Abstract
This paper revisits the case of “Focus-movement” as manifested in one of its best-studied instances, Hungarian, and assesses it in relation to views of Abar movement within Chomsky’s (1995, 2000) Minimalist Program. I examine whether the movement is due to a formal [Focus] feature, and provide detailed argumentation against this hypothesis. The paper motivates the proposal that the movement involves a distinct quantificational “Exhaustive Identification” (EI) operator, which interacts with Focus only indirectly. It claims that the [EI] operator feature projects a clausal functional head that drives the syntactic movement construed mistakenly in the literature to be Focus-driven movement. After a cross-linguistic exploration of Focus-related movements, the paper evaluates the implications for the tenability of purely interface-based treatments of Focus.
Abstract
This paper revisits the case of “Focus-movement” as manifested in one of its best-studied instances, Hungarian, and assesses it in relation to views of Abar movement within Chomsky’s (1995, 2000) Minimalist Program. I examine whether the movement is due to a formal [Focus] feature, and provide detailed argumentation against this hypothesis. The paper motivates the proposal that the movement involves a distinct quantificational “Exhaustive Identification” (EI) operator, which interacts with Focus only indirectly. It claims that the [EI] operator feature projects a clausal functional head that drives the syntactic movement construed mistakenly in the literature to be Focus-driven movement. After a cross-linguistic exploration of Focus-related movements, the paper evaluates the implications for the tenability of purely interface-based treatments of Focus.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Phrasal and clausal architecture 1
- Restructuring and clausal architecture in Kannada 8
- The position of adverbials 25
- Bare, generic, mass, and referential Arabic DPs 40
- The possessor raising construction and the interpretation of subject 66
- Syntactic labels and their derivations 93
- Separating “Focus Movement” from Focus 108
- In search for Phases 146
- Wh-movement, interpretation, and optionality in Persian 167
- Structure preservingness, internal Merge, and the strict locality of triads 188
- Using description to teach (about) prescription 206
- ‘More complicated and hence, rarer’ 221
- Prescriptive grammar 243
- The syntax of valuation and the interpretability of features 262
- Linear sequencing strategies or UG-defined hierarchical structures in L2 acquisition? 295
- Minimalism vs. organic syntax 319
- Location and locality 339
- Conceptual space 365
- ‘Adjunct theta-roles’ and the configurational determination of roles 396
- Author index 412
- Subject index 417
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Phrasal and clausal architecture 1
- Restructuring and clausal architecture in Kannada 8
- The position of adverbials 25
- Bare, generic, mass, and referential Arabic DPs 40
- The possessor raising construction and the interpretation of subject 66
- Syntactic labels and their derivations 93
- Separating “Focus Movement” from Focus 108
- In search for Phases 146
- Wh-movement, interpretation, and optionality in Persian 167
- Structure preservingness, internal Merge, and the strict locality of triads 188
- Using description to teach (about) prescription 206
- ‘More complicated and hence, rarer’ 221
- Prescriptive grammar 243
- The syntax of valuation and the interpretability of features 262
- Linear sequencing strategies or UG-defined hierarchical structures in L2 acquisition? 295
- Minimalism vs. organic syntax 319
- Location and locality 339
- Conceptual space 365
- ‘Adjunct theta-roles’ and the configurational determination of roles 396
- Author index 412
- Subject index 417
