Superman Sentences

1 Introduction

Suppose Father comes home from workand finds Mother in obvious distress. Then the following discourse may take place:

(1) Father:

What happened?

Mother:

You know how I think our children should read decent books. Well, when I came home, rather than doing his homework, [ _IP Johnny was [ _VP reading [ _DP S UPERMAN] to some kid]].

The discourse status of Mother's reply is complex, as it contains a contrastive focus inside a contrastive focus inside an all-focus sentence. First, her answer tells Father what happened and therefore the bracketed IP must be in focus as a whole. Second, the VP reading Superman to some kidis contrasted with doing his homework. Finally, the DP Supermanis contrasted with decent books. These three foci share a single phonological marking, namely, the stress on Superman(indicated by small capitals). ¹

One may have doubts about the reliability of wh-questions like What happened?as a test for identifying focus. That does not invalidate the claim that (1) is an example of a focus embedded in a larger focus: the contrasts at the level of the VP and the object are enough to motivate this conclusion. The same point can be made on the basis of the scope of the focus-sensitive operators onlyand even, as shown by Father's continuation in (2) (adapted from Krifka 1991:131).

(2) Father: Despite all our efforts! We even, [only ₂read [K AFKA] ₂to our children] ₁!

"Superman sentences" like Mother's reply have hardly been discussed in the literature on focus. Apart from Krifka's paper, one of few relevant works is by Jacobs (1991), whose approach we briefly turn to below.

Superman sentences pose a challenge to any syntactic theory of focus. We will argue, however, that they are more problematic for theories of focus based on a feature that requires syntactic licensing (Horvath 1986, Brody 1995, Rizzi 1997) than for theories based on a mapping between prosody and meaning (Chomsky 1971, Cinque 1993, Reinhart 1995, Neeleman and Reinhart 1998, Zubizarreta 1998, Horvath 2000, Zubizarreta and Vergnaud 2000, Samek-Lodovici 2002). We first spell out the two approaches to focus in more detail (section 2). We then discuss to what extent they can accommodate Superman sentences (sections 3-5).

2 Stress-Based and Feature-Based Approaches to Focus

Feature-based theories assume (a) that [+focus] is interpreted at the LF interface and (b) that it affects stress assignment at the PF interface (Jackendoff 1972). Recent approaches in addition assume (c) that [+focus] is checked in syntax in the specifier of a designated functional projection (Horvath 1986, Brody 1990, 1995, Laka 1990, É. Kiss 1995, Rizzi 1997). Checking is responsible for focus-related movement in languages like Hungarian, while languages like English have covert focus movement. Thus, in Nick's reply in (3), a member of the Sex Pistolscarries [+focus]. Accordingly, it moves to the relevant functional specifier at LF and is interpreted there. At the PF interface, [+focus] is responsible for the stress shift from the normal stress position to the subject. Note that internally to the subject, stress is as predicted by the Nuclear Stress Rule, as shown by the fact that A MEMBERof the Sex Pistols comes here a lotwould be an infelicitous reply in (3).

(3) John:

So, which celebrities did you say frequent the Jeremy Bentham?

Nick:

Well, [a member [of the S EXP ISTOLS]] comes here a lot.

Stress-based theories assume that every utterance is associated with a set of potential foci, where members of this set are constituents that contain the main stress.

(4) Any constituent that contains the main stress of an utterance can be interpreted as the focus of the utterance.

According to this definition, Nick's reply has at least three potential foci, listed in (5). (5b) is the actual focus in the discourse in (3).

(5)

1. a. [ _DP the S EXP ISTOLS]

2. b. [ _DP a member of [ _DP the S EXP ISTOLS]]

3. c. [ _IP [ _DP a member of [ _DP the S EXP ISTOLS]] comes here a lot...