The emergence of low focus position in the Mineirês dialect of Brazilian Portuguese

This article investigates whether the Mineirês dialect of Brazilian Portuguese activates a low focus position in a slot Immediately After the Verb (IAV). In order to bring further support to this analysis, this paper compares the focus realization in Mineirês Portuguese with two Bantu languages, namely Chichewa and xiChangana. It is observed that both the Mineirês Portuguese and these Bantu languages place focused constituents in a position Immediately After the Verb (IAV), both in canonical cleft and in double object constructions. We hypothesize that contrastive, identificational and information focus both in Mineirês Portuguese and the Bantu languages examined here is moved to a specifier position of a low focus head located below TP and above vP. This analysis also confirms that these languages are not true wh-in-situ languages, since wh-objects and wh-adjuncts may move to a low focus position to receive focus interpretation.