Exploring the Focus-morphology interface: Morpho-syntactic aspects of nonprosodic Focus

Abstract

This paper claims that a constraint-based theory (i.e, OT) can best account for the many manifestations of Focus in typologically diverse languages. We propose an interaction between Discourse Representation Theory (hereafter DRT) (Kamp, 1981; Kamp and Reyle, 1993) and Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince and Smolensky, 1993/2004) to best account for these facts, maintaining that constraint-ranking is the best way to achieve a descriptive and explanatorily adequate analysis of natural data. In particular, we provide a novel sketch of a theoretical account of natural languages that mark Focus morphologically but not prosodically. We also show that modular frameworks cannot account for the facts presented in this paper (see also Perlmutter, 1998 and Teeple, 2007). Thus, there is another advantage to our proposal which has been less frequently discussed but is perhaps more crucial. Our data and the analysis put forth here require parallel evaluation of syntax, phonology, and morphology, which we model within OT. Consequently, our data and analysis offer interesting insights into grammatical theory. The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 provides some background on Focus constructions and presents a selective review of the different ways in which Focus can be expressed in typologically different languages. Section 3 introduces DRT, the OT constraints and develops the analysis. We also present the data of relevant languages in this section. Section 4 summarizes our main claims and findings and draws attention to issues that do not appear to have been explicitly covered in previous research nor in the current paper, thus needing much attention in the future.