Association with Focus

This chapter analyses the semantics of focus as it associates with a range of expressions including adverbial quantifiers, emotives, comparatives and superlatives, cardinals, exclusives, additives and negatives. Association with focus is treated as a grammatical rule and not as primarily due to contextual reasoning.

Nominals

In Latin information structure is syntactically represented within noun and adjective phrases as well as at the clausal level. This chapter gives a syntax-semantics interface for topic and focus structures in nominal phrases, covering nomina agentis, nomina actionis, quantifiers, and continuous and discontinuous modifiers. Hyperbaton is treated as a syntactic, rather than purely prosodic, construction.

Introduction

This chapter discusses theoretical issues related to the application of formal semantics and pragmatics to Latin syntax. Various approaches to the semantics of free word order are reviewed and their suitability for the Latin evidence evaluated. Different frameworks used in formal pragmatics are also presented, and it is argued that for Latin the Structured Meanings theory is more suitable than the Alternative Semantics theory.

Topics, Scrambling and Tails

This chapter analyzes the syntax and semantics of information structure within the cofocus. In particular, it covers simple and contrastive topics, scrambling (which plays an import role in Latin syntax), tail subjects and tail objects. Various types of verb raising are also analyzed.

Narrow Focus

This chapter discusses a range of issues relating to the syntax and semantics of narrow focus in Latin: discourse congruence, event presupposition, the formalization of narrow focus, the activation of a set of alternates, focus and intensionality, narrow focus in a branching phrase, double focus, second mention focus and verb focus.

Broad Focus

This chapter identifies the neutral word order used for broad scope focus sentences in Latin and proposes a syntax-semantics interface for them. The semantics of adverbial adjuncts, directional arguments and nonreferential objects is also discussed. Other issues covered include existential and presentational sentences, verum focus and discourse cohesion operators.