Contrastive Focalization on Topics and Preverbal Subjects in Italian: Syntax Free Prosodic Focalization or Syntactic Movement to Focp?

1 § Introduction In this paper, I will confront the split CP model (Rizzi 1997 and subsequent work) and the criterial framework proposed by Rizzi (2004c) with two empirical problems. Firstly, I will consider a peculiar Italian construction (see (1)b), previously described and analysed by Benincà (1988:137-139 and 2001) and Benincà and Poletto (2004), which seems to mix up the interpretative and prosodic properties of contrastive focus and the syntactic ones of ClLDed topics (Benincà 1988, Cinque 1990, Rizzi 1997). In (1)b, the fronted direct object (henceforth DO) is characterized by contrastive focus prosody and interpretation and it is resumed by a clitic. (1) a. –A: Ha detto che il tappeto l'ha comprato l'anno scorso. '[S/he] has said that the carpet [s/he] it-has bought last year' b. –B: No, ti sbagli. Ha detto che LA POLTRONA l'ha comprata l'anno scorso (, non il tappeto)! 'No, you are wrong. [S/he] has said that THE ARMCHAIR [s/he] it-has bought last year (, not the carpet)!' At first glance this construction could be conceived of as an exception to the split CP model of the left periphery and to some assumptions underlying the cartographic approach the cartographic approach (Rizzi 2004b, Benincà and Poletto 2004, Belletti 2004c). Nevertheless, a closer investigation, based on the analysis of the subordinate clauses proposed by Haegeman (2004), suggests that the availability of this construction is related to the activation of the focus projection in the left periphery. In this paper I will first propose an analysis coherent with the split CP model and a restrictive formulation of the cartographic approach (Benincà and Poletto 2004). In the second part of this paper, I consider the issue of contrastive focalization (henceforth CF) on preverbal subject in Italian, in order to investigate whether a phrase within the IP domain could be contrastively focalized independently of the dedicated syntactic projection. I argue that a subject cannot felicitously receive the interpretation and prosody of contrast standing in the preverbal IP-internal position, which I assume following Cardinaletti (2004). On the contrary, a contrastively focalized preverbal subject has to be necessarily extracted from a low postverbal position and moved to the specifier of FocP in the CP domain. This conclusion is