Verum focus and polar questions

Abstract

We argue that some word order phenomena in Romanian and Sardinian are the result of a checkingoperation in the left periphery involving verum focus (i.e. focus on the polarity component of the sentence).In particular, this operation accounts for some word order patterns found in polar questions. In Romanian,polarity fronting is realized as head-movement of (V+)T to a higher peripheral head which bears a Focusprobe.This licenses VS orders for predications in which VS is not allowed as a neutral order (i-levelpredicates, iteratives, generics). In Sardinian, an entire phrase headed by the lexical predicate (verbal nonfiniteform or non-verbal predicate) is fronted before the auxiliary. We argue that this order is obtained bytwo movement operations, head-raising of Aux to Foc and movement of the predicate phrase to SpecFoc. Wealso present the semantics of polarity focus, distinguishing several types of focus (informational, emphatic,contrastive).

Keywords

• verum focus
• polar questions
• focalization
• Romanian
• Sardinian