Focus–background structure has taken center stage in much current theorizing about sentence prosody, syntax, and semantics. However, both the inventory of focus expressions found cross-linguistically and the interpretive consequences associated with each of these continue to be insufficiently described. This volume aims at providing new observations on the availability and the use of focus markings in Romance languages. In doing so, it documents the plurality of research on focus in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian. Topics covered include constituent fronting and clefting, the position of subjects and focus particles, clitic doubling of objects, and information packaging in complex sentences. In addition, some contributions explore focus–background structure from acquisitional and diachronic angles, while others adopt a comparative perspective, studying differences between individual Romance and Germanic languages. Therefore, this volume is of interest to a broad audience within linguistics, including syntacticians, semanticists, and historical linguists.

Preface

Introduction

Topicalization and focalization in French SI-clauses

Discourse functions of fronted foci in Italian and Spanish

Clefting and discourse organization: Comparing Germanic and Romance

Cleft sentences from Old Portuguese to Modern Portuguese

Fronting and verum focus in Spanish

Additive focus particles in bilingual language acquisition

Major constituent order, information packaging, and narrative structure in two Middle French texts

Grammatical and contextual restrictions on focal alternatives

Verb placement in Old Portuguese

Topic, focus, and background in Italian clauses

Index

 

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