The Syntax of Givenness Ivona Kucerová

such an interpretation would lead to Presupposition failure. What about the other option?
If we do not presuppose Marie, nothing goes wrong either in syntax or in semantics. I
argue that in order to exclude option (ii) we need to refer to a pragmatic principle called
Maximize Presupposition, given in (19). I argue that if Marie in (16) is not presupposed
then (16) violates the Maximize Presupposition maxim.
(19) Maximize Presupposition (after Heim (1991))
In context C use the most informative presupposition satisfied in C.
We can thus conclude that (16) is not well formed because Marie cannot be interpreted as
presupposed in this particular syntactic configuration. The only way to interpret Marie as
presupposed is to change the structure, i.e, to move Marie above the new elements.
To formalize the idea about marking givenness introduced in this chapter, we will first
need to derive the descriptive generalization about Czech given in (18). Then I will introduce
a formal evaluation component that decides what structure satisfies the Maximize
presupposition maxim in the relevant context. I will argue for a global comparison system
which will evaluate syntactic structure at the level of a phase.
More concretely, in the next subsection I will derive (18) by introducing a semantic
operator which recursively marks syntactic elements as presupposed. Then I will show
how this operator interacts with Maximize Presupposition. I will also show how the modified
system can account for the Czech cases discussed in chapters 1–3. In section 4.3 I
will show how the modified system can account for the coordination facts that have been a
problem for the original system. Section 4.5 formalizes the notion of givenness in Czech
and in section 4.6 I will address the question of the relation of G-movement in Czech and
deaccentation in English. Finally, in section 4.7 I will show why a syntax-phonology interface
system is not a viable alternative.
It has already been suggested that Maximize Presupposition may license movement
(see Wagner (2005, To appear a) and Wagner (To appear b)). I want to extend the idea to
licensing other grammatical structures as well. Roughly, Maximize Presupposition may be
used for global comparison of different derivations. It is up to the reference set to incorporate
whatever the relevant means of expressing givenness in a particular language are.
The intuition to capture is that there may be more than one grammatical tool to consider
within the comparison set. Thus, while some languages use, for example, morphological
marking (for definite articles) or prosodic tools (deaccenting) as means which can give rise
to a presupposition (can pick up a unique referent from the discourse), other languages may
have other tools. I argue that Czech uses movement (cf. Hlavsa (1975) for a similar idea)
and a linear partition between given and new as such a tool. 3
3 Notice I do not claim that givenness in Czech corresponds to definiteness. Even though there may be a
partial overlap, these are two different notions.
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