UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 12 (2000)
Fronting: The syntax and pragmatics of ‘focus’ and ‘topic’
ANNABEL CORMACK & NEIL SMITH
We argue on conceptual and empirical grounds that there are no dedicated Topic
and Focus heads. Instead, we postulate two semantically trivial heads, Gap
and Fon, which may be merged in the left periphery, with distinct
syntactic and morphological properties. Gap is a Case assigner; Fon
morphologically selects for the PF-interpretable part of some sign. These heads
can be exploited to front phrases which may be pragmatically interpreted as
topic or focus. We further argue that the two fronting mechanisms postulated
can explain certain properties of NPI licensing in English, where Copy
Movement, with or without movement in the PF component, cannot.
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