Focus Structure or Abstract Syntax? A Role and Reference Grammar Account of some Abstract Syntactic Phenomena

Arguments regarding the reality of abstract syntactic representations have typically revolved around phenomena in which there is a striking discrepancy between the overt structure of the sentences involved and how they are interpreted. In principles & parameters approaches like Government-Binding [GB] theory and its descendent, the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1981, 1995), many syntactic phenomena have been dealt with at the level of Logical Form [LF], either in terms of covert movement or constraints applying to abstract LF representations, e.g. issues of quantifier scope and WH-movement in languages in which WH-words appear overtly in situ. Consider, as an example, the problem of quantifier scope, as in (1).