The Syntax of Givenness Ivona Kucerová

landing site. In chapter 3, I will use the formalization offered in this chapter to show
how G-movement, a relatively simple syntactic tool, can account for complex word order
patterns.
2.1 The target of G-movement
In this section, I will address the question of the landing site of G-movement. I will show
that in Czech there is no unique syntactic position that is always interpreted as given. The
argument will be based on properties of movement to T. The logic behind this move is that
the element that moves to Spec,TP or to T is often interpreted as given. In the same time
such an element can be new as well. If, for example, Spec,TP were a unique syntactic
position for being interpreted as given, the possibility of new elements in Spec,TP would
be unexpected. 1 I will argue that movement to Spec,TP is a result of an Attract Closest
condition on T and as such it has nothing to do with the information structure nature of the
projection. I suggest that the ambiguous property of movement to Spec,TP can be extended
to other functional projections as well. 2
Notice that the argument goes only in one direction. It says that it cannot be true that
whatever moves to Spec,TP must be given. Thus, the argument does not exclude the possibility
that whatever is to be interpreted as given moves to Spec,TP. We have seen, however,
in section 1.4 that this is not true either. In section 2.2, I will provide examples that make
the point that G-movement can target other positions as well.
We now proceed to the first half of the argument, i.e., to the claim that Spec,TP does not
have a uniform interpretation. We have already seen in the discussion of basic word orders
(in section 1.2), that in the basic word order the leftmost element can be either given or new.
Consider the example in (1). Nějaká paní ‘some lady’ does not need to be presupposed and
it can still occupy the subject position (Spec,TP).
(1) a. What happened?
b. Nějaká paní poslala osamělým dětem dárky.
some lady.Nom sent lonely children.Dat presents.Acc
‘Some lady sent presents to lonely children.’
I argue that movement to T (Spec,TP or head-adjunction to T) in Czech is driven by an
EPP-like principle, not by, for example, some given feature (see also Saito (1989); Tateishi
(1994); Sauerland (1999) for scrambling in Japanese). If this is correct, we predict that
movement to Spec,TP is dependent on the internal structure of vP, in the sense that it is the
highest element within vP that moves to Spec,TP by virtue of being closest. Thus, even in
1 The argument is in line with Lavine and Freidin (2002); Bailyn (2003), among others, who argue that
Spec,TP is not a designated given position.
2 The argument crucially assumes that given DPs target an A-position. One might argue that the given
interpretation arises only if the relevant DP undergoes A-bar movement. I will argue in the appendix that
G-movement is indeed A-movement. Thus, there is no reason to assume that there is a positional difference
between a DP being interpreted as given and a DP being interpreted as new.
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