Multiple NP split: a distributed deletion analysis

The underlined words represent parts of a discontinuous noun phrase; the left-hand part is topicalized, while the right-hand part bears focal stress; the status of the intermediate part is somewhat unclear, but it might be a secondary focus. Following Pafel (1996), I will refer to the phenomenon illustrated in (2) as Multiple NP Split. The paper is organized as follows. In section 2, I will present the basic properties of NP-split constructions; since multiple splits have so far not been discussed in the literature, it will be necessary to show that they exhibit the same basic properties as regular (single) splits. In particular, I will show that multiple splits must be analyzed as results of A’movement; this analysis clashes, however, with the freezing effects discussed by Muller (1998) in connection with scrambling. Section 3 will discuss a solution to this problem, based on the Distributed Deletion approach to split constructions (Fanselow & Cavar 2002).