The Syntax of Givenness Ivona Kucerová
The Syntax of Givenness Ivona Kucerová
The Syntax of Givenness Ivona Kucerová
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vP<br />
Marie<br />
vP<br />
yesterday<br />
vP<br />
gave<br />
VP<br />
quickly<br />
VP<br />
t gave ?P<br />
horse<br />
VP<br />
Pavel<br />
VP<br />
<strong>The</strong> argument as it stands now is not conclusive. First <strong>of</strong> all, if we assumed that a<br />
ditransitive verb does not have a VP shell but there are instead two independent heads<br />
involved (cf. for example, Pylkkänen (2002) and the literature cited there), the hypothesis<br />
that G-movement takes place at the end <strong>of</strong> a maximal projection would still be feasible.<br />
Similarly, if we assumed that adverbs form their own functional projections, we could not<br />
distinguish between the two hypotheses. A crucial piece <strong>of</strong> evidence that G-movement may<br />
take place after any merge comes from SOV orders. Consider the example in (22).<br />
(22) a. How did the boy get the lollipop?<br />
b. Chlapec lízátko<br />
boy.Nom lollipop.Acc<br />
|| našel.<br />
found<br />
‘<strong>The</strong> boy found the lollipop.’<br />
In this case, the subject and the object are given and only the verb is new. Since the verb<br />
needs to move to v, there must be an option for the object to move over the verb before the<br />
subject is merged. If the object moved at the end <strong>of</strong> the vP projection, it should linearly<br />
precede the subject, resulting in OSV order. As the example in (22) shows, this prediction<br />
is incorrect. <strong>The</strong> corresponding derivation is given in (23). <strong>The</strong> given elements are marked<br />
by boxes.<br />
t gave<br />
horse<br />
(23) a. v is merged:<br />
53
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