The Syntax of Givenness Ivona Kucerová

(31) Derivation of [Subject]-G verb-G Object
vP
Subject G
vP
v-G
VP
t V
Object
The logic that arises is the following: if a structure is monotonous in the sense that there is
no point where a new element would asymmetrically c-command a given element, syntax
does not have any tool to mark what part exactly is given and what part exactly is new. In
contrast, if there is any deviance from the basic word order, the partition between given
and new is syntactically realized. Thus, the interpretation of the utterance is restricted by
syntactic tools. I will argue in chapter 4 that if there is no G-movement, the partition is
established by the semantic component.
I argue that any basic word order sentence – if presented out of the blue – is ambiguous
with respect to its information structure. Since there is no syntactic marking of the partition
between given and new within basic word order determining the partition is left entirely to
the semantic interface. I argue that this follows from the fact that in a neutral word order
sentence there is no G-movement taking place. Thus the syntactic output of such a sentence
is identical no matter how many semantic interpretations of the sentence are available.
This conclusion is supported by the fact that there is no difference in prosody between
(27-a) and (30-a). If we assume that phonology reads prosody directly off the syntactic
structure (see, for example, Bresnan 1972; Truckenbrodt 1995; Wagner 2005; Büring 2006,
among many others) this is an unsurprising result. Therefore, it is only the semantic component
that may interpret such a clause in different ways depending on the actual context.
For syntax and the syntax-phonology interface there is only one structure to be considered.
Crucially, this behavior is a consequence of G-movement being a last resort operation. If G-
movement had to take place whenever there was something potentially given, the semantic
(but also word order and prosodic) ambiguity of the basic word order would be unexpected.
In this section, we have seen that there is a close connection between the last resort
character of G-movement and the multiple interpretations available for basic word orders.
In the next section we will look at ambiguities that arise within derived orders. I will argue
that this type of ambiguity follows from G-movement being dependent on head movement.
1.3 Verb partitions and their semantic ambiguity
In Czech the partition between given and new is often manifested by a finite verb. The
fact that Czech verbs usually appear between the given and the new part has already been
observed by Vilém Mathesius (Mathesius, [1929] 1983, 1939). In the following Czech
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