Università Roma Tre

This course is intended to analyze the discourse categories within the theoretical framework of Generative Grammar, in relation to a hierarchy of functional projections specified for a number of discourse-semantic features which determine their formal properties and their interpretation at the interfaces.
Categories like Topic, Focus, Contrast and Correction will be treated in comparative and cross-linguistic perspective, with particular attention to the comparison between Italian and the languages included in the curricula of the students that will attend the course.
In particular, the module concentrates on tow aspects:
(1) the interpretation of different focus types (information, corrective, contrastive, exclusive, mirative) and their formal realizations, both from a syntactic (in situ vs. fronted; root vs. embedded) and a prosodic viewpoint.
(2) the creation of topic chains and the interpretation of null subjects, comparing different types of pro-drop addressing consistent (e.g. Italian), partial (e.g. Russian) and radical (e.g. Chinese) pro-drop languages.

Testo:
Frascarelli, Mara & Puglielli Annarita (2008). Linguistic Analysis. From Data to Theory. Mouton de Gruyter. Berlin. [Capp. 5-6-7]

Articles in volumes and journals:
1) Krifka, Manfred (2007). "Basic Notions of Information Structure". In C. Féry et al. (eds.), The Notions of Information Structure, Potsdam, Universitätverlag Potsdam, 13-55.
2) Bianchi, V. & G. Bocci (2012). "Should I stay or should I go? Optional Focus movement in Italian". In C. Pinon (ed.) Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 9, 1-16.
3) Bianchi, Valentina, Giuliano Bocci & Silvio Cruschina. (2015). "Focus Fronting and its implicatures". In Enoch Aboh, Jeannette Schaeffer & Petra Sleeman. (eds.), Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2013, 3-20. Amsterdam & Philadelphia, John Benjamins.
4) Frascarelli, Mara (2007). "Subjects, Topics and the Interpretation of Referential pro. An interface approach to the linking of (null) pronouns". Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 25, 4: 691-734
5) Frascarelli, Mara (2017). "The interpretation of pro in consistent and partial NS languages: A comparative interface analysis". in Federica Cognola & Jan Casalicchio (eds.), Understanding Null-Subjects. A synchronic and diachronic perspective. Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York.