The Syntax of Givenness Ivona Kucerová
The Syntax of Givenness Ivona Kucerová The Syntax of Givenness Ivona Kucerová
It has also been observed that in basic word order various constituents may be understood as new. The only condition for an SVO language like Czech is that a new constituent be aligned to the right edge of a clause. We can test this property by using wh-questions targeting different constituents, as seen in (23). 18
(23) What can be understood as new? a. (i) What did Marie give to Pavel? (ii) Marie dala Pavlovi [facku] New ←− slap b. (i) What did Marie give to whom? (ii) Marie dala [Pavlovi facku] New ←− Pavel a slap c. (i) What did Marie do? (ii) Marie [dala Pavlovi facku] New ←− gave Pavel a slap d. (i) What happened? (ii) [Marie dala Pavlovi facku] New ←− Marie gave Pavel a slap In contrast, if an utterance contains any deviance from the basic order, then such an utterance is infelicitous in an all-new context. It means that if any reordering takes place, at least one constituent must be α G , i.e., introduced in the previous discourse. In other words, any reordering limits the number of structural positions in which we can identify the partition between given and new. For example, in a derived word order, as in (24), there is only one felicitous interpretation of the information structure. More precisely, only the rightmost constituent can be interpreted as new (non-G). In this particular case, it is the indirect object Pavel. Thus, in (24) there is only one possible partition between given and new, in contrast to (22) that is compatible with several partitions, as schematized in (25). (24) Focus Projection within a derived word order: a. Marie dala facku [Pavlovi] New ←− S V DO || IO t DO b. #Marie dala [facku Pavlovi] New c. #Marie [dala facku Pavlovi] New d. #[Marie dala facku Pavlovi] New (25) a. Marie dala facku || Pavlovi. b. (||) Marie (||) dala (||) Pavlovi (||) facku. What we can learn from the observed pattern is that in basic word order there is a relative freedom in what parts of the utterance can be interpreted as new and what parts can be interpreted as given. As I have already anticipated in the previous discussion of G-movement, this pattern can be described in the following manner: whatever is interpreted as given cannot be linearly preceded by anything interpreted as new. Let’s now turn to the question of how exactly the multiple partition effect follows from our system. To see that, we will look at a very simple case: a transitive clause that has no modifiers, only a subject, a verb, and an object. Consider first the case where the subject is the only given element. As we already know, the resulting word order is SVO, as seen in (26) and (27). 16 (26) a. Subject-G verb Object ←− b. #Object verb Subject-G 16 I use here examples with potom ‘then, afterward’ instead of a wh-question. The reason is that potom creates a natural context where only the subject is presupposed/given. For reasons that are not clear to me, it is difficult to obtain the same pragmatic effect with a wh-question. 19
- Page 1 and 2: The Syntax of Givenness by Ivona Ku
- Page 3 and 4: Acknowledgments Two things were dif
- Page 5 and 6: A.4 A note on base generation . . .
- Page 7 and 8: (2) a. SVO: Chlapec našel lízátk
- Page 9 and 10: accent on the auxiliary did in (4-a
- Page 11 and 12: Pitch (Hz) 500 400 300 200 100 0 ch
- Page 13 and 14: (6) Petr řídil včera rychle auto
- Page 15 and 16: phrases are required to undergo G-m
- Page 17: . A entails (α,U) where (α,U) is
- Page 21 and 22: (28) Derivation of [Subject]-G verb
- Page 23 and 24: functionalist tradition there has b
- Page 25 and 26: c. ?P v-V vP Subject vP v-V VP V Ob
- Page 27 and 28: (40) What happened to the antique c
- Page 29 and 30: movement is possible. (47) a. Why d
- Page 31 and 32: TP Aux vP money vP gave VP t money
- Page 33 and 34: TP Aux TP T vP t Aux VP money VP gi
- Page 35 and 36: c. #Jeho viděla Marie na nádraž
- Page 37 and 38: (63) a. #Diskuse proběhla bez věd
- Page 39 and 40: (70) a. #Žáky a učitelku to pře
- Page 41 and 42: Chapter 2 G-movement In chapter 1,
- Page 43 and 44: asic word order cases we expect wor
- Page 45 and 46: (9) a. What happened? b. #[Vlak př
- Page 47 and 48: . ?P DO vP subject vP v VP V VP IO
- Page 49 and 50: . vP subject vP v VP V ?P DO VP IO
- Page 51 and 52: . Marie [ vP včera dala [ V P rych
- Page 53 and 54: vP Marie vP yesterday vP gave VP qu
- Page 55 and 56: list reading. No such requirement e
- Page 57 and 58: poskytovat jídlo. provide food.Acc
- Page 59 and 60: a. X X X Z X X α b. X α X X X Z X
- Page 61 and 62: existing Agree relation in case it
- Page 63 and 64: 2.4 Summary In this chapter, I have
- Page 65 and 66: 3.1 Deriving the verb partition In
- Page 67 and 68: We will see in the next section how
It has also been observed that in basic word order various constituents may be understood<br />
as new. <strong>The</strong> only condition for an SVO language like Czech is that a new constituent be<br />
aligned to the right edge <strong>of</strong> a clause. We can test this property by using wh-questions<br />
targeting different constituents, as seen in (23).<br />
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