Root Contrastiveness and V2 A Supra-­Informational Status: The Case of Two North-­Eastern Italian Dialects

The article sheds light on the interaction between residual V2 and information structure in two North-Eastern Italian dialects, Lamonat and Sovramontino. It shows that the V2 constraint is intrinsically linked to the packaging of discourse-pragmatic information. V2-motivated T-to-C movement ensures: (i) adjacency of the verb to the pragmatically salient element that, hence, receives discourse prominence; and (ii) the correct interpretation of contrastive elements, which are structurally realised in the preverbal field. The article also explores contrastiveness as an independent discourse-pragmatic status that supersedes topic and focus, concluding that contrastiveness should not be considered a categorical notion, but a continuum in which the degree of contrastiveness is determined by the properties of the set containing the contrastive element.