The Syntax of Givenness Ivona Kucerová

c. TP
VP
book give to-Peter t book
will
TP
vP
Marie
t V P
But we already know that the perfect partition is irrelevant here. The reason is that the
only place where the G-operator may be inserted is between ‘book’ and ‘give’, as in (57).
Any other position would lead to Presupposition failure. The position is, however, already
available after the object G-moves within VP. Moving the whole DP does not bring in any
interpretation that would not already be available after the first instance of G-movement.
Therefore, G-movement of the whole VP is not licensed.
(57) TP
VP
book G give to-Peter t book
will
TP
vP
Marie
t V P
The same reasoning accounts also for the assumption that a constituent containing several
given elements may G-move only if it contains only given elements. If there were any new
element, a G-operator would have to be inserted within the moving constituent, i.e., in the
position in which it would have been inserted if the whole constituent did not undergo G-
movement at all.
Let’s summarize where we stand. We have an operator that can motivate given elements
to be located in the left edge of its propositional domain and we know informally how the
distribution of the operator can be regulated by the Maximize presupposition maxim. The
open question is what happens if there is more than one propositional domain per finite
clause. The prediction is clear. In principle, any propositional domain might have its own
G-operator in the same way as it can have an independent linear partition between given
and new. Consider the example in (58).
(58) Marie bude knihy prodávat
Marie will books sell
‘Marie will sell the books.’
.
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