Restrictive Focus Particles and Clause Peripheries in English, German and Romanian
Restrictive Focus Particles and Clause Peripheries in English, German and Romanian

Summary/Abstract: The paper analyzes the syntactic behaviour of restrictive focus particles in English, German and Romanian within the Minimalist Program framework. It discusses the specific syntactic properties of the particles in the three languages concerned particularly the type of syntactic relation between the particle and its associate and the general architecture of the clause. It argues that in all the languages analyzed the particles occupy two distinct positions in the peripheries of the phasal domains proposed in the Minimalist syntax: vP and CP/TP. The main difference between the syntactic configurations of English only and its German and Romanian counterparts nur and numai is attributed to language-specific constraints, namely strict word-order in English versus the wider use of scrambling in German and Romanian. Scrambling is also used as a diagnostic test for the phase periphery position of nur in German.

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