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This chapter discusses the main problems and questions that generally arise in relation to information structure notions such as topic and focus. More specifically, it tackles the problems of the definition of topic and focus and of their implementation in the syntax. It begins with the definition of the notions of topic and focus, with particular attention given to the exact specification of what is directly derived from syntax and what is influenced by inferential pragmatic processes dependent on the context. A review follows of the mainstream approaches in the current Generative Grammar, i.e. Minimalist Program and the Cartographic Approach, and of the respective explanatory tools needed to tackle the problem primarily from a theoretical perspective.

This introductory chapter begins with brief discussions of functional heads and Guglielmo Cinque’s so-called “cartographic approach.” It then sets out the purpose of the book, which is to provide a broad picture of what the work in the cartographic approach is like, and of the consequences it has for the general theory of syntax. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter deals with a basic problem of the cartographic approach, namely whether functional projections are always present inter- and intra-linguistically. The analysis reconciles the cartographic approach with a more minimalist perspective. Following Cinque’s (1999) generalization, and analyzing data from Icelandic and English, it suggests that grammatical categories, (i.e., features and/or heads) are present and syntactically active even in those languages in which such features and/or heads are not grammatically signaled. Therefore, these grammatical categories, which build up the clause structure, enter in syntax as interpretable but unvalued features, and their value is subsequently assigned in the course of the derivation. In those languages in which categories like Tense, Person, etc., are signaled by overt morphemes, these morphemes should be considered as uninterpretable, and the corresponding categories should be considered categories that reflect combinations of “atomic” syntactic relations.

This chapter focuses on two apparently unrelated facts that could present problems for the cartographic approach, namely the degraded status of an adverbial PP in a functional specifier as opposed to an adverb, and backward binding in different classes of psych-verbs. By applying the notion of smuggling, it supports the cartographic approach to sentence structure integrated with Kayne’s (2004) proposal of prepositions as probes.

Concerning the peripheral area around the edge of vP, Chinese provides a perfect testing ground for investigation in that linguistic expressions are very often constructed analytically and their “loosened” parts may spread over functional projections in a minimalist manner. As a result, Chinese proves to be an ideal testing ground for the cartographic approach due to its robust analyticity, as functional elements spread over the sentential projections in an orderly manner, revealing some “hidden” cartography obscured by morpho-syntactic displacement in other languages. In particular, there is the contrast of the vP periphery vs. the left periphery, in the inner-outer dichotomy of wh-adverbials, as well as that of reflexive adverbials. The same pattern is found again in light verbs, applicatives, and object fronting with striking conceptual connections, and so our finding hopefully will bring us closer to a full understanding of the nature of syntax-semantics mapping under the cartographic approach.

This paper offers a comprehensive cartographic account of the modality spectrum in Chinese. It becomes clear from our study that the complicated relation between modals and modality calls for a more articulated theory of the organization of functional projections. More specifically, epistemic modals occupy the complementizer layer, deontic modals the inflectional layer, and dynamic modals the lexical layer. Moreover, we provide an explanation of certain cases of actuality entailments in Chinese modals from a typological point of view, in that Chinese develops a more “analytic” strategy to represent the scope relation between modals and other sentential operators, that is, by merging an operator where it should be.

The filling of the prefield in Modern German is determined by information-structural constraints such as scene-setting, contrastiveness, and topichood. While OHG does not yet show competition between these constraints, competition arises from MHG onward. This has to do with the generalization of the V2 constraint (i.e. the one-constituent property of the prefield) for declarative clauses, in which context the information-structural constraints are loosened. The syntactic change whose result eventually was the loss of multiple XP fronting comprised a change of the feature endowment of C because the fronting of expletive thô (roughly in the OHG of the ninth century) led to the reanalysis of XP fronting as a semantically vacuous movement whose only function is to check the EPP feature of C. Data from doubly filled prefields in ENHG and post-initial connectives indicate that an articulated split CP-structure, as proposed within the cartographic approach, is also at play in German.

This chapter discusses negator distribution in Late Medieval Greek with texts from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries AD. Spoken Greek of this period depicts a stage of variation in the forms of NEG1 and NEG2. Both elements have developed counterparts with which they appear in free variation, as the former NEG1-thing, οὐδέν‎ /udhén/, and NEG2-thing, μηδέν‎ /midhén/, indefinites have bleached into plain sentential negators. Two instances of parameter resetting in Late Medieval Greek are identified: (i) the specifier-to-head shift in the syntactic status of the negators and (ii) the loss of NEG2 from the conditional protasis. The NEG2 was lost from the conditional antecedent for reasons that relate to its syntactic status shift and exact location on the expanded CP.