Focus positions and additive phrases

Abstract This study investigates a prosody-syntax mismatch that appears with left peripheral additive phrases in Greek and Hungarian. In these constructions, the additive phrase is focused, which is reflected in prosody, such that it attracts the nuclear stress. However, fronted additive phrases display deviations from the morphosyntactic properties of constructions with fronted foci in both languages. In Greek, such phrases can be co-indexed with pronominal clitics, a property only marginally observed with fronted foci. In Hungarian, they do not trigger verb fronting, which is otherwise obligatory for narrow foci. Analyzing the questions under discussion ( QUD ’s) for these constructions, we conclude that the focus structure of these utterances is directly reflected in prosody, while their morphosyntactic properties align with discourse properties that are independent of focus.