TY  - JOUR
A1  - Fanselow, Gisbert
A1  - Lenertova, Denisa
T1  - Left peripheral focus mismatches between syntax and information structure
JF  - Natural language & linguistic theory
N2  - In Czech, German, and many other languages, part of the semantic focus of the utterance can be moved to the left periphery of the clause. The main generalization is that only the leftmost accented part of the semantic focus can be moved. We propose that movement to the left periphery is generally triggered by an unspecific edge feature of C (Chomsky 2008) and its restrictions can be attributed to requirements of cyclic linearization, modifying the theory of cyclic linearization developed by Fox and Pesetsky (2005). The crucial assumption is that structural accent is a direct consequence of being linearized at merge, thus it is indirectly relevant for (locality restrictions on) movement. The absence of structural accent correlates with givenness. Given elements may later receive (topic or contrastive) accents, which accounts for fronting in multiple focus/contrastive topic constructions. Without any additional assumptions, the model can account for movement of pragmatically unmarked elements to the left periphery ('formal fronting', Frey 2005). Crucially, the analysis makes no reference at all to concepts of information structure in the syntax, in line with the claim of Chomsky (2008) that UG specifies no direct link between syntax and information structure.
KW  - Czech
KW  - German
KW  - Focus
KW  - Topic
KW  - Information structure
KW  - Intervention effects
KW  - Cyclic linearization
KW  - A-bar-movement
KW  - Prosody-syntax interface
KW  - Accentuation
Y1  - 2011
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-010-9109-x
SN  - 0167-806X
VL  - 29
IS  - 1
SP  - 169
EP  - 209
PB  - Springer
CY  - Dordrecht
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Drenhaus, Heiner
A1  - Zimmermann, Malte
A1  - Vasishth, Shravan
T1  - Exhaustiveness effects in clefts are not truth-functional
JF  - Journal of neurolinguistics : an international journal for the study of brain function in language behavior and experience
N2  - While it is widely acknowledged in the formal semantic literature that both the truth-functional focus particle only and it-clefts convey exhaustiveness, the nature and source of exhaustiveness effects with it-clefts remain contested. We describe a questionnaire study (n = 80) and an event-related brain potentials (ERP) study (n = 16) that investigated the violation of exhaustiveness in German only-foci versus it-clefts. The offline study showed that a violation of exhaustivity with only is less acceptable than the violation with it-clefts, suggesting a difference in the nature of exhaustivity interpretation in the two environments. The ERP-results confirm that this difference can be seen in online processing as well: a violation of exhaustiveness in only-foci elicited a centro-posterior positivity (600-800ms), whereas a violation in it-clefts induced a globally distributed N400 pattern (400-600ms). The positivity can be interpreted as a reanalysis process and more generally as a process of context updating. The N400 effect in it-clefts is interpreted as indexing a cancelation process that is functionally distinct from the only case. The ERP study is, to our knowledge, the first evidence from an online experimental paradigm which shows that the violation of exhaustiveness involves different underlying processes in the two structural environments.
KW  - ERP
KW  - It- clefts
KW  - Only-foci
KW  - Information structure
KW  - German
Y1  - 2011
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneuroling.2010.10.004
SN  - 0911-6044
VL  - 24
IS  - 3
SP  - 320
EP  - 337
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Oxford
ER  -