General Session - Syntax
Emilio Servidio (University of Siena)
Italian polarity fragments and the nature of nonsententials
Approaches to nonsententials or fragments differ as to whether the seemingly absent syntactic
structure is indeed present at some level of representation or not. Merchant (2004) adopts a deletion
approach to simple XP fragments according to which subsentential utterances are the result of
constituents moving to a left peripheral position (namely a Focus position), with an [E](llipsis)
feature on a functional head triggering non-pronunciation of its complement. Evidence for this
analysis was twofold: connectivity effects support full sentential structure and island effects support
movement. Both kinds of evidence for Merchant’s original examples have been contested (Casielles
2006, Valmala 2007, Barros 2012).
Here I discuss the class of Italian fragments in (1), that I argue to support an analysis à la Merchant.
The interpretation is as expected under the assumption of a theory of Contrastive Topics (CTop)
like Büring (2003). A sentence with a CTop addresses a question that belongs to a set of questions
that are part of a strategy to answer a superquestion currently under discussion. In the relevant
cases, the set includes polar questions such that alternatives for the CTop substitutes for it, see (2).
In analogous contexts, on the other hand, a simple fragment (interpreted as an information focus) is
infelicitous: see the contrast in (3). Unlike in Büring’s examples, here the subquestions are not whquestions on a constituent, but polar questions. To the extent that the two can be assimilated, one
can regard answers with sì and no as expressing polarity focus (Cf. Krifka 2001).
As for syntactic analyses, Spanish equivalents of these fragments have been studied by Depiante
(1999) and Vicente (2006). Unlike the former, I argue that the XP is a Contrastive Topic rather than
in a Focus position. Unlike the latter, I propose that no is in a Focus position. See my proposal in
(4).
The fragments are degraded when extracted out of islands (5), which is evidence for the view that at
least this class of fragments is derived via movement and deletion (Cf. Merchant 2004). In Italian,
the topicalization process called clitic left dislocation is known to be island-sensitive (Cinque
1990), so I propose that the clitic left dislocation of CTop across an island boundary is what makes
(5) unacceptable.
This deletion analysis is consistent with cartographic studies that assume that in the left periphery a
CTop is rigidly ordered before a Foc as in (6) (Frascarelli and Hinterhölzl 2007). Opinions diverge
as to whether this FocP is bound to be contrastive (Rizzi 1997) or not (Brunetti 2004), or different
Foc positions exist in Italian or in related languages (Cruschina 2011). I will argue that this turns
out to be immaterial to my analysis, since the domain of polarities trivially satisfies the properties
attributed to contrastive focus: membership in a finite set, saliency, exhaustivity (Molnár 2002).
Examples
(1) a. Gianni
sì.
Gianni
yes.
b. Il libro
sì.
The book
yes
c. A casa
no.
At home
yes
d. Andare al mare
Go to the beach
(2)
no.
no
a. Gianni è venuto alla cena sociale?
1
Did Gianni come at the social dinner?
b. Gianni Sì (= GianniCT è venuto alla cena sociale).
c.
[[Gianni Sì (= GianniCT è venuto alla cena sociale)]]ct = {{ [[Gianni è venuto alla cena
sociale]], [[Gianni non è venuto alla cena sociale]] }, { [[Maria è venuta alla cena sociale]], [[Maria non
è venuta alla cena sociale]] }, { [[Luca è venuto alla cena sociale]], [[Luca non è venuto alla cena
sociale]] } … }
(3)
a. I dottorandi sono venuti alla cena sociale?
‘Did the grad students come to the social dinner?’
b. #Gianni.
‘Gianni.’
c. Gianni sì.
‘Gianni came.’
(4) [CTop Gianni [ Top [FocP sì [ Foc [ … [IP è venuto ]]]]]]
(5) i. a. Conosci i compagni che hanno fatto un regalo a ognuno dei ragazzi?
‘Do you know the friends that gave a present to each of the kids?’
b. #A Gianni no.
To Gianni no
ii. a. Avverti tua madre prima di andare da qualche parte?
‘Do you tell your mother before you go somewhere?’
b. #In palestra no.
To the gym no
(6) [ShiftP A-Topic [ContrP C-Topic [FocP [FamP* G-Topic [FinP [IP … ]]]]]]
References
Barros, M. (2012) Sluiced fragment answers: another puzzle involving islands and ellipsis. Snippets, 25, 5-6.
Brunetti, L. (2004) A Unification of Focus. Padua: CLUEP.
Büring, D. (2003) On D-trees, beans, and B-Accents. Linguistics and Philosophy, 26, 511–545.
Casielles, E. (2006) Big questions, small answers. In L. Progovac et al., (pp. 117-145).
Cinque, G. (1990) Types of A’-Dependecies. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.
Cruschina, S. (2011) Discourse-Related Features and Functionl Projections. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Depiante, M. (2000) The Syntax of Deep and Surface Anaphora: A Study of Null Complement Anaphora and
Stripping/Bare Argument Ellipsis. University of Connecticut: Ph.D. Thesis.
Frascarelli, M. and R. Hinterhölzl (2007) Types of topics in German and Italian. In K. Schwabe and S. Winkler (eds.)
On Information Structure, Meaning and Form, (pp. 87–116). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Krifka, M. (2001) For a structured meaning account of questions and answers (revised version) In C. Fery & W.
Sternefeld (eds.), Audiatur Vox Sapientia. A Festschrift for Arnim von Stechow, (pp. 287-319) Berlin: Akademie
Verlag.
Merchant, J. (2004) Fragments and ellipsis. Linguistics and Philosophy 27, 661-738.
Molnár, V. (2002) Contrast in a contrastive perspective.’In H. Hasselgård, S. K.A. Johansson, B. Behrens and C.
Fabricius-Hansen (eds.) Information Structure in a Cross-linguistic Perspective, (pp. 147-161). Amsterdam / New
York: Rodopi.
Progovac, L., K. Paesani, E. Casielles and E. Barton. (2006) The Syntax of Nonsententials: Multidisciplinary
Perspectives. Amsterdam : John Benjamins.
Valmala, V. (2007) The syntax of little things. In Y. Falk (ed.) Proceedings of the 23rd Israel Association for
Theoretical Linguistics Conference. Available online at http://linguistics.huji.ac.il/IATL/23/.
Vicente, L. (2006) Negative short replies in Spanish. In J. van de Weijer and B. Los (eds.) Linguistics in the
Netherlands 2006, (pp. 199-211). Amsterdam : John Benjamins.
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