The accent pattern known as verum focus is commonly understood as an ordinary alternative focus on the truth of a proposition. This standard view, which we call the focus accent thesis (Fat), can be contrasted with the lexical operator thesis (Lot), according to which the accent pattern that looks like focus in languages like German or English is actually not an instance of focus marking, but realizes a lexical verum predicate, whose function is to relate the current proposition to a question under discussion. Although it is hard to distinguish between the Fat and the Lot on the basis of German or English, a broader cross-linguistic perspective seems to favor the Lot. Drawing from fieldwork on Tsimshianic (Gitksan) and Chadic (Bura, South Marghi), we first show that in none of these languages is verum realized in the same way that ordinary alternative focus is marked. This sheds initial doubt on the unity of verum and focus. Secondly, the Fat predicts that a language cannot have co-occuring verum and focus, if it does not allow multiple foci, and that a language should allow them to co-occur if it allows for multiple foci. Again, while it is hard to find counterexamples in German or English, some of the data from our cross-linguistic investigation favor the Lot.
While the expressive function of natural language has received much attention in recent years, the role grammar plays in the interpretation of expressive items has mainly been neglected in the semantic and pragmatic literature. On the other hand, while there have been syntactic studies of some expressive phenomena they do not explicitly connect to recent developments in semantics. This book bridges this gap, showing that semantics and pragmatics alone cannot capture all grammatical particularities of expressive items and that expressivity has strong syntactic reflexes that interact with the semantic interpretation and account for the mismatches between the syntax and semantics of these phenomena. The main thesis he argues for—the hypothesis of expressive syntax—is that expressivity is a syntactic feature, on a par with other established syntactic features like tense or gender. Evidence for this claim is drawn from three detailed case studies of expressive phenomena: expressive adjectives, expressive intensifiers, and expressive vocatives. These expressions exhibit some puzzling properties and by developing an account of them employing minimalist approaches to syntactic features and agreement, the author shows that expressivity, as a syntactic feature, can partake in agreement operations, trigger movement, and syntactically be selected for. This not only provides indirect evidence for the hypothesis of expressive syntax and extends the usefulness of operations on syntactic features operation beyond their traditional domains, but also highlights the hidden role grammar may play for phenomena that are often considered to be solely semantic in nature.
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