Against a unitary clause-final focus: Evidence from Russian and Polish

Abstract

AbstractThis article argues against Neeleman et al.’s (2009) claim that in Russian focus is unitary and uniformly clause-final. First, it is pointed out that the account presented in Neeleman et al.’s study suffers from a number of conceptual shortcomings; among them are the lack of a structural basis of the postulated “right periphery focus” or the indeterminate status of the notion of “clause-finality”. Based on a larger set of data from Russian and Polish, it is then argued that neither the facts regarding the scope of quantifiers nor the available options of split scrambling allow a clause-final focus hypothesis to be sustained. More evidence against this position is provided from focus fronting of phrasal heads and instances of multiple and complex focus. The hypothesis that the factor inducing alleged focus fronting is the presence of contrast is, in turn, confronted with cases of