1

Left Peripheral Focus:

Mismatches between Syntax and Information Structure

Abstract

Movement of focus phrases into the left periphery has often been taken as evidence for an information-structural

(IS) feature ‘focus’ which triggers (overt or covert) movement and is interpreted at LF. The paper provides a

detailed discussion of left peripheral focus in Czech and German, where initially placed phrases carrying nuclear

accent need not correspond to the semantic focus of the sentence. This ‘partial focus fronting’ is shown to be

subject to locality constraints concerning the prosodic status of the intervening elements: the attracted phrase is

identified by an accent and its fronting is blocked if another accented phrase intervenes. Thus rather than a

semantic focus feature as a trigger for the movement, the formal property of the attracted element – its accent

marking – is argued to be relevant in the syntax. Partial focus fronting is shown to be quite a common

phenomenon cross-linguistically. On the other hand, covert focus movement at LF supporting a theory based on

a semantic focus feature checking is argued not to be well-supported. In the proposed account, syntax interacts

only indirectly with information structure, to the extent that both are sensitive to accentuation.

1. Introduction

The identification of the factors that ‘trigger’ or ‘license’ movement has become one of the

central topics in syntactic theory. If one abstracts away from different choices of technical

tools (such as ‘EPP-features’) that different grammatical models employ, it seems as if

phrases undergo movement in the context of grammatical function change (A-movement),

clausal typing, and the placement of semantic operators such as wh- and relative pronouns

into their scope positions (A-bar-movement).

In many languages, among them Czech (Cz.) and German (Ge.), focused phrases can move

into or close to the position of wh-phrases, as the a-answers in the dialogues in (1) and (2)

illustrate (the b-answers showing the ‘canonical’/‘neutral’ order in the same context). The

same is true for topics. This seems to justify an extension of the factors licensing movement

to the basic distinctions of information structure. Rizzi (1997) is a particularly influential

2

version of such an extension, postulating topic and focus heads, the specifiers of which are

filled by topicalized and focused phrases, respectively.1

(1) A: Co jste tam viděli? (Cz.)

what aux.2pl there see?

B: a. LAvinu jsme viděli!2

avalanche.acc aux.1sg seen

‘What did you see there? We saw an avalanche!’

b. Viděli jsme LAvinu!

(2) A: Wen hat Maria eingeladen? (Ge.)

who.acc has Mary invited?

B: a. Den PEter hat sie eingeladen!

the.acc Peter has she invited

‘Who has Mary invited? She has invited Peter.’

b. Sie hat den PEter eingeladen!

In this paper, we argue that this extension is not warranted, at least not in the domain of

focus. What appears at a first glance as a movement of a focused phrase must be analyzed as

the displacement of a phrase bearing an accent, quite independent of the presence or absence

and the nature of a particular pragmatic function borne by the displaced phrase. This implies

that syntax interacts only indirectly with ‘information structure’. The latter has an effect on

clause structure only to the extent that it correlates with those prosodic properties that syntax

is sensitive to.

1 A non-movement analysis of sentences analogous to (1Ba) in contexts like (1A) in Slavic is proposed in

Junghanns (2001), where it is argued that the surface string with initial focus results from partial deletion

(‘rightward backgrounding’) complementarily applied to two adjoined identical CPs (source and its copy).

2 In the Czech and German examples, syllables carrying the main stress will be capitalized. Where relevant (cf.

sections 3 and 4), small caps will mark syllables with prenuclear stress.

3

We sketch the ‘classical’ pragmatic view of the placement of focus phrases in section 2.1,

and summarize the arguments brought forward in the literature that focus movement is pro-

sodically triggered in languages like Hungarian (Hu.) and Italian (It.) in section 2.2. In

section 3, we argue for a prosodic reinterpretation of focus movement even in languages like

Czech and German, in which primary stress is not confined to the position targeted by the

moved phrase. Such a reinterpretation is required for the proper identification of the phrase to

be moved, and the proper formulation of the locality constraints. This model is then

elaborated further in section 4. Section 5 broadens the perspective by showing how further

languages fit into the theory developed so far. It will turn out that the overall conclusion that

focus movement must be reinterpreted as a movement triggered by a formal property, viz.

accent, is well supported in many languages. Since there is no overt focus movement, covert

focus movement should be non-existent, too. In section 6, we show that this expectation of

our model is fulfilled as well.

2 Focus Displacement: Syntax vs. Prosody

2.1 Quantificational Approaches: Focus Movement as Operator Movement

A-bar-movement is triggered in the context of clausal typing and the scope taking of semantic

operators. Following Rizzi’s (1991) ‘wh-criterion’, this basic insight is captured in most

approaches by means of an obligatory spec-head-agreement relation for operator features

such as ‘wh’ in the CP domain. Whether this operator feature itself triggers movement

because it is a ‘subfeature of D’, or is checked as a ‘free rider’ when another feature triggers

movement (Chomsky 1995) is an issue that need not concern us here.

Wh-phrases in a narrow sense are not the only expressions undergoing A-bar-movement. The

wh-criterion was therefore soon generalized. Rizzi (1997, 2001) assumes a set of specifier-

licensing features in the A-bar-system, each of which makes the fronting of XPs with

corresponding features possible. This feature set includes, according to Rizzi (1997, 2001)

‘quantificational’ features such as wh, neg, and also focus and topic, and, additionally,

4

‘modifier’ features. By integrating focus and topic into the licensing system of movement,

Rizzi built a bridge between theoretical work on the factors licensing movement and the

research tradition initiated by É.Kiss (1994) and others postulating the existence of

‘discourse-configurational’ languages. In Hungarian, the phrases of a clause must be arranged

according to the grid in (3). Brody (1990, 1995) proposed a phrase projected from a FOCUS

head above IP, such that a focus XP moves to the specifier of FOCUS because its focus

feature must be licensed/checked. Similar proposals have been made for other languages, see,

e.g., Laka (1990) for Basque, Tsimpli (1995) for Greek, and Vilkuna (1995) for Finnish.

(3) Topics - quantifier field - focus - verb - rest of the clause

Rizzi’s (1997) elaboration of such proposals led to a detailed model of the left periphery of

CP, with structures such as (4), in which the former Comp node is replaced by a number of

heads, viz., Force, Fin, Focus, Topic. The latter two are inserted if a special informational

function is to be expressed. In that case, focus and topic phrases move to the specifiers of the

corresponding heads

(4) [ForceP ... Force [TopP … Topic [FocP … [Focus [FinP … [Fin IP]]]]]]

2. 2 The Role of Prosody in Driving Focus Movement

Reference to the notion of focus has become common in accounts of constituent order

variation, yet its immediate relevance for licensing syntactic movement has been questioned

due to the connection of focus and stress across languages. Two observations have figured

prominently in motivating these alternative accounts.

First, the idea that movement is triggered by the need of checking a syntactic focus feature

may have little or no explanatory force in languages in which main stress is realized in

specific positions. If the prosodic laws of a language confine phrases with main stress to

certain positions in the clause, then focused phrases have to be located there. They seem to

move in order to fulfil a prosodic requirement. Zubizarreta (1998) argued that main stress is

rightmost in the Romance languages on prosodic grounds, so that focused phrases move there

5

in order to pick up stress. In Hungarian, the left edge of a phonological phrase is prosodically

most prominent, so that the claim has been made that focus phrases move to the left periphery

of the clause for prosodic reasons (see Szendrői 2001). We cannot understand such arrays of

facts in terms of syntactic features alone.

Whether these reflections imply a compelling argument against a focus feature triggering

movement is difficult to assess. Even if one does not deny the role of prosody in determining

where accent bearing focus phrases must be placed, there must be a syntactic mechanism

executing the displacement. The prosodic generalizations do not exclude per se that a syn-

tactic focus feature mediates between prosody and syntax. Furthermore, it is not entirely clear

that the prosodic system of, e.g., Hungarian is in fact restricted in the way often presupposed.

After all, accented phrases are not excluded from all positions but the left-peripheral one in

Hungarian, a fact we will return to below.

However, Kenesei (1998) made a further observation concerning the left periphery of

Hungarian that is much more problematic for the standard view of the triggering of focus

movement (cf. also Roberts 1998). It is illustrated in (5). As the b-continuation indicates, the

XP moved to the preverbal position may be smaller than the actual focus of the utterance.3

(5) Péter Annának olvasta a Hamletet… ‘Peter read Hamlet to Anna…’ (Hu.)

Peter Ann.dat read the Hamlet.acc

a. ... nem pedig Pálnak. ‘not to Paul.’

not rather Paul.dat

b. ... nem pedig szaladgált. ‘rather than running around.’

not rather ran-around

3 The two examples differ prosodically, however, as Kenesei (1998) observed. If the moved phrase is linked to a

wide focus interpretation, all postverbal XPs must be stressed. Szendrői (2001:92-96) argues that the fronted

preverbal XP carries the main stress and the postverbal ones carry phrasal stress, unless they are discourse-

linked. We will return to this issue below, cf. section 5.4.

6

The situation in (5a) is a familiar one: Annának is the (corrective) focus of the utterance that

moves because a [+focus]-feature is attracted. (5b) is quite different, however: the whole VP

is the focus of the utterance, but only a part of it is displaced. We are thus confronted with a

movement of part of the focus only (so that we may speak of pars pro toto movement, as

suggested by Fanselow 2004). This partial focus movement (PFM), as we will call it in this

paper, has no counterpart in other instances of operator movement4, a fact that suggests that

focus movement is not just an additional subtype of operator movement.

In this paper, we investigate whether this type of partial focus movement is typical for the

languages allowing ‘focus’ movement. The answer will be affirmative, leading to the further

question of what is the optimal unified treatment of preposing in the context of informational

distinctions.

3 Partial Focus Fronting in Czech and German

3.1 General Aspects of the Left Periphery in Czech and German

Phenomena of the type exemplified in (5) are abundant in Czech and German. The two

languages differ from Hungarian in that main stress is not confined to the position targeted by

the moved element (cf. (1b) and (2b)). This is important for the analysis of partial focus

movement: in Hungarian, it could be understood as an operation triggered by purely prosodic

requirements (cf. Szendrői 2001). This is an unlikely analysis for Czech and German.

A few remarks on general aspects of Czech and German clause structure are in order. The

two languages are similar with respect to their left-periphery: both have 2nd-position effects

(V2 in German, 2P (auxiliary and pronominal) clitics in Czech) and the first position can be

occupied by various elements - wh-phrases, adverbs, adverbials, subjects and fronted internal

arguments or adjuncts.

4 Note that the wh-operator is the word bearing the wh-feature, and not the DP dominating this word. [How

many books] have you read therefore involves the pied-piping of a DP, while combien as-tu lu de livres (how-

many have-you read books) exemplifies wh-movement without pied-piping rather than “partial” wh-movement.

7

For German, movement to the first position has often been labelled ‘topicalization’.

However, this movement does not always result in the identification of a pragmatic topic, as

illustrated by (6a) with fronted non-referential quantifier and by (7a) with fronted contrastive

focus. (6-7b) exemplify the same phenomena for Czech.

(6) a. Niemandem hat das Medikament geHOlfen. (Ge.)

nobody.dat has the medicine helped

‘The medicine has not helped anybody.’

b. Nikomu prý ten lék NEpomohl. (Cz.)

nobody.dat prt. the medicine.nom not-helped

(7) a. Ein BUCH hab ich ihm gekauft, und nicht eine CD. (Ge.)

a book have I him bought and not a CD

‘I bought him a book, not a CD.’

b. KNÍžku jsem mu koupila, ne cédéčko. (Cz.)

book.acc aux.1sg him.dat bought.sg.fm not CD

Descriptively speaking, the first position of a German clause can be filled in two different

ways, as was already argued by Travis (1984). On the one hand, the highest phrase in

TP/FinP can move to the leftmost position in CP even when it has no special pragmatic or

semantic function. This option (called ‘formal movement’ by Frey 2005) is responsible for

the unmarked preposing of subjects, sentential adverbs, temporal adverbs and similar

categories to sentence initial position, see Fanselow (2002) and Frey (2005).

On the other hand, XPs bearing a special semantic (wh-phrases) and pragmatic (topic, focus)

status can go to Spec,CP, too. These two processes of ‘formal’ and ‘operator’ movement find

a unified analysis along the following lines (see Fanselow 2002, who takes up ideas proposed

by Bhatt 1999 for Kashmiri). A formal feature f of COMP attracts some phrase β to its

specifier α, cf. (8). Because of the Minimal Link Condition (MLC), cf. (9), the element β

moving to α must be the category closest to α that can move there. If Comp imposes no

8

further requirement on its specifier position, only the highest phrase in FinP can be attracted

to Spec,CP. Usually, this is the subject, or a sentential adverb. If Comp possesses a further

feature that must be checked (e.g., a wh-feature), the MLC requires that the phrase moving to

α must be the highest element in FinP with a matching feature. This captures wh-movement

to Spec,CP. See Frey (2005) and Müller (2004) for different accounts in a similar spirit.

(8) [CP α [[COMP … f … (g) … ] [FinP … β … ]]]

(9) Minimal Link Condition (Chomsky 1995):

γ cannot move to α in Σ if there is a β such that β can move to α and β is closer to α

than γ*: [Σ … [ α [ …. [ . .. (β) … [ … γ …]]]]]

The set of elements that occupy the first position in Czech is, more or less, identical with the

German one. The major difference is that VPs containing a participle can be fronted in

German, but not in Czech. Czech, on the other hand, allows Stylistic Fronting (cf. Holmberg

2000) of the Scandinavian type: there is last resort verb participle fronting in order to satisfy

the second position constraint for auxiliaries and clitics (cf. Lenertová 2004:150-4). Probably,

these differences stem from the fact that Czech is a VO-, and German an OV-language.5

5 Stylistic Fronting is an operation in which the category closest to Infl is attracted by Infl when there is no

subject (cf. Holmberg 2000). Probably, verbs are too low in the structure in OV languages for being attracted in

such contexts. In contrast to Ge. - (ia), past participles in Cz. raise and thus cannot undergo VP-fronting with

their objects - (ib). Infinitival verbs can be VP-fronted - (ic). The last resort raising -(ii) provides clitics with a

syntactic host.

(i) a. Ein BUCH gekauft habe ich ihm. ‘I bought him a book.’ (Ge.)

a book bought have I him.dat

b. * Koupil KNIhu jsem mu. (Cz.)

bought.sg.ms book.acc aux.1sg him.dat

c. Koupit KNIhu jsem mu chtěl. ‘I wanted to buy him a book.’

buy.inf. book.acc aux.1sg him.dat wanted.sg.ms

(ii) a. Koupil jsem mu KNIhu. ‘I bought him a book.’ (Cz.)

bought.sg.ms aux.1sg him.dat book.acc

b. * jsem mu koupil KNIhu.

9

Apart from that, the conditions for moving to first position are very similar. Therefore, we

assume that the two languages have, essentially, the same analysis in this domain.

Examples such as (1-2b) suggest that focus phrases are treated as operators, just like wh-

phrases, in German and Czech syntax, at least in terms of movement to Spec,CP. However, it

has not gone unnoticed in the literature on German (cf. Büring 1997:46, 72, Gärtner 1996,

Krifka 1994: 145-6, Fanselow 2004) that it is not always the semantic focus that is fronted in

focus constructions: the fronting of a direct object can occur in cases of broad focus, as

illustrated for VP-focus in (10) (taken from Krifka 1994).6 Exactly the same was observed for

Czech by Lenertová and Junghanns (2004), cf. (11). We will give a detailed analysis of such

instances of partial focus movement in the rest of this section.

(10) A: What did Peter do next?7

B: Ein BILD hat er gemalt. (Ge.)

a picture has he painted

‘He painted a picture.’

(11) A: What do you want me to do? (Cz.)

B: NÁplast mi podej!

plaster.acc me.dat give.imp

‘Give me a plaster!’

6 Following common practice, we identify the focus of an utterance with that part of the utterance that

corresponds to the wh-phrase in a congruent constituent question, cf. Büring (to appear:13) and Reich

(2003:ch2) for recent argumentation in favour of the Q/A test.

7 In the interest of space, context questions will be given in English only rather than also in the target language

in the rest of the paper. The b/c-versions of examples sometimes lack glosses, if they are only word order

variations of the a-versions.

10

3.2 Simple cases of partial focus fronting

(10) and (11) show that objects may be fronted in contexts with VP-focus. In addition, the

following authentic examples illustrate that the fronting of a direct object or a prepositional

object can also occur in utterances with IP-focus (12)-(13).

(12) A: Why did you like him so much?

B: NÁladu mi dodával! (Cz.)

mood.acc me.dat provided.3sg.ms [S1]

‘He was cheering me up!’

(13) A: What happened?

B: Im GRAben ist er gelandet! (Ge.)

in ditch has he landed [S2]

‘He drove into the ditch!’

The examples (10) - (13) resemble Hungarian (5b) in that the fronted element is not the focus

of the utterance, it is only part of the focus. Consequently, it does not bear an informationally

defined focus feature, and cannot enter a spec-head-agreement relation with a Focus head.

Partial focus movement cannot be derived in terms of a movement operation that is licensed

because of an informationally defined focus feature.

Furthermore, main prominence is located in the right-periphery in Czech and German. Unlike

what might be true for Hungarian, leftward partial focus movement cannot be reinterpreted as

being triggered by the need to pick up a nuclear accent.

3.3 Intervening subjects

Partial focus movement is thus not a subcase of operator movement, but it also does not

appear to be an instance of the informationally neutral ‘formal’ fronting operation picking the

highest category in TP (subjects, sentence adverbs, etc.). After all, direct and PP objects do

not occupy the highest structural position in a clause: they are, e.g., c-commanded by the

11

subject. The conclusion, however, that partial focus movement is not simply an instance of

formal movement cannot be drawn that easily.

The acceptability of partial focus movement depends on the nature of the intervening subject.

Partial focus movement of an object is nearly always acceptable when the subject is an

unstressed or silent pronoun, but intervening lexical subjects often block partial focus

movement. In an acceptability rating experiment, object initial sentences with narrow and

broad (VP-) focus were found to be fully acceptable to speakers of German when the subject

is a pronoun, but acceptability decreases by nearly two points on a 7-point scale (reaching a

mean of 4.4, with 7 optimal) in case of non-pronominal subjects in sentences with broad IP-

focus. The role of non-pronominal subjects is also exemplified by the low acceptability of

partial focus movement in Czech (14Bb). (For more details concerning Cz. and G. data, see

fn. 16. The details of the experiments are reported in a separate paper).

(14) A: What’s new?

B: a. GUláš jsem uvařila. (Cz.)

goulash aux.1sg cooked

‘I cooked goulash.’

b. #GUláš matka uvařila.

goulash mother cooked

c. Matka uvařila GUláš.

mother cooked goulash

The contrast between pronominal and non-pronominal subjects in partial focus constructions

might be due to differences in syntactic position or prosodic status. Let us discuss these two

options in turn.

Weak object pronouns occupy special positions in both Czech and German clauses; they are

adjoined to some head in the Infl/Comp domain (they are in the Wackernagel-position). Note

that object pronouns cliticized to the ‘Wackernagel’ position c-commanding the subject do

12

not block the formal movement of subjects to Spec,CP in informationally neutral sentences,

as (15) illustrates.

(15) A: What happened to the table?

B: Jemandi muss ihn ti gestern mit einem HAmmer bearbeitet haben. (Ge.)

someone must it yesterday with a hammer worked have

‘Someone must have hammered it yesterday.’

If cliticized elements cannot move to Spec,CP, weak object pronouns do not qualify as

potential interveners for elements targeting Spec,CP in the sense of the MLC. Therefore, ihn

does not block the formal attraction of the subject to Spec,CP in (15b). If weak subject

pronouns have the same property, the subject intervention effect may have a syntactic source,

as proposed by Frey (2005) for German.

Weak subject pronouns of German would not qualify as elements that could move to Spec,CP

in (10) and (13) if they are themselves adjoined in the Wackernagel position. Consequently,

the objects are the highest elements in TP that can be attracted to Spec, CP in these examples.

and they would therefore be picked by an attracting Comp without any additional operator

features. This type of account is quite attractive because it allows us to capture partial focus

movement in terms of assumptions that are independently justified. However, it fails to

account for a number of data.

In Czech, pro does not count as a category that can move to Spec,CP, as it cannot fulfil the

second position condition because of the absence of a phonetic matrix. In this case, the finite

verb/participle undergoes stylistic/formal fronting as the highest available element, thus (16)

is the neutral version of (14a):

(16) Uvařila jsem GUláš. (Cz.)

cooked aux.1sg goulash

13

More importantly, partial focus movement is not confined to structures with weak or

inaudible pronominal subjects in Czech and German. Indefinite subjects like ‘somebody’ –

(17)8, (19) or epithets – (18) do not block partial focus movement either.

(17) A: What’s new?

B: KARla někdo hledal. (Cz.)

Karel.acc somebody.nom looked-for.sg.ms

‘Somebody was looking for Karel.’

(18) A: What did Fritz do on Sunday?

B: Ein BUCH hat der Idiot gelesen anstatt schwimmen zu gehen. (Ge.)

a book has the idiot read instead swim to go

‘The fool read a book, instead of going swimming!

(19) A: How was the party yesterday?

B: Ein BUCH hat jemand vorgelesen. (Ge.)

a book has somebody read out

‘Someone read out a book.’

What seems to matter here is not the syntactic position of the intervening subject (cliticized

or not), but its prosodic status: the indefinite pronominal somebody and epithets can be left

unaccented.9 The intervention data are captured if we postulate that partial focus movement

is nothing but the attraction of an accented phrase to Spec,CP. If an accented subject is

8 Note that pronominal indefinites block last resort V-raising in Czech, cf. (i). Therefore, they cannot behave as

syntactic clitics, in contrast to what might be argued for pronominal subjects in German.

(i) What’s new?

a. Někdo se tu snažil najít JAnu. (Cz.)

somebody.nom refl.clitic here tried.sg.ms find.inf Jana.acc

‘Somebody was trying to find Jane here.’

b. #Snažil se tu někdo najít JAnu.

9 See Ladd (1996:174-204) and Truckenbrodt (2005:16), among others, on deaccentuation of indefinite

pronouns, functional and anaphoric elements.

14

present, such an attraction process will pick the subject rather than the object because of the

MLC. When the subject is deaccented, the object will move when Comp attracts an accented

phrase, regardless of whether this object is focused itself, or whether it is just part of the

focus.10

3.4 Long-distance fronting

The fact that partial focus fronting allows long distance dependencies corroborates the view

that it cannot be an instance of the purely formal fronting discussed in 3.1. Furthermore,

partial focus fronting is island sensitive, which proves that it is a ‘normal’ syntactic

movement, in spite of the fact that the crucial property for being attracted is the possession of

an accent.

(20) shows that partial focus fronting is not a clause-bound operation, even deeply embedded

accented phrases can be fronted:

(20) A: What has she been doing there so long?

B: Das AUto denk ich hat sie versucht zu reparieren! (Ge.)

the car think I has she tried to repair

‘I think she has tried to repair the car!’

In Czech, focus fronting is compatible even with weak islands, and wide focus interpretation

is possible in such cases as well, as illustrated in (21) with a wh-island and in (22) with a

factive-island (note that long topicalization also patterns in this way, in contrast to wh-

movement, which is blocked even with weak islands, cf. Meyer 2004: 188-195):

10 We thus assume, in line with Gussenhoven (1992, 1999, a.o.) (cf. also Selkirk 1995), obligatory accents on all

arguments, including subjects, in wide focus domains (for supporting experimental evidence on German, see

Truckenbrodt 2004). In other words, only arguments that are given or anaphoric may be left unaccented (and

thus they do not block PFM, cf. sections 3.5 and 4.1-2). Predicates, on the other hand, may prosodically

integrate with their arguments (cf. also Jacobs (1999, a.o.); Wagner (2005) argues for prosodic subordination of

functors (the projecting elements) in general). We return to predicates in PFF constructions in section 3.5.

15

(21) A: Why are you so angry?

B: Ále,[jeden blbej FORmulář]i nevím, jak mám vyplnit ti. (Cz.)

prt one stupid form not-know.1sg how shall.1sg fill-in.inf

‘Uh, I don’t know how to fill in one stupid form.’

(22) (Kdybysme jeli, tak by to muselo drncat. Nebo aspoň by se to pohupovalo. ‘If we were

moving, it would have to jolt. Or it would at least wobble.’) (Cz.)

A [VZDUCH]i bysme cejtili, že rozrážíme ti ! [S3]

and air.acc would.1pl feel.pl that cut.1pl

‘And we would feel that we cut through the air!’

On the other hand, ‘strong’ islands like adjunct clauses block partial focus fronting:

(23) A: Are you not worried that Peter still does not know what he really wants?

B: a. *ŠKOlu se rozhodne, až dokončí! (Cz.)

school.acc refl. decide.3fut when he-finish.fut

‘He will decide himself when he has finished the school!’

b. Rozhodne se, až dokončí ŠKOlu!

decide.3fut refl when he-finish.fut school.acc.

Although analogous examples cannot be presented with Standard German, the South German

dialects allowing long extractions would show the same contrast. Thus we can also conclude

that the kind of partial focus fronting with wide focus interpretation shows A-bar-movement

properties.

3.5 Shifted prominence

So far, we have only considered the fronting of direct and prepositional objects in contexts of

partial focus movement. Indeed, the placement of an accented verb into sentence initial

position is typically possible only with a narrow focus interpretation - (24b) is a

pragmatically odd answer to the question in (24).

16

(24) A: What did you do on Sunday?

B. a. Den WAgen hab’ ich gewaschen. (Ge.)

the car have I washed

‘I washed the car.’

b. #GeWAschen hab ich den Wagen.

‘I WASHED the car.’

In the light of what we saw in the preceding sections, we need no stipulations for confining

partial focus movement to the direct object in such examples. In a VP focus context like (24),

the direct object is accented and the verb is prosodically integrated (cf. fn. 10). Since partial

focus movement is nothing but the attraction of an accented element, the verb alone has no

chance of moving to Spec,CP on the basis of that operation.

However, one expects that predicates may be preposed whenever they are accented due to a

shift of prominence that is triggered because the object is contextually given or deaccented

for some other reason. This expectation is borne out. In (25) - (27), (part of) the predicate has

been placed into Spec,CP, with a wide focus interpretation. Note that both the subject and the

direct object are weak pronominals or deaccented indefinites in these examples, so that the

sentence accent is shifted to the predicate. Consequently, it can be attracted by a Comp that

goes for an accented element.

(25) A: What made you help him?

B: LÍto mi ho bylo. (Cz.)

sorry me.dat him.gen it-was [S1]

‘I felt sorry for him.’

(26) A: What has happened last Sunday?

B: VerLETZT hab ich mich. (Ge.)

hurt have I myself

17

‘I hurt myself.’

(27) A: Why did he have to leave?

B: BeLEIdigt hat er wen. (Ge.)

insulted has he someone

‘He insulted someone.’

The examples in (25) - (27) thus lend strong support to our claim that partial focus movement

is a process in which an accented element is attracted. Shift of prominence to categories other

than the verb should imply that these categories may move in partial focus movement

contexts as well. In (28) and (29), this is illustrated for subject fronting in sentences with

deaccented objects. Note that the availability of a wide focus reading in these sentence is

merely compatible with what we have said, because subjects have a privileged access to the

clause initial position in any case, because they are (often) the highest element in TP.

(28) A: Why did you do that?

B: a. MATka mi to poručila. (Cz.)

mother.nom me.dat it ordered.sg.fm

‘Mother ordered it to me.’

(29) A: That is a really nice sweater.

B: ANtje hat mir den geschenkt. (Ge.)

Antje has me it given

‘Antje gave it to me as a present.’

Finally, (30) shows that the fronting of a prepositional phrase licenses a wide focus reading if

the direct object is deaccented.

(30) A: What have you done with the plates?

B: In die KÜche hab ich sie gebracht. (Ge.)

in the kitchen have I them brought

‘I brought them in the kitchen.’

18

Elements that cannot occupy the German prefield for syntactic reasons (e.g. focus particles)

cannot be fronted even when they are accented, this does not depend on them being

interpreted as narrow focus or focus exponent in context imposing wide focus interpretation

like in (31). In other words, the attraction of an accented phrase must meet the general

conditions for syntactic movement, as one would expect.

(31) A: What happened after they had quarrelled so much?

B: a. Dann haben sie sich NUR noch gestritten. (Ge.)

then have they themselves only more quarrelled

b. *NUR haben sie sich dann noch gestritten.

The data presented in this section corroborate the view that the moved element is picked on a

prosodic basis: in the case of a given direct object, partial focus fronting affects the element

that prominence has been shifted to. This observation presupposes a grammar with a cyclic

phonology syntax interaction: the basic prosodic makeup of the VP must be computed before

it is decided which element can move to Spec, CP.

3.6 Idioms

Many focus-related accounts of left-peripheral accented elements in languages like English or

Italian attribute a narrow focus interpretation to the fronted accent-carrier and a discourse-

linked status (reflected in prosodic extrametricality) to the rest of the sentence (cf. Samek-

Lodovici 2004, Szendrői 2001, 2002). These two concepts presuppose that both the moved

element and the category left behind are meaning bearing units, since only such entities can

function as foci, or be discourse-linked. In particular, one would expect, then, that idioms are

not split up in leftward movement contexts, since only the whole idiom has a meaning, but

not its parts – consequently, parts of an idiom cannot be the focus of an utterance. However,

idioms can be split up in partial focus movement constructions both in Czech and in German.

Particularly telling are examples involving idioms with a very low resemblance to

compositionally interpretable structures, such as the b-versions of (32) and (33):

19

(32) A: Why did you quarrel with him?

B: a. BOUdu na mě ušil! (Cz.)

hut.acc for me.acc stitched.sg.masc

‘He has cheated me!’

b. MÁSlo má na hlavě!

butter has on head

‘He is corrupt!’

(33) a. Schöne AUgen hat er ihr gemacht. (Ge.)

beautiful eyes has he her made

‘He made eyes at her.’

b. Den GARaus hat er ihr gemacht.

the garaus has he her made

‘He killed her.’

(32) - (33) pose no problem, however, for the view proposed here: the material that has been

fronted is the accented part of the idiom.

The import of the accent-based reordering of parts of idioms as exemplified in (32) - (33)

goes even further. For some examples of partial focus movement, it is tempting to analyze the

preposed XP as a ‘topic in a focus’, or to assume that particular salience is attributed to the

left-peripheral part of the focus, and that this additional salience is responsible for fronting.

Concepts like ‘salience’ are vague enough for making it quite hard to exclude their influence

on a particular sentence. Concepts such as topic, focus, and salience apply to elements that

have a semantic interpretation, however. The fronting of the meaningless elements in (32) -

(33) cannot be described along these lines.

The idiom argument has recently been challenged by Frey (2005). He points out that idioms

have different degrees of transparency, so that many theories (see Nunberg et al. 1994)

attribute quasi-compositional structure to the idiomatic expressions. Relative to this quasi-

20

compositional analysis, it is conceivable that parts of idioms could have informational values,

and be moved to sentence initial position on that ground. Even if one is willing to grant such

a quasi-decompositional structure of idioms, one can show that the fronting of parts of idioms

is not due to the putative informational status of that unit. Consider (34) in this respect:

(34) a. Vom REgen sind wir in die TRAUfe gekommen. (Ge.)

from rain are we in the eaves come

‘We’ve jumped out of the pan into the fire.’

b. Wir sind vom REgen in die TRAUfe gekommen.

we are from rain in the eaves come

The idiom vom Regen in die Traufe kommen meaning ‘the situation has not improved’ con-

sists of three parts, one referring to the misfortunate source situation (vom Regen ‘out of the

rain’), one to the equally bad target situation (in die Traufe, ‘in the eaves’), and one referring

to the transition (kommen). In spite of the fact that part of the idiom has been fronted in (34a),

the sentence retains its idiomatic interpretation. If anything is particularly highlighted at all in

this utterance (apart from the meaning of the complete idiom), it is the fact the new situation

is bad (in die Traufe). The old situation (corresponding to the PP appearing sentence-initially)

is neither highlighted nor topical at all, yet it appears in the left-peripheral position. What is

fronted in an idiom with more than 2 quasi-compositional XPs is not determined by the

quasi-informational status of these parts, rather, it is determined purely prosodically.

The participation of idioms in partial focus movement contexts is thus a further argument for

the existence of an attraction process that particularly targets accented phrases. But idioms

like (34) tell us even more about the nature of the attraction process. In idioms that involve

(at least) two phrasal parts, it is always the leftmost XP that is moved in partial focus fronting

contexts, as Müller (2003) observes, see also (35a). When the other XP belonging to the

21

idiom is fronted, the idiomatic reading gets lost, and the preposed element receives a narrow

focus interpretation – (35c).11

(35) a. Den NAgel hat er auf den KOPF getroffen. (Ge.)

the nail has he on the head hit

‘He clearly expressed the truth.’

b. Er hat den NAgel auf den KOPF getroffen.

c. #Auf den KOPF hat er den Nagel getroffen.

That only YP but not ZP of (36) moves to A in idioms such as (34) and (35) is predicted if

bearing an accent is the crucial property for being attracted: the MLC will then guarantee that

YP cannot be skipped over by ZP if YP is stressed.

(36) A … [XP YP [ ZP W]]]

Note that the ‘primary’ accent of the clause goes to ZP in such constellations, (cf.

Truckenbrodt (2005) and the references there). ZP but not YP is also the ‘focus exponent’ of

XP in many theories of focus if XP is a focused category. As we have just seen, ZP, the focus

exponent, the phrase with the nuclear accent, does not move in partial focus movement

constructions when there is an accented YP to its left, which is closer to Spec.CP. This

underlines the purely syntactic nature of the attraction process: partial focus movement does

not attract ‘focus exponents’ (in contrast to claims in Fanselow 2004 and Lenertová and

Junghanns 2004, a point made by Frey 2005), and prosodic pitch differences also do not play

a role: the leftmost phrase with an accent is attracted.12

11 Note that some speakers rate the a-versions in (34)-(35) as less acceptable than the neutral b-versions without

fronting. However, they accept the idiomatic reading of the a-versions, in a clear contrast to cases like (35c),

which are completely inacceptable as idioms for all speakers.

12 This may be due to the fact that all accents in a wide focus construction are equally prominent from a

phonological point of view with pitch differences being due to various prosodic processes, as recently argued by

Caroline Féry in unpublished work.

22

3.7 The size of the fronted constituent

Nearly all examples considered so far involve the fronting of an accented XP in a VP- or IP-

focus utterances. Is partial focus movement confined to this constellation? Our account of

partial focus fronting does not predict such constraints, so it is positive that the answer to the

question is negative.

The noun is the smallest element that can undergo partial focus movement, as (37a,b) show.

(37) can answer both the question what has be bought and the question what has he

done/what’s new, which shows that partial focus movement is not confined to VP- and IP-

focus contexts: narrow object focus can also be realized with the partial fronting of a noun,

stranding a determiner.

(37) a. BÜcher hat er sich [‘n paar t] gekauft. (Ge.)

books has he refl a few bought

‘He has bought a couple of books.’

b. KNÍžek jsem ti pár přinesla. (Cz.)

book.gen.pl aux.1sg you.dat a few brought.sg.fm

‘I have brought you a couple of books. ’

The noun is c-commanded by the determiner in a DP, so the MLC correctly predicts that

constructions such as (37) are possible with object or VP-focus only if the determiner is

unaccented. This option is available with closed-class items like ‘a few’ in Cz. and Ge.

The pragmatics of (37) can also be expressed with (38): these sentences allow a narrow and a

VP focus reading, too. (38) thus exemplifies the default assumption that the attraction of an

accented element may (and sometimes, must) involve the pied-piping of some (maximal)

projection dominating the accented word.

(38) a. ‘N paar BÜcher hat er sich gekauft. (Ge.)

a-few books has he refl bought

b. Pár KNÍžek jsem ti přinesla. (Cz.)

23

a-few books.gen.pl aux1sg you.dat brought.sg.fm

For the narrow focus interpretation of (38) (i.e. in a context like ‘What did he buy/What did

you bring’), the net effect of the attraction of an accent plus pied-piping of the dominating DP

is equivalent to what we would get with a movement operation in which the semantic focus is

attracted. The same is true for the VP-focus reading when the VPs dominating the direct

object containing the accent are pied-piped, as it is possible in German, cf. (39).

(39) A: What did he do?

B: a. [N’ paar BÜcher gekauft] hat er sich. (Ge.)

a-few books bought has he refl

b. [Sich n’ paar BÜcher gekauft] hat er.

This suggests that we can eliminate ‘semantic’ focus movement from the grammars of

German and Czech. What appears to be the displacement of a focus phrase is nothing but

partial focus fronting (=accent attraction) involving the pied piping of enough material so that

the impression of ‘focus’ movement arises.

Our approach implies that semantic focus and movement can interact in the following way.

First, the displaced category may be smaller than the semantic focus, because attraction goes

for the accented word only. Even when further material is pied-piped (e.g., because gramma-

tical constraints quite generally forbid extraction out of PPs, as seems to be true of Cz. and

Ge.), the displaced category may be smaller than the semantic focus, as in (40)13 when it

answers A’ rather than A. This is the situation that constitutes the topic of the present article:

partial focus fronting. Note that partial focus fronting may be syntactically advantageous

because it minimizes the amount of material that is displaced in the surface representation.

(40) A: Who did you dance with?

A’: Why is he angry at you?

13 (40) also refutes the idea that partial focus fronting is impossible when the fronted XP is referential.

24

B: a. Mit SaBIne hab ich getanzt. (Ge.)

with Sabine have I danced

‘I danced with Sabine.’

b. *SaBIne hab ich mit getanzt.

Pied piping may also yield a situation in which what is displaced happens to be identical with

the semantic focus. This is the situation dealt with by attraction of a focus feature in many

alternative accounts. In the model proposed here, we need no additional focus feature

attraction. ‘Focus’ movement is just a special case of partial focus movement. Note that the

reverse does not hold: partial focus movement cannot be reanalyzed as a subcase of focus

movement. Thus, the model we propose seems superior to its competitor.

The pied-piping of the complete phrase that is in focus may turn out to be advantageous on

processing grounds. The central ‘new’ information communicated by the clause comes in one

continuous segment. What is optimal from a syntactic point of view (minimal movement)

may thus be in conflict with what is optimal from a processing point of view.

Finally, pied-piping may yield a situation in which more material than the semantic focus is

displaced. This situation arises both in our and the standard model, whenever movement

constraints block the extraction of a particular category. This holds for (40B) when it answers

(40A). Likewise, possessors cannot be moved out of DPs in German, both in constituent

questions (41a) and in accent preposing contexts. Consequently, the DP dominating the

possessor must be pied-piped, yielding a situation in which more than the focus phrase is

displaced in (41b).

(41) a. Wessen Schwester hast Du getroffen? (Ge.)

whose sister have you met?

b. IRInas Schwester hab ich getroffen.

Irina’s sister have I met

‘I have met Irina’s sister.’

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c. *Wessen hast Du Schwester getroffen?

d. *IRInas hab ich Schwester getroffen.

Pied piping going beyond the focus phrase can also be found in situations in which it is not

forced by any grammatical constraint. E.g., (42A) requires an answer with a narrow focus on

the direct object and can be answered by both (42Ba) with a fronted DP and by (42Bb), in

which the VP dominating the direct object has been pied-piped.

(42) A: What have you bought?

B: a. Ein BUCH hab’ ich mir gekauft. (Ge.)

a book have I myself bought

b. [VP Ein BUCH gekauft] hab ich mir.

The core prediction of our model thus seems to be fulfilled. It will have to be complemented

by a theory of pied piping. One issue that must be resolved in this context concerns the

behaviour of determiners and adjectives in noun phrases. Recall that nouns can be fronted out

of noun phrases in DP- or VP-focus contexts, if the determiner is unstressed. The stranding of

adjectival modifiers is not felicitous as they cannot be left unaccented in contexts like (43)14:

(43) A: Peter invited her to the cinema and Paul brought her a red tulip. And what did

Emil do/What did Emil bring?

B: #RŮži jí donesl BÍlou.15 (Cz.)

rose.acc her.dat brought.sg.ms white.acc

‘He brought her a white rose.’

However, although the noun modifier in examples like (43) seems to block the attraction of

the accented noun, this case differs from the above mentioned cases with subject interveners

(cf. example 14). Although the modifier is accented, it cannot be fronted alone - (44), nor is it

14 Results of experimental studies on Dutch corroborate obligatory accents on new and contrastive adjectives, cf.

Krahmer and Swerts (2001).

15 The example improves if the modifier follows a pause, but then we assume a right-dislocation structure.

26

possible in cases where the context facilitates a shift of the main prominence from the noun to

the modifier - (45):

(44) A: What did he bring?/What did he do?

B: a. #BÍlou jí donesl RŮži. (Cz.)

white.acc her.dat brought.sg.ms rose.acc

b. BÍlou RŮži jí donesl.

(45) A: Peter invited Hana to the cinema and John brought her a red rose. And what did

Emil do/What did Emil buy?

B: a. Koupil jí BÍlou růži. (Cz.)

bought.sg.ms her.dat white.acc rose.acc

‘He bought her a white rose.’

b. #BÍlou jí koupil růži.

white.acc her.dat bought.sg.ms rose.acc

c. BÍlou růži jí koupil.

The situation in German is quite similar: neither an accented determiner nor an adjective can

be fronted alone as an instance of partial focus fronting. This can be described fairly easily,

since such displacements would also be impossible when the accented determiner or the

adjective would be a narrow focus of the utterance. The attraction of a determiner or an

adjective always triggers DP-pied piping in German. However, left-branch extraction is

syntactically possible in Czech: wh-phrases like ‘whose’ and ‘what kind of’ and their

counterparts in the answers can be extracted, but pied piping would be acceptable, too.

(46) A: Jakou jsi koupil růži? (Cz.)

what.acc aux.2sg bought.sg.ms rose.acc

‘What kind of a rose did you buy?’

B: a. ČERvenou jsem koupil růži.

red.acc aux.1sg bought.sg.ms rose.acc

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b. ČERvenou růži jsem koupil.

red.acc rose.acc aux.1sg bought.sg.ms

Note that in the acceptable stranding cases such as (46Ba), the fronted modifier is narrow

focus, whereas the stranded part of the noun phrase belongs to the deaccented background.

This is different from the illegal cases of fronting a determiner/an adjective in DP- or VP-

focus contexts like (45): although the adjective is more prominent than the noun, both of

them belong to the focused part of the sentence (determined by the wh-word in the question)

and the shift of main prominence only reflects an additional contrastivity on the adjective.

Let us assume that a ‘direct’ movement of a determiner or an adjective out of DP is never

possible. Examples such as (46) will therefore have a more complex derivation (available

only in Cz.). For example, we can follow Corver (1990), who suggests a remnant movement

analysis in which the noun phrase růži leaves the DP jakou růži before the latter is moved.

This additional movement step places the nominal part into a position c-commanding the

determiner/the adjective. If this nominal part is given (as it in (46) due to the immediately

preceding question, see also section 4.1) and therefore deaccented, its occurrence in a high

position will not block the attraction of the accented determiner, yielding (46B). On the other

hand, if the nominal part is not given and if it is moved to a position c-commanding the

determiner, the latter cannot be attracted because of the MLC: accent-bearing N intervenes

between D/A and the Comp that attracts an accent. The problem is that exactly this

constellation corresponds to the infelicitous (43), which must be actually excluded. A

possible way out of this is to assume that the extraction of N is parallel to scrambling and

thus only affect given Ns like ‘rose’ in (46). Under this assumption, noun extraction could not

lead to cases like (43) at all.

A pied-piping theory must also exclude the following odd dialogues.

(47) A: Whom did you buy the book?

B: *Dem FRITZ das Buch gekauft habe ich. (Ge.)

28

the.dat Fritz the book bought have I

B’: ?Dem FRITZ gekauft habe ich es.

(48) A: Who cooked?

B: *KARL gekocht hat. (Ge.)

Karl cooked has

(49) A: What a nice sweatshirt!

B: *ANtje geschenkt hat ihn mir. (Ge.)

A. given has him.acc me.dat

We assume that the ill-formedness of (47) - (49) is also due to general principles constraining

movement. Thus, quite independent of the issues we are dealing with, it is a commonplace

that subjects can rarely be fronted in a VP in German unless the subject is an indefinite and

unless (preferably) the objects remain in the VP as well. (48) and (49) are not in line with

these restrictions. In any event, because of (41) and (42), standard focus movement theories

must invoke pied piping as well, and therefore share with our model the need to exclude pied-

piping in unwanted cases such as (47) - (49).

3.8 Summary

In this section, we had a close look at partial focus movement constructions in Czech and

German. We found that it can neither be analyzed as movement to disambiguate the

focus/background partition, nor as an instance of purely ‘formal’ movement. Partial focus

movement rather arises when Comp attracts an accented phrase. The assumption that the

bearing of an accent is crucial for movement in the partial focus fronting context accounts for

the choice of the displaced element, intervention effects, and the transparency of idioms.

Furthermore, we argued that ‘focus’ movement is just a special case of partial focus fronting

in the grammar of Czech and German. Thus answers with fronted elements bearing nuclear

accent receive a uniform syntactic account independent from whether the wh-question

imposes a narrow or wide focus interpretation on them.

29

4. Intervention/Conditions for crossing movement

4.1 Deaccented interveners

In the previous section, we argued that the sensitivity of focus fronting to the prosodic status

of the intervening elements is a crucial aspect relevant for the analysis of the so called partial

focus movement. The example repeated in (50) can serve as a starting point for a more

detailed discussion of this aspect.

(50) A: What’s new?

B: a. #GUláš matka uvařila. (Cz.)

goulash mother cooked

b. MATka uvařila GUláš.

mother cooked goulash

(51) A: What did mother cook?

B: a. GUláš matka uvařila. (Cz.)

b. Matka uvařila GUláš.

While the answer in (50a) is not felicitous and only the b-answer fits the maximal-focus

context introduced by the wh-question, the fronting in (51a) is acceptable. The minimal

difference between (50) and (51) is the contextual status of the intervening subject: the wh-

question in (51) renders it given, whereas it has a newness status in (50). As given elements

are subject to deaccentuation, the subject in (51) does not count as a prosodic intervener for

fronting of a lower accented element. In (50), on the other hand, deaccentuation of the subject

seems to be incompatible with its contextual status. At the same time, an (prenuclear) accent

on the subject would block the fronting of the lower accented element due to the MLC,

requiring that only the leftmost accent carrier is attracted to Spec,CP. As expected,

pronominal indefinites and epithets, which can be deaccented even in contexts with broad

focus, do not block partial focus fronting, as noted above (cf. (16) - (18)).

Thus the conditions for crossing movement can be defined on the basis of syntactic

30

restrictions in terms of the MLC sensitive to the prosodic status of the elements on the one

hand, and the information structural requirements on the relation between the prosodic and

the contextual status of the elements on the other hand. The syntax is sensitive to prosody

only, through which it is indirectly affected by information structure.

4.2 Context salient interveners

With a rich enough context, a deaccentuation of an element can be accommodated even if it

does not occur in the immediately preceding discourse. Thus, potential prosodic interveners

to partial focus fronting can be eliminated, as illustrated in the following examples. In (52),

the indirect object ‘my mother’ is contextually salient, due to the presence of parents in the

question. It seems that this kind of context facilitates the fronting of the lower accented

element. In contrast, the answer in (53) is not really felicitous with fronting of the direct

object. Here, deaccentuation of the higher argument is not licensed by the context and MLC

prevents fronting of the lower argument, therefore, only the answers in b) and c) would be

preferred.

(52) A: What did your parents do after they won in the lottery?

B: Ein AUto haben sie meiner Mutter gekauft. (Ge.)

a car have they my.dat mother.dat bought

‘They bought my mother a car.’

(53) A: Karl won the lottery? And what did he do?

B: a. ?#Eine AUgen-Op hat er einem Kind bezahlt. (Ge.)

an eye-surgery has he a.dat child paid

b. Er hat einem KIND eine AUgen-OP bezahlt.

he has a.dat child an eye-surgery paid

c. Einem KIND hat er eine AUgen-OP bezahlt.

a.dat child has he an eye-surgery paid

‘He paid an eye surgery for a child.’

31

Similarly, deaccentuation of an overt subject within broad focus seems to be felicitous if a

rich enough context enables its accommodation. (54) is a possible case of partial focus

fronting across an overt subject made salient by the context: a party with very loud music

evokes an expectation of annoyed neighbours. On the other hand, the same sentence as an

out-of-the-blue utterance (e.g., at the beginning of a phone-call) would sound odd, cf. (55).

(54) A: Why is Karl not here? B: You know Peter was giving a party yesterday and he

prefers a very loud music. A: So what happened?

B: Den STROM hat uns der Nachbar ausgeschaltet … (Ge.)

the electricity has us the neighbour switched-off

‘Our neighbour has switched off the electricity, (Karl injured himself in the dark

and had to stay in the hospital.)’

(55) A: What’s the matter? Do you know how late it is?

B: a. #Den STROM hat uns der Nachbar ausgeschaltet … (Ge.)

the electricity has us.dat the neighbour switched-off

b. Der NACHbar hat uns den STROM ausgeschaltet.

In fact, speakers seem to vary in their judgment of structures comparable to (55Ba).16 This

variation is probably due to differences in the ability and willingness to ‘confabulate’

16 In an informal internet-based survey, 26 linguist native speakers of German judged partial focus fronting

constructions on a six point scale (1 best, 6 worst). The best example of partial focus fronting crossing a

deaccented pronoun was accepted by all informants (i.e., they gave the best two grades 1 and 2), while the best

example of structures such as (55) was accepted by 9 out of the 26 speakers only. The results of a questionnaire

study with 18 non-linguist native speakers of Cz. were similar. Judged on the same scale, the average rating of

simple PFF with pronominal/deaccented subjects (including idioms; cf. (17), (25), (32a)) was 2.43 with 95%

confidence interval of 2.11-2.76. In contrast, PFF with overt lexical subjects (cf. (14b/50a)) received an average

rating of 3.67 with 95% CI of 3.06-4.28 . For comparison, PFF with strong island violation (cf. (23)) was rated

the worst - 5.7 on average (95% CI: 5.24-5.93), whereas PFF-sentences with weak islands (cf. (21) and (22))

received an average rating of 2.43 (95% CI: 2.07-2.8), which is very similar to the simple PFF cases.

32

contextual properties that would license the deaccentuation of the subject even when the

explicit context looks like (55A).

The limits of deaccentuation due to context saliency can be again illustrated with the help of

idiomatic expressions consisting of more parts, as in the repeated example (56). In (56c), the

fronting of the lower accented element is infelicitous as the deaccentuation of the crossed

element would lead to its context saliency and consequently to the loss of the idiomatic

meaning. Therefore, movement is only possible if the leftmost accented element is attracted

and thus no MLC violation arises.

(56) a. Er ist vom REgen in die TRAUfe gekommen. (Ge.)

he has from rain in the eaves come

‘He jumped out of the frying pan into the fire.’

b. Vom REgen ist er in die TRAUfe gekommen.

c. *In die TRAUfe ist er vom Regen gekommen.

The discussion so far can be summed up in the following way: those (‘narrow focus’)

contexts, in which the wh-question imposes a focus on only one element in the answer, are

easily compatible with the fronting of this element‚ as the rest of the sentence is rendered

given and deaccented (and actually frequently undergoes ellipsis), thus no intervention effects

arise when the accented phrase is attracted. In contrast, broad (VP- or IP-) focus answers

often contain more elements that are not given or salient in the context. Their deaccentuation

would render the answer odd in its context. Due to the intervention effects, the fronting of an

accented element within a broad focus is then confined to the leftmost element with an

accent. The question is how the unified analysis for narrow and partial focus fronting is

compatible with multiple foci.

4.3 Multiple focus and inversion

A simple case of multiple focus constructions in form of a single-pair answer to a multiple-

wh-question, as in (57), falls into the picture sketched so far.

33

(57) A: [So you came in and smelled food]:

Was hat wer gekocht? / Wer hat was gekocht? (Ge.)

what has who cooked / who has what cooked

B: a. #GUlasch hat KARL gekocht.

goulash has Karl cooked

b. KARL hat GUlasch gekocht.

‘Karl cooked goulash.’

So called ‘conjoined questions’ (Comorovski 1996) like in (57) involve one wh-operator

unselectively binding the variables, as sketched in the structure in (58) (adapted from van

Hoof 2003):

(58) whx,y, x a person, y a dish [x cooked y]

In a congruent answer, both counterparts of the wh-phrases have to carry an accent, and the

higher accented element cannot be crossed by the lower one, cf. (57Ba), in accordance with

the MLC. However, the so-called bridge contours (cf. Büring 1997, among others) allow

inversion of the elements, although both of them carry an accent.

(59) At the class reunion, many did not recognize some of their school friends.

A: Hat denn jemand niemanden wiedererkannt? (Ge.)

‘Did somebody not recognize anyone?’

B: a. NIEmanden hat nur der HUbert wiedererkannt.

nobody.acc has only the Hubert.nom recognized

‘Only Hubert did not recognize anyone.’

b. Es hat nur der HUbert niemanden wiedererkant.

it has only the Hubert nobody.acc recognized

Van Hoof (2003:528-533) argues in favour of two types of multiple focus structures parallel

to two types of multiple wh-questions: the first one is illustrated by the structure in (58), the

34

second one are matching questions involving two operators. Along these lines, the underlying

multiple wh-question for (59) would be the structure in (60):

(60) a. Wieviel Leute hat wer nicht erkannt?

how-many people has who not recognized

b. whx, x number of people, why, y a person, [y did not recognize x persons]

Two operators enter the derivation in this case, one taking scope over the other. Importantly,

each operates on a set of alternatives, which leads to contrastive implicature. Thus Hubert is

contrasted with other members of the set of the party-participants and nobody is contrasted

with other quantifiers in the set that fulfil the selection criterion requirement of the discourse.

The preposing of the object across an accented subject does not appear to be in line with the

predictions of the model proposed here. A first idea might be to take recourse to the free

constituent order property of German (and Czech), and deny that the object was fronted

across the subject in (59). After all, object before subject order is well formed. One difficulty

of such an approach lies in the fact that the placement of an indefinite object in front of a

proper name subject normally cannot be achieved by scrambling, since scrambling typically

affects given rather than focal material.

If the operation placing the object in front of the subject in (59) is not scrambling, one might

make informationally driven movement types responsible. Movement operations preposing

topics in front of the subject but below the complementizer, and fronting contrast elements to

the left of the topic position have been proposed (Haftka 1995, Frey 2004). However, the

object nobody fronted in (59) cannot have been moved by topic placement, unless we

abandon the notion as defined in Reinhart (1981), restricting topics to referential elements.

We are again confronted with the phenomenon of partial fronting that excludes an analysis of

the preposing in terms of attraction linked to informationally defined features such as ‘topic’

or ‘contrast’. Example (61) taken from Jacobs (1996) reveals that parts of an idiomatic

expression can be fronted across an accented element (the negation, in this case) in the bridge

35

contexts under discussion. What is contrasted in (61) is the whole idiomatic expression sich

die Hare raufen, as the continuation of B in the brackets suggests.

(61) A: How will Grass react to the bad reviews?

B: Nun, die HAAre wird er sich NICHT gerade raufen… (Ge.)

well the hair will he himself not really pull out

‘Well, he won’t be completely upset.’ (Jacobs, 1996:8)

(Aber ein bisschen ärgern wird er sich schon. ‘But he will be a bit angry.’)

B’: Nun, er wird sich nicht gerade die HAAre raufen…

The examples in (62) illustrate basically the same point. What is preposed across the negation

or a subject bearing a falling tone is neither the topic nor a contrastive element nor anything

else defined in terms of information structure. Rather, it is PART of a predicate (setting

houses on fire, reading the bible), that has the relevant pragmatic function.

(62) a. A: Is he an anarchist?

B: Nun, HÄUser hat er noch NICHT angezündet. (Ge.)

well, houses has he yet not set-on-fire

‘Well, he hasn’t set any houses on fire so far.’

b. A: Are they anarchists?

B: HÄUser hat von denen KEINER angezündet. (Ge.)

houses has of these nobody set-on-fire

‘No one of them has set houses on fire.’

c. A: Is he religious?

B: Die BIbel hat er noch NIE gelesen. (Ge.)

the bible has he yet never read

‘He has not ever read the bible.’

Fanselow (2004) presents further examples involving particle verbs. Although the particles

make no identifiable semantic contribution, they can be fronted separately in rise-fall

36

constructions, the pied-piping of the verb being optional:

(63) a. VOR haben wir es SCHON gehabt. (Ge.)

before have we it well had

‘We have intended that, (but…)’

b. VORgehabt haben wir es SCHON.

Thus it seems that we have to do here with a parallel case to the partial focus fronting as

discussed in the previous sections, but crucially, two operators are present, which licenses

two formally distinguished accents. Although (59) and (61) differ contextually/pragmatically

(in (59), the fronted element is given in the immediately preceding context), a unified

analysis of the fronting is desirable. Regardless of the different pragmatic interpretation (e.g.,

a unified topic analysis of the fronted elements is not possible, for the reasons stated

above),17 the common base of the examples is the rising accent of the left element evoking

the contrastive implicature, and the falling accent on the right focus XP.

A checking theory referring to pragmatically interpreted features faces the same problem as

in the case of simple partial focus fronting: it would have to explain why it is possible to

optionally front only a part of the meaningful constituent. There are various ways out of this

dilemma when one works with a model involving prosodic attraction, among which it is not

too easy to decide.

The simplest idea would be to assume that the difference between a rising and a falling tone

is directly relevant for attraction in terms of the MLC. An intervening falling tone could not

block the attraction of a rising tone. However, it is not clear if syntax can show this degree of

sensitivity to phonological distinctions, and, in addition, it seems as if the type of feature

(e.g., Case) rather than a concrete value (say, accusative) is relevant for minimality effects in

17 The information-structural definition of the fronted element in the rise-fall construction is still subject to much

discussion, cf. the argumentation in van Hoof (2003) and Reich (2003) for a contrastive focus character of the

fronted element (contra Büring 1997).

Kommentar [G1]: Nicht mit einfachem Focus

Kommentar [G2]: Trocken durch die Stadt kommt man mit der BVG Müller p27 Und was hat er mit ihr nach dem Streit gemacht ?Raus hat er sie ja nicht gerade geschmissen Mit hat er sie genommen

37

the narrow syntax (but see Hinterhölzl, to appear, for a different view). Therefore, it is not

very likely that the simplest view can be the correct one.

A second possibility lies in interpreting the MLC as an economy constraint, such that the

MLC does not block the attraction of an element A if the attraction of a closer element would

not yield a well-formed representation. In Czech and German, the rising accent has to precede

the falling one, so that intervening falling tones could not block the attraction of a rising tone.

In addition, in the inversion example, the fronted expression would also follow the nuclear

accent without inversion and could thus not be realized at all because of the general

deaccentuation in the postnuclear field (see Féry and Ishihara 2005). Similarly, it could be

that rising tones can be assigned in specific positions at the left periphery of TP only.

Categories that already bear a falling accent could not be attracted to this position (because of

the clash of accents), so that they cannot count as interveners for the attraction of XPs that

receive a rising accent.

4.4 Summary

In this section, we discussed the limits of partial focus fronting in more detail: as it is blocked

by intervening accented elements, it requires contexts rich enough to license deaccentuation

of subjects/arguments in answers with wide focus interpretation. Answers with

focus/background division where the fronted element carrying the nuclear accent alone serves

a (narrow) semantic focus are naturally the most frequent case, as the deaccentuation of the

rest of the material is straightforward. Structures with complex focus in answers to single-pair

multiple wh-questions confirm the locality restriction on the fronting of accented elements.

Structures with two operators requiring a qualitative distinction of the accent form on the

elements belonging to two alternative sets reveal the same mechanism as the structures with

simple focus: again, only a part of the actual member of the set can be fronted, crucially, this

element is the carrier of the accent and thus an analysis in terms of the attraction of a formal

accent marking is desirable.

38

5. Other Languages

In German and Czech, focus movement must be analyzed as the preposing of an accented

phrase, rather than as an operation that affects a semantically identified category. As we will

see in this section, the array of facts supporting this view is by no means confined to these

languages.18

5.1. Slavic Languages

Probably, it comes as no surprise that Slavic languages other than Czech allow partial focus

movement, too. Russian dialogues such as (64) were tested in and accepted by a linguistics

class at Moscow University. Likewise, Polish and Slovenian possess partial focus movement.

(64) A: What have the children done?

B: Cvety oni sobrali. (Ru.)

flowers.acc they have-plucked

In contrast to Czech, elements bearing the nuclear accent in Russian (Ru.) are frequently

moved to a preverbal, sentence-medial rather than initial position (cf. Mehlig 1993, Janko

2001), so in wide-focus sentences like (65), partial focus movement (capitalized) need not

clash with accented subjects:

(65) A: What’s the noise outside?

B: Deti V MJAČ igrajut. (Ru.)

children in ball play

‘Children are playing ball.’ (Janko 2001:195)

Our three Serbo-Croatian (SC) informants gave us a somewhat different impression of the

options of their language. While the fronting of a direct object in case of a VP- or IP-focus

18 We would like to thank T. Asic, D. Ćavar, E. Engdahl, L. Geist, B. Gyuris, G. Hrafnbjargson, K. Jassinskaja,

H. Kairanneva, D. Kalluli, K. Kazenin, K. É. Kiss, E. Khuliashvili, C. Platzack, E. Prifti, V. Samek-Lodovici,

A. Stopar, S. Skopeteas, S. Siegmund, H. Sigurdhson, M. Sorsakivi, and R. van de Vijver for sharing their

intuitions with us.

39

seems grammatically possible, it is always linked to a special emotive effect, expressing that

one is annoyed or bored by the question. Such an effect is absent with the narrow focus inter-

pretation of fronted direct objects.

It would be difficult if not impossible to express these usage differences in the syntactic

derivation itself. Although they are syntactically (more or less) equivalent, different degrees

of pied-piping in derivationally and semantically equivalent sentences may yield different

degrees of processing difficulty, as we have already suggested above. The focus of an

utterance represents the new information communicated by an utterance, and if the material

corresponding to that information appears discontinuously in a sentence (as it is the case in a

clause with truly partial focus fronting), the sentence will be more difficult to process. Using

a structure that is more difficult than its competitors may need a special justification in some

languages, then, and the additional emotive load of partial focus fronting in SC may just

constitute the rationale for picking the construction that is more difficult to comprehend.

5.2. Italian, Greek and Albanian

Italian and (to a lesser extent) Greek (Gr.) have figured prominently in the construction of

syntactic theories in which XPs move to specifier positions of Focus Phrases. The dialogue in

(66) illustrates that Italian allows partial focus movement, too. This is also corroborated by

sentences like (67) in which the accented part of an idiom has moved into the ‘focus’ position

(and which we owe to Vieri Samek-Lodovici, just like (66).

(66) A: Why are you so late?

B: Un blocco stradale, ha trovato il tassí. (It.)

a block road, has found the taxi

(67) La festa, gli abbiamo fatto. (It.)

the feast, to-him have.we done

‘We killed him.’

40

In the system proposed by Rizzi (1997), (66) and (67) involve leftward movement to a high

specifier position. Nothing needs to be added to our system of assumptions under such an

analysis: the data merely show that Italian is not different from the other languages in

allowing the attraction of accented phrases.19

(68) is a perfect dialogue for some speakers of Greek, though not for all our informants. Just

as in Czech and German, the accented part of an idiom can be preposed without a loss of the

idiomatic interpretation in (69). In the light of what we have said above, this constitutes

additional evidence for the existence of partial focus movement in Greek.

(68) A: What did you do on the weekend?

B: Tin efimeriDa Djavasa. (Gr.)

the.acc newspaper I-have-read

‘The newspaper I have read.’

(69) A: What about the neighbours?

B: Mijes varane I jítones. (Gr.)

fly.acc.pl.fm hit.3pl def.nom.pl.ms neighbour.nom.pl.ms

‘They are bored.’

Albanian, geographically situated between Italian and Greek, tolerates partial focus

movement, too.

5.3. Germanic

Dutch is not much different from German: the fronting of an object is compatible with VP-

focus. Even English may be a language in which ‘focus movement’ must be reanalysed as

being due to the attraction of an accented phrase. Williams (2003:34) considers instances of

19 Samek-Lodovici (2004) has, however, argued that left-peripheral foci should be reanalysed as constructions

involving a right-peripheral focus and additional right-dislocation of the rest of the sentence material. To the

extent that material that is semantically focused cannot be backgrounded at the same time by right dislocation,

we argue that data such as (66) and (67) constitute a problem for the analysis proposed by Samek-Lodovici.

41

Heavy NP-Shift such as (70b) as a reply to (70a). To the extent that focus matters in Heavy

NP-Shift constructions, we concur with Williams’ observation that the focus exponent in the

brackets rather than the whole phrase in focus has moved in (70b).

(70) a. What did John do?

b. John gave to Mary [all of the money in the satchel].

The dialogue in (71) taken from Birner and Ward (1998:36) involves an instance of leftward

focus movement. It exemplifies the preposing of the accented phrase six dollars in a situation

in which ‘costs six dollars’ is the semantic focus (under our analysis, but not the

interpretation offered by Birner and Ward).

(71) A: Where can I get the reading packet?

B: In Steinberg [Gives directions]. Six dollars it costs.

In the light of the data discussed so far, the Scandinavian languages are disappointingly

restrictive with respect to partial focus movement. It is completely ungrammatical in

Icelandic (Ice.), according to our two informants.

(72) A: What have the children done today ?

B: *Blóm hafa þau tínt. (Ice.)

flowers have they plucked

While the dialogue in (73) is grammatically possible, object fronting in wide focus contexts is

‘very very marked’ in Swedish (Swe.) (C. Platzack, p.c.):

(73) A: What have you done on the weekend?

B: ?*Bøcker har jag læst. (Swe.)

books have I read

E. Engdahl (p.c.) points out that partial focus movement improves in coordinate structures if

one makes it explicit that the second clause temporarily follows the first one, cf. (74).

(74) a. Bagaget checkade jag in och gick sen och satte mig. (Swe.)

the-luggage checked I in and went then and sat down

42

b. Bagaget måste du checka in och sen gå och sätta dig.

the-luggage must you check in and then go.inf and sit-down.inf you

Note that Cz. and Ge. also allow this kind of ‘listing’ with partial focus fronting, too, as the

authentic Czech example illustrates:

(75) [I’ll tell you what will happen:]

DOlů spadneš, SEM přijdeš, a PIvo si dáš! (Cz.)

down fall.2fut here come.2fut and beer refl take.2fut [S4]

‘You will fall down, come here, and order beer!’

5.4. Finno Ugric languages

That Hungarian is among the languages tolerating partial focus movement is clear from the

examples such as (5) above that we borrowed from Kenesei (1998). However, Hungarian

might seem to constitute a problem for the model that we propose: according to Szendrői

(2001) and others, an XP moves to the preverbal ‘focus’ position in order to pick up stress

there. Such a movement could not be subsumed under the attraction of an accented phrase,

for obvious reasons. However, a closer inspection of VP and IP focus data (that we owe to

Beáta Gyuris) shows that our analysis is not too far off the track.

One way of realizing broad focus in Hungarian is a verb initial construction, in which all

postverbal constituents bear an accent (marked by “). This shows that, at least in wide focus

utterances, accents are not assigned in the preverbal position only.

(76) A: What did John do yesterday afternoon?

B: a. “Olvasta a “Hamletet a “barátainak a “kertben. (Hu.)

read the Hamlet.acc the friends-his.dat the garden-in

‘He was reading out Hamlet to his friends in the garden.’

b. “Felolvasta a “Hamletet a “barátainak a “kertben.

prt-read the Hamlet.acc the friends-his.dat the garden-in

c. “Olvasta “fel a “Hamletet a “barátainak a “kertben.

43

The prefix fel ‘out’ can appear before or after the verb. When it is after the verb, it also bears

an accent. (76a) is perfective, and (76b) imperfective, and has a marked progressive reading.

In the structure (76c), any of the constituents can be moved into the preverbal slot while the

wide focus interpretation is maintained. We can capture this as an attraction of an accented

phrase by the head the verb sits in (presumably, Comp). The syntactic options of Hungarian

are in line with the MLC as well, because constituent order is free in the postverbal domain.

Each constituent is thus able to figure as the highest accented postverbal constituent, which is

then moved to the preverbal slot. This can also be illustrated with idiomatic expressions, as

(77) shows: According to I. Kenesei (p.c.), both linearizations are possible as long as both

NPs are stressed.

(77) a. Anna a “gombhoz varrta a “kabátot. (Hu.)

Anna the button.all sewed the coat.acc

b. Anna a “kabátot varrta a “gombhoz.

‘Anna sewed the coat to (fit) the button.’ = ‘She was attentive to the details rather than

the whole picture.’

In Estonian (Est.), the question in (78) can be answered by either (78a) or (78b). It is a

language with partial focus fronting, too.

(78) A. What have the children done?

B: a. Korjasid lilli. (Est.)

plucked flowers

b. Lilli korjasid.

However, our standard examples of partial focus movement were unanimously rejected by

our Finnish informants. Perhaps, this is due to the strong contrastive nature of the left

peripheral position in Finnish (Fin.) (see Kaiser 2000) that triggers the need for the additional

presence of a contrastive particle hän in relevant examples, as suggested by one of our

44

informants. If correct, this idea implies that Finnish belongs to the set of languages allowing

partial focus movement, too.

(79) A: Have you heard that Peter left his wife yesterday?

B: Ei, talonsahan hän my-i! (Fin.)

no house.3s.poss-part 3s sell.past.3s

‘No, he sold his house!’

5.5 Further Languages

Persian allows partial focus fronting as well, as evidenced by the fact that parts of idiomatic

expressions can be fronted (see Müller 2005). In Basque (Bsq.), the dialogue in (80) is

possible, but given the SOV basic structure of the language, one cannot tell for sure whether

(80B) involves partial focus movement or simply represents focus projection from an object

that sits in situ.

(80) A: What have you done on the weekend?

B: Egunkaria irakurri dut. (Bsq.)

newspaper read have-I

Focus exponent movement is also an option in Yucatec Maya (YM). Any of (81Ba-c) is an

acceptable answer to (81A), though (81Ba) was somewhat preferred by the informants.

(81) A: What did the boys do?

B: a . T-u tok-o’b lool-o’b’. (YM)

PFV-A3 pluck.pl flower.pl

b. Lool-o’b’ t-u tok-o’b .

flower.pl PFV-A3 pluck.pl

c. Chen t’ok-lool-o’ob t-u meent-aj-o’ob.

only pluck-flower.pl PFV-A3 do.CMPL.pl

‘They have done (only) flower-plucking.’

45

5.6. Summary and Outlook

In our small sample of languages that allow the fronting of focused phrases and in which

focus is linked to an accent, we have found much support for the view that focus movement

reduces to partial focus movement understood as the attraction of an accent: in most of the

languages considered, we found clear evidence for the existence of partial focus fronting. We

saw that partial and complete focus movement may differ with respect to connotations.

Finding a detailed account of such differences remains on our research agenda.

Another aspect that goes beyond the scope of the present study is the grammar of fronted foci

in languages in which focus is not realized prosodically. Their displacement is not accounted

for on the basis of a process that attracts a phrase with an accent.

Notice now that an object can be fronted in VP-focus utterances in a number of African

languages as well. In Somali (see Svolacchia, Mereu and Puglielli 1995: 73f.) both questions

in (82A) can be answered by either of the options in (82B).

(82) A: a. Cali muxuu sameeyay? (Som.)

Cali what he did

b. Cali yuu dilay?

Cali whom beat

B: a. Cali Maryan buu dilay.

Cali Mary foc beat

b. Maryan buu dilay Cali.

Mary foc beat Cali

The pair (82Aa)-(82Bb) is of particular interest in the present context, since it seems to

instantiate partial focus fronting in a language with morphological focus marking. Gurune

(Gur.) (Andreas Haida, p.c.) seems to have an obligatory morphological focus marking for

objects, viz. by la for in situ constructions, and ti for displaced objects. Apparently, the object

can also be preposed when the VP is in focus, as in (83Bb).

46

(83) A: a. fO boti fO eN la beni? (Gur.)

you like you do foc what

b. Beni to fO bota fO eNe?

B: a. Mam boti eNme la boolE

I like play foc football

‘I like to play football.’

b. BoolE ti mam bota ti eNme

football foc I like ti play

Hartmann and Zimmermann (2004) give a careful analysis of Hausa (Ha.) focus

constructions. They argue that there is no prosodic marking of focus in situ, and no obligatory

morphological reflex. Focus phrases can, but need not, be moved to the left periphery. They

also observe that the preposing of the direct object may occur in IP- or VP-focus utterances.

(84) A: What happened?

B: Dabboobi-n jeejìi nee mutàanee su-kà kaamàa. (Ha.)

animals-of bush prt men 3pl-rel.perf catch

‘The men caught wild animals.’

Before one can discuss what analysis is appropriate for such apparent instances of partial

focus fronting in languages with morphological focus marking or without any focus marking

at all, the ‘driving force’ for such displacements needs to be identified. If a language has no

formal means of in situ focus marking at all (as Hartmann and Zimmermann 2004 argue for

Hausa), the mechanics of movement cannot involve such means either, for obvious reasons.

This leads one to suspect that the factor responsible for movement in (84B) is neither related

to formal nor to semantic aspects of information structure in a strict sense. Indeed Hartmann

and Zimmermann (2004) propose that movement serves the purpose of highlighting a

47

‘salient’ element in (84B).20 The crucial test for whether (82) - (84) are in line with what we

found for Czech and German is whether parts of idioms (that cannot be ‘salient’) can be

fronted in these languages as well, but we have no evidence on this. We will thus leave it

open how (82) - (84) should be accounted for in our model.21

6. Overt and covert focus movement revisited

6.1. Some characteristics of overt focus movement

We have argued that the movement of focus phrases should not be analyzed in terms of a

semantic/pragmatic focus feature. Rather, Comp attracts the closest accented phrase in many

languages, and this often yields a situation in which a phrase in focus is overtly displaced. We

wish to conclude the treatment of such dependencies with a brief discussion of whether

properties typically attributed to overt focus movement can be captured in such a model as

well.

Rizzi (1997) argued that focus and topic movement differ syntactically. Topic fronting

obligatorily involves clitic doubling (85a,b), but such clitics are incompatible with focus

fronting (85c,d). Focus movement (capitalized) shows weak crossover effects (86b), but topic

movement does not (86a).

(85) a. Il tuo libro, lo ho comprato. (It.)

the your book it have.I bought

‘(As for) your book, I’ve bought it.’

20 As M. Zimmermann (p.c.) points out, preposed material in Hausa is obligatorily marked by High tone raising.

Fronting could therefore also be linked to a prosodic property, the difference to other languages being that

movement would be obligatory. One could therefore also say that the phrase is rather fronted in order to receive

prosodic prominence, cf. Manfredi (2004).

21 The presence of object focus agreement morphology on the verb shows up with both narrow (object) and wide

(VP-) focus in Kolyma Yukaghir (Maslova 2003). This shows that morphological object prominence is

compatible with wide focus not just in dependent but also in head marking languages.

48

b. *Il tuo libro, ho comprato.

c. *IL TUO LIBRO, lo ho comprato.

‘It is your book that I have bought.’

d. IL TUO LIBRO ho comprato.

(86) a. Giannii, suai madre loi ha sempre apprezzato. (It.)

Gianni, his mother him has always appreciated

‘As for Gianni, his mother has always appreciated him.’

b. ??GIANNIi, suai madre ha sempre apprezzato.

‘It is Gianni that his mother has always appreciated.’

Little needs to be said in this context if we continue to confine our attention to focus

movement. The feature that Comp attracts in partial focus fronting is a property

(accentuation) that does not belong to the set of l-related features in the sense of Chomsky

(1986). Therefore, partial focus movement is an instance of A-bar-movement, and triggers

weak crossover effects for the reasons that make other instances of A-bar-movement behave

in the same way. Clitic doubling is impossible for focus phrases that sit in situ as well, so the

ungrammaticality of (85c) is expected.

For languages that have a choice between an in situ and an ex situ focus strategy, it has often

been claimed that ex situ focus comes with additional pragmatic properties (see Drubig 2003,

a.o.): it must be ‘exhaustive’ or ‘contrastive’. This is still subject to discussion (see, e.g.,

Wedgwood 2003 for arguments against semantic encoding of exhaustivity or identification in

the preverbal position targeted by stressed elements in Hungarian) and we are not fully

convinced that this claim correctly characterizes Czech and German, but for the purposes of

the present paper, we need not go into this issue at all: partial and ‘complete’ focus

movement do not differ in this dimension.22

22 Probably, the effect is due to the fact that the already prominent accented phrase gets extra prominence by

being placed in the left periphery. This prominence must then be ‘justified’ interpretively.

49

6.2. Is there Covert Focus Movement?

Our accent-related reinterpretation of focus movement differs from the theories working with

semantically defined focus features in an important way. Having an accent is a formal

property of an element, related to its phonological shape. Since no prosodic information is

present at Logical Form, there is no room for LF focus movement in our approach, be it

partial or complete. This is in contrast to/with theories assuming that focus is represented in

configurational terms at LF, and that both overt and covert movement are means of mapping

a phrase into the position adequate for its informational status. In fact, the postulation of

covert focus movement stood at the very beginning of reflections on the nature of LF

(Chomsky 1976, 1981, Huang 1981).

A first expectation following from the existence of covert focus movement at LF relates to

islandhood. One expects that a focus XP in situ should not occur in syntactic islands out of

which it has to move at LF. Likewise, other constraints on movement should be satisfied.

Huang (1981) argues that this prediction is borne out in Chinese. However, it has already

been noted in Chomsky (1981:238) that a number of constraints on movement are not

respected by in situ focus. This is illustrated in (87) for the ECP/that-trace effect.

(87) a. I don’t think that JOHN will win.

b. I wonder how JOHN solved the problem. (Chomsky 1981: 238)

c. *who do you think that _ will win

The ‘standard’ operator movement theory of focus placement is therefore obliged to make

extra assumptions that allow covert focus movement to escape the ECP in (87a-b). This may

not be too easy a task, since in situ wh-phrases seem affected by the ECP - (88). Similar

problems arise, e.g., in the context of the Subject Condition - (89). See Rooth (1996) for

further examples in which in situ focus would have to be moved out of syntactic islands.

(88) ?*Who thinks that who will win?

(89) a. The brother of JOHN has kissed Mary, not the brother of Bill.

50

b. *Who did the brother of _ kiss Mary.

We can conclude that island and movement constraint data at least do not support the view

that there is covert focus movement.23 This is a relevant difference between wh-movement

and accent-related movement.

Wold (1995) brings forward data such as (90) and (91) that constitute a serious challenge to

the concept of covert focus movement. Suppose that the focus XP bound by a focus sensitive

operator such as only moves to a position at least as high as that operator at LF (e.g., to the

specifier position of an ONLY-phrase cf. Kayne 1998). This implies that a bound pronoun

must be moved out of the scope of the phrase binding it (see (90b) as an LF for (90a)), and

that a quantifier with narrow scope (as in (91a)) must be moved to a position c-commanding

the quantifier that takes scope over it (illustrated in (91b)).

(90) a. Mary only1 asked Bill which boy2 will bring [his2 mother]F1.

b. Mary only1 [his2 mother] 1 [VP asked Bill which boy2 will bring t1].

(91) a. Mary only1 thought that every boy would bring [a teddy bear]F1.

b. Mary only1 [a teddy bear]F1 [VP thought that every boy would bring t1].

Such examples come very close to being fatal for a theory postulating covert focus

movement. Covert movement is a matter of LF. LF is meant to be a representation of

23 Sentences like (i) were argued to show island sensitivity of association with focus: only the whole island –

(ic) may move, cf. Drubig (1994). However, Reich (2003) argues that the ungrammaticality of (ia) is an

epiphenomenon of the island-sensitivity of wh-phrases – (ii), due to which the wh-question underlying (i) needs

to have a form of (iii). If in a congruent Q/A-pair the focus in the answer corresponds to the wh-phrase in the

question, the answer in (i) has to contain the whole complex DP, which is not the case in (ia).

(i) He didn’t interrogate the man who invited the ex-convict with the RED shirt, but

a. *the BLUE shirt/ *the ex-convict with the BLUE shirt.

c. the man who invited the ex-convict with the BLUE shirt.

(ii) *Who did he interrogate the man who invited t?

(iii) Who did he interrogate? The man who invited the ex-convict with the RED shirt?

51

quantifier scope and quantificational binding in terms of c-command relations. The examples

in (90) and (91) show that the scope of quantifiers and the ‘scope’ of a focus phrase cannot be

represented structurally in terms of c-command within the same representation. Given that

the idea that scope and binding are represented structurally at LF is well supported, (90) and

(91) show that focus is not structurally represented at LF. There is no covert focus movement.

The examples are only ‘very close’ to being fatal for the following reasons. First, one might

argue, following Vallduví (1995) and Zubizarreta (1998) that such and similar data merely

show that we need an independent syntactic level of information structure in addition to LF.

This is, certainly, a possibility. Note, however, that very little (if anything) can be gained by

assuming covert focus movement for building ‘information structure’ (island predictions are

not borne out, and weak crossover data can find another explanation, see below), while a very

high price is paid: the serious complication of the architecture of grammar implied by the

postulation of a new level of representation with quite an unclear relation to LF - at least in

the domain where there are truth conditional consequences of information structure (bound

focus), LF should be able to ‘see’ what is going on in information structure. Therefore, we do

not consider the postulation of an extra level a desirable result.

The other survival strategy for covert focus movement in the light of (90) and (91) would be

to simple declare it not responsible for the interpretation of bound focus, or by questioning

the validity of the representations (90-91b). In the former case, one would need to assume

that bound focus can be interpreted in situ, but then, there is no good reason left for not

applying the mechanisms of in situ interpretation to the case of free focus as well. In the latter

case, one would have to show that a movement not placing the crucial elements out of the

scope of the other quantifier would serve the needs of focus interpretation as well. Again, one

may wonder why the strategies then needed to link only and the focus would not work when

the focus XP is left in situ. We therefore believe that (90) - (91) make the existence of covert

focus movement highly unlikely.

52

Even the strongest argument in favour of covert focus movement introduced by Chomsky

(1976), viz. weak crossover effects, is unconvincing. (92) does not have the interpretation

(93), i.e., she cannot be bound by ‘only Mary’. This would be explained if we assume that

only Mary moves upward at LF, crossing over the coindexed pronoun she which yields the

weak crossover effect we are familiar with in the context of (92).

(92) The man she met liked only MARY

(93) only x=Mary: the man x met liked x

(94) ?*whoi does the woman hei likes invite ti

However, Rochemont (1986) notes that contrastive focus may give rise to constellation that

should be excluded by the weak crossover condition if there is focus movement at LF: This is

exemplified by the following dialogue, in which he and John may co-refer in the final

utterance.

(95) A: Sally and the woman John loves is leaving the country today.

B: I thought that the woman he loves has BETRAYED Sally.

A: No, the woman he loves has betrayed JOHN.

(95) also differs from (93) in that he and John corefer in (95), there is no need for a binding

relation. (92) allows for a reading, too, in which she and Mary are coreferent. Quite in

general, a focused NP can be coreferent with a pronoun to its left.

(96) only x=Mary: the man Mary met liked x

What needs to be excluded is the establishment of a binding relation (rather than coreference)

between the focus-NP and the pronoun. As Rooth (1985, 1996) points out, binding

presupposes that the binder undergoes a scope taking operation, which is constrained by weak

crossover effects. According to Rooth, it is this scope taking operation (QR) that yields the

weak crossover effect in all binding relations quite independent of whether the affected

phrase is in focus (as it is in (92)) or not. We do not need to assume focus movement if we

53

want to explain (92) - it suffices to assume QR (or to assume that binding presupposes

surface c-command).

6.3. Summary

The preceding sections have shown that the concept of covert focus movement is not well

supported. This insight helps to decide between accounts of the overt displacement of focused

NPs. If the property responsible for their overt displacement were semantically defined, there

should be LF focus movement as well, since all other well established movement types come

in a covert and an overt version. The postulation of an overt movement attracting focus

phrases would thus constitute an anomaly in the theory of grammar. The accent based theory

we propose here helps to avoid that problem: there are no accents at LF, so there can be no

LF- attraction process based on that feature.

Consequently, we arrive at a theory that comes quite close to what Rooth (1985)24 proposed:

no rules other than those phonologically interpreting focus make reference to focus in

grammar. All other ‘focus’ effects are mediated by accentuation.

7. Conclusions

The starting point of the paper was the observation that the fronting of elements carrying

nuclear accent in Cz. and Ge. does not necessarily result in structures with unambiguous

focus-background division (partial focus movement). Crucial evidence comes from idiomatic

expressions, which need not lose their idiomatic meaning if the element with main

prominence is fronted. As it is not plausible to argue for an information-structural division in

idioms, the fronting cannot be attributed to a semantic focus feature.

24 Note, however, that Rooth’s focus-in-situ theory may have shortcomings that do not arise for the structured

meaning approach to focus/background-structures based on movement, cf. von Stechow (1981, 1991). See

Reich (2002, 2003) for a combination of the structured meaning approach with an in situ analysis of focus.

54

The observed kind of movement allows long-distance dependencies (in contrast to a simple

formal movement that is only local) and is sensitive to islands and pied-piping restrictions,

therefore, it can be characterized as a syntactic A-bar movement.

Crucially, the movement not only affects elements identified by accent/prominence, but is

also subject to locality conditions concerning the accent distribution on the interfering

elements. Thus bearing an accent is the crucial property for being attracted and the attraction

is blocked if another accented element intervenes between the goal and the target. Main

evidence can be again found with idioms. Although in rich enough contexts, potential

accented interveners can be deaccented due to their contextual saliency, idioms involving

more phrasal parts require their accentuation, otherwise their idiomatic meaning gets lost.

Importantly, idioms do not allow the fronting of lower accented element across higher ones,

i.e. only the leftmost accented element can be fronted.

Thus the account can be extended to a general attraction of accented phrases, regardless of

whether they carry a nuclear or a prenuclear pitch accent.

The ‘discontinuous’ focus/background division is not limited to VP- or IP-focus

interpretation, also accented parts of DPs can be attracted, subject to the same locality

conditions. On the other hand, pied-piping of larger structures than the semantic focus is

possible as well. From the syntactic perspective, displacement of minimal amount of

material, as long as it is compatible with general principles constraining movement, may be

advantageous over pied-piping. On the other hand, pied-piping of the whole material

corresponding to semantic focus may be advantageous on processing grounds.

In the proposed theory, movement of semantic focus can be dispensed with, as it is just a

special case of partial focus movement. The movement is driven by a feature sensitive to a

formal property of the attracted element - its accent marking.

Cross-linguistic investigation reveals that partial focus movement is quite a common

phenomenon and can be analyzed as attraction of an accented phrase. However, there are

55

different connotations in the usage of partial and complete focus movement across languages

that need to be accounted in more detail. Still, we do not think it is plausible to encode the

various (pragmatic) usage differences in the syntax.

Our results have two major implications for the theory of grammar. First, we have shown that

syntax makes no reference to focus features, which makes it quite unlikely that other

informationally defined distinctions could be syntactically relevant. Distinctions of

information structure relate to the “knowledge base” relative to which language is interpreted,

and we take it to be in line with general minimalist assumptions that syntax does not

communicate directly with that knowledge base. Furthermore, our model presupposes a

cyclic interaction of syntax and phonology, since the identification of accents in a certain

domain must precede attraction in a larger domain. In this respect, our model concurs with

current minimalist theorizing as well.

Sources: [S1] Utopím si ho sám (film script), [S2] Verlorenes Land (film script), [S3] Dobytí

severního pólu Čechem K. Němcem (theatre play), [S4] Hospoda na mýtince (theatre play).

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