Gradience and optionality in the syntactic realization of focus

The goal of this paper is to analyse the optionality and gradience observed in the syntactic distribution of information focus in three Romance languages: Catalan, Spanish and Italian. While the postverbal position is preferred in the three languages, the preverbal position is also acceptable to some extent, depending on the combination of language and grammatical function of the focus. It is more acceptable in Spanish and less so in Italian, Catalan being in the middle. In addition, while Catalan is insensitive to the grammatical function of the focus, in both Spanish and Italian preverbal subjects are rated higher than preverbal objects. These asymmetries are reminiscent of Leonetti’s dichotomy between restrictive and permissive languages, the former imposing a straightforward mapping between syntax and information structure and the later not doing so. We propose an OT model that is able to provide a deeper characterization of this dichotomy, as well as account for the gradient acceptability judgements, based on internal grammar and interface principles. Casted as weighted soft constraints, they do not cause ungrammaticality when violated, but the greater their weight, the more unacceptable their violation becomes, which can explain the observed patterns.