The topic of this book is the notion of ‘focus’ and its linguistic characterization. The main thesis is that focus has a uniform grammatical identification only as a syntactic element with – in English at least – a certain systematic phonological interpretation and – presumably universally – a range of semantic interpretations. In broad respects, the framework within this investigation is conducted is that of Chomsky & Lasnik (1977) and the subsequent Government and Binding framework. After considering defining the location of prominence in a focused phrase in terms of constituent structure, the author argues that an argument structure approach to the focus phrase/prominence relation is more promising. This is then exemplified in analyses of cleft focus and constructional focus.
Les mer
1. Preface; 2. Dedication; 3. Introduction; 4. Chapter 1: Accent and Focus; 5. 1.1. The NSR and the NSR'; 6. 1.2. The NSR"; 7. 1.3. Prominence; 8. Chapter 2: The Interpretation of Focus; 9. 2.1. The Presupposition Analysis; 10. 2.2. c-construable; 11. 2.3. Narrow Focus, Contrast, and Default Accent; 12. Chapter 3: The Representation of Focus; 13. 3.1. Focus and Argument Structure; 14. 3.2. The Structure of Discourse; 15. Chapter 4: Constructional Focus; 16. 4.1. The Constructional Focus Principle; 17. 4.2. The Constructional Focus Position; 18. Chapter 5: Cleft Focus; 19. 5.1. The Interpretation of Clefts; 20. 5.2. The Structure of Clefts; 21. 5.3. Cleft Focus Constructions and Parametric Variation; 22. Appendix - On Overt wh Phrases in English Cleft Clauses; 23. Chapter 6: Summary; 24. Footnotes; 25. References
Les mer

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9789027227911
Publisert
1986-01-01
Utgiver
Vendor
John Benjamins Publishing Co
Vekt
430 gr
Høyde
240 mm
Bredde
160 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet

Forfatter