Mica preposing as focus fronting

Abstract

This paper deals with the Italian presuppositional negation marker mica. This particle can surface differently in the negative circuit, e.g. either in a clause-initial or a clause-internal position. However, depending on its position, different types of focus and pragmatic requirements are found. We consider the initial mica as an instance of corrective focus and the clause-internal one as encoding a more generic contrastive focus. We show that this is in line with the recent findings on focus typology of Italian.

The rise and fall of illocutionary negation: Evidence from Veneto

“…Some explanation for the notation: E pi x (w) is defined as the set of worlds conforming to x's knowledge in w; Conv x (w ′ ) is the set of worlds where all the conversational goals of x in w ′ are fulfilled (in a Gricean sense), and CG is the stalnakerian Common Ground at a world w, i.e. the set of propositions that the speakers assume to be true at w. To put it simply, mica indicates that the proposition p, on behalf of conversational goals, should not belong to the Common Ground, based on speaker's knowledge (see also Magistro (2022)). It must be mentioned that the definition given in formula ( 7) is based upon the tradition started by Höhle's (1992) VERUM, an illocutionary operator which expresses the speaker's commitment to the truth of a proposition.…”