Untitled - Lear

Focus in IP: the Particle ma in Florentine
raise to a position adjacent to ma, say the specifier of the low Focus projection. This
first hypothesis is exemplified by the structure in (14):
(14) IP
2
maP
2
ma FocP
2
XP Foc’
2
Foc° vP
This first hypothesis implies that the contrastive interpretation encoded by ma
requires also the checking of the [Focus] feature. In other words, “contrast” is a
property given by ma to an element already marked as Focus.
Before adopting this hypothesis, some other facts must be considered.
2. More about the syntax of ma
In this section I will describe more in detail two properties of the syntax of ma
that can be provided as evidence that the focused item is moved from its basic
position, i.e. the focused item is not in VP or vP. The first one concerns
Marginalization (“Emarginazione” in the sense of Antinucci and Cinque, 1977) and
clitic Right Dislocation, the second one the focusing of the entire VP.
2.1 Marginalization and Right Dislocation
So far I have examined mainly sentences with only one internal argument.
Consider now the case where there are two internal arguments, for instance a direct
object and a dative PP. In this case, it is possible of course to focus by the particle
ma one of them. However, the non-focused argument must appear as a clitic Right
Dislocation. This is shown in (15):
(15) a. l’ho dato ma [a Mario]focus, i libro (non a Giorgio).
it have given ma to Mario the book not to Giorgio
‘I gave the book to Mario (not to Giorgio).’
b. gl’ho dato ma [i libro]focus, a Mario (non i giornale).
to-him have given ma the book to Mario not the newspaper
‘I gave the book to Mario (not the newspaper).’
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