The Syntax of Givenness Ivona Kucerová

(2) a. SVO: Chlapec našel lízátko.
boy.Nom found lollipop.Acc
(i) ‘A boy found a lollipop.’
(ii) ‘The boy found a lollipop.’
(iii) ‘The boy found the lollipop.’
(iv) #‘A boy found the lollipop.’
b. OVS: Lízátko našel chlapec.
lollipop.Acc found boy.Nom
‘A boy found the lollipop.’
As we can see in (2-a), the SVO order in Czech is compatible with several different interpretations.
The very same Czech string can correspond (i) to a situation where neither a boy,
nor a lollipop are given, in the sense that there is no referent determined by the previous
context, i.e., the existence of the referent has not been asserted yet; (ii) to a situation where
only a boy has been previously determined by the context; or (iii) to a situation where both
the boy and the lollipop have a unique referent but they have not been introduced by the
previous context. Crucially, however, the SVO order is not felicitous in a situation in which
only the lollipop has been introduced by the previous context, (iv).
To achieve the missing interpretation, i.e., the interpretation in which only the object
has been determined by the previous context, the word order must be OVS, as in (2-b),
translated as ‘A boy found the lollipop.’.
What is the nature of the reordering? Notice that in order to capture the intuition about
meaning differences corresponding to different word orders, I used indefinite and definite
articles. Since Czech does not have any overt morphological marking of definiteness – with
the exception of demonstrative and deictic pronouns – we could understand the different
word orders as a strategy to achieve the same interpretation that English can achieve by
using overt determiners. This would be, however, a simplification. The object in the OVS
order does not need to correspond to a definite description. It is enough that it has been
introduced in the previous discourse, as in (3). 4
(3) a. We left some cookies and lollipops in the garden for the kids. Who found a
lollipop?
b. Lízátko našla Maruška a Janička.
lollipop.Acc found Maruška and Janička
‘Little Mary and little Jane found a lollipop.’
4 The reordering observed in (2-a) and (2-b) might remind the reader of the Mapping Hypothesis of Diesing
1992 or of a more general discussion of specificity as in Enç 1991; van Geenhoven 1998; Farkas 2002, among
many others. One might think that for a DP to become specific (whatever it means) such a DP must move to
(or it must be base-generated in) a certain syntactic position. As we will see shortly, not only referential, but
also predicational or propositional elements can be introduced in a discourse in the same way as the object in
(2-b). I do not know at this point whether there is any connection between specificity and the data discussed
here. In general, I will ignore possible relations between quantification and information structure here.
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