description
The aim of the workshop is to achieve a systematic classification of polarity emphasis phenomena. While there have been a number of recent publications on such phenomena for individual languages, there is no overarching description of their typology. Moreover, the proposals have been formulated largely independently of each other, leading to varied terminology and varied analyses, and have been published in various places, sometimes without cross-references. Preliminary enquiry has suggested that most of the expressions of polarity emphasis discussed in the literature so far are to be classified as main clause phenomena (MCP) or root transformations, that is, patterns by and large restricted to main clauses, possibly including a restricted set of subordinate clauses known to be transparent for such phenomena/to pattern with root clauses (see Hooper and Thompson 1973 and Emonds 1970, 1976 for early discussion). Other expressions of polarity emphasis have been shown to have a freer distribution.
This difference in distribution of polarity emphasising expressions has been noted before; Hyman and Watters (1984) in their large-scale study of several African languages on what they call "auxiliary focus"– emphatic assertion as expressed through focus on the auxiliary – show that while in most languages, it is restricted to main clause types, potentially including embedded clause types that can be assimilated to main clauses (1984:256), emphatic assertion through auxiliary focus is generally available in all clause types in some languages. They propose that in languages in which auxiliary focus is what we call a MCP, "focus marking is grammatically [...] controlled" (1984: 256), while in languages in which it is unrestricted, it is pragmatically controlled.
A number of recent papers have proposed accounts of those expressions of polarity emphasis which appear to be MCP in terms of specialized structure in an articulated left periphery (LP). Most of the phenomena in question have been argued by the relevant authors to implicate an operator in a left-peripheral functional projection (variously named SpecFocP, PolFocP, VerFocP and the like). On the other hand, emphatic polarity phenomena in other languages do not display this restricted distribution, and are possibly what Hyman and Watters call "pragmatically controlled".
The question arises whether with respect to the observed cross-linguistic differences in the expression of polarity emphasis, the crucial distinction is between syntactically vs. pragmatically controlled phenomena, or whether a purely syntactic approach e.g. within the cartographic framework is sufficient. An approach of the latter type would take the difference to reside in the different syntactic positions of the expressions of polarity emphasis, viz. within the left periphery (MCP) or within the TP-domain (unrestricted). Duffield's (2007) treatment of do insertion in English is an example of such an approach. Proposals of TP-internal focus phrases, made to account for other phenomena might be applied here with success (cf. the work of e.g. Jayaseelan or Belletti). On the other hand, a purely syntactic account may not be able to capture the discourse effects associated with specific patterns and it could be that a radically pragmatic account may offer a closer fit to the data.
The contributions to this workshop will take a serious look at the nature of the empirical differences. While many patterns encoding polarity emphasis can be argued to be syntactically encoded in the clausal left periphery and (therefore?) to be MCP, English emphatic do may be an instance of a language where polarity emphasis is syntactically encoded within the TP-domain (Duffield 2007), and is not a MCP. Flemish en and Portuguese ele, on the other hand, appear to be pragmatically controlled, and are not MCP. Based on the cross-linguistic evidence available to us so far, also taking into account Hyman and Watters' (1984) results, there appears to be a strong, perhaps universal, positive correlation between syntactic encoding (mostly in the clausal left periphery) and MCP-status and a positive correlation between pragmatic control and unrestricted availability. The question arises, of course, whether other possible types of polarity emphasis should be unattested for principled reasons: if syntactic encoding in the left periphery makes a polarity emphasis phenomenon a MCP, a language with syntactic encoding within CP, but free distribution should be excluded. If pragmatically controlled phenomena are generally unrestricted in their distribution, a language with pragmatically controlled polarity emphasis that is an MCP should be unexpected. As there also appears to be a strong correlation between syntactic encoding and the clausal left periphery, the question arises whether a phenomenon can be pragmatically controlled in the left periphery, or whether a phenomenon can be syntactically encoded within TP, but still be a MCP?
Clearly, these considerations have wider implications for our understanding of the general architecture of grammar, in particular for the cartographic enterprise, which aims at "syntacticizing as much as possible the interpretive domains" (Cinque and Rizzi 2010: 63). The discussion also brings to the fore the more general question of the one to one mapping relation between meaning and syntactic structure (Holmberg 2010). This workshop, and the special issue of Lingua that will be the result of it, aims to provide an answer to these questions.
Questions & information: anne.breitbarth(at)ugent.be and karen.declercq(at)ugent.be