The Syntax of Givenness Ivona Kucerová

1.5 The distribution of pronouns: G-movement as a last
Resort
In this section (i) I will provide independent evidence for the assumption that G-movement
is a last resort operation. (ii) I will also address the question of what happens if α G is
required to move but the movement is independently blocked by syntax. I will also introduce
an observation that elements that are given by their lexical entry, such as pronouns,
do not undergo G-movement. I will use the difference between lexically given items and
non-lexically given items to investigate when G-movement must take place.
I will first look at cases in which G-movement is independently blocked. In contrast to
the previously discussed cases where α G was able to locally G-move, we will now consider
cases in which α G cannot move at all. We will see that, in such a configuration, if α G is
asymmetrically c-commanded by a new element, α G must be realized by a pronoun, i.e.,
an element that comes marked as given from the lexicon. I will argue that if G-movement
of α is required, α must G-move at least once. On the other hand, as we will see, if α G
is trapped in a position that is not asymmetrically c-commanded by any new element, α G
does not need to be lexically given. This fact will provide independent evidence for the
assumption that G-movement is a last resort operation.
I will refine this analysis in chapter 4 where I will introduce a global comparison system
which will enforce lexical givenness in cases that would not be otherwise interpreted
as given. In this chapter, however, we will stay with the surface oriented generalization.
A question we have not asked yet is whether G-movement applies to all given elements.
The answer is no. G-movement does not apply to pronouns. To see this, consider the
example in (57). As we can see, there is a difference in the position of the same given
element depending on whether the element is realized as a full DP (Pavel) or as a pronoun
(ho/jeho, ‘him’). 21
(57) What do you know about Pavel?
a. Marie ho viděla na nádraží. ̌new > pronoun
Marie.Nom him.Acc saw on railway-station
b. #Marie Pavla viděla na nádraží. # new > DP
Marie.Nom Pavla.Acc saw on railway-station
21 Personal pronouns in Czech come in two flavors: weak pronouns, in this case ho, and strong pronouns,
in this case jeho (Cardinaletti and Starke, 1999). They differ in their syntactic distribution and interpretation.
Crucially, weak pronouns are excluded from the left edge of a prosodic constituent, including the sentence
initial position. The reason is that Czech requires main word stress to be aligned to the left edge of a prosodic
constituent (see, for example, Petr et al. 1986; Palková 1994; van der Hulst 1999) and since weak pronouns
cannot be stressed they are excluded from the left edge. If a pronoun needs to be, for instance, in the sentence
initial position, it must be realized as a strong pronoun. For further details about the distinction between weak
and strong pronouns see Cardinaletti and Starke 1999. More details about distributional properties of Czech
weak pronouns can be found at Vos and Veselovská 1999.
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