Other fronting movementsrelationship between the selecting verb and the head of its complement clause, i.e. the
complementiser, that the presence of the topic interferes with. In this case then the
topic will have to adjoin lower down: to iP, if present, and if not, to IP.
The fronted negative is in complementary distribution with the focus:
(123) a I said that under no circumstances would potatoes I store in this room
b I said that potatoes under no circumstances would I store in this room
Once again, if we want a focus in such a sentence it must be indicated by stress alone
without the movement:
(124) I said that under no circumstances would I store potatoes in this room
This complementary distribution seems more significant than that which holds
between the focus and the wh-element as both the focus and the fronted negative
clearly occupy very similar positions. We might therefore claim that both make use of
the same landing site: specifier of iP.
The difference however, between the fronted focus and the fronted negative is that
the latter induces inversion to ‘i’, while the former does not. Referring back to the
difference between wh-movement that triggers inversion and wh-movement that does
not, we proposed that inversion is triggered when there is no head to agree with. In
embedded interrogatives the complementiser position could be filled and hence there
will be no inversion. If we project these ideas on to the current situation, we conclude
that with focus the i head is filled by some abstract element but with negative fronting
the head position is unfilled. We know that the negative head is a verbal element of the
category ‘v’ and so it cannot be generated directly in i. The only way for the negative
head to get to i is for it to move and yet we know that the negative is not able to move
to I to support the inflection in English, as it is in Finnish. Thus, there is no way for the
negative head to get to i and hence when a negative element moves to the specifier of
iP it will induce inversion to provide a head for it.
With a fronted focus, on the other hand, there must be an abstract head capable of
being generated in i with which the focus can agree. Let us call this head Foc. In other
languages this element may appear as a morpheme on the focussed element,
supporting the assumption here, as in the following Korean example:
(125) Mary-ka John-man-ul saranghanta
Mary-nom John-Foc-acc love
‘John Mary loves.’
This head apparently cannot enter into an agreement relationship with the fronted
negative and so, presumably, it must be inherently positive. Given that nothing
prevents it from appearing when there is a focus, it will be present whenever there is a
fronted focus and hence inversion will be unnecessary. The structures we end up with
are: