Stylistic fronting at the interface of syntax and discourse

• 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.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Jämförande språkvetenskap och allmän lingvistik (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Language Studies and Linguistics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Coherence feature

EPP-movement

Focus movement

Formal movement

Stylistic inversion

Stylistic preposing

Stylisting fronting

Topicalization

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kap (ämneskategori)

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