Contrastive Focus and Contrastive Topics in Greek

This paper puts forward the idea that in Greek contrast is an independent feature, represented in syntax by a preverbal position. Contrast can be assigned to diierent sorts of entities, topics and foci, once a set/list of contrasting alternatives/entities has been introduced or directly implied by the discourse. Evidence for an independent treatment of contrast is provided by similarities in the distribution of contrastive topics and focus. The asymmetries between the two are explained as a result of general diierences between topics and focus. 1 Contrastive focus Consider the following data: 1 (1) A: who did you see? B: I saw John Example (1b) can be divided into two parts in terms of information packaging (Valduvi 1993). The rst part, I saw consists of the old information or ground of the utterance. John is the new information, or focus. This is a case of narrow and presentational/non-contrastive focus. Consider now the following contexts: (2) A: Did you see John or Peter? 2 B: I saw John Now, imagine a context of misunderstanding where one of the interlocutors utters (3) in order to solve the misunderstanding (3) I saw John, not Peter 1 I would like to thank my rst supervisor Caroline Heycock for helping me formulate vague intuitions about the data presented here into more concrete ideas. I would also like to thank my second supervisor Ronnie Cann for useful comments and the State Scholarships Foundation of Greece for its nancial support. 2 Keith Mitchell pointed out to me that (2a) is ambiguous between`did you see any one of the two, Peter or John' and`which one of the two did you see, Peter or John'. I use (2a) with the second reading.