Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: In this short paper we present a so far unnoticed syntactic constraint on contrastive focus reduplication (CR), a phenomenon that restricts the semantics of the reduplicated element to a prototypical meaning (but has other uses as well): The CR construction cannot be modified. In the case of nominal CR, this means that adjectival modification is blocked, as in *black COFFEE-coffee. We present data from English and German to support our claim and highlight how earlier accounts fail to capture the syntactic restriction. We then provide a sketch of an analysis couched with a Cartographic framework, tentatively proposing that CR results either (i) from cyclical movement of phrasal material through the specifiers of functional projections into the specifier of a focus phrase or (ii) by directly moving phrasal material into the specifier of a focus phrase.
DOI: 10.5334/gjgl.1075
Authors: Fabian Bross, Katherine Fraser
Institutions: University of Stuttgart, University of the Basque Country
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $551
OpenAlex ID: W3024614753