The Syntax of Givenness Ivona Kucerová

To summarize, we have seen that there are two different strategies to mark a syntactic
element in Czech as given. (i) Either an element is in an appropriate configuration (given
precedes new), or (ii) it is lexically marked as given. The appropriate configuration can
be achieved either by base generation or by G-movement. The relevant environments we
have discussed so far are summarized in (13). We have also seen that failing to be in an
appropriate configuration is not necessarily a problem. The facts are more subtle, as we
have seen in the coordination of adverbs.
(13) Summary of environments in which a given element must precede a new element:
a. finite clause (may involve cyclic G-movement)
b. domain defined by verb movement (may involve local G-movement)
c. coordination (no movement)
The syntactic mechanisms introduced so far create the right partition when some G-movement
takes place. It cannot, however, account for the word order constraint in coordination and it
cannot account for the distributional pattern of pronominalized versus non-pronominalized
elements because G-movement is the only mechanism that can improve a suboptimal structure.
The question is whether we can do better.
Let’s first see whether we can do better if we take into account current insights about the
syntax of information structure. There are two main approaches to consider: cartographic
approaches (Rizzi, 1997, 2004; Cinque, 2002; Belletti, 2004; Aboh, 2004, among others)
and interface-driven approaches (Vallduví, 1992; Cinque, 1993; Reinhart, 1995; Erteschik-
Shir, 1997; Zubizarreta, 1998; Arregui-Urbina, 2002; Szendrői, 2003, among others). 2 The
cartographic approaches cannot deal with the Czech word order data. Such an approach
would have problems with ordering within the given part (when should the order be preserved,
when should it be reversed?), with ordering within a coordination (if feature checking
can be done by Agree, why this option is not available for any given element?), and
with the fact that not only given but sometimes also new elements (a finite verb) undergo
movement. The interface-driven approaches (more precisely approaches which rely on the
syntax-phonology interface) deal with the Czech data much better. For example, if we consider
a rather abstract version of the nuclear stress rule, we might be able to account for
most of the ordering patterns. But unfortunately, exactly the cases which cannot be captured
by G-movement, such as ordering within a coordination and the difference between
coordinated DPs and coordinated VPs, would be left aside as well. Furthermore, a phonology
driven approach does not provide any insight for deriving the empirical generalization.
I argue that the missing part in our understanding of givenness is the syntax-semantics
interface. Even though many of the above mentioned authors are concerned with the semantic
interpretation of givenness (or focus), the syntax-semantics interface is not understood
as the key component. Instead, the syntactic component or the phonological component
works in parallel to the semantics. I argue that we indeed do want to put the main burden
2 I do not comment here on optimality theory approaches (Choi, 1999; Downing et al., 2006; Zerbian,
2006, among others) and functionalist approaches (Sgall et al., 1986; Firbas, 1992, among others).
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