Narrow Focus on Pre- Nominal Modifiers in Spanish Brad Hoot University of Illinois at Chicago...

Narrow Focus on Pre-Nominal Modifiers in

Spanish

Brad HootUniversity of Illinois at Chicago

([email protected])

Hispanic Linguistics SymposiumOctober 14-17, 2010Bloomington, Indiana

An Optimality Theoretic Analysis

Outline1. The puzzle2. Rightmost focus

1. P-movement2. Conflicting constraints

3. Analysis1. Stress2. Syntactic well-formedness3. Stress-focus correspondence4. Stress-focus correspondence revised

4. Implications/Conclusions

HLS 2010 2Brad Hoot

The puzzle Stress and focus must generally correspond

(1) Who saw a movie? (Subject focus)a. [My MOM]F saw a movie.b. # [My mom]F saw a MOVIE.(2) What did your mom see? (Object focus)a. # My MOM saw [a movie]F.b. My mom saw [a MOVIE]F.(3) How many people saw a movie? (Focus on the number)a. [THREE]F people saw a movie.b. # [Three]F PEOPLE saw a movie.c. # [Three]F people saw a MOVIE.

HLS 2010 3Brad Hoot

The puzzle Stress in Spanish must generally be rightmost

(4) Mi mamá vio una PELíCULA.my mom saw a movie‘My mom saw a movie.’

(5) # Mi MAMÁ vio una película.

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The puzzle Focused constituents in Spanish are

generally rightmost(6) Who saw a movie? (Subject focus)

a. Vio una película [mi MAMÁ]F

b. # [Mi mamá]F vio una PELÍCULA.

c. # [Mi MAMÁ]F vio una película.

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The puzzle However, the case of pre-nominal modifiers

complicates this picture(7) How many police officers arrested the suspect? (Narrow focus on the number)a. Lo arrestaron [cuatro]F POLICÍAS.Cl.Acc arrested four police‘Four police officers arrested him.’b. # Lo arrestaron [CUATRO]F policías.c. # [Cuatro]F policías lo ARRESTARON.

Stress does not correspond with focus, which is unusual

Yet the subject is still rightmost

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The goals of this talk Provide an analysis of the data in (7) in

terms of constraint conflict Discuss the implications of this analysis

for our understanding of focus realization

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Two quick notes I’m concerned with presentational/information focus, not

contrastive/emphatic focus, which has different behaviors.

It should be noted that not all speakers agree with the judgment of (7). Some speakers strongly reject final stress (7a) in favor of stress on the modifier (7b), while others strongly prefer final stress (7a). Perhaps this is a difference of dialect. Fieldwork is currently underway to determine how

widespread this phenomenon is. Nonetheless, this data represents some subset of

Spanish speakers, and those whose varieties are different can also be accounted for under this analysis.

HLS 2010 8Brad Hoot

Rightmost focus: P-movement Perhaps the most influential analysis of focus in

Romance is Zubizarreta (1998) Zubizarreta (1998) analyzes Spanish rightmost

focus in terms of prosodically motivated movement (p-movement)

There are two stress rules, a Nuclear Stress Rule (NSR) and a Focus Prominence Rule (FPR), and when they conflict, p-movement saves the day

HLS 2010 9Brad Hoot

Rightmost focus: P-movement In Zubizarreta’s framework for Spanish, the NSR always

requires rightmost stress The FPR, though, requires stress on the focused constituent If the focused constituent is not the rightmost constituent, the

NSR and the FPR conflict, picking two different elements to stress(8) * FPR NSR

Lori le dio [un erizo]F a Meghanne.Lori Cl.Dat gave a hedgehog to Meghanne‘Lori gave a hedgehog to Meghanne.

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Rightmost focus: P-movement Solution: move the discourse-given

constituent so that the focused constituent is at the end, assigned stress by both rules(9) FPR NSR

Lori le dio a Meghanne [un erizo]F

Lori Cl.Dat gave to Meghanne a hedgehog ‘Lori gave a hedgehog to Meghanne.


Rightmost focus: P-movement However, if p-movement occurs so the NSR and FPR

can both be satisfied, it cannot be the explanation for (7). In (7), the subject is rightmost despite the fact that the

FPR still isn’t satisfied. Stress-focus mismatch can’t be rescued by p-movement.

(7) How many police officers arrested the suspect? a. Lo arrestaron [cuatro]F POLICÍAS.

Cl.Acc arrested four police‘Four police officers arrested him.’


Rightmost focus: Conflicting Constraints Büring & Gutiérrez-Bravo (2006), Gutiérrez-Bravo (2002) and

Samek-Lodovici (2005) analyze focus realization in Romance and Germanic using Optimality Theory

They propose constraints requiring rightward stress, stress-focus correspondence, and syntactic well-formedness, which conflict

In Romance, it is claimed, stress-focus correspondence is undominated

Rightmost stress in Spanish is also claimed to be undominated

Both outrank syntactic well-formedness (for our purposes, this means SVO order)

Thus, stress must be rightmost, and stress and focus must correspond, so the focused constituent must be rightmost


Rightmost focus: Conflicting Constraints

(10) Who saw a movie?(Subject focus)

a. Vio una película [mi MAMÁ]F

saw a movie my momb. # [Mi mamá]F vio una PELÍCULA.

c. # [Mi MAMÁ]F vio una película.


Analysis: Stress Let’s assume a constraint on prosody similar to

Samek-Lodovici’s(11) Align (Head, Right; iP, Right) (Align-iP-R)

The head of each intonational phrase is aligned with the right edge of the phrase.

Violated once for phonological phrase boundary between the intonational phrase head and the intonational phrase’s right

edge. Let’s further assume it is undominated And that it admits gradient violation


Analysis: Syntax Assume constraints on syntactic well-formedness to be low-ranked

EPP: Sentences must have subjects. Stay: No traces

But, if syntactic well-formedness is ranked low, why can’t we get (12)?(12) How many police officers arrested the suspect? Policías lo arrestaron [CUATRO]F tpolicías.police Cl.Acc arrested four‘Four police officers arrested him.’

Not all syntactic constraints are created equal(13) Trace-Government (T-Gov) (Samek-Lodovici 2005)A trace is governed.Violated once for each trace that is not properly governed.

T-Gov is undominated Has the practical upshot of not letting the noun move out from below its modifier


Analysis: Stress-focus correspondence Some constraint requires that stress and focus correspond Let’s take something basic to start with, like Büring & Gutiérrez-

Bravo’s FocusProminence(14) FocusProminence (FP) [Initial formulation]

Focus is most prominent.Violated if the main stress (the iP-level stress) does not correspond to the Foc-marked node(s).

As mentioned, Büring & Gutiérrez-Bravo, Gutiérrez-Bravo, and Samek-Lodovici take some similar constraint to be undominated

In fact, something similar – such as the Stress-Focus Correspondence Principle (Reinhart 2006; Szendrői 2001) or the Focus Prosody Correspondence Principle (Zubizarreta 1998, based on Chomsky 1971 and Jackendoff 1972) – seems to be a part of all analyses of focus across the board


Analysis: Stress-focus correspondence However, as we’ve already seen, stress and focus do not

correspond in the Spanish data presented here Obviously, then, FP can’t be undominated But allowing Align-R to outrank FP isn’t enough – That way we just

end up with (15b)(15) How many police officers arrested the suspect?

a. Arrestaron al sospechoso tres POLICÍAS.Arrested the suspect three police officers‘Three police officers arrested the suspect.’

b. # Tres policías arrestaron al SOSPECHOSO.c. # TRES policías arrestaron al sospechoso.d. # Arrestaron al sospechoso TRES policías.e. * Policías arrestaron al sospechoso TRES.


Analysis: Stress-focus correspondence(16)


Analysis: Stress-focus correspondence FP needs to be reformulated What if it were an alignment constraint, like with stress? In fact, this isn’t that crazy an idea – Truckenbrodt (1999) proposes an

alignment constraint that aligns focus and prosodic structure (specifically, with the edge of an phonological phrase in Chicheŵa), and notes that similar constraints exist in Bengali, Japanese, and Korean(17) FocusProminence (FP) [Revised formulation]

Focus is aligned with prominence.Violated once for each phonological phrase boundary

between main stress (the phonological phrase head that projects the intonational phrase head) and a phonological phrase head corresponding to a Foc-marked node.

This has the practical upshot of penalizing a structure for each ‘step’ away from the focus the main stress falls

This would give the correct predictions


Analysis: Stress-focus correspondence(18)


Analysis: Stress-focus correspondence Reformulating FP gives the correct

predictions for the data It also explains why the subject should be

rightmost despite the fact that the stress-focus mismatch still occurs – the answer is that the mismatch is less severe, that is, it incurs fewer violations of FP


What about other focused modifiers? They seem to have the same behavior

(19) Which Bad Religion record did you buy?a. Compré su [último]F DISCO.bought.1st their latest record‘I bought their latest record.’b. # Compré su [ÚLTIMO]F disco.(20) Which contestant won the prize?a. Ganó el premio el [primer]F CONCURSANTE.won the prize the first contestant‘The first contestant won the prize.’b. # Ganó el premio el [PRIMER]F concursante.c. # El [primer]F concursante ganó el premio. (Regardless of stress) (21) Which platypus did Kalyani buy?a. Kalyani compró [este]F ORNITORRINCO.Kalyani bought this platypus‘Kalyani bought this platypus.’b. # Kalyani compró [ESTE]F ornitorrinco.(22) Which platypus ate all the food?a. Comió toda la comida [este]F ORNITORRINCO.Ate all the food this platypus‘This platypus ate all the food.’b. # Comió toda la comida [ESTE]F ornitorrinco.c. # [Este]F ornitorrinco comió toda la comida. (Regardless of stress)


Implications/Conclusions An analysis was given of (7) based on conflicting

constraints(7) How many police officers arrested the suspect?a. Lo arrestaron [cuatro]F POLICÍAS.Cl.Acc arrested four police‘Four police officers arrested him.’b. # Lo arrestaron [CUATRO]F policías.c. # [Cuatro]F policías lo ARRESTARON.

Constraint Ranking: (23) (T-Gov <<>> Align-iP-R) >> FP >> EPP >> Stay

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Implications/Conclusions Stress-focus correspondence is not absolute

Its violations are gradient It is an alignment constraint, like so many other

constraints on prosody Stress-focus correspondence is not always

undominated It can be outranked by other concerns In most languages, though, it indeed appears to be

undominated, as in English, which is what gives it the appearance of being an either/or constraint – when it’s undominated, even one violation is enough to doom the structure


Implications/Conclusions Those accounts that derive focus FROM stress, like the

Stress-Focus Correspondence Principle of Reinhart (2006) and Szendrői (2001), or the F-marking rules of Selkirk (1995), cannot be correct on this account

There are cases where stress and focus do not in fact correspond, and thus the focus cannot be derived from stress

Instead, this points to an analysis in which focus is determined independently, perhaps based on the pragmatics of the context, and is then required to correspond (as closely as possible) to stress (something like Schwarzschild (1999), perhaps)


ReferencesBüring, D., & Gutiérrez-Bravo, R. 2006. Focus-related constituent order without the NSR: A prosody-

based crosslinguistic analysis. In M. Séamas (Ed.), Syntax at Santa Cruz 3, 41-58.Chomsky, N. 1971. Deep structure, surface structure and semantic interpretation. In D. Steinberg

and L. Jakobovits (Eds.), Semantics: An interdisciplinary reader in philosophy, linguistics, and psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gutiérrez-Bravo, R. 2002. Focus, word order variation and intonation in Spanish and English: An OT account. In C. Wiltshire & J. Camps (Eds.), Romance phonology and variation (pp. 39-53). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Jackendoff, R. 1972. Semantic interpretation in generative grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Reinhart, T. 2006. Interface Strategies. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Samek-Lodovici, V. 2005. Prosody-syntax interaction in the expression of focus. Natural Language

and Linguistic Theory 23:687-755.Selkirk, E. 1995. Sentence prosody, intonation, stress, and phrasing. In J. Goldsmith (Ed.), The

handbook of phonological theory (550-569). Oxford: Blackwell. Schwarzschild, R. 1999. Givenness, AvoidF and other constraints on the placement of accent.

Natural language semantics 7: 141-177.Szendrői, K. 2001. Focus and the syntax-phonology interface. UCL Dissertation.Truckenbrodt, H. 1999. On the Relation Between Syntactic Phrases and Phonological Phrases.

Linguistic Inquiry 30: 219-256.Zubizarreta, M. L. 1998. Prosody, Focus, and Word Order. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.


Thank you!

Special thanks to Luis López-Carretero and the members of the Bilingualism Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Comments/feedback welcome.

Brad HootUniversity of Illinois at Chicago

([email protected])


Narrow Focus on Pre- Nominal Modifiers in Spanish Brad Hoot University of Illinois at Chicago...

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