On thetic broad focus

Building upon Bentley & Cruschina’s (2018) analysis of thetic broad focus, this contribution examines the restrictions on the verb classes that occur in this construction in Italian and captures them in terms of the depth of semantic embedding of the postverbal DP. It is also claimed that the occurrence of passives in thetic broad focus follows from a demotion analysis which does not require externalization of the lower argument. While supporting the view that broad focus and theticity ought to be disentangled, the paper pursues the hypothesis that verbs have lexical properties which are reflected in the syntax of their arguments. The lexicalization of scalar change is the key property in the licensing of thetic broad focus.