The Syntax of Givenness Ivona Kucerová

‘Marie will give the/a horse to Pavel.’
Furthermore, the three hypotheses make different predictions with respect to the distribution
of adverbs. I assume that adverbs in Czech, with the exception of prosodically heavy
adverbs, are left branching and adjoin immediately to a functional head. Thus, for example
a vP adverb can linearly intervene between the subject and the finite verb in v. 8 Consider
the examples in (18). Time adverbials, such as yesterday, that are base generated at vP may
precede the finite verb and both the direct and indirect object, irrespective of the word order
of the objects. If G-movement of the direct object took place only at the phase level, this
order would be unexpected without additional assumptions about movement of adverbs.
Thus, we can conclude that the reordering of the direct and indirect object takes place
within vP.
(18) vP adverbs:
a. Marie [ vP včera dala Petrovi
Marie.Nom yesterday gave to-Peter.Dat
‘Marie gave yesterday Peter a horse.’
b. Marie [ vP včera dala koně
Marie.Nom yesterday gave horse.Acc
‘Marie gave yesterday a horse to Pavel.’
koně].
horse.Acc
Pavlovi].
Pavel.Dat
We can further restrict the domain of the reordering by looking at VP adverbs. Assuming
that VP adverbs adjoin to VP, we predict that if G-movement targets the end of the maximal
projection, the direct object should precede the adverb. If, on the other hand, G-movement
takes place within VP, there is no problem with the adverb preceding the direct object. As
we can see in (19), a manner adverb rychle ‘quickly’ may indeed precede the direct object.
(19) VP adverbs:
a. Marie dala [ V P rychle Petrovi
Marie.Nom gave quickly to-Peter.Dat
‘Marie gave quickly Peter a horse.’
b. Marie dala [ V P rychle koně
Marie.Nom gave quickly horse.Acc
‘Marie gave quickly a horse to Pavel.’
koně].
horse.Acc
|| Pavlovi].
Pavel.Dat
The examples in (20) are here as a control showing that the reordering with respect to the
VP adverb takes place within VP. Thus the only way we can derive the examples in (20)
with our current assumptions is to assume that G-movement takes place after any merge.
The derivation of (20-b) is schematized in (21). The only new element – the indirect object
– is marked by a box.
(20) vP and VP adverbs:
a. Marie [ vP včera dala [ V P rychle Petrovi koně]].
Marie.Nom yesterday gave quickly to-Peter.Dat horse.Acc
‘Marie gave yesterday quickly Peter a horse.’
8 For a detailed discussion of adverbial syntax in Czech, see, for example, Biskup (In preparation).
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