Anti-pied-piping
Kenyon Branan, Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine
January 2023 

Anti-pied-piping is a widespread but understudied phenomenon where a language targets a proper subpart of the logical focus for focus morphosyntax: for example, focus particle placement or focus movement. We show that anti-pied-piping is attested in over 60 languages from over 40 distinct language groups. We present a theory of focus particle syntax/semantics that involves severing the pronounced position of a focus particle and the logical position of its corresponding semantic contribution, which successfully accounts for both anti-pied-piping and pied-piping behavior. Constraints on attested anti-pied-piping behavior and its interaction with movement show that particle placement takes place at particular, punctuated points in the derivation, in a cyclic model of syntactic structure-building. We also discuss the relation of particle placement to other processes such as linearization and stress assignment.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/005351 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	accepted for publication in Language
keywords:	focus particles, focus movement, focus association, anti-pied-piping, pied-piping, particle placement, cyclic spell-out, stress assignment, semantics, syntax
previous versions:	v2 [June 2022] v1 [August 2020]
Downloaded:	1500 times

 

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