This paper examines the interaction between sentence accent(or pitch accent) and focus. Drawing on earlier works by Selkirk (1984, 1995), Gussenhoven (1983, 1992, and 2002), Rochemont (1986), and Krifka (2001/2) on the relation between sentence accent...
This paper examines the interaction between sentence accent(or pitch accent) and focus. Drawing on earlier works by Selkirk (1984, 1995), Gussenhoven (1983, 1992, and 2002), Rochemont (1986), and Krifka (2001/2) on the relation between sentence accent and focus, we note that focus projection/transfer intermediating between them apparently displays complement vs. non-complement asymmetry. In turn then, the complement vs. non-complement asymmetry in focus projection/transfer provides a mirror into sentence structure building and other syntactic properties such as Wh-extraction.
In particular, examining more carefully the implications that the analysis of the accent-focus relation in English suggests to us, we demonstrate that focus projection/transfer displays argument vs. adjunct asymmetry rather than complement vs. non-complement asymmetry. We also suggest that Chomsky’s (2001) conception of the distinction between set-merge and pair-merge is well motivated when we take into account the accent-focus relation.