Focus movement and focus interpretation in Old English

Abstract

Addressing the current debate on the mapping between focus marking and focus interpretation, the paper presents evidence suggesting that different types of focus correlate with different types of movement of DP-objects in Old English. The analysis of the contexts in which these movement operations occur reveals that if we assume a double base scenario allowing for optional movement both to the left and to the right of the IP, we obtain orders in which the objects firmly correlate with a particular information-structural property. While movement to the left takes place in those cases in which the referent of the object is in a contrastive relation to another entity in the context, rightward movement clearly relates to novelty in the discourse.