The document discusses the left periphery structure of clauses. It describes Rizzi's (1997) proposal that the CP domain consists of multiple functional projections, including ForceP, TopicP, FocP, and FinP. Topic and focus elements can occur in these projections in different orders depending on the language. The left periphery is argued to be universal across languages, though languages realize it differently, for example through verb movement in some Celtic and Germanic languages. Evidence for distinct topic and focus fields is also discussed from research on Italian.

1. The left periphery
By Mouad Fekkar

2. 2
Outline 1. The Cartography
2. What is The left periphery
3. The functional projections of the left periphery
3.1. Force Phrase (ForcP)
3.2. Finitess Phrase (FinP)
3.3. Focus Phrase (FocP)
3.4. Topic Phrase (TopP)
3.5. Interrogative Phrase (IntP)
4.The second line of research in the left periphery
5.The movement to the left periphery: Verb fronting
6. Crosslinguistic evidence for the universality of the
Left periphery

3. 3
The cartography of syntactic structures
1

4. The cartography of syntactic structures
Pollock’s (1989) Split-Infl hypothesis, which, through much related work on Romance and Germanic, eventually
led to Cinque’s (1999) detailed map of the structure of the IP. These considerations led to an increased
emphasis on the study of the functional lexicon, and of the configurations that functional structures could
assume in clauses and phrases. This trend gave rise to the cartographic projects.
• Cartography is a research program within the Principles & Parameters framework of syntactic Theory.
According to Cinque and Rizzi (2008), Cartography endeavors ‘‘to draw maps as precise and detailed as possible
of syntactic configurations’’ but its place lies in a broader research project, namely the study of functional (or
grammatical) categories, their content, number and order.

5. The cartography of syntactic structures
In the framework of this project, Three areas have been identified: a higher CP area, which functionally
connects the sentence with the syntactic and pragmatic context; an intermediate area IP, where Tense, Aspect,
Modality and Voice are encoded; a lower VP area, where the semantic characteristics of the lexical verb define
an event by marking the relevant positions of its functional structure, thus legitimizing the insertion of
arguments and participants.

6. 6
The Left periphery
2

7. The Left periphery
• The study of the left periphery of the clause was among the initial topics of cartographic analysis. The initial
periphery refers to the C-Projection, C-system or CP (Complementizer Phrase).
• In Rizzi (1997) the research strategy was to initially study in great detail the properties of the left periphery
in one language, Italian, and then enrich the analysis by bringing in comparative considerations, always
trying to adhere as much as possible to uniformity guidelines.
• In the proposed approach by Rizzi (1997), CP (C-system) appears to be delimited by two heads, Force and
Fin(iteness) and it is split into several different projections, some of which can iterate multiple times.
• The highest projection (replacing CP) is Force Phrase (ForceP), followed by Topic Phrase, Focus Phrase,
another potential Topic Phrase, and Finiteness Phrase, which serves as a landing site for verb heads.

8. 8
The functional projections of the left
periphery
3

9. Force Phrase (ForceP)
Rizzi (1997) adopts the specification of Force proposed by Chomsky (1995).
• Force is The highest position of the Left Periphery, connected with previous discourse in main
clauses; its head is selected by a higher verb in embedded clauses (a main verb like think would
select a declarative, wonder an interrogative, and so forth).
• The head of ForceP is usually filled by a complementizer, which expresses the clause type
(declarative, question, exclamative, …; Cheng 1991), as it always precedes the TopP (Rizzi 1997:
285).

10. Force Phrase (ForceP)
Evidence from Italian shows that Topics can only follow Force, corresponding to the declarative
complementizer “che”.
Ho deciso che, la macchina, la comprerò quest’anno.
‘I decided that, the car, I will buy it this year.’

11. Finitess Phrase (FinP)
The finitess head is the lowest head of the CP and it is in direct contact with the content of the IP. Fin
expresses the finite or non-finite character of the clause, agreeing in finiteness with the finite or non-
finite morphology of the clause-internal predicate.
FinP according to Rizzi (1997) follows the TopP:
Ho deciso, la macchina, di comprarla quest’anno.
‘I decided, the car, of to buy it this year.’
• The infinitival complementizer di (FinP), introducing control infinitives necessarily follows the topic.
So we have:
Force … Top … Fin …
FinP is often assumed to be the landing site of the verb within the CP (in e.g. Germanic V2, Haegeman
1996, Roberts 2004), because it contains “a tense specification which matches the one expressed on the
lower inflectional system” (Rizzi 1997: 283)

12. Finitess Phrase (FinP)
• Credo, il tuo libro, di apprezzare molto
I believe your book of to appreciate it a lot
• (Italian, Rizzi 1997: 288, 11b)

13. Topic & Focus
Rizzi (1997) notes that in languages such as English and Italian, elements that are left-dislocated often show a
marked focus or topic feature, and devises a landing site of FocusP and TopicP in the left periphery. Each has a
functional head that projects a category in the X-Bar schema.
According to Rizzi (1997), TopP and FocP are associated with specific discourse functions and are only present
when these functions are activated.
The Focus head selects a focalized element as its specifier and the presupposition as its complement (Rizzi
1997).

14. Topic & Focus
the Topic head selects the topicalized element as its specifier and comment as its complement (Rizzi
1997).

15. Focus Phrase (FocP)
• From a discourse perspective, a focused constituent typically represents new information (i.e.
information not previously mentioned in the discourse and unfamiliar to the hearer).
• Focus is an element or phrase which contains new information is put in focus.
Speaker a: Would you ever cheat in really tough exams?
Speaker b: Under no circumstances would I cheat in exams

16. Focus Phrase (FocP)
According to Bianchi, Bocci & Cruschina (2013), a typology of Focus exists: Corrective, Mirative and New
Information Focus. In Italian, for example, the functional projection in the CP hosts a left peripheral focus
position to express the corrective focus (CFoc) and Mirative Focus (MFoc), whereas New Information Focus
(IFocP) occupies a lower clause internal position in the Periphery of the vP (Belletti 2004). The a position of the
corrective focus (CFoc) and Mirative Focus (MFoc) is always unique and can be preceded and followed by
topics (Rizzi, 1997).
• For example: “QUESTO” is preceded and followed by the TopicP.
Credo che, al presidente, QUESTO, nella riunione di domani, gli dovreste dire
‘I believe that, to the president, THIS, in tomorrow’s meeting, you should say to him’

17. Focus Phrase (FocP)
• Focus and wh-items cannot co-occur; plausibly they are candidates for the same position.
• a. *A GIANNI che cosa hai detto (, non a Piero) ?
• ‘’TO GIANNI what did you tell (, not to Piero)
• b. *Che cosa A GIANNI hai detto (,non a Piero) ?
• ‘’What TO GIANNI did you tell (, not to Piero) ?
• (Italian, Rizzi 1997: 291)

18. Topic Phrase (TopP)
Topic has first been defined as “a preposed element characteristically set off from the rest of the
clause by 'comma intonation' and normally expressing old information somehow available and
salient in previous discourse" (Rizzi 1997: 285; Frascarelli & Hinterhoelzl 2007; Bianchi & Frascarelli
2010).

19. Topic Phrase (TopP)
• In languages like Italian (1a), Topics are typically present in Clitic Left Dislocation structures (ClLD), in which a
clitic resumptive pronoun is present in the clause following the topic and predicating some property of it (1a);
in other languages such as, e.g. English (1b), a gap is present in the position in which the fronted topic is first
merged:
• (1) a. Il tuo libro, lo ho letto
• Your book I read it.
• (Italian, Rizzi 1997: 286; 3)
• b. Your book, I bought yesterday
• (English, Rizzi 2013: 214; 36b)

20. Topic Phrase (TopP)

21. Topic Phrase (TopP)
• According to Rizzi (1997), all the orders Top Foc Top, Top Top Foc, Foc Top Top are possible, with a unique
focus and any number of topics on either side of Foc. TopicP and FocusP are optional, and may remain empty.
Further, given data from Italian, it becomes clear that Topic has two projections on either side of Focus, and
can iterate further at those two points in the hierarchy.
• This led to the following general map (Rizzi 1997):
[Force [Top∗ [Foc [Top∗ [Fin [IP …]]]]]]

22. The heirerichal structure of the left
periphery proposed by Rizzi (1997)
[Force [Top∗ [Foc [Top∗ [Fin [IP …]]]]]]
For example:
Credo che ieri, QUESTO, a Gianni, i tuoi amici avrebbero dovuto dirgli
• FORCE TOP FOC TOP
‘I believe that yesterday, THIS, to Gianni, your friends should have said to him
• More precisely, che expresses the FORCE head, ieri and a Gianni fill Spec positions of two TOP
heads, QUESTO fills the Spec position of the FOC head, while the FIN layer is not overtly realized
in this kind of sentence (Rizzi, 1997; as cited from Rizzi, 1999)

23. Interrogative Phrase (IntP)
• An important addition came from the study of interrogative complementizers corresponding to English if.
Rizzi (2001) has argued for additional projections including IntP activated in polar questions. That is, The Italian
equivalent, se, differs from che and di in that it can be both preceded and followed by a topic, and surrounded
by topics:
Mi domando, a mio figlio, se, la macchina, gliela compreremo quest’anno
‘I wonder, to my son, if, the car, we will buy it to him this year’
• It is also consistent with a Focus position, but with a strict order se – Foc:
Mi domando se LA MACCHINA/∗LA MACCHINA se gli potremmo regalare (non la moto)
‘I wonder if THE CAR/∗THE CAR if we could give to him (not the motorbike)
(Italian, Rizzi & Bocci, 2013)

24. Interrogative Phrase (IntP)
• The integration of Int thus gave rise to the following map:
[Force [Top∗ [Int [Top∗ [Foc [Top∗ [Fin [IP …]]]]]]]]

25. The second line of research on the left
periphery
The second line of research is championed by Beninca and Poletto (2004), who convincingly argue
that recursion of TopPs as proposed by Rizzi is not an option, by showing that there is a one-to-one
mapping between syntactic positions and semantic/pragmatic functions for different types of Topics
and Foci.
In light of the syntactic properties and ordering restrictions among different types of Topics and Foci in
standard and nonstandard varieties of Italian, Beninca and Poletto (2004) propose that Topic and
Focus are best analyzed as fields, each comprising a finite set of distinct Topics and Foci, as shown
bellow (see also Beninca 2001):

26. The second line of research on the left
periphery
Contrary to Rizzi's (1997, 2004) claim that TopP is a set of recursive projections that can occur above and below
a single FocP, the figure bellow reveals that the Topic field is composed of four types of Topics-Hanging Topic
(HT), Scene-Setting Topic (Scene Setting), Left-Dislocated Topic (LD), and List Interpretation (LI)-all of which are
located above the Focus field, which is composed of two types of Foci (Contrastive Focus (ContrF), and
Information Focus (InfoF)).
In addition, figure bellow shows that within the Topic and Focus fields, the respective sets of Topics and Foci
are subject to ordering restrictions.

27. Topics in Italian
• they are two types of topics in Italian, the Hanging Topic and Left Dislocation Topic, as shown by
Benincà and Poletto (2004) for Italian.
LD: an entire argument appears on the left.
• a Di Mario/di questo libro, non (ne) parla più nessuno LD
• Of Mario, not of.him-talks any more nobody
HT: can only be a DP; the two constructions are distinguishable in this respect only when a
prepositional phrase is involved. HT requires a resumptive pronoun.
For example:
• Mario/questo libro, non ne parla più nessuno HT
Mario, not of.him-talks any more nobody
“Nobody talks about M. /this book any more

28. Topics in Italian
HT can co-occur with LD: the order is HT-LD:
• ) a Giorgio, ai nostri amici, non parlo mai di lui HT-LD
• ‘G., to our friends, I never talk of him’
• B *Ai nostri amici, Giorgio, non parlo mai di lui *LD-HT
• ‘To our friends, G., I never talk of him’
Additionally, (Benincà, 2001) argues that a syntactic Topic cannot appear below Focus. That is, the
order LD-Focus is grammatical, and the opposite order is ungrammatical.
• a) Il tuo amico, A MARIA, lo presenterò! LD-Foc
• Your friend, TO M., I will introduce him!
• C) *IL TUO AMICO, a Mario, gli presenterò! *Foc-LD
• YOUR FRIEND, to M., I will introduce to him!
Therefore, the proposed order can be summarized as follows:
{Frame[HT]..}{Topic...[LD]..}{Focus...[ContrastFocus]...[UnmFocus]..}

29. 29
Movement to the left periphery
4

30. Movement to the left periphery
Under the Minimalist framework in which Rizzi operates, movement is considered to be “last resort,” “and
must be motivated by the satisfaction of some criterion” (Rizzi 1997, p. 282). He goes on to surmise that
“under such a restrictive theory we expect that no kind of (syntactic) movement to the left periphery may
involve free, optional adjunction to IP” (Rizzi 1997, p. 300). Thus, some motivation is necessary to account for
any presumed syntactic movement.
(Rhodes,2013), assumes that movement in Chukchansi language, though seemingly unmotivated with
completely optional phrasal order, to be motivated by semantic or pragmatic features such as Focus or Topic.
He assumes Focus and Topic paradigms existence in Chukchansi the to account for XP movement, for which a
motivation is required to comply with the Last Resort Condition.

31. Verb Fronting
In Robert’s (2004) analysis of V-movement in Celtic languages and V2 properties in German, he
introduced the “filled-fin” requirement, a property of these languages which requires the
[Head,FinP] position to be filled with a verbal element.
For example:
In Breton language (exist in England), the verb undergoes head movement and adjoins to FinP
while the particle a occupies [Head,FinP]:
• lenn a ra Anna al levr
• Read.INF PRT does Anna the book
‘Anna reads the book.’
• Rendered with brackets:
FinP[Fin[V[lenn] Fin[a]] AgrSP[ra TP[Anna tlenn al levr]]]
(Roberts 2004)

32. Verb Fronting
Similarly in Chukchansi Language, arguments have been made that appeal to the movement of the
verb to positions in the left periphery.
This reflects canonical word order of Chukchansi declaratives:
Ta’sh-it na’ nim nek’et.
see-PST I.SUB my aunt- Ø
‘I saw my aunt.’
• Rendered with brackets:
FinP[Fin[V[tashit] Fin[Ø]] TP[na’ tta’shit nim nek’et]]

33. 33
Crosslinguistic evidence for the
universality of the Left periphery
5

34. The left periphery of Mandarin
• Previous studies of the left periphery of Mandarin reveal that Topics
and Foci are ordered hierarchically. Paul (2005) provided the
hierarchal order of the left periphery of Mandarin Chinese. The
hirerical structure is summarized as follows:
• ‘CP (force) > TopicP > ‘even’ FocusP > IP > inner TopicP > ‘even’ focusP > vP’
• This hierarchal order corresponds only partially to that postulated by
Rizzi (1997; 2002) and Belletti (2003), especially with respect to the
relative order of topic and focus projections.

35. The left periphery of Japanese
• Saito (2010) provides a preliminary hypothesis on the structure of the Japanese right periphery. The
preliminary investigation in this paper suggests that the CP structure is fairly rigid across languages
with the locus of variation in Report, Focus, and possibly Topic. Saito (2010) argues that the CP
system of Japanese is remarkably similar to that in Italian.
• Itallian: [ … Force [ … (Topic*) [ … (Focus) [ … (Topic*) [ … Finite [TP … ] ] ] ] ] ] (Rizzi, 1997)
• Japanese: [ … [ … [ … [ … [TP … ] Finite] (Topic*)] Force] Report] (Saito, 2010)
• There are only two differences aside from the linear order. One is the presence of the Report head
in Japanese. Spanish and Japanese have it, but Italian and English do not. The other concerns the
absence of the Focus head in Japanese. That is, languages may vary with respect the
presence/absence of the Focus head within the C system (Saito, 2010).

36. References
• Badan, L., & Del Gobbo, F. (2011). On the syntax of topic and focus in Chinese. Mapping the left periphery,
63-91
• Cheung, C. C. H. (2010, May). On the fine structure of the Left Periphery: the positions of Topic and Focus in
Cantonese. In 18th Annual Meeting of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics (IACL-18) and the
22nd North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL-22). Harvard University, MA, United States.
• Cinque, G., & Rizzi, L. (2008). The cartography of syntactic structures. Studies in linguistics, 2, 42-58.
• Benincà, P. (2004). The left periphery of Medieval Romance.
• Benincà, P. & Cecilia Poletto (2004), Topic, Focus and V2: Defining the CP sublayers. In Rizzi ed. (2004), 52-75.
• Rizzi, L. (1997) “The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery”, in L. Haegeman (ed.) Elements of Grammar,
Kluwer, Dordrecht, 281-337.
• Rizzi, L. (2001). On the position “Int (errogative)” in the left periphery of the clause. In Current studies in
Italian syntax (pp. 287-296). Brill.
• Rizzi, L., & Bocci, G. (2017). Left periphery of the clause: Primarily illustrated for Italian. The Wiley Blackwell
Companion to Syntax, Second Edition, 1-30.
• Saito, M. (2012). Sentence types and the Japanese right periphery. Discourse and grammar: From sentence
types to lexical categories, 147-175.