Resumen de Focus, checking theory and fronting strategies in romanian

Virginia Motapanyane

• Checking theory allows only formal features to have syntactic relevance. Focus has an impact on syntax although it is semantic. This paper argues that [focus] features enter the grammar in conjunction with [wh] and [tense]. Complex [wh/focus] and [tense/focus] features induce contrastive configurations and crosslinguistic variation. Romanian constructions with preverbal focus are compared with English clefts, and point to a parametric approach: languages display different strategies for overt movement to focus according to their parametric setting for [wh/focus] or [tense/focus]. The analysis of [focus] as syntactically dependent on [wh]/[tense] provides a uniform treatment for important variation in focus constructions (e.g. preposing through clitic doubling chains versus clefting) and in interrogative clauses (e.g. presence versus absence of V2 effects in embedded interrogatives).