Syntactic association with focus: an agreement-based approach

In this paper I argue for a syntactic analysis of association with focus based on agreement of focus features. I will show that agreement does not only take place between focus and an associated focus particle, but that additional elements in the left periphery are involved in the agreement process as well. The approach will then be used to derive restrictions on possible association patterns into islands and certain complement clauses, before the more general connection between information structural features and φ-features, and its consequences, are discussed.