Abstract
In Portuguese, though not in French, postverbal subjects provide new information, i.e. in the unmarked case postverbal subjects are foci in Portuguese, not topics, as claimed in Ambar (1988). However, in Portuguese or French wh-questions the postverbal subject does not provide or ask for new information. These postverbal subjects are not foci. These facts lead one to raise the following two questions: (i) why is it that Portuguese syntax allows for a post-verbal topic in wh-questions, an option it typically bans elsewhere?; (ii) why does French only allow for postverbal subjects in stylistic inversion sentences where the postverbal subject is a topic? We shall attempt to provide a unified answer to these two questions here. In line with Kayne & Pollock (1998)-(2001), our main claim will be that despite appearances a topic DP does stand in the left periphery of the input structures in the two languages. That topic position in the CP domain is analogous, though not identical, to the position in which a clitic left dislocated DP stands. The postverbal occurrence of the (topic) subject must result from further remnant movement of the whole IP to a position past the topicalized subject.
Highlights
In neither (1) nor (2),(1) A quem falou o João? ‘To whom spoke João?’(2) À qui a parlé Jean? ‘To whom spoke Jean?’Journal of Portuguese Linguistics, 1 (2002), 119-138120 Manuela Ambar & Jean-Yves Pollock does the postverbal subject provide or ask for new information: o João and Jean are not foci; in such sentences only the wh- words a quem and à qui are foci
This allows for a neat account of the ban of QAD from postverbal subjects in SI and of the minimally different extraction of combien from SI postverbal subjects; independent properties of en cliticization combine with this account of SI to yield the complex array of judgments that speakers pass on adnominal and quantitative en extraction from preverbal and postverbal subjects
The analysis put forth in this article provides us with the first ingredients of an answer to question B, repeated below: What we have been saying in effect is that in both Portuguese and French the topic position is preverbal, more precisely an outer layer of the left periphery, and that SI sentences are only apparent counterexamples to this generalization because IP has moved across that topic position to a ‘higher’ (‘‘GP’’) layer
Summary
120 Manuela Ambar & Jean-Yves Pollock does the postverbal subject provide or ask for new information: o João and Jean are not foci; in such sentences only the wh- words a quem and à qui are foci. In contexts like (3) Portuguese, though not French, as the ungrammaticality of (4) shows, does allow for a postverbal focus subject:. Where the DP in que+DP strings is interpreted as the only licit element from among a set of invalid alternatives: in (5) Jean is a contrastive focus Elementary facts such as these may lead one to raise the following two questions: A. [TopP Pierrei Top° [IP ti a parlé quand]] Remnant IP movement c. [GP [IP ti a parlé quand] j G°[TopP Pierrei Top° tj ] Wh- Movement d. We shall try to say why Wh- Movement makes Remnant IP movement past the topic position licit in the two languages, thereby providing the first step to a unified answer to questions A and B
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