The Syntax of Givenness Ivona Kucerová

(9) a. What happened?
b. #[Vlak přijel] New
train arrived
‘A train arrived.’
c. What about the train?
d. Vlak || přijel
train arrived
‘The train arrived.’
To conclude, we have seen that even though an element in Spec,TP is often interpreted
as given, there is nothing about this particular syntactic position that enforces given interpretation.
I argue that this conclusion can be extended to other syntactic positions as
well, i.e., there is no syntactic projection that is canonically associated in Czech with given
interpretation. As we will see in the next section, G-movement may take place after any
merge. This means that it can target various syntactic positions. One might conclude that
basically any syntactic position is a good enough landing site for G-movement. In section
2.3, I will show, however, that the possibilities of various landing sites are restricted by G-
movement being parasitic on head movement. In chapter 4, I will refine the generalization
even further. I will show that the landing sites are further restricted by their semantic type.
2.2 When in the derivation does G-movement apply?
In this section I will address the question of timing of G-movement. In order to distinguish
among different theories, I will look more closely at more complex word order facts. On
the basis of this data, I will argue that G-movement may take place after any merge (both
internal and external).
I will consider in turn three hypotheses: (i) G-movement may take place only at a
phasal level, (ii) G-movement may take place at the end of any maximal projection, and
(iii) G-movement may take place after any merge, the hypothesis I will argue for.
(10) Timing of G-movement:
G-movement may take place after any merge.
Consider first the examples in (11) and (12). The example in (11) shows the basic word
order in a ditransitive construction. The example in (12) differs only in a local word order
change: while in the basic word order, the indirect object Pavel precedes the direct object
‘horse’, the order of the objects is reversed in (12). The rest of the order is the same.
(11) Neutral order: S V IO DO
a. What happened? / What did Mary give to Pavel? / . . .
b. (||) Marie (||) dala (||) Pavlovi (||) koně.
Marie.Nom gave to-Pavel.Dat horse.Acc
‘Marie gave Pavel a horse.’
(12) a. Whom did Marie give a horse?
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