Samek-Lodovici, Vieri;
(2025)
On corrective questions and the position of focus.
Natural Language & Linguistic Theory
, 43
(3)
pp. 1899-1947.
10.1007/s11049-025-09656-6.
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Abstract
Corrective questions exploit focalization to correct and replace a preceding question much like corrective statements exploit focalization to correct and replace a preceding statement. This paper examines Italian corrective questions in depth, presenting new experimental data supporting their grammatical status. It also shows that Italian corrective questions constitute root interrogative clauses, lack a terminal rise, and qualify as canonical questions when assessed with respect to Farkas’ criteria (Farkas 2022). Corrective questions are theoretically significant because they simultaneously contain a wh-phrase and a corrective focus in a root clause. Their grammaticality challenges the widely held hypothesis that wh-phrases and corrective foci must both be interpreted in a left-peripheral FocP projection that can only hosts one or the other. This hypothesis incorrectly predicts corrective questions to be impossible. I will argue, instead, that corrective foci can be interpreted in-situ, and that focalization à la Rooth (1992) and contrast à la Neeleman and Vermeulen (2012) naturally extend to corrective questions and straightforwardly account for their interpretation and corrective import. The paper also examines focus fronting, discussing the object / non-object divide that emerges from the experimental data and showing that non-object corrective foci may front even when a wh-phrase is present.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | On corrective questions and the position of focus |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s11049-025-09656-6 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-025-09656-6 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Social Sciences, Linguistics, Language & Linguistics, Corrective focus, Left periphery, Focalization in-situ, Corrective questions, Canonical questions, Contrast, Focus fronting, ANSWERS |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > SELCS |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10215886 |
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