From focus to syntax

In this paper, we argue that the location of the focused constituent within a sentence, as well as the definition of all the constituents that might be interpreted as focused, is predictable on the basis of the syntax of a given language. The major (though not only) division across languages as to the distribution of focus is related to the degree of freedom that languages allow for its location. The basic idea tested on basis of data taken from French, Italian, Turkish and English, is that the more prominence may move around within an intonational phrase, the more the language is characterized by rigid word order properties. Since infants are sensitive to prosodic properties since birth, we argue that it is feasible that infants use the location of intonational parameters in a preverbal stage. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.