Séminaire de Recherche en Linguistique

Ce séminaire reçoit des conférenciers invités spécialisés dans différents domaines de la linguistique. Les membres du Département, les étudiants et les personnes externes intéressées sont tous cordialement invités.

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Titre Some thoughts on the relationship between focus and wh-phrases
Conférencier Valentina Bianchi (CISCL Siena)
Date mardi 26 mars 2019
Heure 12h15
Salle L208 (Bâtiment Candolle)
Description

On the relation between focus and wh-phrases

One prominent approach to interrogative wh-phrases takes them to contribute to semantic interpretation just a focus value (Beck 2006, Cable 2010 a.o.). On the syntactic side, wh-phrases tend to occupy a focus position cross-linguistically (Rizzi 1997 and related work). Yet a complete assimilation of wh-phrases to focus phrases is not tenable, for at least two empirical reasons:

a) in Italian indirect questions, wh-phrases can follow a constituent fronted to the left-peripheral focus position;

b) in Italian direct wh-questions the wh-phrase does not bear the Nuclear Pitch Accent, unlike focussed phrases (Bianchi, Bocci & cruschina 2017).

In this talk propose that there are two routes to building a wh-questions within the framework of AnderBois (2011,2012): the first possibility is that the wh-phrase bears  a [focus] feature, yielding en existential presupposition; the second possibility is that an inquisitive closure operator is inserted on top of the wh-clause. I will discuss possible instances of these two cases  with regard to Italian and to the Northern Italian dialects discussed in Manzini & Savoia (2011), Manzini (2014), Bonan (2017).

AnderBois, S. 2011. Issues and alternatives. PhD thesis, UCSC.

Bocci, G., V. Bianchi, S. Cruschina. 2017. Prosody tracks cyclic movement: evidence from Italian wh-questions. Paper presented at the GLOW 2017 Workshop on Syntax-phonology interface.

Bonan, C. 2017. Arguing against a one-fits-all derivation for Northern Italian ‘insituness’. In J. Garzonio (ed) Quaderni di lavoro ASIt. Vol 20.

Manzini, M:R: & L. Savoia. Wh-in situ & wh-doubling in Northern Italian Varieties: Against Remnant Movement.

Rizzi, L. 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. In L. Haegeman (ed.), Elements of Grammar, 281–337. Kluwer.

   
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