文档介绍：TOWARDS A TYPOLOGY OF FOCUS
AND FOCUS CONSTRUCTIONS
Hans Bernhard Drubig
University of Tübingen
April 2000
Mailing address: Seminar für Englische Philologie
Wilhelmstr. 50
72074 Tübingen, Germany
E-mail: hans-bernhard.******@uni-
Fax: +49-7071-2975760
Abstract
Departing from the assumption that focus is non-uniform (Kiss 1998) this paper
takes preliminary steps towards a typology of focus and focus constructions.
Focus is taken to be a syntactic feature assigned freely to word level categories at
Numeration licensed either by integration into a wider domain (presentational
focus) of by overt/covert movement to a functional projection headed by a
polarity formative (contrastive/exhaustive focus). Crosslinguistic variation in the
target position of focus movement (sentence-peripheral vs. verb-adjacent) support
the stipulation of two polarity projections, one P and one in INFL, with
different effects on interpretation. The evidence of the WH/focus relationship, on
the other hand, suggests that question and answer instantiate a distinct type of
focus-background partition (completive focus) independent from and orthogonal
to primary information structure. Analyzing clefts as another type pletive
focus constructions solves a serious problem confronting the movement analysis
of narrow focus: in a number of languages showing striking parallels between
focus and relative constructions (Schachter 1973) sentence-peripheral foci bind
resumptive pronouns without WCO or island effect. This paper investigates a cleft
analysis for this type of focus constructions and discusses its typological
implications.
0. Introduction
In the following discussion I propose a typology of focus and focus constructions
which attempts to account for a substantial part of the known crosslinguistic
variation in this domain. The typological approach underlying this proposal was
developed in the course of parative investigation into focus and informatio