| Abstract: | This paper investigates the syntactic and prosodic characteristics of focused and discourse-linked elements in Italian. I argue that the focused constituent always contains the main stress of the clause (Neeleman & Reinhart 1998). I show that the potential mismatches between the placement of main stress by the stress rule and the intended focal interpretation are resolved in two different ways depending on the information status of the non-focal part of the utterance. If the status of the non-focal part is unmarked, then a syntactic movement operation -- stress-driven movement -- resolves the mismatch. If the non-focal part is marked as discourse-linked, then a misaligned mapping occurs between the prosodic and the syntactic representation. |
