The distribution of preverbal en in (West) Flemish: Syntactic and interpretive properties

Abstract

The present paper consists of two parts. We first show that the Flemish preverbal morpheme en in negative sentences differs from superficially similar items in other languages such as French both in terms of distribution and in terms of interpretation: Flemish en is dependent on finite Tense and conveys contrastive focus on the negative polarity of the clause. In the second part of the paper, we develop a new syntactic analysis of en and argue that although en syntactically encodes (low) focus, the contrastive effects associated with it are pragmatically inferred through the interaction of the focal interpretation with the discourse context. That is, we conclude that focus and contrast can be dissociated and that not all expressions of contrast are syntacticized.