dc.identifier

ECF_article_1076

dc.title

Scrambling as verum focus. German ‘Scrambling’ meets Romance ‘Anaphoric Anteposition’

dc.contributor.author

Cognola Federica

dc.publisher

Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing

dc.type

Research Article

dc.language.iso

en

dc.identifier.uri

http://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/en/edizioni4/riviste/annali-di-ca-foscari-serie-occidentale/2017/1/scrambling-as-verum-focus/

dc.description.abstract

In this paper I demonstrate that in Mòcheno, a German dialect spoken in Northern Italy, scrambling, i.e. the movement of any constituent above sentential adverbs and below the finite verb, is permitted like in Continental Germanic languages. Unlike in these languages, however, leftward movement is not triggered by specificity or scope-fixing (A-scrambling) or by the need to check any topic or contrastive/new-information focus discourse-features (A’-scrambling). By relying on information structure, the syntax of modal particles and the distribution of scrambling in sentences with fronted operators, I provide evidence that scrambling in Mòcheno triggers a verum focus reading on the truth value of the sentence and involves a type of focus movement to a FocusP in CP. That scrambling can be associated with verum focus is a unicum among Continental Germanic languages, which I show follows from a reanalyis of the properties of Germanic focus scrambling under the influence of Romance anaphoric anteposition.

dc.relation.ispartof

Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie occidentale

dc.relation.ispartof

Vol. 51 | September 2017

dc.issued

2017-09-28

dc.dateAccepted

2016-07-11

dc.dateSubmitted

2016-04-12

dc.identifier.issn

dc.identifier.eissn

2499-1562

dc.rights

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License

dc.rights.uri

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

dc.identifier.doi

10.14277/2499-1562/AnnOc-51-17-12

dc.peer-review

yes

dc.subject

Emphatic focus

dc.subject

Modal particles

dc.subject

Verb Second

dc.subject

Information structure