«Inversion» as focalization and related questions

The main empirical area studied in this article concerns so called subject «inversion» structures. The proposal is put forth that the postverbal subject is licensed in the specifier of a low Focus projection, internal to the functional clausal architecture. Focus is considered a morphosyntactic feature giving rise to its own projection and constituting a regular checking domain. Consequences of the hypothesis are investigated for other structures assumed to involve the same process of clause internal focalization such as: structures containing «emphatic» pronouns, structures undergoing complement reordering, unaccusative structures. Some speculative remarks are also made on the so called process of «marginalization» which is taken to constitute a case of clause internal «topicalization»; the process is also assumed to be involved in interrogative structures necessarily requiring a postverbal subject which displays behaviors different from the focalized postverbal subject of declarative sentences.