Stylistic fronting at the interface of syntax and discourse

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Abstract

This paper presents a novel analysis of the discourse properties of the phenomenon called "Stylistic Fronting" (SF). The widely held view according to which Stylistic Fronting has no discourse-semantic effects in Icelandic, but is related to topic or focus interpretation in Romance, is challenged. It is argued that SF is not simply triggered by formal features but has relevance for information structure (IS) in both Romance and Scandinavian. The impact of SF on discourse interpretation is, however, dependent on the type of syntactic derivation. In Icelandic, the "stylistic" movement can be either a locally (and information-structurally) restricted "formal movement" (STYL-inversion) into the subject gap without changing the IS-properties of the moved constituent or a "true" discourse-triggered movement (STYL-preposing) with an obligatory contrastive effect. Since SF also seems to vary with respect to syntactic properties and discourse interpretation in Romance, the triggers and interpretive properties of SF in Scandinavian seem not to be as different from those in Romance as generally suggested in the literature.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationArchitecture of Topic
EditorsValéria Molnár, Verner Egeland, Susanne Vinkler
PublisherMouton de Gruyter
Pages373-424
Number of pages52
ISBN (Electronic)9781501504488
ISBN (Print)9781501512612, 9781501524967
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019 Aug 19

Publication series

NameStudies in Generative Grammar (SGG)
Volume136
ISSN (Print)0167-4331

Subject classification (UKÄ)

  • Comparative Language Studies and Linguistics

Free keywords

  • Coherence feature
  • EPP-movement
  • Focus movement
  • Formal movement
  • Stylistic inversion
  • Stylistic preposing
  • Stylisting fronting
  • Topicalization

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