On the syntax and pragmatics of some clause-peripheral positions

Abstract

The criterial approach to scope-discourse semantics puts forth the hypothesis that the clausal peripheries are populated by functional heads attracting phrases to their specifiers and determining interpretive properties at the interfaces with sound and meaning. In this paper we address some interpretive properties of positions dedicated to topic and focus. Through the use of short discourse fragments such as question-answer pairs it is possible to highlight some conditions which render topic use felicitous, and which distinguish between different types of focus such as new information focus, corrective focus and mirative focus. A systematic use of such testing environments is an essential component of the cartography of syntactic structures and of the study of the interface properties of cartographic representations.