Bare quantifiers and Verb Second
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Silvia Rossi
Abstract
The pre-participial syntax of the bare quantifiers tutto ‘everything’, molto ‘much’ and niente ‘nothing’ in Old Italian has been argued to be determined by the optional or obligatory presence of a classifier-like category n° in their internal structures (Poletto 2014; Garzonio & Poletto 2017, 2018). Their ‘upstairs’, i.e. CP syntax, however, does not seem to be sensitive to this distinction. All of these bare QPs are equally subject to the V2 property and can appear before the inflected verb, showing the exact same distributional properties. It will be shown, however, that on the basis of interpretative differences, tutto, molto and niente are not moved to the same projection: molto targets a lower projection in the focus field, we identify as Mod(ifier)P in Rizzi (2004), while tutto and niente target positions for either contrastive or ‘new information’ focus. More generally, this will be shown to follow from the pragmatic nature of the V2 phenomenon in OI.
Abstract
The pre-participial syntax of the bare quantifiers tutto ‘everything’, molto ‘much’ and niente ‘nothing’ in Old Italian has been argued to be determined by the optional or obligatory presence of a classifier-like category n° in their internal structures (Poletto 2014; Garzonio & Poletto 2017, 2018). Their ‘upstairs’, i.e. CP syntax, however, does not seem to be sensitive to this distinction. All of these bare QPs are equally subject to the V2 property and can appear before the inflected verb, showing the exact same distributional properties. It will be shown, however, that on the basis of interpretative differences, tutto, molto and niente are not moved to the same projection: molto targets a lower projection in the focus field, we identify as Mod(ifier)P in Rizzi (2004), while tutto and niente target positions for either contrastive or ‘new information’ focus. More generally, this will be shown to follow from the pragmatic nature of the V2 phenomenon in OI.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgments vii
- Interface phenomena and language change 1
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Part I. Interface phenomena at the intrasentential level
- Information structure and Jespersen’s cycle 35
- The object position in Old Norwegian 61
- Bare quantifiers and Verb Second 95
- On the role of information structure in the licensing of null subjects in Old High German 123
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Part II. Interface phenomena at the intersentential level
- Gehen as a new auxiliary in German 165
- Discourse-driven asymmetries between embedded interrogatives and relative clauses in West Germanic 189
- Discourse relations and the German prefield 215
- Informational aspects of the extraposition of relative clauses 235
- Index 253
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgments vii
- Interface phenomena and language change 1
-
Part I. Interface phenomena at the intrasentential level
- Information structure and Jespersen’s cycle 35
- The object position in Old Norwegian 61
- Bare quantifiers and Verb Second 95
- On the role of information structure in the licensing of null subjects in Old High German 123
-
Part II. Interface phenomena at the intersentential level
- Gehen as a new auxiliary in German 165
- Discourse-driven asymmetries between embedded interrogatives and relative clauses in West Germanic 189
- Discourse relations and the German prefield 215
- Informational aspects of the extraposition of relative clauses 235
- Index 253
