TY  - JOUR
AB  - An important challenge in the study of focus constructions is teasing out the properties of the layers of linguistic structure that are involved, in particular identifying which interpretational properties are associated with the syntactic operation at issue, which properties arise through inferential processes, and which properties can be deduced on the basis of the prosodic structure. This article undertakes this challenge in a language with a structurally identifiable left-peripheral position which is employed for the expression of focus, namely, Yucatec Maya. This syntactic configuration comes with a focus interpretation and we show that the occurrence of this construction is not restricted to a subtype of focus corresponding to a truth-conditionally relevant operator. The properties of the syntax-prosody mapping indicate that focus fronting is a syntactic operation that places the material in focus in the maximally prominent partition of the prosodic constituent that contains the predicate.
DA  - 2015
DO  - 10.1086/679041
KW  - information
KW  - prosodic phrasing
KW  - word order
KW  - focus
KW  - exhaustivity
KW  - structure
LA  - eng
IS  - 1
M2  - 1
PY  - 2015
SN  - 0020-7071
SP  - 1-40
T2  - International Journal of American Linguistics
TI  - Licensing Focus Constructions in Yucatec Maya
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0070-pub-27190531
Y2  - 2024-11-21T20:33:21
ER  -