On information structure, meaning and form: generalizations across languages

On Information Structure, Meaning and Form

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today (LA) provides a platform for original monograph studies into synchronic and diachronic linguistics. Studies in LA confront empirical and theoretical problems as these are currently discussed in syntax, semantics, morphology, phonology, and systematic pragmatics with the aim to establish robust empirical generalizations within a universalistic perspective.

Series Editors Werner Abraham

Elly van Gelderen

University of Vienna

Arizona State University

Advisory Editorial Board Cedric Boeckx

Ian Roberts

Harvard University

Cambridge University

Guglielmo Cinque

Ken Safir

University of Venice

Rutgers University, New Brunswick NJ

Günther Grewendorf

Lisa deMena Travis

J.W. Goethe-University, Frankfurt

McGill University

Liliane Haegeman

Sten Vikner

University of Lille, France

University of Aarhus

Hubert Haider

C. Jan-Wouter Zwart

University of Salzburg

University of Groningen

Christer Platzack University of Lund

Volume 100 On Information Structure, Meaning and Form: Generalizations across languages Edited by Kerstin Schwabe and Susanne Winkler

On Information Structure, Meaning and Form Generalizations across languages

Edited by

Kerstin Schwabe ZAS, Berlin

Susanne Winkler University of Tübingen

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelphia

8

TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data On information structure, meaning and form : generalizations across languages / edited by Kerstin Schwabe and Susanne Winkler. p. cm. (Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, issn 0166–0829 ; v. 100) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. Grammar, Comparative and general--Topic and comment. 2. Focus (Linguistics) 3. Pragmatics. I. Schwabe, Kerstin. II. Winkler, Susanne, 1960P298.O494 2006 415--dc22 isbn 978 90 272 3364 6 (Hb; alk. paper)

2006047968

© 2007 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa

Table of contents

Acknowledgments On information structure, meaning and form Generalizations across languages Kerstin Schwabe, Susanne Winkler

ix

1

Part I. Information structure and grammar Generalizations across languages Phases and the typology of focus constructions Hans Bernhard Drubig

33

1.1 Topics and topicalization across languages The prosody of topicalization Caroline Féry

69

Types of topics in German and Italian Mara Frascarelli and Roland Hinterhölzl

87

The Korean particle nun, the English fall-rise accent, and thetic/categorical judgements Jorunn Hetland

117

Topicalization in Malagasy, Tagalog and Tsou Paul Law

129

On the discourse configurationality of West Germanic Laszlo Molnárfi

155

Topic, focus and default vs. contrastive accent Typological differences with respect to discourse prominence Werner Abraham

183

vi

On Information Structure, Meaning and Form: Generalizations across languages

1.2 Focus and focus movement across languages Identifying inferences in focus Dan Wedgwood

207

Focus structure and the interpretation of multiple questions Balázs Surányi

229

Focus structure, movement to spec-Foc and syntactic processing Carsten Breul

255

Focus and marked positions for VP adverbs Edward Göbbel

275

Ellipsis and inversion: A synchronic and diachronic perspective Remus Gergel, Kirsten Gengel and Susanne Winkler

301

The subject/object asymmetry in Northern Sotho Sabine Zerbian

323

Wide focus interpretation with fronted focus exponents in Czech Denisa Lenertová and Uwe Junghanns

347

In place – out of place? Focus in Hausa Katharina Hartmann and Malte Zimmermann

365

Part II. Information structure and pragmatics Clause structure and context Instructions for interpretation as separate performatives Paul Portner

407

Interrogative complement clauses Kerstin Schwabe

427

The syntax and pragmatics of embedded yes/no questions Regine Eckardt

447

Toward a uniform analysis of short answers and gapping Ingo Reich

467

Alternative Semantics for definite NPs Klaus von Heusinger

485

Table of contents vii

Bare plurals as topics in English and Italian Ariel Cohen

509

References

523

Name Index

559

Subject Index

563

Acknowledgments This volume emerged out of a long-term collaboration of the contributors and a joint workshop of the ZAS and the University of Tübingen on the topic of Information Structure and the Architecture of Grammar: A Typological Perspective held at the University of Tübingen in February 2004. The workshop was organized in honor of Bernie Drubig’s 65th birthday, a fact which influenced both, the topic of the workshop and the structure of the present volume. We thank the participants of this workshop for their fruitful discussions of the ideas and issues presented in this volume and the authors of this volume for their contributions and their participation in the internal reviewing process. We would further like to gratefully acknowledge the rewarding dialogues on information structure with the following linguists: Cornelia Endriss, Werner Frey, Manfred Krifka, Andreas Haida, Jutta Hartmann, Valéria Molnár, Ewald Lang, and Luis López. A special thank you goes to the series editors of this book, Elly van Gelderen and Werner Abraham for discussing the concept of the book and their ongoing support in bringing it to its conclusion. We also want to thank Kees Vaes for his professional assistance and invaluable help in carrying out this project. Particular gratitude goes to Kirsten Brock for copy-editing substantial parts of this text and to Mechthild Bernhard and Paul Doherty for their help in putting this volume together. We also thank the German Science Foundation (DFG) for supporting the workshops and the research of the editors presented in this book�.

On information structure, meaning and form Generalizations across languages Kerstin Schwabe and Susanne Winkler 1. The outset Over the past four decades, the syntactic and prosodic properties reflecting the information packaging of a particular sentence have attracted considerable attention in the field. Most linguists working in the generative framework will agree that there are language-specific phenomena concerning information structuring, such as focus, topic and intonation, and that they can only be adequately described with reference to a specific theoretical framework, or model of grammar. However, they will disagree on exactly how this gram­matical model must be conceptualized in order to derive the relevant syntactic form with the appropriate intonation and the intended semantic and pragmatic meaning. This book takes up the issue of how the grammar of human language should be modeled to account for linguistic information packaging and interrelated issues such as word order variation and speech act type. The fundamental issue it addresses is the interaction between the linguistic form of information structuring and its interpretation across languages. The term Information Structure (IS) of a sentence refers since Halliday (1967) to the linguistic encoding of notions such as focus versus background and topic versus comment, which are used to describe the information flow with respect to discoursegivenness and states of activation. Examples (1B1-B5) below each provide the same constituent as the foregrounded information, despite certain variations with respect to word order, particles, length, or elaboration. Foregrounded, or focused, constituents are often prosodically highlighted, as signaled by small capitals from now on. (1)

A: What did John bring to the party? B1: He brought paella to the party. B2: He brought only paella to the party. B3: He brought paella to the party and cookies to the reception. B4: Only paella did he bring to the party. B5: (Only) paella.



Kerstin Schwabe & Susanne Winkler

This functional similarity is generally attributed to the fact that all of these responses serve as felicitous answers to the same question, which requires the specification of John‘s contribution to the party. The subject paella is the constituent which corresponds to the wh-phrase in (1A), provid­ing the missing information in the answer. This constituent, which is intonationally highlighted by the main accent, is generally referred to in the literature as the Focus of the sentence. The complementary notion, illustrated by the constituents he or John in examples (2B1-B2), is referred to as the Topic. In most approaches, the term topic generally refers to a sentence-initial con­stituent about which something is predicated. In (2B), the predication brought paella to the party is about the subject of the sentence, which is usually intonationally unmarked (cf. Reinhart 1982 and Portner, this volume). (2) A: What did John bring to the party? B1: He brought paella to the party. B2: John brought paella to the party. Examples (3) and (4) provide evidence for the linguistic relevance of the notions focus and topic. In particular, examples (3B1) and its reduced version (3B2) show that the violation of focus constraints imposed by the heuristic question-answer test leads to infelicitous question-answer sequences. Both expressions, however, would be appropriate answers to a question such as Who brought paella to the party? (3) A: What did John bring to the party? B1: #John brought paella to the party. B2: #John. The infelicity of (3B1-B2) as answers to (3A) results from the violation of the information exchange principle, which states that in an information exchange context, a sentential expression must mark non-discourse-givenness by linguistic focus marking. The response in (3B1) is infelicitous because John is prosodically focus-marked, although it is discourse-given, and (3B2) is infelicitous because paella is not focus-marked, in fact, not even phonologically realized, although it is not discourse-given. Example (4B1) illustrates a violation of the topic constraint: constituents which are already introduced into the discourse are deaccented and preferably realized as a pronoun. A rising accent on John, marked by the slash in (4B2), signals that the topic John is contrasted with an alternative topic (cf. Féry, this volume, and Hetland, this volume). (4) A: What about John? B1: #John brought paella to the party. B2: /John brought paella to the party. As seen in (1) to (4), focus and topic are linguistically relevant information structural notions in that they mirror information packaging constraints in the formal realization of sentences. However, differ­ent languages use different strategies in encoding these notions. The most important means of express­ing focus in English is intonation.



On information structure, meaning and form: generalizations across languages

This also holds true for German, which together with many other European languages belongs to the class of intonational focus marking languages: (5) A: Was hat Hans zur Party mitgebracht? what has Hans to the party brought ‘What did John bring to the party?’ B1: Er hat paella zur Party mitgebracht. he has paella to-the party with-brought ‘He brought paella to the party.’ B2: Zur Party hat er paella mitgebracht. Hungarian, in contrast, is a language which is often described as having a designated syntactic position for a specific kind of focus – the identificational focus. This focus type is possible only in the immedi­ate preverbal position (see Surányi, this volume, and Wedgwood, this volume). (6) János Marit hívta meg. János Mari.acc invited vm ‘It’s Mari who János invited.’ Although many differences exist, the topic is often realized in sentence-initial position, as in English (2B), German (5B1), and Hungarian (6), where it must be realized to the left of the focus, preferably sentence initially. In Romance languages, the topic can be realized at the right periphery of the sen­tence, as illustrated by the Italian example in (7). (On possible locations for topics see the contributions by Abraham, Breul, Molnárfi, and Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl in this volume.) (7) Non riesco a darmela da sola la conferma. not can.1sg to give-to.me(cl)-it(cl) alone the check ‘I cannot make this check on my own.’ (example from Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl, this volume) Some languages use still other means for topic and focus marking. In Japanese and Korean, for in­stance, morphology is responsible for signaling the focus or topic status of constituents. In the Japanese example (8a), the particle wa functions as topic marker and the particle ga as focus marker (cf. Kuno 1973). In the Korean example (8b), the unaccented particle nun marks the aboutness topic of the sen­tence (cf. Choe 1995, and Hetland, this volume). (8) a. b.

[Jono hon wa] [ John ga ] yonda. the book TOP John FOCUS reads Chelswu-nun ca- n- ta. Chelswu-top sleep- pres- dec ‘Speaking about Chelswu, he is sleeping.’ (Choe 1995: 282)





Kerstin Schwabe & Susanne Winkler

The question arises whether all syntactic highlighting, here referred to as focus marking, corresponds to non-discourse-givenness, as has been suggested with respect to the answers in (3). For particular lan­guages such as, for instance, Hungarian (see (6)) and Hausa (see (9B)), it has been suggested that dislo­cations need not necessarily have the interpretation of non-discourse-givenness (cf. Wedgwood, this volume, for the interpretation of preverbal elements in Hungarian, and Hartmann & Zimmermann, this volume for the emphasis interpretation of ex situ elements in Hausa). More specifically, Hartmann & Zimmermann argue with respect to (9), their example (38), that the complete utterance of (9B) is focused, despite the fact that only the subject is moved to an ex situ position. (9) A: B:

Mèe ya fàaru? what 3sg.rel.perf happen ‘What happened?’ B’àràayii nèe su-kà yi mîn saatàa! robbers prt 3pl-rel.perf do to.me theft ‘robbers have stolen from me!’

There is a tremendous amount of empirical evidence from many different languages which shows that topic and focus and related phenomena are universally represented and which therefore requires a uni­fied explanation. But there is still no agreement on how the different findings should be integrated into a co­herent theo­retical framework. This volume contributes to the task of modeling such a framework by bringing together papers which contribute a new perspective to the study of information structure and bring us closer to the goal of deriving relevant generalizations for an information structure theory. The core issues center on the questions of how information structural notions like topic and focus are repre­sented at the levels of syntax, semantics and phonology and how they are related to pragmatics. The researchers adopting the grammar view are further divided over the issue of whether topic and fo­cus are represented as syntactic features with interpretational reflexes in phonology and semantics, or whether these notions must be understood as exclusively phonological features. The volume reflects the cooperation of a group of researchers with syntactic, semantic, phono­logical, and pragmatic backgrounds whose recent investigations have concentrated on three major re­search areas, each of which raises challenging questions: i. Information structure and grammar: At the core of this research area are fundamental questions like the following: How do syntax, phonology and semantics interact in information structure related accounts of different languages? What counts as linguistic evidence for the existence of topic, focus and related information structural notions? What are typologically and crosslinguistically relevant pieces of evidence for the characterization of information structural terms? That is, do information-structural notions exist as grammatical categories and how do they reflect the dichotomies such as focus versus background, topic versus comment, and rheme versus theme?



On information structure, meaning and form: generalizations across languages

What exactly is the relation between form and meaning? And more precisely, are the pragmati­cally based notions like topic and focus generally encoded as syntactic features which correspond to semantic and prosodic properties? Or can these notions be directly related to prosody and to meaning? And if yes, what does this imply for the architecture of grammar? Little work has been done to define the term information structure. What exactly does the term in­formation structure denote? Is it a cover term for the focus-background structure or the topic-comment structure (cf. Chomsky 1971, Dahl 1974, Kiefer 1977, Jacobs 1984, Drubig 1992a, b, Lambrecht 1994 and Portner’s account, this volume)? Or should it be conceived of as an independent level? Most papers in this volume view information structure as an interface level between two or more compo­nents. The contribution of this book is to specify relevant interface conditions on information structure. ii. Information structure and pragmatics: The central questions which define this research area are the following: How do the grammatical components proper interact with the prag­matic component and discourse grammar? What exactly is the relation between grammatically deter­mined meaning and pragmatic meaning? Is there a pragmatically determined information structure interface, which is fed by grammar and extralinguistic knowledge? If yes, how can the conditions which operate at this inter­ face be made more precise? iii. Information structure and typological generalizations: Fundamental to this research area are ­ questions the answers to which may show that information structural constraints operate universally: What are the possible ways of characterizing and classifying topic and focus and their information structural function in a typologically relevant way? More precisely, what are the universal principles which determine the syntactic, phonological, semantic and pragmatic repre­sentation of information structural notions? The main goal of this volume is to provide answers to the questions raised above. The three identified research areas determine the structure of this introduction. We start out by providing further insight into the state of the art and preliminary work in each research field. Section 2.1 investigates the interaction of information structure with the core components of grammar. Section 2.2 discusses the interaction of information structure with the semantic-pragmatics component. Section 2.3 concen­trates on longstanding questions and new contributions. In section 3, we group each paper according to its central contribution to one of the research areas.

2. The formal approach and the interpretive approach In recent linguistic research on information structure, meaning and form, two central approaches can be identified: the formal view and the interpretive view. The former comprises (i) the syntactic or fea­ture-based account and (ii) the phonological or prosody-based account. The latter, often also referred to as the semantic-pragmatic view, comprises (i) the one-to-one mapping account of grammatically de­termined meaning





Kerstin Schwabe & Susanne Winkler

onto pragmatic meaning and (ii) the semantic underspecification account. The two views and their theoretical implications are compared and evaluated from a typological perspective. The articles in this volume are summarized and grouped with respect to this discussion.

2.1

The formal approach: Syntax and prosody

2.1.1 Focus: Arguments for a syntactic implementation Within the formal theory, the feature-based approach assumes that the information structural notions topic and focus are integrated into the formal system of language. According to the standard variant of this theory, a formal f(ocus)-feature is introduced at some level of the representation and causes the f-marked phrase to move to the specifier position of a corresponding functional focus head, which is projected in the left-peripheral domain of the sentence (Rizzi 1997, É. Kiss 1998b). The f-feature is translated at the pho­nological form (PF) into prominence according to specific phonological rules and at the logical form (LF) into a semantic representation. Within this theory, information structural no­tions are directly and unambiguously represented in the syntactic component and translated at the two interpretive interfaces. This type of approach was developed by Chomsky (1971) and Jackendoff (1972) and has been argued for within Generative Grammar and Minimalism since. Influenced by early phonological work by Chomsky & Halle (1968) and Halliday (1967), Chomsky (1971) defines focus as the phrase containing the intonation center. He further concurs with Halliday in the assumption that the focus constituent represents new information; therefore, the accent on garden in (10b) signals a focus con­stituent, which is accordingly interpreted as new information: (10) a. Does John write poetry in his study? b. No, John writes poetry in the garden. Chomsky further argues that the part of the sentence that is not focused is presupposed. He defines the presupposition as that part of the sentence “determined by replacement of the focus by a variable” (p. 91). Thus, Chomsky’s focus-presupposition account can be formalized as in (11): (11) a. Focus: The foci F1...Fn in S are identified by accent location. b. Presupposition: Given a sentence S and its foci F1...Fn, replace each F1 in S with a variable X1. Turning against the assumption that focus is directly correlated with accent, Jackendoff (1972: 240) introduced for the first time an independent syntactic feature F, which receives both a phonologi­cal and a semantic interpretation: “Two systems of rules will make use of the marker F, one in the se­mantics and one in the phonology.” Since Jackendoff is primarily interested in explicating the seman­tics of fo­cus, he bases his analysis on Chomsky’s focus-presupposition account and proposes that the semantic



On information structure, meaning and form: generalizations across languages

representation of an example like (12) consists of three steps: First, a one-place predicate Presupps is formed by replacing the focus with an appropriate semantic variable x. The second step requires that the focus be a member of the presuppositional set to yield a true proposition (Focus∈λx Presupps (x)). The third step involves constructing the pre­supposition in (12a) and the assertion in (12b) from the pre­suppositional set (cf. Jackendoff 1972: 245f.): (12) a.

b.

John likes Bill. λ x the

relation between John and Bill attitude of John toward Bill

is x

like ∈ λx the

relation between John and Bill attitude of John toward Bill

is x

is well-defined is under discussion

In Jackendoff ’s speaker-hearer model, (12a) is interpreted as ‘we are talking about possible relations between John and Bill or attitudes of John toward Bill’, and (12b) would specify that like is one of the relevant relations. Jackendoff incorporates his view that focus is not directly correlated with accent into the rule of focus assignment (cf. Jackendoff 1972: 247), which annotates the syntactic structure and serves as input to both semantic and phonological interpretation. Phonological rules assign the pitch accent to the constituent that carries the focus feature according to the Nuclear Stress Rule. Interpretive rules of the semantic component assign an interpretation to the focus-marked constituent, yielding the presuppositional set. Thus, by proposing a focus-annotated surface structure, later referred to as focus structure, Jackendoff ’s proposal stands as the first approach that satisfies the requirements of a modular grammatical model. All of the subsequent syntactic information structure theories analyze focus as a syntactic fea­ture. The main argument for the assumption that focus should be encoded in syntax comes from focus movement facts. Chomsky (1976) proposes that focused phrases must form an operator-variable LF representation. The central argument for quantified focus structures at LF is based upon the observation that weak crossover effects are responsible for the ungrammaticality of sentences such as (13a, b). No violation, however, is caused by focus raising in (13c). (13) a. *The woman hei loved betrayed someonei. b. *The woman hei loved betrayed Johni. c. The woman hei loved betrayed Johni. According to Chomsky (1976), the pronoun he and the referential expression John can be coreferential in (13c), since in this case John has not been moved and the binding conditions are not violated at S-structure.





Kerstin Schwabe & Susanne Winkler

Although Chomsky’s (1976) arguments have been subject to discussion (see Rochemont 1978, 1986, Solan 1984, Horvath 1986, Horvath & Rochemont 1986), the general observation of focus rais­ing in (14) is found in many subsequent works. (14) Focus Raising [FP ... αi [CP ... ti... ]] [+focus] This rule proposes that focused elements are raised at LF and are adjoined to a left-peripheral sentence-initial position. These quantified structures, which identify the focus constituent, are the input to focus interpretation rules, which operate as well-formedness conditions on discourse structures. Drubig (1994, 2003) and Krifka (2006) participate in the debate on whether association with fo­cus is a syntactic phenomenon or a purely semantic one. Within the semantic association-with-focus theories, Rooth (1985) and Kratzer (1991b) have argued explicitly that the association between the fo­cus-sensitive particle and the focused element does not involve any movement. In Rooth (1992a), the association falls out from the focus interpretation principle (Rooth 1992a: 85f.), which specifies that “if C is the domain of quantification of a focusing adverb with argument α, then the contrasting set C is a subset of the focus semantic value of α (C ⊆ vαb f ).” Kratzer (1991b) uses example (15) to show that only and the NP zoning board cannot be associated via movement because island violations would be expected. (15) They only investigated the question whether you know the woman who chaired the zoning board. Within the syntactic theories that implement association with focus there are basically two proposals: either the focus-sensitive operator, which forms a syntactic constituent with the focus constituent in its base-generated position, moves to a non-adjacent position from which it can c-command the contras­tive focus (e.g., Brody 1990a, É. Kiss 1998b), or the focus itself moves to a sentence-initial position, where it is associated with a focus-binding element, as in Chomsky’s (1976) original work. Drubig (1994) ar­gues with respect to Kratzer’s (1991b) example that focus movement moves not only the pitch accented element but the complete focus phrase. He employs as a test tool the negative contrastive con­struction, which reveals that only is associated with the highest DP (DP1), as shown in (16): (16) They only investigated [DP1 the question of whether you know [DP2 the woman who chaired [DP3 the zoning board.]]] a. *not the school board. b. *not the woman who chaired the school board. c. not the question of whether you know the woman who chaired the school board.



On information structure, meaning and form: generalizations across languages

Based on these observations, Drubig (1994) argues that in languages like English and German the con­trastive focus phrase moves at LF, namely into the Spec position of a sentence-initial focus phrase. In a recent paper, Krifka (2006) again takes up the question of whether association with focus is a structural operation involving LF movement, or an interpretational operation. Contrasting the struc­tured meaning approach and the alternative semantics approach he argues for a hybrid association-with-focus approach which is more complex than either the simple alternative semantics or the simple structured meaning approaches. The central claim is that the association with focus phrases takes place via LF movement, while the association of focus within focus phrases occurs via the projection of al­ternatives. Insights from explicit contrasts, multiple foci in syntactic islands and elliptical answers to questions provide more solid evidence for island restrictions in association with focus. 2.1.2 Topic and focus positions In the last decade the syntactic account of information structure has concentrated on two topics: First, what is the exact structure of the left periphery and how is it defined? Second, is the assumed structure and recursiveness of the left periphery universal? The central idea of Rizzi’s (1997) proposal is that the C-system is made up of two parts, the ForceP and the FinP. The former establishes the relation of the clause to the context and contains information about the sentence type, either by overt morphological encoding or by providing an operator position of the required type. The latter establishes the relation to the TP embedded under the C-sys­tem. The head of the FinP carries the finiteness features, which are related to mood distinctions, tense distinctions, etc. The TopP and FocP are sandwiched between the ForceP and the FinP, as in (17): (17) [ForceP [TopP [FocP [FinP [TP … ]]]]] Rizzi (1997: 288) proposes with respect to (17) that “it is reasonable to assume that the topic-focus system is present in a structure only if “needed”, i.e. when a constituent bears topic or focus features to be sanctioned by a Spec-head criterion.” Thus, in agreement with Rizzi’s (1990) general well-formed­ness condition for syntactic operators and Brody’s (1990a) Focus Condition, topic and focus must be operators that are only licensed if they occur in a specifier-head configuration. Recent syntactic accounts have discovered two main areas in sentential structure in which struc­tural topic and focus positions are located. As Rizzi observes, most Romance languages exhibit move­ment of focused constituents to a position within the CP area. However, a vast number of typologically unre­lated languages like Hungarian (É. Kiss 1998b), Hebrew (Belletti & Shlonsky 1995), Kirundi (Nday­iragije 1998), Georgian (Bush 2000) and Malayalam (Jayaseelan 2001) have a structural focus position in the vicinity of the verb phrase. For English it is generally assumed that the CP area can be the target of focus movement (cf. Breul 2004 for recent discussion). How-



 Kerstin Schwabe & Susanne Winkler

ever, considerable language-par­ticular and typological evidence from different types of constructions has been collected in recent years which suggests that an additional clause-internal focus position is available in English, as well. Recent devel­opments in the minimalist program make reference to the notion of phase, which is defined as “the closest syntactic counterpart to a proposition” (Chomsky 2001). A phase is identified concretely as the predicate phrase (vP, the constituent which encodes the full argument structure of the predicate) and the sentential constituent (CP, semantically a proposition). Starting with initial insights by Kayne (1998), who proposed that focus operators move to a position which is at the edge of vP, further evidence was found that suggested that movement was phase-bound (Fox 2000 and Chomsky 1999, 2001, 2002, 2005). The central claim in current syntactic theory is that dislocation is always leftward, either to the left edge of the sentence or to the left edge of the predicate phrase. Drubig (this volume) proposes the typologically relevant isomorphism hypothesis, which captures the fact that derivational phases have identical structure. Therefore, information structural positions must occur both at the left edge of the smaller vP-phase and at the left edge of the clausal phase. In recent influential work on the order of topic and focus, Hetland & Molnár (2001) propose that the order follows two universal information structuring principles: i. the Topic First Principle, which determines that information which is connected to the preceding discourse comes first (cf. Gundel’s (1988a) Given Before New Principle, Tomlin’s (1986) Theme First Principle, and Herring’s (1990) Dis­course Iconicity Principle), and ii. the Focus First Principle, which determines that the most important information comes first (cf. Gundel’s First Things First Principle and Mithun’s (1987) Newsworthiness Principle). The two principles are not contradictory if the complementary part of the topic, the com­ment, contains the focus, which, in turn, precedes its complementary part, the background as the sentence initial marked theme in (18a) (see also the Hungarian example (6)). If, however, the focus is the first sentential constituent, as, for instance, in German answer focus as in (18b), the Topic First Principle seems to be suspended. (18) a. His name I never found out. (Taglicht 1984: 3) b. A: What have you bought? B: Ein Buch habe ich gekauft. a book.acc have I bought ‘I have bought a book.’ According to Herring (1990) both principles depend on the word order type of the language in ques­tion. She argues that “information structure is determined relative to a language’s basic word order, as a rhetorical marking strategy. Verb-subject languages tend to order focus (comment) before topics, in contrast to languages of either the SVO or SOV type” (see also the Italian example (7)). To conclude, the general and typologically relevant hypothesis of syntax-based approaches is that information structural notions like topic and focus are represented as formal features in the syntactic component of the generative system. Feature-an-



On information structure, meaning and form: generalizations across languages

notated syntactic structures are interpreted on the two interpretive levels, PF and LF, which constitute interfaces with the articulatory-perceptual and the con­ceptual-intentional systems (Chomsky 1995b: 168) as represented by the T-model in (19). (19) Model of Grammar Lexicon

(Spell-out)

PF articulatory system

Syntax

LF intentional system

The claim that information structure is syntactically encoded and feeds into the PF and LF component is often referred to as the two-interpretive interface hypothesis. (20) Two-Interpretive Interface Hypothesis The syntactic structure is interpreted at its interfaces, PF and LF. The advantage of the two-interpretive interface hypothesis is that it is based on a strictly modular and therefore a restrictive model of grammar. However, the disadvantage of the two-interpretive interface hypothesis is that it has been driven by theory-internal rather than empirical considerations. To put it more bluntly, the claim that phonology interacts with meaning only via syntax and vice versa might be empirically inadequate. It has long been observed (e.g., van Riemsdijk & Williams 1986, Woodbury 1987, Winkler 1997) that information structural phenomena may pose a challenge to this hypothesis since they seem to allow for a direct interaction between the different modules. There is, for example, the phonological or prosody-based account, which proposes that some movement operations are not feature-driven and do not occur in syntax, but are rather phonologically driven and occur in the pho­nological component (cf. Zubizarreta 1998, Szendrői 2001, 2004, Erteschik-Shir 2006). This view is further developed by Féry, this volume, Abraham, this volume, and Monárfi, this volume. They argue that phonological requirements trigger movement for different information structural effects. What still needs to be investigated are the testing tools for phonological movement and how they are dif­ferentiated from syntactic movement. Yet another view suggests that a direct correspondence exists between phonology and interpretation without recourse to syntax as hypothesized by Schwarzschild (1999) and Büring (2006) for givenness-related phenomena from a semantic perspective. Although the exploration of direct interaction between the different components seems to show that there are, in fact, some phenomena which do not require the representation of pragmatic information structural notions in syntax, such as givenness phenomena, including some forms of ellipsis (cf. Winkler 2005, 2006, Gergel, Gengel & Winkler, this volume and Schwabe, this volume), most of the typologically relevant

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generalizations discussed in this volume, such as focus and topic marking, involve the syntactic component in one way or another.

2.2

The interpretive approach: The semantics-pragmatics interface

Information structuring, since Halliday (1967) defined as the linguistic encoding of information which is structured with respect to the communicative relevance of its constituents, poses a challenge for gen­era­tive theories of grammar: nowhere is the necessity of a direct interaction of semantic, syntactic, and phonological factors, on the one hand, and of pragmatic interpretation, on the other, more apparent and the precise nature of the interaction more controversial. In this book in­formation structure is regarded as a complex interface between the components of grammar and pragmat­ics. The leading idea of the interpretive approaches is the assignment of discourse functions to syn­tactic and phonological constituents. Interpretive approaches are thus concerned with the mapping of the formal linguistic structure onto the semantic structure. They interpret syntactically and phonol­ogically marked focus or topic constituents, modeling their sentence-internal and sentence-external function. If an approach takes the linguistic structure as its starting point, we subsume it under the cover term semantic-based approaches – cf. the approaches of Jackendoff (1972), Jacobs (1982, 1983, 1984, 1988), Rooth (1985), Büring (1997) and authors of this volume such as Cohen, Eckardt, von Heus­inger, Portner, Reich, Schwabe, and Wedgwood. In contrast to the semantic-based approaches, there are pragmatic-based approaches, which take communicative and functional aspects of a sentence as their starting point and model a separate information structural component (cf. Dik 1978 and Vall­duví 1992). Within the pragmatically based theories, the elaboration of pragmatically determined in­formation structure is of primary concern. In addition to the grammatically relevant notions topic and focus, several other re­lated concepts have been suggested and different levels of information structure have been developed for the integration of these concepts into the pragmatic system. Especially the relational concepts given versus new and theme versus rheme play a major role in the pragmatic view. These notions are essentially pragmatic in the sense that they track the information status of discourse constituents which are not necessarily derived from purely grammatical properties or features. The prag­matic notions are, for example, relevant for the internal differentiation of focus (cf. Lenertová & Junghanns, Hartmann & Zimmermann, this volume). There are at least three theoretical variants of the se­mantic-based approach to information struc­ture: the semantic-syntax view, the semantic-phonology view, and the semantic-based view. The se­mantic-syntax view has its historical roots in the focus projection concept of Höhle (1982) and Sel­kirk (1984, 1995). This concept models the distribution of accents by allowing pitch accents to mark more than just the accented constituent as focus. While the principle of focus projection makes use of syntactic concepts – e.g., head, internal argument, and adjunct (Gussenhoven 1983), the ac-



On information structure, meaning and form: generalizations across languages

tual con­ditions on accenting relate prosody via syntax to semantics. Many arguments against the strict syntac­tic approach to focus have been made based on this moderate view (Gussenhoven 1999). In recent years even the role of syn­tactic focus marking has been debated and the semantic-phonol­ogy view has become a research topic. This approach goes back to ideas about the notions of givenness (Halliday 1967) and highlighting (Bolinger 1972b). For example, Schwarzschild (1999) proposes a system in which accent placement is directly mediated by interpretive principles, thereby explain­ing the effects of focus. While Schwarzschild’s approach still employs focus marking, Büring (2006) proposes doing away with it completely. Finally, the pure semantic view, which concentrates on the sentence-internal and -external functions of focus and topic constituents, can be subdivided into the Structured Meaning Approach (Jacobs 1982, 1983, 1984, von Stechow 1991a, Krifka 2006), the Al­ternative Semantics Approach (Rooth 1992a), and the Expressive Semantics Approach (Potts 2003a, b, and Portner, this volume). Semantic-based approaches, which regard focus and topic as semantic phenomena, design formal methods to model focus-background and topic-comment structures. In Jacob’s Relational Focus The­ory, each focus constituent is bound by a focus binding element. Focus binders are focus sensitive par­ticles like only, even and not (21a), attitudinal predicates, and illocutionary operators (21b) – cf. Jacobs (1984) and the discussion of his approach in Hetland & Molnár (2001). (21) a. only (λxNP [Peter visits x’s sister], Gerda) b. assert (λxNP [Peter visits x’s sister], Gerda) Following Jackendoff (1972) and Rooth (1985), Jacobs (1988: 91f.) relates the focus to a “coherent class of possible contrasts with the focus.” In contrast to the syntactic approaches mentioned above, Rooth’s theory manages without focus movement. Focus is licensed by the c-command relation be­tween the focus and the focus sensitive particle. According to Rooth’s (1992a ) Theory of Focus Inter­pretation, focus is realized by that accent which goes to the most accentable syllable of the focus con­stituent, or in other words, to the focus exponent. The focus exponent is a syntactic X0-category associ­ated via focus projection with a focus feature. This focus feature is assigned freely to a syntactic con­stituent and thus forms a focus domain. While in the case of narrow focus the focus exponent and the focus domain coincide, where the focus is wide the focus feature projects to the focus exponent. As for the focus semantics, this is a matter of a separate semantic dimension – i.e., Rooth distinguishes between the ordinary meaning and the focus meaning. The focus meaning results from the interpretation of the f-feature. According to Rooth’s theory, each focus feature is interpreted at LF by a focus operator written ∼. For example, the interpretation in (22) takes place at the level of the FocPnode. The operator is adjoined to the FocP, which hosts the focused constituent. To show how Rooth’s theory works, we examine the answer (22B) to the question (22A):

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 Kerstin Schwabe & Susanne Winkler

(22) A: Who has written a letter to his mother? B: Hans has written a letter to his mother. [CP[FocP[FocP Hans has written a letter to his mother] ∼ C]] The focus operator ∼ has two arguments: one argument is the expressed proposition ‘Hans has written a letter to his mother’ (= p), the other one is the set of alternatives C. The semantics of the focus operator introduces two conditions. The first one demands that p and C must belong to the same focus semantic value (vαbf ). The focus semantic value of a sentence is defined by Rooth as a set of propositions which is, informally speaking, derived from the semantic value of the sentence in such a way that the position of the sentence occupied by a focused constituent is substituted by a variable. For p in (22B) the focus semantic value is therefore: (23) {write a letter x, x’s mother / x ∈ E}, with E as individual domain To prevent variables from being instantiated identically in both conjuncts, the focus ope­rator intro­duces a second condition. This condition demands that the ordinary meaning of p (vαb0) is not a subset of C. Büring (1997) expands Rooth’s theory in that he adds the topic meaning to the focus meaning dimen­sion. Similarly to the focus semantic value, which he calls focus value, he postulates a topic value for prosodically marked topics which provides the relevant set of alternatives. Potts (2003a, b) expands the two-dimensional semantics by adding the interpretation of apposi­tives, honorifics, and epithets, as well as conventional implicatures, to the interpretation of topic and focus. To distinguish all these meanings from the ordinary or at-issue meaning, he calls them expres­sive meanings. According to Potts, the final meaning of a sentence has two dimensions and can be rep­resented as a pair 〈A, C〉, where A is the ordinary, at-issue meaning and C is the set of expressive meanings (cf. Portner, this volume). Whereas Potts manages the parallel calculation of the ordinary meaning and expressive meaning via type theory, Portner (this volume) explicitly calculates the two meanings using separate interpretational functions. He adds to the expressive meaning set the vocative, topic and force meaning. The semantic approaches in this volume regard LF as a syntactic structure which is related to the syntactic Spell-out structure, on the one hand, and to semantic structures – ordinary sentence meaning, illocutionary force meaning, focus meaning, and topic meaning –, on the other. The format of the seman­tic structures is provided by different inputs: the ordinary meaning is structured by the ordinary semantic information of lexical categories, the force meaning is structured by an illocutionary operator and by the sentence form; the focus meaning is structured by the focus and background constituents, and the topic meaning is structured by the topic and comment constituents. The question of whether LF is also related to PF is still an open issue (cf. Féry, this volume). As observed by Jacobs (1997), focus and topic meaning can influence the ordinary meaning– cf. the scope of negation in (24), which depends on the accent type of the quantifier phrase. The slash signals a rise and the √ a fall-rise.

(24) A. B. B’:

On information structure, meaning and form: generalizations across languages

Kann man denn alle Romane von Grass empfehlen? can one part all novels by Grass recommend ‘Can one really recommend all novels by Grass?’ Alle Romane/die kann man nicht empfehlen. all novels/they.acc can one not recommend ‘One cannot recommend them.’ √Alle Romane kann man nicht empfehlen. ‘One cannot recommend all of them.’

The influence of focus and topic interpretation on the ordinary meaning is also shown by Cohen and von Heusinger, this volume. Several papers in this volume discuss the issue of whether all syntactically or prosodically focus-marked constituents only indicate discourse non-given information. Therefore, one might assume that focus can be underdetermined with respect to its interpretation as being something additional to discourse non-givenness (cf. Lenertová & Junghanns and Hartmann & Zimmermann, this volume). Similarly, Wedgwood (this volume) argues that the interpretation of the prefinite verb position in Hungarian, which is commonly considered to function as an identificational focus position, is semantically under-determinated with respect to its information structural function. As the examples in (25) show, the position just before the finite verb can have an identificational focus interpretation (a), a presentational focus interpretation (b), and non-focus interpretations (c and d). The actual information structural interpretation of this position, Wedgwood claims, must be inferred pragmatically. (25) a. János Marit hívta meg. János Mari.acc invited vm ‘It’s Mari who János invited.’ b. A: Kit hívtak meg? who invited.3pl vm ‘Who did they invite?’ B: János (hívták meg). János.acc invited.3pl vm ‘(They invited) János.’ c. János meg hívta Marit. János vm invited Mari.acc ‘János invited Mari.’ d. János látni fogja Marit. János see.inf will Mari.acc ‘János will see Mari.’ The concept of semantic underdeterminateness also plays a role with respect to the force interpretation of independently used German complement clauses. Schwabe

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(this volume) shows that these sentences have a syntactically silent matrix predicate, the expressive meaning of which is inferred pragmatically.

2.3

Longstanding questions and new contributions

The major task of future information structure research is to spell out how the core grammatical com­ponents interact with the pragmatic component, and conversely, how the discourse component is inter­nally structured. One fundamental issue is how this structure is mapped onto grammatical structure. More precisely, we must specify which notions and layers must be established and how their relations can be described. There are four burning issues to which the volume contributes: 1. The definition of information structure: The term information structure is often used as a cover term for various discourse notions which are integrated as features in syntax and then mapped onto semantics and phonology. However, information structure in Halliday’s original work (1967: 200) re­fers to the hypothesis that “the distribution of information specifies a distinct constituent structure on a different plane; this ‘information structure’ is then mapped onto the constituent structure as specified in terms of sentences, clauses and so forth (...).” The central questions are the following: What is the structured object at issue? Is it the content of the information, thus a proposition? Is it the form of the information, the syntax and prosody of a sentence? If it is the form, what does it really express with respect to information packaging? Many different research programs have since explored aspects of information structure. The idea that it constitutes an autonomous component by itself, i.e., with its own inven­tory of categories (topic, (comment,) focus, (background,)) which form structures according to IS-specific rules and which are mapped onto the syntactic and phonological structure, has been proposed by Vallduví (1992). Assuming a similar approach, Portner (this volume) proposes an expressive meaning account in which the topic-comment structure and the focus-background structure are consid­ered to be autonomous meaning structures with respect to the ordinary meaning. They have the same independent status as the illocu­tionary sentence type meaning. In the present volume, we concentrate on the interrelatedness between the syntactic structure of a sentence, its derivational history (including movement and anaphoric processes) and its information structural interpretation. Thus, the investigation of information structure is a program to clarify the in­terface between structure, sound, meaning and context. More precisely, we use the term information structure to refer to focus- and topic-annotated properties of the syntactic and pro­sodic structure and its respective interpretations. When we are referring to the semantic information structure, we use the term Surface Semantic Interpretation (SSI), a term introduced by Chomsky (2000, 2001: 15) to describe the interface between syntax and the conceptual component that is responsible for the interpretation of syntactic displacement. When we refer to the pragmatics of information structure, we acknowledge that word order variation and speech act types are determined by context and discourse factors.



On information structure, meaning and form: generalizations across languages

Pragmati­cally determined information structure is to be seen as a specification of the grammatically determined surface semantic effects. 2. The architecture of grammar: How does syntax interact with its interpretive components (PF, LF) in information structural accounts in different languages? Most papers in this volume written in the gen­erative framework adopt the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995b) and the two-interpretive interface hypothesis in (20), which states that the syntactic structure is interpreted at its interfaces (cf. Drubig, Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl, Surányi, Gergel & Gengel & Winkler, Göbbel, Lenertová & Junghanns, all in this volume). The book also reflects recent work on IS and accent placement, such as Schwarzschild (1999) and Büring (2006), who chal­lenge this hypothesis and address the issue that the grammatical components allow for a richer flow of information between them. More precisely, Féry, Abraham, and Molnárfi propose that phonological requirements trigger movement. Féry, for example, argues that topicalization is triggered in order to avoid a stress clash between two constituents, while Abraham and Molnárfi assume that scrambling is a phonologically driven movement operation. The volume also presents some innovative work on the interaction between syntax and semantics. More specifically, Wedgwood chal­lenges the traditional view incorporated in the two-interpretive interface hypothesis that there is a one-to-one mapping of syntactic structures to semantic forms. He investigates the prever­bal focus position in Hun­garian and hypothesizes that this position is underspecified in the sense that extragrammatical inferen­tial processes determine the exact interpretation of the elements located in this position. Moving even further away from the two-interpretive interface hypothesis, Portner argues that certain structural phenomena, such as vocatives, topic and force introduce separate performative or expressive meanings in addition to the main utterance content which are best analyzed by a theory of expressive meaning, as proposed by Potts (2003a, b). Some questions with respect to the two-interpretive interface hypothesis still remain unsettled. The most press­ing question is whether the syntactic account, the phonology-based account and the interpre­tive account make different predictions. With respect to the phonological account, the question of whether the as­sumption of phonological or stylistic movements at PF causes a weakening or strength­ening of the generative paradigm is still open. Since neither of these theories can be favored over the others on conceptual grounds, the investigation of the phonology, syntax and semantics of information structure is essential for the clarification of this issue on empirical grounds. Therefore, the main goal of this volume is to systematically gather and analyze phonological, syntactic and interpretive data and thereby contribute to current information structure research within generative grammar. 3. The interaction of grammar and pragmatics: Is there a more complex pragmatic correlation to the grammatical information structure, a structure one could call pragmatic information structure? What feeds this pragmatic information structure? Is it only the SSI as a structural layer belonging to the grammar? Or are there rules operating at the interface between grammatical information structure and pragmatic

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 Kerstin Schwabe & Susanne Winkler

information structure which have direct access to syntax and prosody? The present volume offers some pieces of evidence which argue for SSI: the semantically under­ determined matrix clause of solitaires as discussed by Schwabe, prosodically marked, but semantically underdeter­mined left-peripheral constitu­ents in Hausa as discussed by Hartmann & Zimmermann, and the so-called preverbal focus position in Hungarian, which, according to Wedgwood, is underdetermined with respect to a fo­cus interpretation. Thus, the basic question is: How much of the pragmatic information structure is grammatically en­coded? As for, for instance, the notion of focus, one could rely on Sperber & Wilson’s (1986) relevance theory and regard focus stressed constituents as merely expressing relevant or salient dis­course entities. Whether they are discourse new or given and contrasted is decided by the pragmatic context. Something similar could hold for the various topic types as proposed in Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl (this volume) if the par­ticular accents they discuss are motivated prosody-internally. The answer to the question as to whether topics and foci are anchored in semantics or pragmatics has consequences for the localization of the discussion concerning issues so far regarded to be semantic issues proper. Particular issues addressed in this volume, such as the kind-interpretation of English bare plurals, which depends on their topichood (Cohen), the non-unique interpretation of the definite article in complex DPs containing nar­row focus (von Heusinger), and the interpretation of syntactically silent constituents in gapping con­structions (Reich) and solitaires (Schwabe), then turn out to be interface phenomena proper. One could regard information structure as the syntactic grammaticalization of pragmatic backgrounding and foreground­ing which is motivated by discourse relevance or irrelevance. Discourse relevance or irrelevance can also be grammaticalized lexically. This is shown in Eckardt in this volume. 4. Typologically relevant information structural generalizations: In the search for language-spe­cific manifestations of universal principles, recent research has located constraints which restrict the possible mappings between syntax, semantics, phonology and pragmatic relations. Let us concentrate on three typologically relevant generalizations which, we assume, are relevant for the two-interpre­tive interface hypothesis:

i. Isomorphism hypothesis The research of the last two decades has identified the left periphery as the main area to which topic and focus constituents are moved for interpretational purposes. Evidence from different types of con­structions has been discussed in recent years which suggests that an IP-internal focus position is also available in English. Kayne (1998) proposes that putative in situ negative and focus operators move to a position in the lower IP area. Expanding the initial evidence given in Fox (2000) and Chomsky (1999, 2005) that wh-phrases adjoin to vP on their way to CP, Johnson (2003), López & Winkler (2003) and Winkler (2005, 2006) argue that the contrastive remnants in gapping constructions move to the edge of the verbal phrase. Göbbel (this volume) proposes that focused manner adverbs move to a structural focus position at the edge of vP with subsequent remnant movement of the defocused VP. By relating these observa-



On information structure, meaning and form: generalizations across languages

tions to the concept of phases (Chomsky 1995b, 2005), Drubig (this volume) arrives at a typologically relevant generalization: the isomorphism hypothesis. This hypothesis states that deriva­tional phases have parallel structures and that therefore information structure positions must be repre­sented not only at the left periphery of the overall clause, but also in the lower vP area. Drawing on language-particular and typological evidence from topicalization, clefts, polarity, modality, interroga­tive force and ellipsis, Drubig argues that the isomorphism hypothesis derives the typologically attested word order variations in the representation of information structure across languages. The isomorphism hypothesis might have further implications, both empirically and theoretically. For example, crosscate­gorial symmetries seem to suggest that the isomorphism of functional peripheries may not be limited to clauses, but may extend to other categories, such as DP. From a conceptual perspective, it would be highly desirable if the isomorphism hypothesis could be shown to apply in general to all functional edge positions.

ii. Focus and topic marking hypothesis Topic and focus interpretations across languages are signaled by different grammatical devices: syn­tactic movement, as proposed by Drubig, Gergel & Gengel & Winkler, Göbbel, Law; prosodic highlighting, deaccentuation, and deletion, as proposed by Abraham, Féry, Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl, Gergel & Gengel & Winkler, Molnárfi, lexical means as is shown in Hetland, syntactic indeterminateness, as in Schwabe; and morphological markers, as proposed by Hetland, Hartmann & Zimmermann, and Zerbian (all this volume). iii. Multiple question-answer congruence hypothesis Recent research has concentrated on multiple wh-questions and their corresponding answers. Two crosslinguistically relevant genera­lizations with respect to the focus structure are presented in this vol­ume: Surányi’s Pair List Generalization and Reich’s Uniform Condition on Short Answers and Gap­ping. Concentrating on the focus structure of multiple questions in Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian and Japanese, Surányi shows that the generalization that wh-movement and focus movement target the same leftperipheral position (cf. Brody 1990a and Rizzi 1997) is only true for single wh-movement. In multiple wh-interrogatives, the central observation is that, again, only one wh-element must be focused. Based on empirical evidence, Surányi formulates the pair list generalization, which states that a pair-list interpretation is generated at the interface only in the presence of multiple wh-elements in a single functional focus projection, where the focus bears the wh-feature. A different, but related generalization type is presented by Reich (this volume). Concentrating on short answers and gapping in response to multiple wh-questions, Reich puts forth the uniform condition on short answers and gapping. The con­dition specifies that short answers and gapping are subject to similar conditions: the deleted material is given in the context as a salient “question under discussion.” In the case of short answers the material is explicitly given

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by the question, while in the case of gapping the relevant question under discussion is reconstructed on the basis of the focus-background structure of the initial conjunct. Both papers high­light different information structurally relevant aspects of multiple questions and their related answers.

iv. Focus underspecification hypothesis Particular topic and focus interpretations across languages are determined by nongrammatical, i.e., pragmatic triggers, such as emphasis (cf. Lenertová & Junghanns and Hartmann & Zimmermann, this volume) and avoidance of incompatibilities, such as stress clash in Féry (this volume), antifocus in Molnarfí (this volume), and the requirement ‘avoid default interpretation’ in Zerbian (this volume). The research strategy has been straightforward for many years: linguists have investigated word-order variation, and phonologically and morphologically marked topic or focus constituents and derived the relevant interpretations in different theoretical frameworks. However, the common vision has been to achieve a more precise understanding of the rules that determine information structure. Therefore, the hypotheses in I to IV are interrelated. In I the signaling device for particular information structural interpretations is clearly grammatical and therefore identifiable within the existing models of genera­tive gram­mar. In IV researchers are searching for possible triggers of information structural interpreta­tions outside grammar. The major task of future information structure research is to extend the empiri­cal domain and the empirical expertise, particularly to remote languages, in order to identify the gram­matical features which lead to specific information structural interpretations.

3. The chapters This volume documents the achievements of linguistic investigation in information structure. Informa­tion structure is understood as the interface between syntactic and semantic form, syntactic and pho­nological form, and, depending on the theoretical approach, between semantic and phonological form. The aim of this book is to contribute to a better understanding of these interfaces and to spell out the rules and conditions that define this complex interaction. To give an example: Ideally, the information structure of a preposing construction, such as (18a) above, receives syntactic, phono­logical, semantic and pragmatic analyses each of which capitalizing on the others‘ insights. The resulting constraints must be understood as interface conditions on the information structure of topicalizations. The research pro­gram resulting from this vision is to find relevant rules and generalizations that operate on the informa­tion structure interface. In particular, the fruitful discussion and interaction between the formal and interpretive approaches have illuminated many formal and functional aspects and revealed many ty­pological regularities. The overall research goal with respect to topic



On information structure, meaning and form: generalizations across languages

and focus is to provide a detailed account of the theoretical status of these notions and their respective representation in the different parts of the language system. The papers introduced in this section are arranged accordingly. The major theoretical challenge is to spell out the interaction between the three main components of the gram­matical model: the syntactic component, phonological form and logical form. Since none of the above-mentioned theories can be favored over the others on conceptual grounds, the investigation of the syntax, phonology and semantics is essential for the clarification of this issue on empirical grounds. Therefore, the main goal is to systematically gather and analyze the syntactic-, prosodic- and meaning-related data, and thereby contribute to current information structure research within generative gram­mar.

3.1

Information structure and grammar: Generalizations across languages

Hans Bernhard Drubig: Phases and the typology of focus constructions Covering a wide variety of special topic- and focus-related constructions with different information structural interpretations, Drubig’s paper presents significant generalizations for a universal theory of infor­mation structure. The central hypothesis is that most of the variations attested in the typology of infor­mation structure can be accounted for utilizing a generalized phase-based approach. There are three essential characteristics of this approach: (i) The clause consists of two predicative layers (VP and TP) forming an eventive and a propositional phase, with their respective functional peripheries, the lower CP, dominating vP, and the higher CP, at the left edge of the overall clause. (ii) Both phases are isomorphic and have identical structural peripheries. (iii) The phases are built up cyclically and once closed they are sent to the interpretive component. There the peripheries are subject to different do­main-specific semantic interpretations, event-related in the lower phase and proposition-related in the higher. Evidence for this theory is provided on the basis of facts from topicalization, clefts, polarity, modality, interrogative force, and ellipsis in many different languages. The ultimate goal is the deriva­tion of an explanatory account of information structure within which certain factors contributing to crosslinguistic generalizations can be accommodated. 3.1.1 Topics and topicalization across languages Caroline Féry: The prosody of topicalization Couched within an Optimality Theory framework, the paper by Féry convincingly shows that certain types of displacements, particularly those of contrastive and split topics in German, may be driven by phonological requirements. The basic idea is that displacement to the German Vorfeld is motivated by the need to avoid a clash between two pitch accents associated with constituents that bear different dis­course functions. The pa­per also contains an interesting discussion and analysis of thetic sentences with marked word order. Situated at the syntax-phonology interface, the paper can be classified as being part of the small, but growing literature on phonologically driven

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movement operations, which have been pursued for other languages as well (see, for example, Szendrői 2004 on Hungarian; Zubizarreta 1998, Göbbel, this volume, and Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl, this volume, on Romance; Erteschik-Shir 2005 on Islandic). Mara Frascarelli and Roland Hinterhölzl: Types of topics in German and Italian In contrast to Rizzi’s (1997) free recursion analysis, this paper argues that topics are not freely recur­sive. Taking as a starting point a detailed intonational and syntactic analysis of Italian and German cor­pus data, the paper shows that three types of topics are distinguishable based on their syntactic and pro­sodic properties: shifting topics (= new aboutness topics), contrastive topics, and familiar topics (con­tinuing or non-new aboutness topics), and that these three topic types correspond to different discourse functions. The main hypothesis of this paper is that the topics are ordered strictly hierarchi­cally in the C-domain such that shifting topics dominate contrastive topics, which in turn dominate familiar topics. The results of extensive phonological investigation show that Italian and German distinguish the same types of topics. However, since the grammars of both languages are organized differently, they differ considerably in the syntactic realization of these topics. German uses Case to identify the grammatical function of topics and resorts to scrambling. Italian uses clitics in left­-hand and right-hand topic con­structions to mark the syntactic function of the dislocated element. And since clitics are related with pros in an A-position and pronouns cannot be locally A-bound, Italian topics are merged in an A’-posi­tion. Jorunn Hetland: The Korean particle nun, the English fall-rise accent, and thetic/categorical judge­ments Hetland’s paper examines the information structure of accented nun-phrases in Korean and compares it to the effects of using the fall-rise pitch accent in English. The central hypothesis is that accented nun-phrases do not have a uniform interpretation at the topic-comment level of Korean sentences. Depend­ing on their surroundings in the sentences where they appear, accented nun-phrases may play one of the following roles in information structure: they may act as topics, as part of the comment, or even as the core of the comment in categorical as well as in thetic sentences. A similar ambiguity applies to the fall-rise accent of English sentences. The paper’s claim is that a speaker who uses an accented nun-phrase in Korean or a fall-rise accent in English conveys that the addressee will find some relevant al­ternative to the marked constituent within his knowledge store. The crosslinguistic generalization is that both languages provide a tool for signaling this function independently of the topic-comment dis­tinction in both languages. Paul Law: Topicalization in Malagasy, Tagalog and Tsou This paper provides an interesting insight into topic constructions of the Austronesian languages Mala­gasy, Tagalog, and Tsou. It shows that despite the typological distance of these languages from the other languages discussed in this volume, they also mark topical elements in the left periphery. The paper argues that there are two different syn-



On information structure, meaning and form: generalizations across languages 

tactic structures underlying topicalization in Tsou and Tag­alog, but only one for topicalization in Malagasy. Similarly to German, Italian, English (see Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl, this volume, and Frey (2004a, b) and many other languages, topical elements in Tsou and Tagalog can either be moved from an argument position, just like whelements and relative pro­nouns, or can be base-generated as an adjunct to a sentence containing a coreferring null pronominal element pro. Malagasy, in contrast, which does not provide such a coreferring pro, does not have base-generated topics. All three languages are very closely related in that their verbal morphology deter­mines which argument is a trigger, i.e., can be moved into a topic or wh-position. Law shows that only phrases marked as triggers can be extracted. If topical elements in Tsou or Tagalog are not marked as triggers and are base-generated in a topic position, they must be related to a pro. The silent pronoun, which also can occur for independent reasons, is licensed by agreement in Tsou and by contextual re­coverability (indeterminateness) in Tagalog. The paper further argues that Malagasy has a TopPhrase because of its topic marker dia; the topics in Tsou and Tag­alog, however, are adjoined to IP. Laszlo Molnárfi: On the discourse configurationality of West Germanic The paper by Molnárfi discusses the focus properties of different West Germanic languages, in par­ticular German and Afrikaans, and contrasts the results with focus prominent languages, such as Hun­garian. The main claim is that word order variation in West Germanic is driven by a prosodic interface condition, which ensures that deaccented constituents are moved to designated positions in the middle field. Thus, defi­nite categories must leave the domain of predication, while indefinites remain there and may function as focus exponents. More precisely, it is argued that a prosodic feature is responsible for the deaccentu­ation of referential definites, referred to as antifocus. In contrast to syntactically driven movement, the displacement triggered by antifocus remains fundamentally optional. The observed op­tionality of this prosodydriven movement is explained by the optional pronunciation of the base posi­tion of movement chains. Werner Abraham: Topic, focus and default vs. contrastive accent: typological differences with respect to discourse prominence Abraham’s paper discusses different approaches to the integration of the discourse functions theme and rheme into the grammar, concentrating on the basic characteristics of dis­course prominence in West Germanic, most prominently German and English. The central claim is that discourse functions in German can be computed on the basis of the architecture of German clause structure and the distribu­tion of clausal accent. In contrast to other approaches which enrich the clause structure with functional projections to host topic and focus constituents (Frey 2006, Molnárfi, this volume, Grewendorf 2004, Breul, this volume), this paper assumes a lean clause structure from which the information structural in­terpretations can be read off in the interpretive components. The paper discusses aspects of specific­ity and adverb placement (cf. also Göbbel, this volume) and proposes that word order variation is driven by prosodic requirements.

 Kerstin Schwabe & Susanne Winkler

It shows how the proposal that German signals discourse prominence while English signals grammar prominence is implemented in the grammar of clause structure. 3.1.2 Focus and focus movement across languages Dan Wedgwood: Identifying inferences in focus This paper takes a fresh look at the syntax-semantics interface, and proposes a new approach to the generally held assumption of a one-to-one mapping of syntactic structures to semantic forms. The main claim is that once the effects of extragrammatical inferential processes are taken into account, the re­lationship between linguistic structure and its interpretation is more complex. Concentrating on the focus position (FP) in Hungarian, the author arrives at an overarching generalization identifying the apparent preverbal focus position as one manifestation of a more general word order/ meaning corre­spondence, which also accounts for the position of verbal modifiers and verbs in so-called neutral sen­tences. The meaning encoded in the relevant grammatical configuration is a certain kind of predicative procedure (cf. É. Kiss 2006). The identificational and exhaustive interpretations of certain expressions in this position predictably follow by inference on the basis of this procedure and therefore need not be attributed to grammatically encoded semantic operators. On the basis of an in-depth comparison of the Hun­garian FP and English it­cleft constructions, it is shown that the it­cleft encodes an identificational reading, while the Hungarian FP gives rise to an identificational reading following from the newly identified predicative procedure. Balázs Surányi: Focus structure and the interpretation of multiple questions Surányi’s paper explores the idea that multiple movements of wh-elements are a necessary and suffi­cient condition for pair list readings. On the basis of intensive languagespecific and crosslinguistic evidence, Surányi sharpens the pair list generalization, which states that a pair list interpretation is gen­erated at the interface only in the presence of multiple wh-elements in a single functional focus projec­tion, where the focus bears the wh-feature. He shows that this generalization not only applies to Eng­lish, as has been previously suggested, but also extends to Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian and Japanese. He investigates the focus structure of multiple questions in these languages and finds that the generaliza­tion that wh-movement and focus movement target the same left-peripheral position is only true for single wh-movement. In multiple whinterrogatives at least one wh-element needs to be focused, but the other wh-elements need not be. These findings contribute substantially to our understanding of the divi­ sion of syntactic labor between the wh-feature and the focus feature with respect to the deeper regulari­ties concerning their interpretation in pair-list contexts. Carsten Breul: Focus structure, movement to spec-Foc and syntactic processing This paper discusses the stylistic construction generally known as fronting, preposing or topicalization in English and German on the basis of a recently developed featurebased theory of focus structure (cf. Breul 2004). The central hypothesis of this theory is that there are three different types of focus struc­tures, which differ with respect to



On information structure, meaning and form: generalizations across languages

their syntax: the categorical and identificational root clauses are char­acterized by the presence of FocP, while the thetic sentences lack a FocP. This FocP-hypothesis pro­ poses that the derivation of the categorical and identificational sentences is triggered by [±foc] fea­tures on the topic or focus constituent, while thetic sentences do not involve movement. In conjunction with a processing account, this theory can explain the core differences in the acceptability of German and English preposing structures. Edward Göbbel: Focus and marked positions for VP adverbs Couched in current minimalist syntax, this paper discusses evidence for a complex middle field in English using a phase-based approach. It investigates the distribution of English manner adverbs in different focus contexts. Assuming that broad focus utterances are a reliable test for information struc­turally unmarked positions of adjuncts, this paper argues that the transportability of adverbs within certain clausal spaces can be captured by allowing different functional heads to license appropriate classes of adverbs within their c-command domain. The highest position of a particular adverb is the specifier of the licensing head; lower positions are traditional adjunction positions. Marked positions of adverbs in the lower portion of the clause are the result of movement of the adverb to a structural focus phrase in the lower IP-area. Movement to the right, as with certain heavy adverbs, is analyzed as pho­nologically driven movement at PF, lacking a syntactic trigger. Remus Gergel, Kirsten Gengel and Susanne Winkler: Ellipsis and inversion: a synchronic and dia­chronic perspective The goal of this paper is to provide an account of the syntactic and prosodic licensing conditions on VP-ellipsis under inversion with respect to the isolation of contrastive topics and foci in English and the parallelism constraint. Recent studies (e.g., Lasnik 1999, Merchant 2003) have proposed PF-repair strategies according to which VP-ellipsis takes place to repair an otherwise illicit configuration. Con­centrating on one particular instance of VP-ellipsis, occurring in comparative constructions both with and without inversion, the authors argue that a purely syntactic repair strategy approach is in need of qualification. They propose an information structural approach and claim that the necessity of VP-ellip­sis in comparative constructions under inversion is directly related to a more general parallelism condi­tion (cf. Fox 1999, Lang 2004) and to a syntax-based concept of focus isolation. The evidence provided draws on synchronic and diachronic sources and on prosodic and syntactic investigations of the re­maining elements after ellipsis. Sabine Zerbian: The subject/object asymmetry in Northern Sotho This paper discusses a subject/object asymmetry with re­spect to focus in Northern Sotho, a Bantu lan­guage spoken in South Africa. As in Hausa (cf. Hartmann & Zimmermann, this volume), objects in Northern Sotho can be focused in their canonical position, whereas subjects cannot. The subjects are either located in a cleft construction or postverbally. The article presents the relevant data for subject focus in cleft



 Kerstin Schwabe & Susanne Winkler

constructions and proposes an analysis within the Optimality Theory framework. Ac­ cording to this analysis, in situ subject focus and in situ subject wh-phrases are excluded by the domi­nance relations between certain constraints: Subject=topic, which prevents a focused subject from re­maining in SpecI, which is also a topic position, is ranked over Subject, which demands that there must be a subject in SpecI to check agreement features between the subject and the finite verb. Subject dominates Stay, which prevents focused objects and subjects of intransitive verbs from focus move­ ment. And Stay is ranked over Foc-Spec, which requires focused constituents to be in an operator posi­tion, which is a cleft position in Northern Sotho. Denisa Lenertová and Uwe Junghanns: Wide focus interpretation with fronted focus exponents in Czech This paper also investigates a left-peripheral focus phenomenon: the distribution and information struc­tural interpretation of fronted focus exponents in Czech. While it is generally agreed that the exponent of neutral focus canonically appears at the right periphery of the clause, the authors observe that there is a systematic pattern of sentenceinitial focus exponents in Czech which can be used in the same wide focus inducing contexts. The basic claim is that Czech allows the wide focus exponent to move from its base position at the right periphery of the sentence to the sentence-initial position allowing for a wide focus interpretation, as is the case for focus exponents in thetic clauses. The trigger for the movement of the focus exponent is identified as an emphasis operator. A similar explanation with respect to par­tial focus movement is presented by Hartmann & Zimmermann in this volume. Katharina Hartmann and Malte Zimmermann: In place – out of place? Focus in Hausa The authors provide a detailed presentation of syntactic, morphological and prosodic focus marking strategies in Hausa. They show that Hausa provides syntactic conditions for focus movement (ex situ focus) and non-moved focus (in situ focus) – cf. the observations for Czech and Northern Sotho in Lenertová & Junghanns and Zerbian in this volume. Like Zerbian for Northern Sotho, the authors dem­onstrate for Hausa that subjects must be focus moved if they have a semantic focus interpretation. Claiming that Hausa has partial focus movement, they present, like Lenertová & Junghanns, an account that takes an emphasis interpretation for the focus moved constituent into consideration. A central claim of Hartmann & Zimmermann’s paper is that in situ constituents which can have a pragmatic fo­cus interpretation need not be focus-marked, i.e., they can be underspecified syntactically, morpho­logi­cally, and – what is surprising – prosodically. The paper thus challenges the widely adopted assumption that focus marking is obligatory. It proposes that focus marking appears to be obligatory in accent lan­guages, but not in tone lan­guages. The paper further challenges the hypothesis that different syntactic focus positions are always linked to different semantic interpretations by demonstrating that none of the different focus positions in Hausa has a differentiated focus interpretation. This observation is very close to Wedgwood’s claim in this volume that there is no special position in Hungarian for identifi­ca­tional focus.



3.2

On information structure, meaning and form: generalizations across languages 

Information structure and pragmatics: Clause structure and context

Paul Portner: Instructions for interpretation as separate performatives The author takes Potts’ (2004) expressive meaning theory as a starting point, which regards the mean­ing of a sentence to be a pair 〈A, C〉, where A is the ordinary meaning and C is the set of expressive meanings. Expressive meanings are performatives and thus always true once understood. What is novel in Portner’s paper is first, that he integrates vocatives, topics, and declarative, interrogative and im­perative forces into the expressive meaning C, second, that he calculates the two meanings, A and C, explicitly using separate interpretation functions, third, that he demonstrates that unlike the ordinary meaning A, the expressive meaning C does not have complex compositionality, and fourth, that he shows how topics, as expressive expressions, are interpreted in embedded clauses. Kerstin Schwabe: Interrogative complement clauses The central claim of this paper is that the illocutionary question meaning of independently used inter­rogative clauses is not expressed syntactically, but inferred pragmatically. This inference can be sup­ported by particles and/or intonation, which indicate a certain kind of expressive meaning by them­selves. The paper shows that root and solitaire interrogatives have in common that they are questions with interrogative functions. Whereas a root interrogative is the argument of the expres­sive interrogative illocutionary operator int, which maps the question onto a complex of illocutionary conditions involving addressee-relatedness, an interrogative solitaire is an argument of a matrix predi­cate variable. The variable is specified pragmatically either by the ordinary meaning of a preceding question – cf. Reich’s (this volume) salient question under discussion – or, if there is no linguistic context, by a pragmatic predicate which does not involve addressee-relatedness, but which determines that the interrogative solitaire is either a deliberate question or an exclamative. Regine Eckardt: The syntax and pragmatics of embedded yes/no questions This paper discusses a further aspect of expressive meaning. It presents an interesting analysis of the different distribution of English if and whether as complementizers for polar questions in extensional contexts and, specifically, of the restriction of if-questions to negative contexts. Eckardt argues that the markedness of embedded if-questions in certain contexts emerges through the cooperation of sev­eral factors: the question ‘if S’ presupposes an (ir‑)relevance asymmetry between the proposition de­noted by S and its negation. This relevance asymmetry leads to a competition between embedded if-questions and that-clauses in the relevant constellations. This in turn excludes the if-question as the less optimal variant. Ingo Reich: Toward an uniform analysis of short answers and gapping Reich’s paper presents a uniform analysis of short answers and gapping by assuming that both kinds of constructions use the same mechanism: the deleted material is given in the context as a salient question under discussion. In the case of short answers the material is explicitly given by the question (cf. Schwabe, this volume), while in the case of gap-

 Kerstin Schwabe & Susanne Winkler

ping the relevant question under discussion is recon­structed on the basis of the focusbackground structure of the initial conjunct (cf. Schwabe 2000). The uniform analysis of short answers and gapping is supported by their parallel behavior with respect to the finite first constraint, the major constituent constraint, locality, and island-sensitivity, and further­more, by the observation that strict/sloppy-ambiguities in gapped sentences are disambiguated when interpreted against the background of multiple wh-questions. Providing two variants of this analysis, one couched within Rooth’s (1992a) alternative semantics account, the other formulated within Schwarzschild’s (1999) theory of F-marking, the paper compares the two implementations and points out the interesting implications of discourse structuring by implicit questions under discussion. Thus, this paper assumes, like von Heusinger‘s, this volume, an expressive meaning approach. Klaus von Heusinger: Alternative semantics for definite NPs Von Heusinger’s paper discusses the semantics of association with focus in complex definite NPs within the Alternative Semantics framework. It focuses on three main issues: i. the domain of quantifi­cation for the focus-sensitive operator, ii. the whereabouts of the uniqueness condition in the set of al­ternatives, and iii. the alternative function of the definite article. Von Heusinger argues against a simple LF-movement approach since it predicts too many or too few alternatives in the domain of quantifica­tion. He extends the Alternative Semantics account in order to analyze complex definite NPs with fo­cused subconstituents, first by formulating the rules for deriving the alternatives for common nouns and their restrictive modifiers such as adjectives and relative clauses, second by giving the alternative com­position rules, and third by reconstructing and formally describing the alternative semantic function of the definite article. Discussing the general problem which is caused by the particular alternative func­tion of the definite article, which cannot be derived from its ordinary meaning, von Heusinger suggests the following: The ALT-function is modified so that it generates very finegrained alternatives. A gen­eral maximality condition is substituted for the uniqueness condition of the definite article. The definite article is represented by a choice function and the ordinary and alternative function of the article are merged into one polymorph choice function. Finally, the construction of alternative sets of definite NPs is analyzed as the alternative function of the type shift operation from a common noun to an NP. Ariel Cohen: Bare Plurals as Topics in English and Italian Whereas von Heusinger shows the dependence of the interpretation of linguistic items on information structure, Cohen’s paper demonstrates the dependence of information structural properties on the inter­pretation of linguistic items. He shows that English and Italian bare plurals which have an existential interpretation and therefore denote properties cannot be topics since they are not specific. If they do not have an existential interpretation and denote a kind, they are topics since they have a specific interpre­ tation, as is the case with bare plurals in English generic sentences. Italian bare plurals, however, can­not denote kinds, but they too can occur in generic sentences. Cohen demonstrates that if they occur in generic sentences, they do not denote a kind, but



On information structure, meaning and form: generalizations across languages 

are, like English indefinite singulars, part of the predi­cation of a specific rule, which is given implicitly. It is this rule which is the topic of the sentence and not the Italian bare plural or English indefinite singular.

4. Conclusion Information Structure, Meaning and Form: Generalizations across Languages is a collection of articles which offers a new and compelling perspective on the interface which connects syntax, phonology, semantics and pragmatics. The papers in this volume contribute to the enterprise of finding typologi­cally relevant information structural generalizations, such as the isomorphism hypothesis of the left periphery of phases, the focus and topic marking hypothesis, the multiple question-answer congruence hypothesis, and the focus underspecification hypothesis. They have further succeeded in spelling out important syntactic, prosodic, semantic and pragmatic conditions which operate on the information structure interface. In addition, the papers demonstrate that the current investigations on the topic of information structure have immediate consequences for our understanding of the architecture of gram­mar: (i) topic and focus exist as grammatical categories in each component of grammar, (ii) their overt syntactic position is predominantly in the left periphery of each phase, (iii) if both are marked, the topic precedes the focus, (iv) they are parts of the expressive meaning, (v) their expressive interpretation can depend on their ordinary meaning, and (vi) their pragmatic interpretation can be grammatically underdetermined. Finally, through concrete analyses of topic, focus, and related phenomena in and across different lan­ guages, the contributors of this volume have added new and convincing evidence to the research on infor­mation structure.

part i

Information structure and grammar Generalizations across languages

Phases and the typology of focus constructions* H. Bernhard Drubig Many languages are known to have special constructions in which foci and topics are displaced to specified positions in the clausal periphery. The extent to which the syntactic form of such constructions varies is remarkable and presents a serious challenge to a universal theory of information structure. Taking as its point of departure a recent approach to derivation by phase according to which cyclic domains are essentially isomorphic and have functional peripheries with identical component projections, this paper argues that such a proposal, combined with the device of extensive remnant movement, can account for the most important variations attested in the typology of information structure, including those which can be found in cleft constructions.

1. Introduction On the following pages I will try to show that the results of recent work on typological variation in topic-focus structures (§ 2) can be accounted for on a general basis, if we adopt the proposal that phases are isomorphic (§ 3). In order to give substance to this claim, I will argue that the functional edges of phases are essentially identical and include target landing sites for the displacement of topics and foci (§ 4). Some further extensions of this approach with regard to the structure of terms, categorial shells and cleft clauses will also be touched upon (§ 5).

2. The typology of peripheral focus positions Rizzi’s (1997) Split-COMP hypothesis, a simplified version of which is (1), has done much to stimulate work on the typology of focus constructions.

(1) ForceP – TopP – FocP – FinP

 H. Bernhard Drubig

Many languages seem to have focus positions in the left periphery, corresponding to more or less exactly what the hypothesis predicts.1 One such language is Gungbe, a Kwa language discussed in Aboh (1999), which isolates focus in the left periphery, followed by a focus particle which Aboh analyses as the head of Rizzi’s FocP. This is shown in (3a) and (3b). Note that (3a), but not (3b), is a well-formed answer to (2). Besides that, Gungbe also has a topic particle heading TopPs. (2) mέnúi *(w) ti xìá wémà l who Foc read-PERF book the ‘Who read the book?’ (3) a. ún lìn d Sέnái w ti xìá wémà l I think that Sena Foc read-PERF book the ‘I think that SENA read the book.’ b. ún lìn d wémà li w Sέna xìá ti. I think that book the Foc Sêna read-PERF ‘I think that Sêna read THE BOOK.’ Other languages, such as Somali, have foci in situ accompanied by focus markers whose attachment respects islands, which may indicate some sort of covert displacement (cf. Schaffar 2003: 30-31). Compare (5a) and (5b), where the focus is contained in an island. Here, the focus marker realizing the head of FocP attaches not to the focussed constituent itself, rather to the island containing it. This is the so-called focus phrase effect originally discussed in Drubig (1994). (4) ma [F nin shaadh cas leh] buu arkay? Q man shirt red had FM-he saw ‘Did he see A MAN WITH A RED SHIRT?’ (5) a. *maya, nin shaadh [Fcagaaran] baa leh uu arkay. no man shirt green FM had he saw b. maya, [nin shaad cagaaran leh ] buu arkay. no man shirt green had FM+Clitic saw ‘No, he saw a man with a GREEN shirt.’ Still other languages, such as Ngizim (Chadic), appear to displace focus to the right periphery, as shown in (6), which, however, can be interpreted as a function of remnant movement, (cf. Green 1997 and Hartmann and Zimmermann, this volume). (6) bd karee a aask nn [F Audu]. sold goods in market the Audu ‘AUDU sold goods in the market.’ (not somebody else)



Phases and the typology of focus constructions

This type of background Scrambling seems to be a rather common phenomenon. It can be observed with various types of focus constructions, including the so-called predicate-clefting construction, a VP-focussing structure involving the displacement into the left periphery of a VP stripped down to its head, as shown in (8), an example from Vata (Kru). This process, too, is island-sensitive, as Koopman (2000) demonstrates. Interestingly, both the focussed VP and its copy (or trace) are pronounced in such constructions. (8) [F pā] ń ka m� pá. throw I will it throw ‘I will THROW it.’ (as opposed to rolling it) This type of displacement is particularly common in West African languages, where it occurs as an areal feature. There is, however, at least one language, Nweh (Grassfield Bantu), which has the focussed predicate in final rather than initial position, as is commonly the case. Cf. (9b), the focussed counterpart of the “neutral” example (9a) (Nkemenji 1995, Koopman 2000). (9) a. b.

Atem a kε nčúū akendò . Atem Agr Past boil plantains ‘Atem boiled plantains.’ Atem a kε nčúū akendò [Fčúū]. Atem Agr Past boil plantains boil ‘Atem BOILED the plantains.’

As both Koopman and Nkemenji have argued, it is plausible to assume that the order observed in Nweh is a function of remnant movement.2

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 H. Bernhard Drubig

As is well known, however, the sentential periphery is not the only environment in which syntactically isolated focus positions occur. In the typologically relevant literature many languages are discussed in detail in which focus movement targets a position at the (usually left) edge of VP, or in a position close to it. Numerous languages appear to fall into this pattern, among them Basque, but also Altaic languages, (e.g., Turkish, cf. Kural 1992), Chinese (Shyu 1995), Dravidian languages (e.g., Kannada, cf. Trumalesh 1996), Bantu languages such as Agham (Hyman and Watters 1984), Kimatuumbi (Odden 1984), or Sotho (Zerbian, this volume), and many others. Although the majority of such languages displays focus in the left periphery of the predicate, there is also evidence for remnant movement, resulting in a right-peripheral placement of focus, which is superficially indistinguishable from the structure in (7). A case in point is Italian, discussed in Belletti (2004), Jayaseelan (2001) and Frascarelli and Hinterhlzl (this volume). Compare (11a), which is ambiguous, with (11b), its focussed counterpart, which lacks the idiomatic reading.

The important point is that (11b) has a right-peripheral focus with a presentational reading, whereas focus in split-COMP positions (whether accompanied by remnant movement or not) is always contrastive (cf. Rizzi 1997 for discussion). As Belletti shows, the focus position in Italian sentences like (11b) occurs at the left edge of VP (or vP), rather than CP. Remnant movement (or background scrambling) in this case operates on VP (or vP), as shown in (12).



Phases and the typology of focus constructions

As a matter of fact, it might also be claimed that English has a structure corresponding to (12), provided that we analyze the pseudogapping construction as a type of VP subdeletion following focus extraction and combined with remnant movement, as suggested by Baltin (2002) and Jayaseelan (2001). (13) Ii wouldn’t [TopP [VP ti try to persuade tj] Top [FocP FREDj Foc tVP]] but I would [TopP [VP ti try to persuade tj] Top [FocP MARTHAj Foc] tVP]] As the contrast between (14) and (15) shows, the stranded focus displays the type of island sensitivity which indicates covert movement. (14) John won’t try to sell pictures of his children but he will ___ of his friends.

Following Belletti and Jayaseelan we may assume that the TopP-FocP array proposed by Rizzi occurs not only in the split-COMP, but also in the split-INFL range of functional projections (cf. also Göbbel, this volume). This seems to indicate a conspicuous but unexpected parallel between the internal and external functional periphery of clauses, which calls for an explanation. In § 3, I will address myself to some of the consequences that follow from these observations and try to show that the observed parallelism involves more than just information structure. An approach will then be sketched which capitalizes on a recent refinement of the notion of phase allowing a number of far-reaching generalizations which also affect the theory of information structure and its typological dimension.



 H. Bernhard Drubig

3. Two assumptions about phase structure 3.1

Clausal phase structure is event structure

Chomsky (2001) proposes that syntactic derivations undergo semantic and phonetic interpretation in incremental chunks, or phases. Phases, in the intended sense, are a set of specified constituents acting as cyclic domains in the syntactic derivation of sentences. Phases are headed by C or D, or else active (i.e., theta-assigning) light-verbs, as in (16). Once a phase is complete, movement and other operations may target either its head or constituents in its edge, e.g. SpecvP, but they cannot affect the remaining part of the structure, i.e. VP in (16).

In recent work, Butler (2003, 2005) offers two challenging claims about phases which seem to make good sense against the backdrop of the above observations on information structure. First, Butler takes issue with Chomsky’s (2001) claim that a phase is propositional: CP is claimed to be a phase because it is evaluable for truth, whereas vP is said to be propositional in that it has full argument structure. Trying to overcome this obvious discrepancy, Butler proposes to redefine phase on a semantic base in terms of eventualities, or, as he prefers to say, situations. vP, the eventive phase under Butler’s redefinition, takes the domain that is closed when the situation variable, displayed through an active light verb (Harley 1995), is bound by a quantifier located in a layer Butler calls CP (alias DP), which turns out to be the equivalent of Z(eit)P in Stowell’s (1996) syntactic theory of tense.



Phases and the typology of focus constructions 

The only phase which may properly be called propositional is the equivalent of traditional CP, as shown in (18). Its structure is strictly parallel to that of the eventive phase in (17). Tense is construed as a temporal ordering predicate in the sense of Stowell (1996) and plays the same role as the lexical base in the eventive phase: it expresses a temporal ordering relation between situations, roughly equivalent to Reichenbach’s (1966: 288) reference and event times, as reconceptualized in Stowell’s theory.

This analysis is an important step, because it leads to a significant parallelism between IP and CP, the two layers of clausal structure: both turn out to have a semantic base, i.e. a predicate forming a relational domain (VP, TP), both domains are selected by light predicates (v, ti; tP corresponds to traditional Agr(eement)S(ubject)P), and, finally, both have a functional edge or periphery (i.e. a CP), which hosts the required quantifier. The biphasal structure of an ordinary main clause is then as shown in (19).

I believe that Butler’s approach has some important consequences for the syntax-semantics interface. In particular, I would like to propose that the lower CP in (19) can be viewed as a syntactic articulation of the basis of Diesing’s (1992) Mapping Hypothesis: the existential quantifier in SpecCP, which under Butler’s approach binds the situation variable (or “event role”) of the predicate heading the lower domain (vP-VP), defines

 H. Bernhard Drubig

the domain of existential closure by unselectively binding indefinite NPs functioning as its (event-dependent) arguments.3 Specific DPs, which have event-independent reference and are not subject to such binding and which therefore threaten to violate the Bijective Principle, must scramble to vP-external positions. This process splits the lower layer of clausal structure to meet the requirements of the syntax-semantics as well as the syntax-phonology interface: scrambling turns out to be a topicalization-type of process which affects both semantic interpretation (specificity or givenness marking) and phonological processing (deaccentuation as a form of defocussing).4 Tsai (2001) presents comparative evidence (e.g., subject specificity effects in Chinese and other languages) which suggests that Diesing’s Mapping Hypothesis must be viewed as a special case of a more general principle (his Extended Mapping Hypothesis), which operates cyclically in a bottom-up fashion, applying not only to vP (or traditional IP), but also the higher level of clause structure (i.e., traditional CP). Under Butler’s approach to clausal structure, this modus operandi of the syntax-semantics mapping turns out to be a natural consequence. Furthermore, Tsai shows that DP is also a mapping cycle (cf. Drubig 1997 for similar arguments), an assumption which can be accommodated within the current framework, provided that DPs are phases in the relevant sense. The general structure of phases is shown in (20).

Under the clausal interpretation of (20), PRED ranges over lexical verbs and tenses, as we have seen. Following Stowell’s suggestion that aspectual projections (comprising layers of outer aspect, such as perfect, progressive etc.) are essentially equivalent to embedded tenses, Butler assumes that complex tenses (such as the present perfect in (21a-b)) must have both a temporal and an aspectual phase. The structure of the latter is shown in (21c), where SITUATIONR stands for an intermediate reference time.



3.2

Phases and the typology of focus constructions

The functional peripheries of phases are isomorphic

Butler’s second claim concerns the internal structure of the functional peripheries of phases. Building upon suggestions of Belletti (2004) and others he assumes that split-COMP in Rizzi’s sense applies to the CP-layer in each individual phase, which has interesting results:5 not only does a clause have a biphasal structure with an external and an internal periphery, but phasal peripheries are actually assumed to be isomorphic, showing essentially identical component projections, albeit with certain variations due to semantic differences between event- and proposition-related phases. For concreteness, I will follow Butler (2003) and assume that this means that a more fully spelled out version of (19b) is (22).6 Under such a proposal, our initial typological observation that the TopP-FocP array occurs both in COMP and in INFL (with or without overt displacement and remnant movement targeting the functional edge of each phase) turns out to be a necessary consequence, and furthermore, since DP is the nominal equivalent of CP, a DP must be assumed to have an internal information structure as well.7 Before I can discuss this and further consequences, I would like to turn to the question of whether there is any substantial evidence supporting such far-reaching claims. In § 4 I will discuss three candidates for component projections of COMP and INFL, namely Pol(arity) (negation/affirmation), Modality and Force/Mood, in that order.

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 H. Bernhard Drubig



4. Do eventive and propositional phases have parallel structures? 4.1

Polarity

As (22) already shows, Butler (2003, 2005) assumes a deeper analogy between focus and polarity, an assumption which in Drubig (1994) was already argued for on independent grounds.8 For concreteness, I will assume that Pol merges in the INFL layer, but when it operates in COMP and takes scope over the subject, it has a replacive reading and associates with a focussed category, which gives the sentence the characteristic reprise or retort flavor of contrastive focus constructions. (23) JOHN didn’t invite Mary. (somebody else did) When Pol (i.e., negation) operates in INFL (or in a lower aspectual phase), it associates with negative polarity items. This is equivalent to association of negation with a presentational focus. (24) We can’t always not invite any neighbors.



Phases and the typology of focus constructions 

As many recent discussions of negation have observed, more than two instances of Pol (negation) may make a sentence virtually incomprehensible, but by no means ungrammatical. (25) You can’t just not have (not) been (not) doing it. Summarizing we may perhaps say that polarity seems to occur in every phase including COMP. There is, however, a sharp interpretative difference between polarity in COMP (propositional phase: contrastive) and in INFL (temporal or aspectual phases: presentational).

4.2

Modality

4.2.1 The modal hierarchy In his paper on modality, Butler’s (2003) point of departure is an observation by Cormack and Smith (2002), who point out that modals seem to occur in the scopal array shown in (26). (26) NECROOT > Neg > POSSROOT (26) obviously applies to the root reading of must and of may/can, as shown in (27).

Again following Cormack and Smith (2002), Butler stipulates that the scopal hierarchy also extends to epistemic interpretations, an assumption which is not without difficulties, since may in (27b) scopes over negation under an epistemic interpretation. In keeping with a certain tradition in the analysis of epistemic modality, Butler assumes that can functions as a suppletive form of epistemic may under negation. It is generally recognized that affirmative can does not have an epistemic reading. If we set aside epistemic may for the time being, (26) does seem to amount to an empirically adequate generalization on the scopal interaction between modality and negation. Two other observations which must also be accounted for under an appropriate analysis of root and epistemic modals are the following:9 1) Epistemic modals generally scope over root modals. This can be observed in all languages in which modals cooccur, including the so-called multiple-modal dialects of English. The following example, adapted from Boertien (1978), shows this. In (28) could has a root (i.e., dynamic) reading and occurs in the scope of might, which is claimed to be epistemic. The syntactic hierarchy directly reflects scopal order. (28) You might could see Uranus.

(Epistemic > Root)

 H. Bernhard Drubig

2) Epistemic modals scope over tense. The most convincing evidence for this claim is the so-called Past-Tense Replacement effect originally reported in Hofmann (1976).10 In (29a) the perfect construction in the scope of the modal has a reading which is the equivalent of a present perfect, as the adverbial already indicates. In (29b), however, the perfect construction appears to have a past tense interpretation, which is suggested by the accompanying temporal adverbial, which does not occur with the present perfect. Since must has an epistemic reading in both (29a) and (29b), the past tense interpretation in (29b) is evidence that epistemic modals take scope over tense. (29) a. John must have already left. b. John must have left yesterday.

(Epistemic > Past)

That the perfect construction in (29b) does indeed instantiate a past tense is indicated by the fact that it induces the same kind of sequence-of-tense effect with complement clauses headed by stative predicates as an unmodalized past tense: both (30a) and (30b) are ambiguous between a simultaneous reading (Fred was tired at the time of his speech act) and a past-shifted one (Fred was tired before his speech act).

Butler (2003) does not mention the above generalization on tense, which seems to follow from his proposal, but he discusses a number of other factors, in particular the scopal interaction between modals and quantified subjects and between modals and symmetric predicates. He then proposes an analysis which rests on the following assumptions: 1. all modals (epistemic and root) merge in the eventive phase (presumably in (the same?) light verb positions), but whereas root modals occupy scopetaking positions in INFL, epistemic modals must be linked to scope-taking positions in COMP.11 This necessitates the further assumption that 2. the scopal array shown in (26) must be instantiated by essentially identical functional projections in the periphery of both eventive and propositional phases. For reasons that will become more transparent in the discussion below, Butler suggests that the scope positions of universal modals (must) and existential modals (may) are the equivalents of ForceP and FinP in Rizzi’s split-COMP array. Both positions have to be accommodated in the edges of eventive and propositional phases. As a consequence of this, the functional peripheries of eventive and propositional phases turn out to be identical: both are instantiations of split-COMP in Rizzi’s sense. The overall structure of a clause is then as follows:



Phases and the typology of focus constructions

The suggested solution is undoubtedly elegant, especially since it proposes to derive the syntactic and semantic properties of modals by combining Kratzer’s (1977, 1991a) modal semantics with the idea of derivation by phase: according to Butler, modals under any interpretation arise in identical light verb positions, where they introduce invariant lexical content, but are associated with scope-taking features, which determine their further destiny in the internal or external periphery of the clauses on which they operate. While their quantificational nature remains constant, the ordering source is taken to vary with the semantic affiliation of the domain in which they take scope, i.e., they are epistemic when they interface in COMP and have root interpretations when they do not reach beyond the INFL range. As already indicated above, however, it turns out that not all problems surrounding epistemic modals find a satisfactory solution under this specific proposal. I think that this indicates that Butler’s analysis, while essentially on the right track, stands in need of revision. While certain scopal differences between epistemic and root modals



 H. Bernhard Drubig

can be derived (1. epistemic modals scope over root modals; 2. epistemic (unlike root) modals scope over tense), there are at least three areas where problems arise: First, not only epistemic must, but also may, has scope over negation, as shown in (32):

Second, epistemic modals in general have long been known to be restricted from occurring in interrogatives. This is shown for must in (33) – (34) and for may in (35). (33) Must John be at home?

(*?Epistemic/Root)

(34) Who must be at home?

(*?Epistemic/Root)

(35) a. It may rain. b. *?May it rain? It is usually assumed (also by Butler, as we have seen) that can functions as a suppletive form of may in negative contexts. As a matter of fact, Bolinger (1989a: 13) points out that “where negation goes, there usually goes interrogation” and shows that can seems to substitute for epistemic may not only under negation but also in questions, as the following interchange suggests, where can supposedly parallels epistemic must. (36) a. I don’t get any answer. Can they be out having lunch or something? b. I guess they must be. This might be taken to suggest that may, for some odd reason, is excluded from all nonassertive contexts, whereas can freely occurs in such positions and generally functions as its nonassertive substitute. This conclusion would force us to assume, however, that can has an exceptional epistemic reading in nonassertive sentences, which disappears when it is not negated or questioned. Under this interpretation, the restricted distribution of may and can would be a purely lexical phenomenon. By way of alternative we might say that both universal and existential epistemic modals are restricted to assertive sentences for semantic reasons and that can is allowed to occur in such positions simply because its meaning is not epistemic, but rather alethic in the sense of Cinque (1999). This is the position for which I will argue below. The form of the elliptical reply in (36b) is indicative of a third restriction which affects epistemics occuring with predicate ellipsis and distinguishes them from nonepistemic readings. As (36b) already shows, epistemic modals occurring with elliptical verb phases require some sort of auxiliary support: an epistemic modal cannot appear adjacent to an elliptical verb phrase, but must be separated from it by a stranded copula, as in (36b), or an aspectual auxiliary, as in (37). (37) a. They must have left. b. They must have ____. c. They must ________.

(Epistemic/Root) (Epistemic/Root) (*Epistemic/Root)



Phases and the typology of focus constructions 

Following observations in Drubig (2001), we may assume that such cases arise when auxiliaries cliticize onto the stressed modal, a process which we may perhaps interpret as a generalized form of the rule of Have-Encliticization discussed in Selkirk (1984: 389-392). Presumably, this process then bleeds predicate ellipsis in a fashion similar to the bleeding of predicate ellipsis by V-movement in languages such as Japanese, Thai (cf. § 4.2.2 below) or Irish, among others. If true, this would be another argument in favor of a deletion approach to predicate ellipsis, similar to the type of pre-elliptical extraction shown in (13) above. A fourth phenomenon which we may add to the list is VP-Topicalization, a process in which auxiliaries (aspectuals or the copula) strand in ways very similar to those observed in elliptical construction.12 4.2.2 Root and epistemic modality in Thai The restrictions observed above have strong cross-linguistic support and occur in very similar form in other languages. Thai is a language which has modal constructions showing essentially the same constraints as their English counterparts.13 In Thai we find a number of modal head morphemes which occur as free forms and have epistemic and root interpretations with certain fluctuations somewhat similar to those found in English. a) Relative scope: Unlike Standard Modern English, Thai may have more than one modal in a simple sentence. Sentences like (38) show that root modals may occur in the scope of (i.e., be preceded by) epistemic modals. The opposite order is not possible.14 (38) khaw5 [ModEp t 3 [ModRoot day3 pay1 haa5 th1 nææ3]]. he must may go see her surely ‘He certainly must be allowed to go to see her.’ b) Negation: The negative marker may3 precedes modals over which it has scope. An epistemic reading is excluded in this case. (39) khaw5 may3 t 3 duu1 thii1 vii1. (Root/*Epistemic) he not must watch TV ‘He does not have to watch TV.’ c) Interrogative force: The presence of an interrogative particle, such as r5, only allows a root reading. (40) khaw5 t 3 pay1 haa5 th1 he must go see her ‘Must he go to see her?’

nææ3 r5. surely Q

(Root/*Epistemic)

 H. Bernhard Drubig

d) Predicate ellipsis: Thai has a type of elliptical response to questions in which the answer may be stripped down to the finite main verb, or a modal, as in (41b). Such elliptical responses are traditionally referred to as predicators. When a modal functions as a predicator, an epistemic reading is excluded. (41) Q: khaw5 t 3 pay1 haa5 th1 may4? (Root/*Epistemic) he must go see her Q ‘Must he go to see her?’ A: a. t 3 pay1 nææ3. (Root/*Epistemic) must go surely b. t 3. (Root/*Epistemic) must ‘He must.’ Constructions of this type can be found in a number of languages, such as Irish, Galician, Portuguese and others (cf. Martins 1994 for discussion). Following Visonyanggoon (2000), we may analyse predicators as cases of predicate ellipsis preceded by a verb movement, similar to Martins’ analysis of response particles in Galician and other languages.

Although this type of ellipsis is only partially similar to English-type predicate ellipsis, the essential parallel seems to be that epistemic modals cannot be adjacent to ellipsis sites.15



Phases and the typology of focus constructions 

e) VP-topicalization: A process comparable to English VP-topicalization comes to light in connection with the wellknown fact that modals in Thai (and a number of other Southeast Asian languages; cf. Simpson 1998) can under certain circumstances appear both in pre- and postverbal position. Simpson shows that postverbal modals can be derived by means of VP-scrambling, a type of givenness marking in the course of which a given VP is moved to a middle-field position below the syntactic locus of epistemic modality. The postverbal modal, which is stressed (i.e., focussed), can only have a root interpretation. (43) khaw t [VP phuut thai] day. he must speak Thai can ‘He must be able to speak Thai.’ Since the details of this process remain to be clarified, I schematically represent it as in (44).

Again, the structural parallels between English and Thai are only partial, since VPFronting targets the periphery of CP in English, but the periphery of IP in Thai,16 and yet, there is a significant correspondence: in both languages, epistemic modals cannot occur adjacent to predicate deletion or extraction sites. 4.2.3 Towards an analysis From the observed restrictions we may derive two important conclusions: 1. Epistemic modals seem to merge in syntactic positions too high for direct involvement in the licensing of processes that typically require stressed modals occurring adjacent to empty syntactic positions, such as predicate ellipsis and VP-topicalization or scrambling; 2. We must assume that in the COMP layer both epistemic (or, as I would prefer to say, evidential) modals, namely, must and may, move to Rizzi’s Force P, where they a) take

 H. Bernhard Drubig

scope over any kind of negation as well as tense and root modalities, and b) give rise to a conflict with interrogative force. These two conclusions suggest that Butler’s proposal, according to which the great divide between epistemic and root modalities can be derived form a combination of Kratzer’s modal semantics with Chomsky’s stipulations about the propositional nature of derivational phases, must be revised in a number of respects. One of Butler’s assumptions is that any kind of modals, irrespective of interpretation, can be derived in some yet to be identified light verb position. Depending on their interpretation (root or epistemic) they then move to their scope-taking positions (Force or Fin) in COMP or INFL, where they receive their respective interpretations in keeping with Kratzer’s proposals. This also allows Butler to derive a number of quantificational phenomena that would otherwise remain unexplained. His proposal, however, leaves two types of data unaccounted for: the different temporal implications of epistemic and root modals and their different interactions with ellipsis and extraction sites. As is well known, root modals select an unactualized event and have a future-oriented reading, similar to infinitival to in Control constructions, whereas epistemic modals have been shown to select TP with a present or past tense reading, similar to infinitival to in raising constructions.17 In the case of epistemics, there is no future-orientation. I interpret this as an indication that root and epistemic modals must be generated in rather different light verb positions. Building on earlier work, Drubig (2001) argues that all epistemic modals are light verb instantiations of SAgr. Apart from syntactic considerations this is also semantically motivated, because the presence of an epistemic modal, in contrast to the unqualified assertion indicated by the agreement morpheme, qualifies assertive force in the same way as evidential markers in languages with evidential inflection: it indicates that the truth claim is based on some sort of indirect evidence.18 If these observations are on the right track, the difference between root and epistemic modality amounts to the following: root modal auxiliaries are indeed exponents of logical modality in the sense of Kratzer and many others (including Butler), characterized by an unactualized or futurate reading of their propositional complements (Enç 1996), whereas their epistemic counterparts must be analysed as evidentiality markers qualifying sentences with an assertive or exclamatory force.19 Within the present framework we may assume that modal auxiliaries are generated in the light verb positions of their appropriate domains (VP, TP), from where they reach their scopal positions in their respective functional peripheries. Root modals arise in v and move to Fin or Force in the eventive phase, depending on their quantificational strengths, whereas both weak and strong epistemic modals arise in t and move to Force in the propositional phase, since both evidential must and may take scope over negation and carry a force feature excluding them from non-assertive clauses, such as interrogatives and conditionals, as shown in (32) – (35) above.20 In this way we can also account for the two observations brought forward above against Butler’s original proposal. If we make the not too controversial tentative assumption that ellipsis is licensed in predicates immediately subjacent to tensed light



Phases and the typology of focus constructions

verbs, its patterning with respect to root and epistemic modals seems to follow in a rather straightforward way: while root modals (including futurate will) appear to meet the requirements and are therefore good candidates for the licensing of predicate ellipsis, their epistemic counterparts are generated in a position above tense, which excludes elliptical predicates, unless they are licensed by an additional intervening factor.21 This is possible, e.g., in English multiple-modal dialects, as the following example shows (cf. Pampell 1975): 22 (45) You might could broad jump the Grand Canyon, and John might could, too. Finally, the semantic generalization noted above can also be derived, since the set of modals which do not license subjacent predicate ellipsis turns out to be coextensive with the set of modals which do not impose unactualized or future readings on their complements.23 A further property of this class of modals is that they do not instantiate the modal hierarchy in (26). The present proposal derives these distinctions from a syntactic basis which reveals a much deeper hiatus between root and epistemic modalities then is traditionally recognized. In particular, it forces us to assume that in the history of English, and presumably in many other languages, modal auxiliaries must have undergone a rather radical process of grammaticalization, in the course of which they were eventually dissociated from the modal system and developed into evidential markers. If this interpretation is on the right track, it has the remarkable consequence that the modal semantics developed in such works as Kratzer (1991a) and others may indeed be appropriate to root modals but inapplicable to epistemic modality.24 In fact, I believe that while root modals do seem to have the quantificational properties which a modal logic analysis presupposes, i.e. they appear as duals and can be arranged in a traditional square of oppositions, this is apparently not true for epistemics such as must and may, both of which scope over negation and therefore cannot form duals or squares of oppositions. Under the proposal sketched out above, the absence of these properties follows from the syntactic condition that they simply do not instantiate the modal hierarchy. In addition, as we have seen, these modals are restricted to assertive contexts, a fact for which there is no obvious explanation under an approach based on modal logic semantics, but which is unsurprising if they are recognized as natural language evidentials. At first flush, it might appear that this interpretation of the root/epistemic dichotomy undermines Butler’s claim that natural language modality can be used as an argument in favor of structural analogies between eventive and propositional phases. More careful consideration, however, shows that this is not the case. First of all, it should be noted that the analysis shown in (31) (repeated) is based on the widespread belief that can has an epistemic reading and steps in as a suppletive form in exactly those contexts from which epistemic may is excluded.



 H. Bernhard Drubig

This interpretation, however, is questionable. Cinque (1999), Drubig (2001) and Condoravdi (2002) have argued that modals such as can, but presumably also must, have an alethic or metaphysical, i.e. pure logical interpretation associated with an empty ordering source (Kratzer 1991a). Unlike epistemic may, alethic can is free of an evidential qualification and does not invite the inference that the proposition which it accompanies is actually true. This allows it to occur in contexts where epistemic may is impossible. Once we recognize this distinction and acknowledge its significance, we can see that the present proposal and the particular interpretation of epistemic modality it suggests is in fact compatible with the spirit of Butler’s proposal but diverges from it in an important way. As the discussion above has made clear, root and epistemic readings cannot be derived from the configuration Butler sets up. Epistemic modals are evidentials, whose semantics is not susceptible to a treatment in terms of quantification over possible worlds and whose syntactic properties are unrelated to the modal hierarchy. With reference to circumstantial (root) and metaphysical or alethic



Phases and the typology of focus constructions

modalities, however, Butler’s proposal makes correct predications, provided we abstract away from epistemic modality and interpret the higher modal hierarchy in (31) in terms of alethic modalities. Thus, both epistemic and alethic modals operate in the propositional layer, albeit in somewhat different scopal configurations. Wide-scope alethic modals, however, behave like epistemics in elliptical constructions and require auxiliary support, which is exactly what we would expect under the analysis proposed here.25 While all this obviously needs to be further substantiated and much more intensively investigated, I nevertheless hope that this brief sketch is sufficient to show that the structure of natural language modality supports the isomorphy of phases.

4.3

Force and Mood

4.3.1 The nonuniqueness of sentence type The hypothesis that derivational phases have parallel structures has the interesting consequence that Force must be represented not only in COMP, but also in INFL.

We now have to ask ourselves what kind of evidence would speak in favor of such a representation as (46) and against the traditional view that every sentence represents a particular speech act type and therefore can have one and only one force component, which is located in COMP. In order to test the validity of (46) we have to answer two questions: First, does it make sense to assume that a sentence can be assigned more than one sentence type category, and, second, if the answer to the first question is affirmative, what is the difference between those two categories and how do they interact? An important idea underlying the traditional view is the assumption that speech act categories, such as interrogative, exclamative, imperative etc., are mutually exclu-



 H. Bernhard Drubig

sive. This assumption, which has always been made silently and without explicit justification, can also be found in taxonomies of speech acts, such as Searle (1979). However, it is not difficult to find evidence to the contrary. McCawley (1988) discusses a type of instruction-seeking question involving the modal shall in English, e.g. polarity questions such as (47A), which can only be answered by an imperative. Hence, (47B), but not (48), is an appropriate answer to (47A), which elicits an instruction rather than declarative information.

(48) *Yes, you shall open it. The interrogative imperative counterpart of a Wh-question appears to be (48) and its answer (50). (49) Where shall I put the flowers? (50) Put them on the table. The fact that interrogative and imperative force do not seem to be mutually exclusive at all, but actually appear to coexist in instruction-seeking questions, indicates that a structure such as (51) is required (McCawley 1988: 712).

In (51) the modal shall would appear to have features for both IMP and Q, which must be derivationally checked in this order. (51) is, of course, at variance with generally accepted views on force or mood – two notions which are usually not kept distinct – in the philosophical tradition from Frege to Lewis (1976), but also in more recent linguistic work, such as Han (1999) and many others.26 This view is represented in (52).



Phases and the typology of focus constructions

An alternative view might depart from (51) and try to build upon the systematic differences between essentially response-oriented force types, such as the interrogative or the exclamative, and mood in a narrower, verb-related sense involving different choices of what Searle (1979) calls direction of fit: declaratives represent words-toworld direction of fit and imperatives world-to-words ‘direction of fit’.27 Making a systematic distinction between force and mood – each in the narrower sense – we may expand (52) into (53). The latter, in contrast to the former, corresponds exactly to the configuration in (51), which we derived from the evidence in (47) – (50).

There is, in fact, considerable linguistic support for such a differentiation. Its systematic nature reveals itself when we observe that force and mood in the narrower sense correlate with COMP and INFL structures: whereas interrogative and exclamative structures are articulated in terms of operator-variable configurations and displacements targeting COMP, imperative and declarative structures seem to be generally articulated without such involvement. In fact, there does not seem to be any crosslinguistic evidence indicating that the structural articulation of declaratives and imperatives extends beyond INFL, since both are usually represented by inflectional or other verb-related categories, including auxiliaries or particles. As a matter of fact, in the representation of force and mood we can observe a certain division of labor between the external and the internal sentential periphery, which facilitates a measure of interaction between the two categories. Many languages have inflectional imperatives which allow a more systematic representation of instruction-seeking queries such as in (47A) or (49) than the somewhat marginal conventions on the use of shall in English. Hungarian, e.g., has a full paradigm of imperative inflection, but, as we would expect, a first person singular imperative form, such as menyék ‘I shall come’, can be used only with an interrogative intonation and is therefore the exact equivalent of (47A).28 All this shows that there are good reasons to assume that something along the lines of (53) must be appropriate. Translated into a phase-based analysis of the kind suggested above the proposal takes on the following form:

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 H. Bernhard Drubig

4.3.2 Direction of fit and subordination It has often been claimed that there is an obvious asymmetry between declaratives and imperatives: declaratives occur in subordinate clauses, whereas the imperative, which seems to lack an embedded form, is said to be a main clause phenomenon. Under the current proposal this would be surprising, since the absence of embedded imperatives, which is claimed to be a systematic gap by the majority of syntacticians, would have to be considered accidental. There is, however, some evidence that the claimed asymmetry is nonexistent. Following Huntley (1984) and McCawley (1988) I stipulate (contra Han (1999), Ginzburg and Sag (2000) and many others) that control infinitives are embedded imperatives. It should be noted that certain expressions, which normally occur only in imperatives, can also be found in control infinitives, provided these are governed by speech-act reporting verbs of the appropriate kind: (55) I told her to please open the door. (56) Open the door or I’ll call the police. (57) I told them to open the door or I’d call the police. The future-orientation of control infinitives reflects the content of the preparatory condition of the corresponding speech act type. If the above suggestion goes in the right direction, then it appears that infinitival indirect questions of the kind shown in (58) are the embedded counterparts of interrogative imperatives.29 (58) I wonder who to invite.



Phases and the typology of focus constructions

Evidence for the accidental involvement of COMP in imperative clauses is not restricted to interrogated imperatives and their subordinate equivalents. Languages with imperative inflection, such as Slovenian, have imperatives in restrictive relative clauses that correspond to infinitival relative clauses in English.30 In Early Modern German we occasionally find imperatives in nonrestrictive relative clauses (cf. Luther’s vor welchen hüte dich ‘against whom be on your guard’). Due to the insubordinate status of appositives, the exponent of Force in such a case is equivalent to that of a main clause. Finally, there is some syntactic evidence that the domain in which imperatives are licensed is INFL. Many syntacticians concerned with the grammar of imperatives assume without argument that their syntactic representation involves COMP. We have already seen that there does not appear to be any clear evidence for such an analysis. A possible exception, however, is the phenomenon of do-support in imperatives. (59) a. Don’t everyone expect a raise. If the subject in (59) occupied its usual Case-checking position in the INFL-range, don’t should be in a position above the INFL-range. Building upon earlier work, in particular Schmerling (1982), Rupp (2003) argues at length that don’t in (59), contrary to what is usually taken for granted, does not occupy C, but actually occurs in I. This claim involves a further step, namely the assumption that the subject of (59) is not in SpecIP, but occupies the specifier position of an intermediate functional projection FP, shown in (60), whose exact identity remains unclear in Rupp (2003).

Flagg (2001) also argues that subjects occupy different positions in declaratives and imperatives. Under her approach the equivalent of FP in (60) is an intermediate aspectual projection. Both proposals require a reanalysis of the role of Case, phi-features and cross-linguistic variation in the toleration of third-person subjects, a discussion of which would go beyond the limits of this paper. The most important evidence, however, is the scopal asymmetry between quantified subjects in declarative and imperative sentences, originally observed in Schmerling (1982) and reanalyzed in Rupp (2003). Compare (61a) and (61b).



 H. Bernhard Drubig

(61) a. Everyone didn’t get a raise (every > not, not > every) b. Don’t everyone expect a raise! (*every > not, not > every) Rupp argues that a traditional rule such as Quantifier Raising is unmotivated in a minimalist framework. Instead, scope differences must be derived by A-movement. Given a representation in terms of copies, such as (62) and (63), representing (60) and (61), respectively, the observed scope asymmetry follows immediately: only (62), which has a copy not c-commanded by negation, supports a wide scope quantificational reading, as shown in (60) above: (62) [IP (everyone) didn’t [(everyone) get a raise]] (63) [IP Don’t [FP (everyone) F [VP (everyone) expect a raise]]]

5. Further consequences for the theory of information structure 5.1

Terms and shells

In § 3.1 and 3.2 I briefly discussed Butler’s hypothesis that phase structure is event structure. As observed by Chomsky, both INFL and COMP function as derivational phases, which implies that they should also have essentially parallel structures. The evidence of clause- and predicate-peripheral focus and topic positions discussed in § 2 already pointed in this direction. Following Butler, I assumed that phases are isomorphic and have functional peripheries with identical component projections, as required by the cyclicality of derivations. The structure of polarity, modality and force/mood projections, as well as their different interpretations in eventive and propositional phases, were found to support this assumption. Under such an analysis of clause structure, the cross-linguistic occurrence of focus positions in COMP and INFL with different (contrastive vs. presentational) interpretations (cf. Belletti 2004; Drubig 2003) is a natural consequence. Furthermore, various types of remnant movement resulting in right-peripheral focus positions indicate the existence of topic positions in COMP as well as in INFL. Such as phase-based approach has a number of interesting implications for the syntax of information structure, and many earlier observations can be accounted for under the condition that the structural elaboration of information structure extends to all types of phases. Due to limitations of space, I can only briefly mention two such cases, namely DP-internal and sublexical information structure. Insights into the nature of DPs, which show a degree of syntactic articulation similar to that of clauses, soon led to the claim that they also have internal functional peripheries with target positions for the displacement of topic and focus (Drubig 1997). There is considerable typological evidence to support this position. Fudeman (1998), e.g., shows that some languages,



Phases and the typology of focus constructions 

among them Balanta (Atlantic), have DP-internal FocPs headed by focus particles similar to those we find in the clausal domain in examples like (2) and (3) (Cf. § 2). If sublexical VP shells can be shown to have phasal status, then the inner aspectual structure of VP is another locus for the articulation of topic and focus structures. It has been known for a long time that small clauses (Heycock 1995) and unaccusative VP shells (Drubig 1992b) may have both a thetic and a categorical reading, which would seem to require the presence of functional structure, in particular a CP-type layer hosting a suitable binder for a sublexical event role associated with the unaccusative shell of an accomplishment structure.31 Drubig (1992b) introduces the term thetic configuration for sublexical focus domains and tries to show that the unaccusative shell of an aspectually complex structure such as [put [THE BOOK on the table]] in (64) acts as a phase, i.e. an independent focus domain with a prominent internal subject (THE BOOK) projecting wide focus. (64) [John put [THE BOOK on the table]] When the external argument of the unaccusative shell is a topic, the focal accent moves to the predicate, as shown in (65), and the unaccusative shell has a categorical interpretation. (65) [John put [the book on THE TABLE]] Under the present approach, unaccusative shells are phases, whose functional peripheries host the necessary syntactic positions for the marking of topics and foci in sublexical information structures. Although much further work is necessary to determine whether or not this is a realistic way of looking at internally complex focus structures, we can at least say that the phase-based approach allows us to integrate earlier proposals into a more unified framework, which in the long run will make stronger and more falsifiable predictions.

5.2

Cleft clauses

An important source of variation in the typology of focus construction is the so-called cleft construction, which in English comes in two varieties, as shown in (66). (66) a. THE RECIPE was what Jane was looking for. b. What Jane was looking for was the THE RECIPE. Drubig (1998a, 2003) and Drubig and Schaffar (2001) argue that a cleft construction like (66), interpreted as the equivalent of a self-answered question, is a particular type of completive focus construction, which assigns a focal value to a variable in a contextually salient open sentence (Prince 1978). Under the present approach, a Wh-cleft must be analyzed as a somewhat marked type of clause, whose phase structure is split into two components, which are distributed over two different clausal constituents.

 H. Bernhard Drubig

The main clause is formed by a propositional phase which is syntactically dissociated from its eventive component. The eventive phase, however, occurs in a subordinate clause, which is derived into a syntactic adjective by means of relative clause formation. The light predicate projection of the main clause in (67) is headed by the copula.

Assuming a split-CP analysis for the CP in the main clause of (66) and following a suggestion by Kayne (1994: 153) we can derive the structure of cleft constructions through focus movement, as shown in (68):32

(68) [FocP [THE RECIPE] was [ CP [what tFoc] Jane was looking for t] ] The structure of (66b) can now be interpreted as a particular instantiation of background topicalization, similar to (7) and (10) in § 2, the application of which results in what looks like a right-peripheral focus position. Apparently, Wh-cleft constructions display the same kind of variation that we found in the types of focus constructions discussed in § 2.

(69) [TopP [CP what Jane was looking for t Foc] was [ FocP[The RECIPE] t t Top]]

The topicalization analysis in (69) is supported by comparative evidence. Japanese, e.g., has a cleft-construction with a structure equivalent to (69). In Japanese, the fronted free relative is accompanied by a topic particle, which presumably heads TopP. In contrast to what we find in English, however, background topicalization is obligatory in Japanese, hence there is no counterpart to (66a).33 (70) [TopP [CP Boku ga

kono tokei o

tFoc katta no] wa

[[PARI de] tCP da.]]

I NOM this watch Acc buy NOM Top PARIS ‘It was in Paris that I bought this watch.’

Loc Cop

The propositional phase forming the main clause in the cleft construction scheme (67) has a somewhat rudimentary status. This becomes evident when we observe that it not only seems to lack certain distinctions of force, in particular interrogativity, which we would expect to occur in propositional phases, but also does not fully share the typical characteristics of main clause assertions, such as sentence negation, emphatic affirmation, and various types of epistemic qualifiers including evidential modals and adverbs. This becomes clear if we compare ordinary subject-predicate sentences, such as



Phases and the typology of focus constructions

(71a) and (72a), with superficially similar sentences involving connectedness effects, such as (71b) and (72b), which unambiguously signal a cleft interpretation.34

Note that the phenomena which are not acceptable in the main clauses of cleft constructions such as (72) are fully acceptable when they occur in the subordinate clauses of such constructions:

In Drubig (1998a) the impoverished status of the cleft main clause, in particular the virtual absence of assertive qualifiers, is interpreted as an indication that cleft constructions must undergo Reconstruction at the derivational level at which information structure and perhaps other semantic properties are interpreted.35 Under this proposal the focus-background structure of cleft constructions can simply be viewed as just another type of connectedness effect motivating reconstruction.36

5.3

Typological variation in cleft focus constructions

Apart from the familiar variation between left-peripheral and apparent right-peripheral focus positions, which seems to be common to all types of focus constructions, cleft focus constructions show an additional, far more intricate pattern of typological variation, which can be derived as the combined effect of two independently varying parameters, namely, a syntactic variation in the structure of the relative clause and a positional variation in the placement of the copula. As we have seen, Japanese, a strict verb-final language, has externally-headed relative clauses in an English-type cleft construction combining focus extraction with obligatory remnant movement to SpecTopP, as shown in (70). (74) is the general schema underlying this construction.



 H. Bernhard Drubig

(74) [TopP [CP … tFoc … NOM] [FocP Focus t CP Cop]] Like many other strict verb-final languages, however, Japanese also has an internallyheaded (or circumnominal) type of relative clause, which forms the basis of a less familiar type of cleft construction, whose general structure is shown in (75). An example is (76).37 (75) [CP … Focus … NOM] Cop (76) [CPKono tokei [Foc PARI DE] katta no] da. this watch Paris Loc buy-PAST NOM Cop ‘It was in Paris that I bought this watch.’ In (76) Focus occurs in situ within the relative clause, due to the general absence of head raising in circumnominal relative clause constructions. The copula is in final position, an obligatory placement in a strict SOV language like Japanese. The complementizer no, a nominalizing element, is an indispensible component of internallyheaded relative clauses. Some SOV languages with less strict verb-final order, among them Sinhala (Sumangala 1992; Hagstrom 1998) and Malayalam (Comrie 1995), have an interesting focus construction which may represent another variety of the circumnominal cleft construction. In such constructions, Focus occurs in situ, the inflected copula, however, is not restricted to a final position but can also appear in a position adjacent to the focused constituent. An example from Malayalam is (77) (Cf. Comrie 1995). (77) ñaan [F raaman-ey] aaNï kaN-T-atï. I Raman-ACC Cop see-PAST-ADJ-NOM ‘I saw RAMAN (It was Raman that I saw).’ The general structure of this construction is (78). (78) [CP … Focus Cop … NOM] Sinhala has very similar focus constructions analyzed in detail by Hagstrom (1998), who shows that the adjunction of the inflected copula to the focused constituent is in fact island sensitive: when the focus is contained in one or more islands, the copula adjoins to the outermost island, not to the focused constituent itself. Hence, no island boundary may intervene between the focused constituent and the copula. This is a focus phrase effect (Drubig 1994) similar to the one observed in the Somali examples (4) – (5) in § 2. I assume that what appears to be the copula in such constructions as (78) must be reanalyzed as an inflected focus particle. The nominalizing element (NOM), which may be a verbal affix, as shown in (77), or a particle as in (76), functions as a scope marker (Hagstrom 1998).



Phases and the typology of focus constructions 

Other languages, such as Akan (Kwa language) or Tuki (Bantu) have clefts with relative clauses relying on the resumptive pronoun strategy of binding. This operation allows the construction of operator-variable structures without movement, which explains the perspicuous absence of locality restrictions in such constructions. This is exactly what we should expect, given that not all relative clauses can be derived by promotion, as Aoun and Li (2003) have shown.38 As we have seen, connectedness effects, in particular reconstruction effects involving binding principles and information structure, show very clearly that the eventive and the propositional phases of clefts and other completive focus constructions must combine into single propositions in the course of interpretation, which then serve to augment the context.

6. Conclusion Much recent work on the architecture of grammar converges on the view that there are two types of semantic properties which call for distinct modes of representation in the structure of clauses. Deep semantic properties, in particular thematic relations, are interpreted locally, i.e., in the positions where their categorial exponents merge, and are typically represented by means of inflectional morphology (Inherent Case), whereas surface semantic relations, such as force, topic and focus, are typical edge phenomena involving dislocation. Uninterpretable features, which are needed to induce the displacement of specified categories to their designated positions, are then natural consequences of the configurational representation of surface semantic properties, as Chomsky has repeatedly argued. This view has given much impetus to research into the functional periphery of clauses, but as we saw in § 2, the left edge (traditional COMP) is not the only syntactic environment in which topics and foci are interpreted. In view of this, a stronger hypothesis was adopted in § 3, under which the clausal center field (traditional INFL) splits into a higher predicate expressing thematic relations (Tense) and an internal functional periphery closing the semantic core of the clause (traditional VP). In § 4 I discussed evidence supporting the assumption that clauses are composed of two (or more) cyclic domains (phases) with isomorphic functional peripheries. This, in combination with Heavy Pied Piping, allows us to derive the typologically attested positional variation in the representation of information structure across languages, both in ordinary sentences and in cleft constructions. The occurrence of connectedness effects in the grammar and information structure of all completive focus constructions indicates that they must be interpreted via reconstruction. This might mean that the current assumption that there are just two interfaces is perhaps not more than a preliminary approximation. Cross-categorial symmetries briefly discussed in § 5 suggest that the isomorphy of functional peripheries is by no means limited to clauses, but extends also to other categories, such as DP, and perhaps even to the domain of sublexical syntax. This generalization is supported by language-particular and typological evidence. Furthermore, it would also be advantageous from a conceptual point of view

 H. Bernhard Drubig

for reasons of its enhanced explanatory power, since a theory of phrase structure in which an articulated functional edge is the privilege of a specific category (namely, the traditional clause) is less desirable than one lacking such a restriction.

Notes * The following is the revised version of a paper entitled “Towards a Phase-based Theory of Information Structure”, presented at the “Workshop on Information Structure and the Architecture of Grammar: A Typological Perspective”, University of Tübingen, February 1-2, 2004. A still earlier version was presented at the University of Potsdam in January 2003. I would like to thank the audiences of both presentations, as well as an anonymous reviewer, for critical comments and helpful suggestions. I am particularly grateful to Remus Gergel (University of Tübingen), who provided much useful information on modals and evidentials. 1. Cf. É. Kiss (1995), as well as Drubig and Schaffar (2001), for typological surveys of such languages. 2. (10) simplifies a somewhat more complex process involving additional displacements. Cf. Koopman (2000) for discussion. 3.

Cf. Kwak (1996) for interesting work on the event-dependency of noun phrases.

4. Meinunger (2000) discusses scrambling and related defocussing procedures in a somewhat similar vein. 5. Note that the components of “split-INFL” in the traditional sense lose their functional status under Butler’s proposal, since TP and AgrSP (alias tP) are reinterpreted as the semantic core components of a phase. 6. In (22) and the remaining part of § 3 I neglect TopP, which is irrelevant to this discussion. 7. This has repeatedly been claimed in the literature dealing with cross-categorial generalizations on information structure. Cf. Drubig (1997) for some relevant observations. The issue of DP-internal information structure will be taken up again in § 5.1 below. 8. Cf. Drubig (2003) for a more detailed proposal. Similar ideas developed independently in a number of other papers, such as Culicover (1991) and Kayne (1998). 9. All aspects of modal syntax and semantics relevant to the current issue are extensively discussed in Drubig (2001). Due to limitations of space the present discussion cannot do justice to the full complexity of modal syntax. 10. Cf. Drubig (2001) for a more discussion and a syntactic account for the Past-Tense Replacement effect. 11. This closely corresponds to earlier suggestions by Picallo (1985), McDowell (1987), Rochette (1988) and Drubig (1998b, 2001). 12. A number of authors observe that at least some of the restrictions listed here appear to be less strong where the modal may is concerned. This may be related to the semantic differences between strong and weak epistemic readings. See Gergel (2003) for some relevant remarks and striking examples. Another complication arises in connection with the modal might, which seems to be even more likely to violate the above restrictions than may: while might scopes over root mo-



Phases and the typology of focus constructions

dals, tense and negation in the expected way, it does not seem to be excluded from interrogatives and often licenses predicate ellipsis and VP Topicalization without auxiliary support. Here, too, semantic factors may play a role. Hollander (1999) analyses might as an exponent of what he calls anepistemic modality, a type of modality indicating ignorance on the side of the speaker. 13. The following examples are based primarily on Visonyanggoon (2000). Similar observations can be found in Simpson (1998). 14. Tones are represented as subscripted numbers after each syllable: 1 is mid, 2 low, 3 falling, 4 high and 5 rising. 15. Perhaps subject to qualifications similar to those pointed out in n.12. I have no data to confirm this. 16. For reasons that will become clear below I assume that epistemic modals are base-generated in a position somewhat above the traditional IP range. 17. Cf. Enç (1996) and Martin (1996) for relevant discussion. 18. Cf. Drubig (2001) for a more extensive discussion of the relationship between epistemic modals and evidentiality markers. 19. I have to leave open the question of whether root modals can be dealt with in the same manner as aspectual auxiliaries, which may have to be analysed as the light verbs of embedded tense predicates along the lines of Demirdache and Uribe-Etxebarria (1998). The same question arises with reference to the expressions of future tense (including futurate will), which is another cross-linguistic source of evidentials. Cf. Palmer (1986) on ‘assumptive will’ in English. 20. Scope over tense and negation and a restriction to assertive force appear to be general properties of evidentials, independent of their language-particular expression. Cf. Drubig (2001) for a discussion of some cross-linguistic evidence and references. 21. Note that the future must head a projection below tense, as Cinque (1999) argues. 22. In Drubig (1998b) I speculated that in examples like (i) (identical to (37b) in § 4.2.1) the enclitic auxiliary is crucial to the licensing process, if we assume that it moves to tense and cliticizes to the epistemic modal for independent reasons at PF. (i) They must have – (Epistemic) As already noted, this would closely correspond to, and actually be supported by, earlier accounts of V movement bleeding predicate ellipsis in languages which preserve the lexical head of the deleted VP (cf. Ngonyani (1996) for an interesting discussion). 23. The grammar of the particle to is parallel to that of modal auxiliaries. In control constructions to has a future orientation and licences predicate ellipsis, in raising constructions it lacks such an orientation and does not licence predicate ellipsis without the support of an intervening auxiliary, similar to epistemic modals. Martin (1996) argues that control to involves tense, but he also discusses some interesting apparent exceptions to these generalizations. 24. Interestingly, this is essentially what Westmoreland (1998) attempts to show. Westmoreland develops an in-depth criticism of Kratzer’s analysis, arguing that natural language modality crucially rests upon a notion of evidence that is inaccessible to a treatment in terms of modal logic semantics. 25. While the range of root or circumstantial modalities can only operate in the eventive phase, alethic modality is apparently not restricted to the propositional layer. Cf. the discussion of dynamic modality (e.g., can expressing ability as a pure modality) in Kratzer (1991a) and Butler



 H. Bernhard Drubig (2003). Perhaps it can be shown that modal categories can exhaust the full range of positions in (31), provided that the ordering source is vacuous. 26. In some approaches (e. g. Wilson and Sperber 1988) force is a pragmatic term and applies to speech act categories, while mood is reserved for the corresponding semantic distinctions. 27. Searle recognizes a systematic distinction between speech acts which articulate direction-offit oppositions and others which apparently do not, but does not draw any conclusions from it, although the two types clearly correlate with features of linguistic form. Cf. Vanderveken (2001) for a more recent attempt to systematically exploit such distinctions in speech act theory. 28. McCawley (1968: 160). Wilson and Sperber (1988) provide additional observations on languages which distinguish between declarative and imperative interrogatives. 29. Note that languages with imperative inflection, such as Hungarian, provide interesting support for this assumption. McCawley (1968: 160) notes that first person imperatives such as menyék ‘shall I come’, which, as we have seen, can be used only with an interrogative intonation in main clauses, are free from such constraints when they occur in embedded contexts, where English uses control infinitives: (i) János azt mondta, hogy menyék ‘John told me to come’ In Hungarian, the imperative inflection paradigm can display its unrestricted array of forms in embedded contexts, where the identity of the nonovert subject is determined by control, i.e. by a syntactic configuration, rather than the interaction between speaker and hearer. This suggests that the main clause imperative shows accidental gaps, due to pragmatics, whereas its subordinate counterpart is relieved from purely contextual constraints and therefore unrestricted. 30. I would like to thank Boštjan Dvořák, Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie- und Universalienforschung, Berlin, for this information. 31. As suggested by J. Higginbotham, an accomplishment is a complex event involving two event roles, one for its activity component and one for the resulting state expressed by its unaccusative shell. Legate (2003) is a recent study that provides independent evidence that unaccusative shells constitute phases. 32. Cf. É. Kiss (1998b) and Meinunger (1998) for similar proposals. 33. NOM in (70) may be analyzed as a complementizer (Hoji 1985). 34. Connectedness effects and their bearing on cleft constructions are discussed in Higgins (1979). (71)-(72) are variations on an example brought up by Higgins. 35. Cf. Heycock and Kroch (1999) for a similar approach to connectedness. 36. Question/term-answer configurations show connectedness effects as well and presumably must also undergo reconstruction. 37. Cf. Schaffar (2003) for a very insightful discussion of the structure and history of circumnominal cleft-constructions in Japanese and other languages. 38. Focus constructions involving resumptive binding are discussed in Drubig (2003) and Drubig and Schaffar (2001).

i.i

Topics and topicalization across languages

The prosody of topicalization* Caroline Féry Because of the elusive nature of pitch accents and prosodic phrasing, the role of prosody has been neglected too often in the description of the syntax-phonology interface. This paper shows that the syntactic structure of German sentences is shaped by the formation of prosodic phrases, and that many puzzles are solved if prosodic phrasing and accents are systematically considered in formal grammar. Some types of topicalization, like contrastive topicalization and split constituents, are motivated by the need to separate two accents which would be adjacent in an unmarked word order. The sentence has now two different intonation phrases, with the fronted constituent bearing an accent equal in strength to the preverbal focus one. The proposal is couched in an optimality theoretic framework, allowing direct interactions between prosody and syntax.

1. Introduction In German, the language under consideration in this paper, topicalization is associated to a special phonological structure. A topicalized constituent is located at the very beginning of a sentence where it has a prominent rising accent on its accented syllable and where it is separated from the rest of the sentence by a boundary tone, or even by a short break (see for instance Büring 1997 Jacobs 1997 and Féry 1993). In this paper ‘topicalization’ is understood as a syntactic and prosodic operation on constituents, and ‘topic’ as the pragmatic or semantic information structural content associated with topicalized constituents. Syntactically, the finite verb of a main clause is located in the second position of the sentence, and the prefield has to be filled. It is thus a natural consequence that a constituent in the prefield is not necessarily topical. Nominative arguments, dative arguments of passive and psych verbs, temporal adverbs, sentence level adverbs, etc. are often the first constituents of the sentence by virtue of being the ‘highest’ constituent of their clause (see below). The present paper focuses on the pre-field elements which are topical and which have been topicalized by a syntactic operation. It suggests that true topicalization has a prosodic origin. From the point of view of the prosody, the motor of topicalization is first the need to fulfill a constraint NoClash which prohibits adjacent

 Caroline Féry

accents, and second the need to realize a rising intonation on a constituent in order to express its topical character. This is why elements expressing a pragmatic topic land in the first position of the sentence, rather than somewhere else. The next section introduces the theoretical framework of the paper. The optimality-theoretic approach to the syntax-prosody interface leans on a proposal developed in Féry and Samek-Lodovici (2006). Section 3 introduces different kinds of topics and topicalizations and shows that the syntactic structure of ‘contrastive’ topics, as opposed to ‘stylistic fronting’ or ‘formal movement’ (Fanselow 2002, Frey 2004b) is reflected in the prosody. Section 4 discusses split constructions in which a noun is left-dislocated. In both contrastive topicalizations and split constructions, the need to separate two pitch accents corresponding to two discourse structural properties can be considered as the motivation for the syntactic construction.

2. Theoretical framework Féry and Samek-Lodovici (2006) propose an optimality-theoretic approach to the syntax-prosody interface (see also Prince and Smolensky 1993, McCarthy and Prince 1993 for Optimality Theory and Truckenbrodt 1995, 1999, Selkirk 2000, Büring 2001, 2006, Samek-Lodovici 2005 and Szendrői 2003 for OT approaches to the syntax-prosody interaction). The prosodic structure of English sentences is shaped by constraints pushing phrasal and sentential accents as far to the right in their prosodic domain as possible (1a-b), reproducing the effects of the Nuclear Stress Rule (Chomsky and Halle 1968). The unique lexical head of a maximal projection is expected to be associated with a pitch accent, and as a result, to be the head of a prosodic domain (2). The typical headargument stress pattern, with a pitch accent on the argument but none on the head, is a consequence of this constraint, see Gussenhoven (1992), Selkirk (1984), Cinque (1999), Büring (2001) and others for different proposals to this effect. In (3), constraints are formulated which restrict the number of prosodic constituents to a minimum. (1) a. HP: Align the right boundary of every P-phrase with its head. b. HI: Align the right boundary of every I-phrase with its head.

(2) StressXP: Each lexically headed XP must contain (maximally) one phrasal stress. (‘Phrasal stress’ refers to the head of a P-phrase.) (3) a. *P-Phrase: No phonological phrase. b. *I-Phrase: No Intonation phrase The effects of these constraints on the prosodic phrasing and placement of accents are comparable in German and in English, and they are illustrated in Tableau 1 with the German example (4), understood as a whole-focused, all-new sentence.

(4)

The prosody of topicalization

( x )I ( x ) ( x )P Sie hat heute morgen Rosen gekauft. she has today morning roses bought

Tableau 1.  [Sie hat heute morgen Rosen gekauft]F

Candidate (a) in Table 1, with two P-phrases and one I-phrase, fulfills the constraints best. This candidate violates HP since the head of the prosodic constituent formed on the direct object plus the verb is not rightmost but this violation is forced by the combined effect of StressXP and *P-Phrase. StressXP requires that lexical heads are heads of prosodic constituents, and *P-Phrase restricts the number of P-phrases to a minimum. It guarantees that no phrase is formed to the sole effect of fulfilling HP. HP, as well as HI, only controls the location of the accent in demanding that it is as far to the right in the domain under consideration as possible. The accent on Rosen is enough to fulfill StressXP with respect to both the NP Rosen and the VP Rosen gekauft. An additional accent on the verb, as in candidate (b), implies one more violation of *P-Phrase. The ranking between StressXP and *P-Phrase is crucial, as can be seen from candidate (c). This candidate has only one phrase and thus does better on *P-Phrase than candidate (a). But, it violates StressXP whereas candidate (a) does not: heute morgen, a syntactic maximal projection, has no accent. Candidate (d) also fulfills HP better than (a) and (b), but is eliminated by high-ranking Stress-XP, because not all syntactic phrases have a corresponding prosodic head: the NP Rosen has none. And finally candidate (e) entails a gratuitous violation of HI. In short, this tableau illustrates that StressXP must be higher-ranking than the other constraints, and that *P-Phrase must be higher ranking than HP and HI, but lower ranking than StressXP. The ranking StressXP >> *P-Phrase >> HI, HP >> *I-Phrase is thus



 Caroline Féry

partly established. The constraint *I-Phrase is relatively low-ranking. Adding an IP in (4) does not ameliorate the optimal candidate. There is no evidence that HP and HI have to be ranked relatively to each other. These two constraints do not interact. The remaining of the ranking will be established below, in further tableaux. The approach developed in Féry and Samek-Lodovici (2006) relates pitch accents directly to the discourse structure of English utterances and differs in this respect from Selkirk’s (1995) model and also from Schwarzschild’s (1999) improvements to Selkirk in giving up projections of F-marks. Selkirk requires the association of pitch accents with F-marks which are allowed to project higher in the syntactic tree according to two projection rules. First, F-marking of the head of a phrase licenses the F-marking of the phrase, and second, F-marking of an internal argument of a head licenses the F-marking of the head. These rules, though very influential, have been shown to be too restrictive by Schwarzschild (1999) and Büring (1997, 2006), who demonstrate that if heads and internal arguments have to be unstressed by virtue of being discourse given, a specifier, adjunct or any other element can be the accent bearer of a larger focus domain. Selkirk’s rules, however, prohibit the projection of an accent from such constituents. Schwarzschild proposes replacing the projection rules by free assignment of F-marks. He also limits their effect by positing a series of constraints. One of these is GIVENness (in (5a)), positing that a constituent that is not F-marked is given. As a consequence, all new constituents are F-marked, and constituents which are F-marked can be new or given. Another constraint introduced by Schwarzschild is AvoidF, formulated in (5b), which limits the occurrence of F-marks. (5) a. Givenness: A constituent that is not F-marked is given. b. AvoidF: Do not F-Mark. In Schwarzschild’s example (6), the VP is not given since it is not mentioned in the previous discourse, nor is it entailed by the previous discourse and crucially, neither the verb praised nor the object her brother are given (see the precise definition of givenness in Schwarzschild 1999). The location of the pitch accent is decided by an extra constraint which posits that a head is less prominent than its internal argument(s). In (7), both praised and him are given by virtue of being introduced in the context in curly brackets, but the fact that she praised John is not given, so that the VP is not given. Constraint (5a) cannot choose between a candidate in which the whole VP is F-marked, as in (7b), and one in which only him is F-marked, as in (7a). The choice between the two is decided by AvoidF, which chooses (7a) because it has fewer Fmarkings than (7b).2 (6) {What did Mary do?} A: She [praisedF [her brother ]F ]F (7) {Who did John’s mother praise?} a. She praised [him]F b. She [[praised]F him]F



The prosody of topicalization

Problematic for both Selkirk’s and Schwarzschild’s approaches, as well as others like Büring (2006), are examples like (9) from Rooth (1992a), (10) from Neeleman and Szendrői (2004) and (11) from Féry and Hartmann (2005), in which main accents are not rightmost in their respective focus domains, even if the whole sentence is discourse new.3 In Féry and Samek-Lodovici (2006), constraints (5) are replaced by StressFocus and DestressGiven in (8), which outline the relationship between discourse structure and accents in a direct way.

(8) a. StressFocus (SF): A focused phrase has the highest prosodic prominence in its focus domain. b. DestressGiven (DG): A given phrase is prosodically non-prominent. These constraints interact with the prosodic constraints in order to determine the placement of accents. In the sentences under consideration, the location of main stress is conditioned by nested foci in which a focus, contrastive or not, is embedded into a larger one. In (9) for instance, the NP an American farmer is all new, and HP, as well as StressXP, conspire to locate the stress rightmost, thus on farmer. But the contrast between American and Canadian triggers a second focus on American, and because of the adjacency of the adjective and the noun, only one of these elements is accented. The realization of two adjacent accents in a P-phrase is strongly dispreferred both in English and in German. The contrast between the adjectives must be realized, more so than the default accent on farmer, and as a result, the least violation is elicited by a candidate with a unique accent on the adjective. The constraints operate similarly in examples (9), (10) and (11), in which one instance of focus is nested into a larger one, and attracts the accent because of prosodic adjacency. ( x )I ( x ) ( x )P (9) [an AmericanF farmer was talking to a CanadianF farmer]F ( x )I (10) [Johnny [was reading SupermanF to some kid]F]F ( x )I ( x ) ( x )P (11) [Ramon likes CubanF and Malte prefers ArgentinianF music]F Féry and Samek-Lodovici (2006) show that the addition of a constraint StressFocus is inescapably necessary to account for embedded foci. Because of this constraint, the focus elicited by the contrast between the adjectives must be realized by a higher prominence than anything else in the NP, as illustrated in Tableau 2.

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 Caroline Féry

Tableau 2.  [An AmericanF farmer was talking to a CanadianF farmer]F

We now have extended the existing constraint ranking: SF >> StressXP >> *P-Phrase >> HI >> HP >> *I-Phrase. In the next section, StressTopic (ST) will be introduced in order to apply this framework to sentences with topic constructions.

3. Topic and topicalization 3.1

Topic

Topic as a pragmatic category has been attributed a number of roles in the literature, like familiarity, aboutness, contrast, implication, partiality, all of which are well-attested and fulfill different aims in sentences. A familiarity topic in the sense of Givón (1990) and Lambrecht (1994) is a discourse-linked constituent, often (but not always) referred to by means of a pronoun, an anaphoric element or a deaccented constituent (see also Prince 1981 and Gundel 1996 for relevant examples). Such a familiarity topic is given or inferable, or salient, and it tends to occupy the pre-field in German as the consequence of Formal Movement (see section 3.2). This paper concentrates on contrastive topics. ‘Contrastive’ is used as a cover term for different pragmatic categories, sharing the fact that they elicit a set of alternatives, as shown by Büring (1997). Aboutness and frame-setting topics are forming a subclass of mildly contrastive topics which can be classified as discourse-setting. Aboutness, or shift topics specifies ‘what the sentence is about’ (Reinhardt 1981). This use of a topic can be understood as contrastive if the sentence could have been about something else. The example in (12), adapted from Jacobs (2001), illustrates this first meaning of topic. The speaker says about her mother that her health is fine, implying at the same time that there are other aspects which could be addressed as well, like her intellectual, marital, financial or psychic state. (12) Gesundheitlich geht es meiner Mutter gut. ‘As far as health is concerned, my mother is well-off.’ Frame-setting may be a variant of aboutness. It sets the sentence in a locational or temporal frame. Some examples are given in (13).



The prosody of topicalization

(13) On Saturday, we usually go to the market and shop for the whole week. In Cannes, older couples are spending several hours a day on the Croisette. Implicational and partial topics are strongly contrastive. An implicational topic is intrinsically contrastive. Büring’s (1997) example is reproduced in (14). A realization of this sentence with a rising accent on the subject and a falling accent on the negation keine implies that somebody else’s wife might have kissed strangers. Meine Frau is contrasted with X’s Frau. (14) Meine/ Frau hat keine\ fremden Männer geküsst. ‘My wife hasn’t kissed strangers.’ Partial topics are semantically and pragmatically elements of alternative sets (or posets in Prince’s terms). Büring (2003) claims that an English contrastive topic is always realized by a fall-rise accent (B accent in Jackendoff 1972 and Steedman 2000) and that the term ‘contrastive topics’ that he uses to refer to these elements is in fact referring to Accent B. In the same paper, Büring takes up Roberts’ (1996) proposal that contrastive topics are reflecting a complex strategy of questions. In this perspective, the typical contrastive topic is a partial topic. This is best illustrated with Jackendoff ’s (1972) famous example in (15) and (16). (15)

a. b. c. d.

Who ate what? What about the beans? Who ate them? What about Fred? What did he eat? Fred ate the beans.

The strategy of questions used in dialogues using elements like those of (15) is illustrated in (16). Subscripted CT stands for ‘contrastive topic’. (16) a. b. c.

Who ate what? What did Fred eat? What did Mary eat? etc.

b’. FredCT ate the beansF c’. MaryCT ate the eggplantF

The same question (16a) can be submitted to a strategy in which the next move after (16a) is to ask who ate some specific vegetable, as illustrated in (15c). The difference between the strategy illustrated in (16) and the latter one is that now the vegetables are contrastive topics, and no longer the persons who ate them. Partial topics thus are ideal representants of topichood, but the other types of topics can be interpreted along the same lines, i.e. as being elements of a set of alternatives of the same class, or smaller. Even if aboutness and frame-setting topics, implicational and partial topics have different environments and different pragmatic implications, their common property is that they choose out of a set of inferable alternatives which element the sentence is about. It is this ‘contrastive’ property which is meant in the examples below.



 Caroline Féry

3.2

Topicalization

German is a V2-language, which means that a pre-verbal position in a main clause is obligatorily occupied (see Thiersch 1978, and many others after him). This position is traditionally called the prefield (Vorfeld), and can be filled by a variety of constituents. According to Frey (2004b), there are three different types of prefields in German. First, constituents which have been left-dislocated by true A-bar-movement, an operation which moves any constituent from the middle field (Mittelfeld), preserving whatever pragmatic property the constituent has acquired in this position. This operation always results in a contrastive interpretation as in (17). Second, a topicalized constituent can be first moved to the left of the subject, into a position occupied by topicalized constituents in the middle field, and only in a second step, this constituent is moved to the sentence-initial position (see also Müller and Sternefeld 1993, Grewendorf and Sabel 1994 and Haider and Rosengren 1998 for the view that arguments can be placed into a pre-subject position by scrambling). This topicalization is triggered by information structure and affects (maximal projections of) any category. It occurs both in root and in embedded clauses, and there must not be a resumptive pronoun related to it in the main clause. It is prosodically separated from the main clause by a prosodic boundary. Elements arrive at their prefield surface position by means of a process called ‘Formal Movement’ in Frey (2004b) which moves whatever is the highest element in the local middle field to the prefield in a pragmatically vacuous manner. Elements moved by formal movement only do not get a contrastive interpretation. In the unmarked situation, it is the subject of the sentence, but it can also be dative arguments of unaccusative and passive constructions, whichever element is the structurally highest phrase in IP (see also Lenerz 1977 and Müller 2003 for examples). For these elements, the highest position is their basis position. Prosodically, no particular emphasis is expected in this case. The difference between this operation and the preceding ones is that there is no movement due to pragmatic reasons in the middle field prior to the Formal Movement. A-bar topicalization may be related to filling the SpecCP, whereas the Formal Movement involves filling the SpecFinP (in Frey’s account) or SpecIP. The difference is illustrated in (17) and (18). Frey also recognizes a third possibility for filling the prefield, corresponding to a base generation of some constituents which are not licensed clause-internally. Adverbials which relate to the discourse may be of this type, an example of which is given in (19). Some temporal adverbials also appear clause-initially without having any special pragmatic meaning. (17) A-bar topicalization a. [CP das Paket2 hat1 [IP Karl t1 [VP t2 weggebracht t1]] the package has Karl taken.away ‘Karl has taken the package away.’



The prosody of topicalization 

b. Mit dem Hammer hat Otto das Fenster eingeschlagen with the hammer has Otto the window smashed ‘Otto smashed the window with the hammer.’ (18) Formal Movement a. [IP Karl hat1 [VP das Paket weggebracht t1]] Karl has the package taken.away b. Einem Mitbewohner wurde die Geldbörse entwendet a-DAT flatmate was the purse stolen ‘A purse was stolen from a flatmate’ (19)

Base generation Ein Glück habe ich den Regenschirm dabei a luck have I the umbrella with.me ‘Fortunately, I have an umbrella with me.’

Frey claims that his proposal explains why constituents situated in the local prefield may be non-contrastive, whereas topicalized constituents moved over long distances are necessarily contrastive, and also why narrowly focused elements positioned in the prefield require other contexts than those which remain in situ. Fanselow (2004) also distinguishes between the three forms of topicalization, but he proposes a unified analysis for A-bar movement and Formal Movement, the latter process he calls Stylistic Fronting. Both movements are explained in terms of feature checking. In A-bar movement an operator feature [+g] attracts a constituent which possesses [+g] as well. This feature may be an information structural feature like [+top] or [+foc]. In this case, a structurally higher category may be skipped for movement if it does not carry the matching feature, in violation of the Minimal Link Condition. In Stylistic Fronting, the attracting feature is an ordinary EPP-feature and the element closest to SpecCP is attracted. Whatever the best syntactic analysis of topicalization turns out to be, the difference between A-bar-movement and pragmatically vacuous formal movement, or between EPP and information structural features is a useful distinction, which is reflected in the phonetic implementation. It is proposed here that the distinction should be implemented in the prosodic representation. Compared to its unmarked position in a clause, A-bar topicalization has the main effect of separating the topicalized constituent into a separate I-phrase. Compare (20).4 (20) a. b.

[[Mein Bruder]P [hat seiner Tochter]P [ neue Schuhe gekauft]P]I My brother has his-DAT daughter new shoes bought ‘My brother has bought new shoes for his daughter.’ [[[Seiner Tochter]P]I [[ hat mein Bruder]P [neue Schuhe gekauft]P]I His daughter has my brother new shoes bought

 Caroline Féry

In (20a), the sentence is in its unmarked word order, with the subject in the prefield. Subject and internal arguments each form a separate P-phrase, and the whole sentence is included into one I-phrase (I). This sentence is intended to be wide-focused. Stylistic Fronting has applied and as a result, the subject has been moved to the prefield in a pragmatically vacuous manner because it was the highest element in the local middle field. The prosodic constraints can not help but select the candidate with the highest prominence on Schuhe as the optimal candidate, which is candidate (a) in Tableau 3. For reasons of space, the tableau only displays the verb’s objects (internal arguments), and ignores the subject (external argument, see Tableau 1 instead). If both direct and indirect objects are in the same I-phrase, the phrase formed on the pre-participial argument plus the verb bears the sentential stress. The addition of prominence on the indirect object in Tableau 3 leads to an unavoidable violation of HI, as illustrated by candidate (c).Candidate (b) is suboptimal because it entails a violation of HI, which is absent in candidate (a). Candidate (d), with two I-phrases, loses the competition with (a) just because it contains two violations of *I-Phrase. Tableau 3.  [seiner Tochter neue Schuhe gekauft]F

In (20b), the indirect object has been topicalized. In the intended interpretation, this object is a contrastive topic and the remainder of the sentence contains a focus, or is whole-focussed. For this reason, two main stresses are needed, one of them triggered by StressFocus (SF), which was formulated in (18a) and the other one by StressTopic (ST), formulated in (21). In the same way that SF requires a focus to be the most prominent element of its focus domain, ST requires a topic to be the most prominent element of its topic domain (for a definition of focus domain see Féry and Samek-Lodovici 2006 who lean on a proposal by Truckenbrodt 1995). (21) Stress-Topic (ST): A topic phrase has the highest prosodic prominence in its topic domain.



The prosody of topicalization 

Since in (20b) two internal arguments require a prominent head, two IPs are formed, which can have equal prominence, as illustrated by candidate (a) in Tableau 4. The dative object is a contrastive topic, and ST requires it to be the most prominent element of its domain. In order to satisfy ST, the topic is separated from the rest of the clause by a stronger phrase boundary, an intonation phrase boundary. Thus, topicalization goes together with the creation of a new prosodic domain, and allows the topicalized constituent to be as prominent as the pre-verbal direct object. Candidate (a) is better than candidate (b) because it fulfills both ST and HI: both IPs have an equally strong head. Candidate (b) fulfills HI as well, but violates ST by virtue of integrating the topical accent in the same IP as the focal one. Candidate (c) shows why an IP must be created on the topicalized constituent: it is not possible to attribute equal prominence to two Pphrases in a single IP without violating HI. The ranking HI >> *I-Phrase is motivated in this tableau. And finally, candidate (d) illustrates why topicalization implies fronting to the prefield. If the indirect object remains in the middle field (and the subject is fronted by Formal Movement as in (20a)), three I-phrases are created, one more than in candidate a. This, however is penalized by *I-Phrase. In the syntactic approach sketched out above, the subject in candidate (a) remains in its canonical position, which is the first position of the middle field. As a consequence, it does not have to bear any special pragmatic interpretation, either when it is in the prefield or when it has been fronted by formal movement, an assumption which seems to be borne out, and which comes as a natural result in the OT analysis proposed here. Tableau 4.  [seiner Tochter]T [hat mein Bruder neue Schuhe gekauft]F

The same prosodic structure, with two IPs, can be realized with the unmarked syntactic structure, as shown in (22), but it is in several respects less well-formed. First, the initial prosodic domain does not correspond to a syntactic phrase, and second, the two most prominent accents of the sentence are adjacent and violate as a result the constraint NoClash, formulated in (23), a violable constraint (Hayes 1995, Elenbaas and Kager 1999).

 Caroline Féry

(22) [Mein Bruder hat seiner Tochter]IP [neue Schuhe gekauft]IP My brother has his-DAT daughter new shoes bought (23) NoClash: Equally strong accents are not adjacent. The result of this section can be summed up as follows: topicalization of a maximal projection is triggered by the need to allow two constituents to be equally prominent. If two adjacent verbal arguments both require main accents, it is better to move one of them to the initial position of the sentence. Prosodically, it then forms a separate Intonation Phrase which can get as much prominence as the preverbal argument. Leaving both arguments in their canonical position leads to violation of the prosodic constraints. In the next section, it is shown that the same motivation, namely avoidance of stress clash and better prosodic shape, is also at play in discontinuous or split constructions, in which non-maximal projections are involved.

4. Discontinuous DP constructions In discontinuous (or split DP) constructions, a nominal phrase is divided into two segments, separated by independent material. In (24a), the NP rote Rosen is in the middle field in its canonical order, with the adjective preceding the noun. In (24b), the noun Rosen is in the prefield, and thus precedes the adjective. The adjective rote is in the middle field, as in the canonical order, but now it is adjacent to the verb. Again an additional incidental change concerns the location of the subject, which is before the finite verb in (24a) and after it in (24b). As explained in the preceding section in relation with the discussion of (20b), both locations are unmarked. (24) a. b.

Maria hat rote Rosen gekauft. Mary has red roses bought Rosen hat Maria rote gekauft. roses has Mary red bought

This construction has been intensively studied from a syntactic perspective and has been alternatively analyzed in terms of movement or in terms of base-generation (see De Kuthy 2002 for a summary of the arguments for and against these options, and also Fanselow & Féry (2006) and van Hoof 2004 for an overview of the constructions in several languages). In the movement or remnant movement approach, the noun is moved to the front of the sentence, and the adjective remains in situ (see for instance van Riemsdijk 1989 and Müller 1998). In the base-generation or reanalysis model (see Fanselow 1987), the noun is generated in the prefield. An alternative explanation is the copy-and-deletion approach (Fanselow and Cavar 2002) in which the whole NP generated in the middle field is copied in the prefield, and the unrealized material is deleted in both positions. It is important to observe that there are a number of discrepancies between the continuous and the discontinuous versions of the NP, the most obvious



The prosody of topicalization

ones being number or Case incompatibility, and regeneration of a preposition (see van Riemsdijk 1989 for German), facts which disfavor a movement approach. From a typological perspective, this kind of ‘inverted’ split construction is only possible in languages which permit noun-dependents to be nominals by themselves, a second factor strongly speaking for base-generation as the most plausible analysis. Fanselow and Cavar (2002), as well as De Kuthy (2002) and Féry, Paslawska & Fanselow (2007) for Ukrainian, consider not only the syntactic facts but also the discourse structural motivation for split constructions. They find a motivation for the NPs’ discontinuity in their information structural properties. In most cases, the preposed element is a topic and the element in situ is a focus. Thus, (24b) could be typically uttered in a situation in which roses have been previously introduced into the discourse. In the sentence under consideration, they are mentioned again and contrasted with other flowers. The speaker adds the new or otherwise prominent information that the roses Mary bought are red (rather than of another color). From the perspective of the prosody, the set of constraints introduced until now lead to a structure in which the word Rosen in (24a) invariably bears main prominence. This is illustrated in Table 5. Tableau 5.  [Maria hat rote Rosen gekauft]F

Tableau 5 contains a simplification since the NP rote Rosen contains two lexical heads, an adjective and a noun, and StressXP requires both of them to project a phrasal accent. The whole NP is finally accented, and is analyzed as a recursive P-phrase, as shown in (25). The adjective and the noun are integrated into a single P-phrase on rhythmical grounds (Nespor and Vogel 1986, Selkirk 1984, Ghini 1993). In the following, the lower P-phrase structure is no longer considered. ( x ) P (x ) (x ) P (25) rote Rosen The discontinuity of an adjective (or quantifier, numeral and the like) and its head noun finds a double motivation. First, as illustrated in the preceding section with max-



 Caroline Féry

imal projections, the need to provide both elements with equal prominence triggers the formation of two phrases, topicalization being the most obvious solution. Indeed, it allows a structure which fulfills NoClash by keeping the two prosodic heads as far apart as possible. In split constructions, the prosodic phrases are not adjacent, as has been demonstrated for contrastive topicalization in the preceding section. Second, the sentence initial position is preferably associated with a rising bitonal tone for topic, and the preverbal one with a falling accent for focus (see Büring 1997). When adjective and noun are adjacent, assigning two accents inevitably leads to a rising accent on the adjective and a falling one on the noun, the reverse of what is found in a split construction. In Table 6, *I-Phrase is left out for reason of space. A candidate with only one Iphrase, like (b) and (c) is eliminated through the effect of higher-ranking constraints. Tableau 6.  [Rosen]T hat sie [rote]F gekauft

Note that an interpretation of the preposed element as a topic is facultative. It can also be a focus, the only restriction being that the two parts of a split construction cannot be elements of one and the same focus. The fronted part can also be the only focus of the sentence, in which case the remaining of the sentence is backgrounded, and deaccented. If both elements of a split construction bear structural information, an asymmetrical information structure seems to be obligatory. A dialogue like (26) is not well-formed, if B’s answer is intended to be exhaustive. In a well-formed answer to (26A), adjective and noun, which form together a narrow focus, are adjacent, as shown in the three well-formed options in (26C). Only the noun carries main stress. (26) A: Was hat sie gekauft? ‘What has she bought?’ B: #Rosen hat sie rote gekauft. C: Sie hat rote Rosen gekauft./ Rote Rosen hat sie gekauft./ Rote Rosen. Similarly, elements of split constructions cannot be parts of a single topic. This is illustrated in (27). In (27B) Rote Rosen and weiße Nelken are topics by virtue of being subsets of a given superset, and the verbs are the foci of the answer. Splitting the noun and the adjective induces a focus on the noun or on the adjective, which is not intended by



The prosody of topicalization

the context (27A). A well-formed answer is provided in (27C): the flowers and their color are topicalized and the participles are the foci of their clauses. (27) A: B. C.

Was hat sie mit roten Rosen und weißen Nelken getan? ‘What as she done with red roses and white carnations?’ #Rosen hat sie rote geschnitten roses has she red cut und Nelken hat sie weisse gepflückt. and carnations has she white picked. rote Rosen hat sie geschnitten und weisse Nelken gepflückt. red roses has she cut and white carnations picked.

Next, consider (28). In this example, both parts of the split construction (28B) are in focus, but crucially they are foci of two different wh-questions. (28) A: B: C: D:

Wieviele von welchen Blumen hat sie gekauft? How many of which flowers has she bought? Rosen hat sie zwölf und Nelken (hat sie) zwanzig gekauft. roses has she twelve and carnations has she twenty bought. Sie hat zwölf Rosen und zwanzig Nelken gekauft. ‘She has bought twelve roses and twenty carnations.’ *zwölf hat sie Rosen und zwanzig hat sie Nelken gekauft. ‘She has bought twelve roses and twenty carnations.’

A different and equally plausible analysis in (28B) involves a topic on the noun and a focus on the numeral. In this reading, Rosen and Nelken are members of a closed, contextually given set, and number of bought flowers is being questioned. In multiple questions there seems to be a strong tendency for one of the wh-words to be D-linked and act as a sorting key for the answer.5 In fact, both answers (28B and C) seem to be equally well-formed: violation of stress clash is as good an option as a split construction, (see 28C and also 28B when the auxiliary hat and the pronoun sie are elided). In (28B), the nouns have preferably a rising accent and the adjectives a falling one, and the preferred analysis is one involving a topic and a focus. In (28C), both the numerals and the flowers are preferably analyzed as foci. There is no need to reverse the order of the adjective and the noun and the unmarked word order with the adjective preceding the noun is chosen, since there is no preference for a certain type of pitch accent on one of the two stressed words. (28D) is syntactically not well-formed, but, from the point of view of the information structure, it should be as good as (28B). As an answer to a question like Welche Blumen hat sie gekauft und wieviele? ‘Which flowers did she buy, and how many?’, (28B and C) are equally well-formed, whereas (28D) is again rather marked. The next example, in (29), illustrates a sentence which contains different elements of the constructions that we have examined so far.



 Caroline Féry

(29)

Das gute Essen hat Maria immer gemocht, The good food has Maria always liked aber Fisch konnte sie noch nie leiden but fish could she yet never bear ‘Maria has always liked good food, but she always hated fish’

The proposal assumed in this paper enhances the prosodic side of such constructions, which is a direct consequence of avoiding stress clash and the need to realize two accents with equal prominence. Both nie and Fisch are accented by virtue of bearing individual pragmatic features, even in a context in which the whole sentence is focused. The structure of the preceding clause is such that two different points of information are required, the first being of the kind of food under debate and the second being Maria’s taste. In addition to being part of the focus, Fisch can be interpreted as a topic and topics are better realized with rising accents. It is a topic by virtue of being inferable from good food (see Reinhart 1981 among others for the topic status of inferable items). The adverb nie has narrow focus, in addition to being part of the focus of the whole sentence. It is thus better with a falling accent. The information structure of a sentence like (29) is shown in (30).6 (30) [[Fisch]T [konnte sie fish could she

noch yet

[nie]F never

leiden]F]F ear

Tableau 7 shows how the constraints elicit candidate (a) as the optimal candidate. The optimal candidate (a) separates the topic and the focus in two different I-phrases. Nie is an embedded focus, and as such carries the prominence of the whole focused sentence instead of the verb leiden, which is, everything being equal, the rightmost stressable word (see Féry and Samek-Lodovici 2006 and section 2). All the other candidates violate either SF or ST, and are thus eliminated from the outset. Candidate (b) is like candidate (a) except for the fact that it has an additional P-phrase on the final verb. It fulfills Stress XP and HP better than candidate (a) but since nie is not the most prominent constituent in its domain, it violates SF. Observe that preserving the prosodic structure of candidate (b), but moving the main accent to nie does not solve the problem, because at the level of the P-phrase, nie is not more prominent than leiden, and SF requires it to be at the level of the P-phrase as well. Candidate (c) does not attribute enough prominence to the topic, and candidate (d) violates SF because nie is not the most prominent item in its domain. In view of the focus of the whole sentence, the accent on Fisch is enough, but the prominence on nie is lacking.



The prosody of topicalization

Tableau 7.  [[Fisch]Tkonnte sie noch [nie]F leiden]F

To sum up this section, contrast, aboutness and topicality are properties associated with rising tones, and are usually found sentence initially. Splitting of constituents is induced by the need to realize two different discourse structure properties on the two elements, multiple foci and topic plus focus being the most obvious options.

6. Conclusion Two constructions have been examined in the paper. First, contrastive topicalization, involving topicalization of a maximal projection, and second, discontinuous DP constructions which topicalizes just a head noun. It has been shown that prosody plays an important role for the motivation of both constructions, since it has the effect of changing the linear ordering of the constituents. Topicalization often fulfills the need to create a new prosodic domain. This new phrase, analyzed in the present paper as an I-phrase (intonation phrase), presents an alternative to a structure which would otherwise contain two adjacent accents. Moreover, it creates a configuration in which the constituent carrying the topic feature of the sentence may be initial, and thus able to have a rising pitch accent. Similarly, if the focus is final in its I-phrase, it may carry the nuclear falling accent. OT is an excellent framework to deal with this kind of phenomena because it does not pre-empt an organization of grammar in which syntax precedes phonology. On the contrary, it is possible to order syntactic and prosodic constraints so that prosody may influence syntax. In the analysis which has been proposed in this paper, syntactic constraints interact with prosodic ones, and deliver a picture of grammar where placement and shape of pitch accents play a major role for word order.



 Caroline Féry

Notes * This paper is part of project A1 of the SFB632 on Information Structure at the University of Potsdam, and of the project on discontinuous DP and PP constructions, both financed by the DFG. Thanks to Gisbert Fanselow, Ingo Feldhausen, Werner Frey, Shin Ishihara, Knud Lambrecht, and an anonymous reviewer for discusssions and helpful comments. Thanks to Gisbert Fanselow for discussion of some of the issues of this paper. Part of this work has been presented at the ISAG conference. I would like to thank the organizers and the audience of the ISAG conference for their interest. Thanks also to Elizabeth Medvedovsky and Esther Sommerfeld for checking English. All errors and omissions are mine. 1. As far as I-phrases are concerned, no unique syntactic construction can be found with which they coincide. For this reason, no constraint similar to StressXP is offered here. An Iphrase, like a P-phrase, is uniquely headed. 2. Another way to explain the accent on him in (7a) is in terms of nested foci, as in Féry and Samek-Lodovici (2006). The wh-constituent who triggers an extra-F-mark inside of the VP, and this extra-F-mark renders him more prominent than the verb, see below for the relevant constraint. 3. See also the so-called Second Occurrence Focus (SOF) sentences, as discussed in Beaver et al. (2004) and in Féry and Ishihara (2005), which present a slightly different challenge for the theory presented here. SOF is realized with a pitch accent prenuclearly, but is subject to deaccenting postnuclearly. 4. Frey (2004b) also claims that the word order of (20b) can be found in a sentence in which seine Tochter is not contrastive. In this case, scrambling has applied first, and in a second step formal movement. This case is not considered here, but I assume that the prosodic structure of such a sentence is similar to the one of (20a). 5.

Thanks to Shin Ishihara and to the anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.

6. The anonymous reviewer points out that in a topic prominent language like Romanian, fish in the same context would be topicalized and the negative quantifier could move to the sentence-initial structural focus position immediately following the topic.

Types of topics in German and Italian* Mara Frascarelli and Roland Hinterhölzl This paper investigates the phonological and syntactic realization of topics in German and Italian. Based on a detailed intonational and syntactic analysis of corpus data, it is shown that topics are not fully recursive (contra Rizzi 1997), but fall into three types that are distin­guished phonologically and realized in different syntactic positions. We argue that there is a systematic correlation between discourse roles and grammatical properties of topics which is encoded in a strict hierarchy of functional heads in the C-domain.

1. Introduction This paper investigates information structure (henceforth, IS) in Italian and German, focus­sing on the correlation between the syntactic and phonological realization of topics and their discourse properties. In particular, we will analyse the connection between discourse roles and formal properties in sentences containing multiple topics. A comparative analysis of the properties of topic constituents in German and Italian is particularly interesting from a typo­logical point of view: these languages differ in a number of parameters (head-complement parameter, V2 property, pro-drop, clitic resumption and morphological Case marking) that make the identification of discourse-related common properties an important issue for the definition of language universals. According to current assumptions, topics are licensed in a specific extra-sentential maxi­mal projection – the Topic Phrase (TopP) – for which different locations have been pro­posed in the literature. Rizzi (1997) indicates two topic fields in the left periphery of the sen­tence, one above and one below the Focus Phrase (FocP).1 As for right-dislocated topics, Cecchetto (1999) and Belletti (2004) support the existence of a lower TopP node, just above the VP. Topic positions are indicated in (1) below:

(1) [TopP topic* [FocP [TopP topic* [IP [TopP topic* [VP … ]]]]]]

Though movement is generally assumed to derive topic constructions, we claim – following Frascarelli (2000, 2004b) – that an analysis of topicalization in terms of movement cannot be maintained for clitic-resumed topics, which are merged directly in

 Mara Frascarelli and Roland Hinterhölzl

TopP positions – cf. rele­vant discussion in section 3.1. The asterisk in (1) indicates that the TopP projection can be iterated. Indeed, in cases of multiple topics, free recursion of the TopP projection is generally assumed: there can be an indefinite number of topics […] [we] assume an adjunction analysis for topic, under the usual assumption on the reiterability of adjunction […] No interpretative problem arises in the case of a recursion of Top: nothing excludes that a comment […] may be articulated in turn as a topic-comment structure, so that topic phrases can undergo free recursion. (Rizzi, 1997: 295, 297)

Topics, however, do ‘different things’ and, at least, three types of topics should be distinguished: (a) aboutness topic: “what the sentence is about” (Reinhart 1981, Lambrecht 1994); in particular, a constituent that is “newly introduced, newly changed or newly returned to” (Givón 1983: 8), a constituent which is proposed as “a matter of standing and current interest or concern” (Strawson 1964); (b) contrastive topic: an element that induces alternatives which have no impact on the focus value and creates oppositional pairs with respect to other topics (Kuno 1976b, Büring 1999); (c) familiar topic: a given or accessible (cf. Chafe 1987) constituent, which is typically destressed and realized in a pronominal form (Pesetsky 1987); when a fa­miliar topic is textually given and d-linked with a pre-established aboutness topic, it is de­fined as a continuing topic (cf. Givón 1983). Given these different discourse properties, let us consider example (2), from the LIP corpus (cf. De Mauro et al. 1993), in which three topics are present in the left periphery of the sentence, namely, the direct object (DO) questo, the subject io and the indirect object (IO) ai ragazzi:2 (2) La situazione è questa: l’insegnante come ho detto ai ragazzi è in maternità ha una gravidanza difficile e sta usufruendo di quella legge particolare della mater­nità anticipata per ora ha avuto un mese io penso che non tornerà però lei m’ha detto ah di non dirlo ancora ai ragazzi perché per motivi suoi- comunque io si­gnora penso di chiudere l’anno […] questo comunque io ai ragazzi non l’ho detto direttamente. ‘This is the situation: the teacher, as I told students, is pregnant, she’s having a difficult pregnancy and she is now having benefit from a specific law that allows for an early maternity-leave. So far, I was given one month of teaching supply. I don’t think she is coming back this year, however she told me not to tell students, because- well, she has her reasons. However, I think I will keep the class till the end of the year […] anyway I did not tell this fact to students directly.’

Questo, io ai ragazzi non l’ ho detto direttamente. this I to.the boys not it(cl) have.1sg told directly ‘I did not tell that fact to my students directly.’ The speaker is a teacher who is talking with the mother of one of his students (his ‘ragazzi’) about a difficult situation concerning his temporary position in the school. As we can see, the IO ai ragazzi is the familiar topic of the conversation: it is mentioned



Types of topics in German and Italian 

at the beginning of the text and then repeated several times. On the other hand, the topicalized subject io has a con­trastive value, since the teacher wants to stress that, as for him, he is not going to tell anything to his students (since he was asked to keep it secret). Finally, the DO topic questo displays aboutness and, in particular, it marks a shift in the conversation to focus the addressee’s at­tention on that particular point. In this paper we will show that discourse properties have structural correlates both in phonology and in syntax. In other words, evidence will be provided that different types of topic show different intonational properties and are realized in a specific order in the CP-system. A free recursion analysis will thus be refuted and a hierarchy will be proposed in which different functional projections are distinguished in terms of prosodic and syntactic properties. In particular, we will argue that the following types of topics are distinguished systematically in the syntax and phonology of both languages and are hierarchically ordered as given in (3): (3) Topic hierarachy Shifting topic [+aboutness] > Contrastive topic > Familiar topic Shifting topics can be best characterized following Givon’s (1983) definition as topics that are newly introduced or newly changed to; contrastive and familiar topics are defined as given above. In the following sections, we will show that shifting topics can unequivocally be charac­terized as aboutness topics. A question arises concerning the status of continuing topics which, according to Reinhart’s (1981) definition, should also count as aboutness topics, but, as we will see, are realized as familiar topics. The tricky issue of the proper treatment of con­tinuing topics will be discussed in section 5.3. We will also show that a movement approach is not tenable for some types of topic and discuss the relevance of clitic-resumption in this respect. Finally, the examination of contexts will also show that topics are not always given elements (66% in the LIP Corpus – cf. Frascarelli 2000). So, drawing on Chafe’s (1987) acti­vation states, topics will be distinguished in terms of a) active, b) semi-active and c) inactive expressions (cf. also Prince 1981 for a discussion of degrees of givenness).

2. The intonation of topic constituents in Italian In this section we examine the particular intonational contours that are associated with differ­ent types of topics to convey different discourse meanings. The pitch accents types that will recur in the course of this paper are based on Pierrehumbert’s (1980) work and further devel­opments in which tunes are described as sequences of low (L) and high (H) tones determining the shape of the F0 contour.3 In this perspective, all pitch accents render prominent the mate­rial with which they are associated, regardless of the type of the accent in question. Tones are also assigned to phrase-final syllables.

 Mara Frascarelli and Roland Hinterhölzl

These are the so-called boundary tones, marking the end of Intermediate Phrases (indicated by the symbol ‘¯’ after the relevant tone) and Intona­tional Phrases (indicated by ‘%’). While pitch accents have a prominence-lending function on stressed syllables, boundary tones delimit prosodic edges. In this paper we focus on the ques­tion of which pitch-accents are associated with topics. The intonational analysis of Italian topics is based on a corpus of spoken data: 100 minutes of conversations among friends and interviews with language students (corpus Bon­vino, 2003), from which we have extracted a total of 103 sentences. The acoustic analysis has been developed using the Winpitch program, on Windows NT. The corpus includes six speakers (five women and one man), aged 20-35 (Roman variety), whose tone properties are given in Table 1 below (MMV and MXV indicate, respectively, the minimum and maximum mean value of F0): Table 1.

A (fem) B (fem) C (fem) D (fem) E (fem) F (mas)

2.1

Baseline (MMV)

Peak (MXV)

Pitch range

out of (nr sen­tences)

173 155 137 136 121 103

234 201 174 195 152 125

61 56 38 59 31 22

35 9 24 15 12 8

The interpretation of tonal events

Our corpus shows that topic constituents in Italian are always made prominent by pitch ac­cents, which differ according to their discourse roles. In particular, we can identify three tonal events associated with topic expressions, namely L*+H, H* and L*. 2.1.1 The L*+H contour Every time a new topic is introduced in the conversation, it is signalled by a rise in the F0 contour that is aligned with the tonic vowel in its full extension and reaches its peak on the post-tonic syllable. According to the specific framework we are using, this kind of tonal event can be described by means of the complex tone L*+H. We therefore associate this tone with aboutness topics that mark a shift in the ongoing conversation. In order to provide an illustration of this contour and the discourse function associated with the relevant topic, let us consider example (4) below. Here, a student (speaker A) is giving her opinion about the material of a self-learning course she applied for in the Lan­guage Center. For quite a long time she talks in general terms (also lamenting about the amount of work included in the course). Then, at a certain point,



Types of topics in German and Italian

she interrupts this kind of narration and proposes a new topic (i.e., an element that was not previously mentioned). The new topic is the DO l’ultima unit (‘the last unit’) which is resumed by the clitic la in the sentence. The speaker introduces this topic in order to announce that, despite the general difficulty, she is working on it at the moment: (4) Il materiale era tantissimo quindi all’inizio l’ho fatto tutto di corsa cercando di impiegarci il tempo che dicevate voi magari facendolo un po’ superficialmente pur di prendere tutto- l’ultima unit la sto facendo l’ho lasciata un po’ da parte perché ho ricominciato il ripasso… ‘The material was quite a lot, so at the beginning I did it in a rush, trying to do it all in the time that you had fixed, maybe a little superficially, so as to do every­thing- I’m doing the last unit now, I put it aside before because I had started to go through the program again…’

L’ultima unit la sto facendo. the last unit it(cl) be.1sg do.ger ‘I’m working on the last unit.’

Figure 1.

As we can see, the pitch accent on the topic phrase l’ultima unit marks a turning point in the conversation. The topic-shift is signalled by a sharp rise on the tonic syllable – the diphthong [ju] – and likewise by a sharp fall after it. Indeed, the topic clearly forms an independent in­tonational phrase: its right edge is marked by F0 resetting and followed by a rhythmic break i.e. a short pause. The predicative part of the sentence la sto facendo is then maintained on a low range for the relevant speaker – cf. Table 1 – no particular peaks can be noticed, as is the case for broad focus sentences in Italian (cf. D’Imperio 2002, Frascarelli 2004a).4



 Mara Frascarelli and Roland Hinterhölzl

2.1.2 The H* contour The H* tone characterizes a contrast between two (or more) topics as far as some specific (new) information is concerned. A fine illustration of this particular topic type is given in (5), in which a student (speaker D) is talking about her skills with foreign languages, overtly con­trasting English with French: (5) Le lingue in particolare non c’ho un metodo particolare perché ho avuto una sto­ ria travagliata soprattutto con l’inglese [...] col francese benissimo: ho fatto tre anni di medie avevo raggiunto un buon livello secondo me riuscivo a vedere un film in inglese ho avuto sempre problemi con i professori. ‘I don’t have a particular method with languages because I had a troubled story, es­pecially with English […] with French, it was perfect: I studied it for three years at school, I reached a good level I think, I could also see movies in original ver­sion- while in English I always had problems with professors.’

in inglese ho avuto sempre problemi con i professori. in English have.1sg had always problems with the professors ‘In English, I always had problems with professors.’

Figure 2.

Observe the intonational contour associated with the PP-topic in inglese. Similarly to l’ultima unit in (4), it is marked by a prominent rise and followed by a low boundary tone. The align­ment, however, is very different from that which we saw on l’ultima unit in Figure 1: in the latter the highest F0 point is reached on the post-tonic vowel, while in Figure 2 the pitch ac­cent extends all over the tonic vowel obtaining a typical H*-contour. The rest of the sentence forms a separate intonational phrase, with a peak on the adverb sempre.



Types of topics in German and Italian 

2.1.3 The L* contour The L* tone is present with familiar topics, that is, with elements that are part of the already established information. They are introduced at some point of the conversation and then repeated for topic continuity or as an afterthought. Consider, for instance, example (6) below. As the context makes clear, the DO la con­ferma represents a familiar element, which is introduced by the student (speaker B), resumed by the interviewer and finally repeated, as a right-hand topic by the student: (6) B: io dovevo studiare le regole qui e lì fare solo esercizio, invece mi aspettavo di tro­vare dei punti a cui far riferimento ogni volta per vedere la regola, questo mi è mancato praticamente per avere la conferma di ricordare tutto insomma; A: co­munque quelle domande ti davano la conferma che avevi capito; B: ma... magari non me la- non riesco a darmela da sola la conferma. ‘B: I was supposed to study rules here and do the exercises there, while I expected to find some outlines I could refer to, at any point, to check the relevant rule, this is what I missed, to check that I could remember everything; A: however those questions gave you the possibility to check your understanding; B: well, maybe I cannot make this check on my own.’

non riesco a darmela da sola la conferma. not can.1sg to give-to.me(cl)-it(cl) alone the check ‘I cannot make this check on my own.’

Figure 3.

As we can see, the tonic vowel of the DO-topic la conferma is realized with a low tone (170Hz), which is very close to the speaker’s baseline (cf. Table 1). Nonetheless it is superior to the lowest value of this utterance, that is reached before the topic itself i.e. on the post-tonic vowel of sola –160Hz – which marks the edge of the comment. The righthand topic, therefore, is not a part of the intonational phrase constituted by the preceding sentence, but an independent intonational unit with its own L*-pitch accent.

 Mara Frascarelli and Roland Hinterhölzl

It is important to underline that, though familiar topics are typically realized in Italian as right-hand topics, the L*-tone characterizing them is not to be considered as a (physiologi­cal) consequence of their final location. Familiar topics are low in any position, as is shown in the example to be discussed in the following section. 2.1.4 A case of multiple realization To conclude the presentation of the different tonal events, let us consider sentence (7). A stu­dent (speaker D) is talking about English courses in general and, at the very end, about her relation to English in particular: (7) Era tutto molto nuovo nel senso che comunque la lingua inglese attraverso i pro­ grammi sul computer diciamo [...] comunque l’inglese risultava anche facendolo da solo più interessante [...] io, inglese non- premetto non l’avevo mai fatto. ‘Everything was very new to me in the sense that I had never studied English through computer programs […] and through self-learning English appeared more interesting to me […] I must say that I had never studied English before.’

Io, inglese […] non l’ avevo mai fatto. I English not it(cl) have.past.1sg never done ‘I had never studied English before.’

Figure 4.

The intonational contours associated with the constituents io and inglese show that they are completely different topic types though they are both located in the left periphery. Inglese, a DO resumed by the clitic lo, is a familiar topic: it is introduced very early in the interview and then repeated as a continuing topic. The subject-topic io, on the other hand, marks a shift in the conversation: the speaker is still talking about English but, at that point, she changes the aboutness topic. She wants to comment on her personal relation to that language. Accord­ingly, io is characterized by an intonational



Types of topics in German and Italian 

rise that reaches its highest point on the post-tonic vowel (like the topic illustrated in Figure 1). The F0 on inglese, however, stays on a low range and is rather flat (like la conferma in Figure 3).

2.2

Tonal events on topics: conclusions

The examples discussed show that the tonal event associated with a topic does not depend on its category: diverse constituents including pronouns can be merged in Topic position and be marked by an into­national rise when they indicate a shift or a contrast in the discourse (cf. also the sample sen­tences in section 3). On the other hand, full DPs can be realized with a low tone if they are familiar topics. Sentences (4) to (7) also show that the realization of a topic is neither influenced by its prosodic weight – io is lighter than inglese in (7) – nor by its position within the sentence – a familiar topic is marked as L* in either periphery of the sentence. We can thus conclude that the tonal event of a topic is only dependent on its discourse role. As for boundary tones, the intonational contours illustrate that shifting topics as well as contrastive ones are always marked by a final lowering which typically signals the end of a prosodic phrase with a declarative illocutionary force. In general, F0 resetting and rhyth­mic/tonal breaks show the presence of an intonational phrase boundary between the topic and the rest of the sentence.5 Comparing these results with other intonational analyses for different languages, it is interesting to note that the H-tone is generally associated with items that are new in the dis­course. This is perfectly consistent with its presence in topics marking a shift. On the other hand, the L‑tone normally marks items the speaker wants to be salient, “but not to form part of what the speaker is predicating in the utterance” (Pierrehumbert and Hirschberg, 1990: 291). In other words: L-marked items are not used to add information to the hearer’s beliefs. This also fits with their present association with familiar topics. As for their analysis in terms of activation states, our corpus shows that shifting topics can be newly introduced or semi-active constituents. Contrastive topics are generally active elements, even if the contrast can also be raised by accessible elements. Only familiar topics are always connected with active referents. This is consistent with their status of given/accessible elements that can serve for referential continuity.

3. The syntax of topics in Italian In section 2, evidence has been provided for a specific and systematic correlation between discourse and intonational properties of topic constituents. According to the intonational (and discourse) properties we have distinguished, the 103 topics of our Italian corpus can be di­vided into 38 shifting topics (ST), 25 contrastive (CT) and

 Mara Frascarelli and Roland Hinterhölzl

40 familiar topics (FT). Their lo­cation in either periphery of the sentence, their rigid order in multiple topic constructions,6 and their interaction with other types of constituents in the CP-system (i.e. focus and wh-con­stituents) will be discussed below. Consider the following samples sentences: i. per esempio il CD-rom invece non l’ avevo mai visto. for example the CD-rom instead not it(cl) have.past.1sg never seen ‘So, for instance, I had never seen a CD Rom before.’

ST

ii. Brava non me lo dirà mai. bravo not to.me(cl) it(cl) say.fut.3sg never ‘He will never say ‘brava’ to me.’

ST

iii.

Io, una cosa che ho trovato positiva, è stata la comprensione. ST, CT I one thing that have.1sg found positive be.3sg been the comprehension ‘As for me, something that I considered as positive was the comprehension part.’

iv. Rispetto agli altri materiali, come ti sei trovata? with respect to-the other materials how you(cl) be.2sg found ‘As for the other materials, how did you like them?’

ST, WH

v. Quello anche sul questionario l’ ho scritto. that also on-the questionnaire it(cl) have.1sg written ‘I wrote that also on the questionnaire.’

ST, FOC

vi. Io tutto pensavo fuorché di parlare alla radio. I all think.past.1sg except of to speak at-the radio ‘I could imagine everything but speaking on the radio.’

ST, FOC

vii. Io, inglese non l’ avevo mai fatto. I English not it(cl) have.past.1sg never done ‘I never studied English before.’

ST, FT

viii. Cioè il senso generale lo capisco. that is to say the sense general it(cl) understand.1sg ‘I mean I understand the general meaning.’

CT

ix. Invece a lei non l’ ha presa come speaker. instead to her not her(cl) have.3sg taken.fem as speaker ‘On the contrary he didn’t choose her to be the speaker.’

CT

x. Io francamente questa attività particolare non me la ricordo. I frankly this activity particular not to.me(cl) it(cl) remember.1sg ‘Frankly, I don’t remember that particular activity.’

CT, FT



Types of topics in German and Italian 

xi. L’ ha sempre tirato fuori lui, il discorso. it(cl) have.3sg always taken out he the discourse ‘It is him who always took this topic.’ xii. E su questa, loro - i gladiatori lottavano. and on this they the gladiators fight.past.3pl ‘And gladiators, they would fight on this.’

FOC, FT

FT, FT

xiii. io non ho mai saputo come si dicevano sti sentimenti in inglese. FT, FT I not have.1sg never known how imp say.past.3pl these feelings in English ‘And I had never learnt how these sentiments were called in English.’ As we can see, in multiple realization, the three topics types we have identified are located in a specific order. This means that sentences can host multiple topics which are located in dif­ferent peripheral positions. However, it is not the case that just any kind of topic can occupy any position. In particular, shifting topics occupy the highest topic position in the left periphery. Note specifically that this type of topic is located in a higher position with respect to whand focus constituents, which compose the so-called operator field (Rizzi 1997) in the left periphery of the sentence – cf. (iv) to (vi). Familiar topics, on the other hand, occupy the lowest Top‑projection. They are located lower than contrastive and focus constituents and can be realized in either periphery – cf. (x) to (xiii), while the right periphery seems to be excluded for shifting and contrastive topics. Contrastive topics finally are located between shifting and familiar topics and, like the former, precede operators. As far as topic recursion is concerned, our corpus clearly shows that shifting and con­trastive topics are not recursive – a sentence can only contain one shifting and one contras­tive topic – and they can only be located in the left periphery. Familiar topics, on the other hand, allow multiple realizations in either periphery, consistent with the fact that different elements can be part of the accessible information. Given that shifting topics represent about­ness topics, this means that a sentence, though it may contain several topics, can license at most one aboutness topic. In the light of the examined Italian data, we propose the following hierarchy for topic constituents in the CP-system:

3.1

(8) [ShiftP [+aboutness] [ContrP [FocP [FamP* [IP

Merge, move and clitic resumption

In recent works Frascarelli (2000, 2004b) has argued for extra-sentential merge of clitic-resumed topics restating (with some major differences) a hypothesis originally put forth by Cinque (1990). According to this analysis, a topic is base-generated in the Cdomain and connected with its thematic role (if any) through binding an IP-internal pro.7 Several pieces of evidence is given in Frascarelli (2004b) to support this claim,

 Mara Frascarelli and Roland Hinterhölzl

including scope, binding and minimality effects. Consider, for instance, the anti-reconstruction effects for Principle C in (9a). As we can see, coindexing between the topic-internal R-expression Leo and the pro­nominal subject lui is grammatical in (9a). But if we merge the relevant DP in argument po­sition, the sentence we obtain becomes ungrammatical (9b): (9) a. b.

La mia foto con Leoi luii non l’ ha ancora mostrata. the my picture with Leo he not it(cl) have.3sg still shown.fem ‘My picture with Leoi, hei hasn’t shown it yet.’ *Luii non ha ancora mostrato la mia foto con Leoi.

It is thus clear that the topic in (9a) is not derived via movement from the IP-internal position shown in (9b) since reconstruction would yield a Principle C effect. On the other hand, if the topic is merged in TopP position, Principle C is not at issue because the DP Leo is not c-commanded by the subject pronoun lui (cf. Frascarelli 2004b for further details). Given Frascarelli’s analysis, which we assume, it is now important to consider whether merge applies for all three topic types we have distinguished so far. Merge must be assumed to shifting and contrastive topics, since they are always clitic-resumed in our corpus. On the other hand, the situation is not immediately clear as far as right-hand familiar topics are con­cerned. They can be iterated and clitic‑resumption seems to be optional with them. Consider, for instance, sentence (10) below (from the LIP corpus) in which the right-dislocated DO un colpo di telefono is not clitic-resumed in the sentence:8 (10) Non ti preoccupare, faccio io, un colpo di telefono. not you(cl) worry make.1sg I a ring of telephone ‘Don’t worry: I will make a phone call.’ To provide a solution to this problem, consider the following contrast: (11) a. b.

Darò ogni libroi, al suoj autore. give.fut.1sg every book to-the his author Gli darò ogni libroi, al suoj autore. to.him(cl) give.fut.1sg every book to-the his author

(i = j, i ≠ j) (i ≠ j)

In both (11a-b) the IO al suo autore is a familiar topic, realized in the right periphery of the sentence with a L* tone. According to the present analysis, they both occupy the Fam‑projection with IP moving across it (see (16) in section 3.2 below). However, the inter­pretation of these two sentences is very different. In particular, sentence (11a) – in which the topic is not clitic-resumed – is ambiguous since it admits both a distributive and an individual reading for the autore. On the other hand, the distributive interpretation is excluded for sen­tence (11b), in which the right-hand topic is resumed by a clitic in the sentence. This contrast shows that non‑clitic-resumed topics are recon-



Types of topics in German and Italian 

structed within the sentence for interpretation, while clitic-resumed topics are merged in extrasentential position so that QPs cannot scope over them at LF. Let us consider additional data that support the merge analysis for clitic-resumed and movement analysis for non-clitic‑resumed (familiar) topics by further analysing their binding properties: (12) a. Mariak ha presentato [ad ogni ospite]j [il suoi vicino di tavolo] (i = j, i = k) b. Mariak ha presentato [il suoi vicino di tavolo] [ad ogni ospite]j (i ≠ j, i = k) Maria have.3sg introduced the his/her table-mate to every guest As is shown in (12), the order of complements affects binding conditions. It is therefore worth noticing that topicalization affects binding in a different way, depending on the pres­ence of clitic-resumption. Consider the familiar topic il suo vicino di tavolo in the sentences below: (13) Mariak ha presentato [ad ogni ospite]j, [il suoi vicino di tavolo]

(i = j, i = k)

(14) Mariak lom ha presentato [ad ogni ospite]j, [il suoi vicino di tavolo]m (?i ≠ j, i = k) Maria him(cl) have.3sg introduced to every guest the his/her table-mate The contrast offered by (13)-(14) shows that when the DO-topic is not resumed by a clitic both the IO and the subject can bind the possessive suo, while when a clitic is present (as in (14)) IO-binding for suo is only marginally accepted. This proves that the DO-topic in (13) is reconstructed within IP for interpretation (obtaining the same ambiguous reading as in (12a)), while reconstruction does not apply in (14). Note that the individual reading in (14) cannot be forced by the presence of the object clitic, or the case in (12b) remains unexplained. Scope requirements are relevant here9 and the marginal possibility of a distributive reading in (14) can be explained through IP-inversion (see discussion on (16) below). We can thus conclude that there is no optionality in clitic-resumption, but two ways of realizing Italian familiar topics: non clitic-resumed familiar topics are moved to FamP from an IP-internal position and reconstructed for interpretation, while clitic-resumed familiar topics are merged in FamP. Since only familiar topics can be iterated, it is feasible to assume that there can be more than one Fam‑projection in the left periphery of the sentence. This represents a major difference between familiar topics, on the one hand, and shifting and contrastive topics, on the other. The latters can only be merged in the C-domain and are not recursive.

3.2

The derivation of right-hand topics

The analysis of Italian data shows that clitic-resumed right-hand topics are also merged in the left periphery of the sentence and that their right-peripheral position is derived through IP-inversion, rather than by right-adjunction – cf. also Drubig (this volume) for remnant IP-movement to derive right-peripheral focus. Apart from independ-

 Mara Frascarelli and Roland Hinterhölzl

ent, theory-internal, considerations which exclude right-adjunction in principle – cf. Kayne (1994) –, a right-adjunction analysis can be shown to be inadequate also from an empirical point of view. Such an analysis pre­dicts that a right-hand topic c-commands IP-internal material in the rest of the sentence. This prediction, however, is not borne out as is shown by sentences like (15), in which coindexing between the righthand topic lei and the DP-subject Maria does not yield a violation of Prin­ciple C: (15) Sicuramente Mariai partirà presto, leij. certainly Maria leave.fut.3sg soon she ‘For sure, Maria will leave soon.’

(i = j)

Additional support for IP-inversion to derive right-topicalization is given by minimality ef­fects (cf. Frascarelli 2000, 2004b), scope and binding properties. In this respect, let us resume sentences (13)-(14). In (13) both the quantified IO ad ogni ospite and the familiar (non clitic-resumed) DO-topic il suo vicino di tavolo are merged in the VP: in this construction the pos­sessive suo can be bound both by the subject DP Maria and by the QP ad ogni ospite. This is expected since both constituents c-command the object DP, hence they qualify as possible binders10. Binding and scope properties, however, are completely different in a construction that presents the DO il suo vicino di tavolo as a clitic-resumed right-hand topic (cf. (14)). In this case the subject DP Maria is the preferred (and, for some speakers, the only possible) binder for the possessive suo. This is strong evidence that a right-hand topic is not moved to a “lower TopP projection” and then reconstructed for interpretation since, in that case, scope properties should be the same as in (13), contrary to facts (see note 9). Scope properties of right-hand topics, on the other hand, are immediately explained in the light of an analysis merging topics in the left periphery and inverting the IP. After IP-inversion the topic is c-commanded by the whole sentence containing both the subject Maria and the QP ad ogni ospite. Since Maria is the highest nominal constituent within the sentence, it is the only element that can c-command out of the fronted clause (cf. Kayne 1994) and thus induces the preferred reading on suo: (16) [GP[IP Mariak lo ha presentato [ad ogni ospitej] ] [TopP il suoi vicino di tavolo] tIP] (?i ≠ j, i = k) As for the specific functional projection in which right-hand topics are located, intonational evidence shows that it must be FamP: right-hand topics are always marked by a L* tone. This implies that IP-intraposition must target a projection that is higher than FamP and is called GP – cf. Poletto and Pollock (2004) for Ground Phrase (GP) in (17):11 (17) [ShiftP [ContrP [GP [IP [VP [DP (clk) [NP ek ]]]] [FamP topick tIP ] ]]] We propose that an EPP feature in the C-domain triggers the IP-inversion which derives right-hand topic constructions. This feature must be checked by the IP to yield new interpretative options, i.e. scope or discourse-related properties. This is in line with Chomsky’s (1995b, 2004) proposal that the dislocation property is implemented to



Types of topics in German and Italian 

satisfy some specific interface conditions. Indeed, the discourse properties of left- and right-hand topics are quite different. The ungrammaticality of (19), for instance, shows that right-hand topics cannot convey con­trast (or aboutness): only familiar elements can be found in that position. (18)

Io ho due fratelli: Luigii loj vedo spesso, (i = j, k = l) I have.1sg two brothers Luigi him(cl) see.1sg often mentre Mariok non lol vedo mai. while Mario not him(cl) see.1sg never ‘I have two brothers: Luigi, who I see often, and Mario, who I never see.’

(19) *Io ho due fratelli: loi vedo spesso Luigij, mentre non lok vedo mai, Mariol. (i ≠ j, k ≠l) The crucial role of IP-inversion in conveying a different meaning is also clearly shown in the following sentences (taken from the LIP corpus): (20)

Non è questione che il tempoi non te lj’ ho dato, not be-3sg question that the time not to.you it(cl) have.1sg given io te lk’ ho dato il tempol. (i = j, j = k, k = l) I to.you it(cl) have.1sg given the time ‘The point is not that I didn’t give you time. I did give you time.’

In (20) the same constituent – the DO il tempo – is topicalized twice by the speaker, though with very different effects. In the first part of the sentence il tempo is the point at issue – the aboutness topic (the questione). In the second part of the utterance, il tempo is repeated as an afterthought, i.e. it is a familiar topic. As for the predicative part of the sentence (te l’ho dato), it clearly has a broad focus meaning in the first clause, while the verb gets a contrastive value in the second part. It is thus plausible to assume that IP-movement targets a projection in the C-domain to meet some interface requirement concerning focus and contrast. We can thus conclude that IP-inversion provides a connection between syntactic configuration and information structure.12

3.3

Contrast: an interplay between focus and topic

It is worth noting that contrastive topics and (contrastive) foci never co-occur in the same sentence (cf. the sample sentences in section 3) and that the tonal event characterizing con­trastive topics is exactly the same as the one for (contrastive) foci in Italian (cf. Frascarelli 2004a) and other languages (Frota 2000, D’Imperio 2002), namely H* – cf. note 4. This similarity in PF interpretation seems to suggest that contrast is not an inherent property of either focus or topic constituents (cf. Molnár 2002, Vallduvi & Vilkuna 1998), but a functional feature that is licensed in an A’-position in the C-domain, where either a topic is merged in or a focus can move to. Of course, when checking this feature, topic and focus maintain their semantic and syntactic properties. Consequently, a focus – giv-

 Mara Frascarelli and Roland Hinterhölzl

en its quantificational nature – identifies a variable excluding other values for it, while contrastive topics do not have quantificational properties and only need to be opposed to some other topic. Indeed, the notion of topic is incompatible with the idea of contradiction, which is typi­cally associated with contrastive foci. Contradicting a statement entails the negation of some part of it and topics are always outside the scope of negation.13

3.4

Rizzi (1997) and the topic-focus/wh relation

As introduced in Section 1, Rizzi (1997: 295) argues for a recursive TopP above as well as below the FocP. He claims that both the topic-focus and the focus-topic order are acceptable: (21) a. Credo che domani, a Gianni, questo gli dovremmo dire. ‘I think that tomorrow, to Gianni we should tell him this.’ b. Credo che domani, questo, a Gianni gli dovremmo dire. The analysis of spoken corpora confirms that the two orders are indeed possible. It is impor­tant to underline, however, that the two topics in (21a-b) have different informational roles. Given the present analysis, we predict that in sentence (21a) the IO a Gianni is a shifting topic, while in (21b) it can only be interpreted as a familiar topic. We thus conclude that the two topics discussed in sentences (21a-b) by Rizzi are not the same type of topic and that TopP is not a freely recursive projection. Rizzi (1997: 298) also excludes the co-occurrence of a contrastive focus and a wh-constituent in the left periphery of the sentence. The LIP corpus supports this claim, showing that contrastive elements preceding wh-constituents must be topics. In this respect, let us consider (22): (22) Accedono semplicemente per un concorso interno senza titoli senza niente non sanno cos’è un quadro non sanno i pigmenti che cosa sono! ‘They get in by an internal competition without qualifications without anything they do not know what a frame is, they do not know what pigments are!’ The context makes it clear that i pigmenti, which precedes the wh-constituent, is not a genuine focus, but a contrastive topic. It does neither exclude any variable nor negate a former pre­supposition. It creates an oppositional pair with respect to another element – specifically with un quadro. Sentence (22) provides additional evidence that the syntactic locus for contrast is higher than the positions hosting focus and wh-constituents. It also shows that contrastive topics are merged in an A’-position in the C-domain, since minimality effects do not arise with the operator-chain connected with the focus. To conclude, the syntactic analysis of topics in Italian provides evidence for a topic hier­archy in the C-domain and shows that clitic resumption is crucial to distinguish between merged and moved topics. This allows for a typological connection between the derivation of topic constructions and the availability of clitic resumption in a language. These results are supported by German data, as is shown in the following sections.



Types of topics in German and Italian 

4. The intonation of topic constituents in German In this section, we report on the results of our corpus analysis of topic realization in German. As we will see in detail below the evidence from German confirms the findings based on Italian data, namely the fact that topics that serve different informationstructural roles are realized differently both phonologically and syntactically.

4.1

The corpus

The data are taken from the corpus of Irene Forsthoffer (FU-Berlin), who provided the digital recordings and the transcripts of radio-conversations. The corpus consists of conversations between a caller and a presenter about different subjects suggested by daily politics. One such subject concerned the events around the wreckage of the Russian submarine “Kursk” col­lected in the Putin file and another concerned the affair between the former CDU party leader Schäuble and the international weapon dealer Karl Heinz Schreiber collected in the Schäuble file. Out of these files, we extracted and analyzed a total of 120 sentences (utterances). In Table 2 we provide some statistical data about the pitch range of the various speakers: Table 2 speaker A (fem, presenter) B (mas) C (mas) D (fem) E (mas)

4.2

Baseline (MMV) 122 95 86 144 85

Peak (MXV)

Pitch range

out of (nr sentences)

176 140 110 241 123

54 45 24 97 38

25 18 19 17 11

The analysis

Our corpus shows that topics in German also display different contours according to their information-structural contribution to the sentence. In particular, we found three different contours that express topicality, namely (a) L+H*, found in 27 sentences (30%), (b) L*+H found in 9 sentences (10%), and (c) L* found in 61 (60%) sentences. 42 of the last-named ones are realized with a flat intonation – cf. 4.2.3 below. 4.2.1 The L+H* contour The L+H* contour is associated with constituents that figure as the topic of the subsequent passage. Thus, it can be identified as the contour that marks aboutness topics.

 Mara Frascarelli and Roland Hinterhölzl

Recall that this type of topic is associated with the contour L*+H in Italian (cf. section 2.1.1). In contrast to Italian, the German corpus only displays DPs being marked with this contour. No PPs or other categories were found marked with this contour. In the German data, this contour is crucially connected with shifting topics. So, every time a new topic is proposed in the conversation, this is indicated by this special rise that has its peak at the end of the tonic vowel. Let us consider the two cases given in (23): (23) C: Ich mein nich unbedingt dass es putin schadet- das muβ nicht dasselbe sein aber ich glaube dass das- dass der nationalstolz also das viel beschowerene ähzusammengehörigkeitsgefühl [...] das ja aus des zarenzeit mehr oder weniger he­raufberschworen wird von- von den medien [...] A: Putin hat gemerkt ähm: da habe ich mich falsch verhalten. ‘C: I do not necessarily mean that it should harm Putin. This need not be the same thing. But I believe that the– that the national pride in fact the much talked about sentiment of belonging together […] which is more or less invoked out of the times of the tsars by the media. […] A: Putin has realized ehm I did the wrong thing in this situation.’ (a) dass der Nationalstolz. (b) Putin hat gemerkt … that the national pride Putin have.3sg noticed … ‘that the national pride.’ ‘Putin has realized…’

Figure 5 a-b.

In this passage, the conversation shifts from the previously introduced topic Putin to the na­tional pride of Russians (speaker C) and back to Putin (speaker A). As the figures in 5 show, each topic-shift is indicated with the L+H* contour, with the peak being reached late in the tonic syllable. In conclusion, this type of topic is associated with a rise in both languages, which differ, however, in the alignment of the H tone: while in German the H tone is associated with the tonic vowel, it is associated with the onset of the post-tonic syllable vowel in Italian.



Types of topics in German and Italian 

4.2.2 The L*+H contour This contour, that in Italian is associated with aboutness topics, seems to be associated with contrastive topics in German, with the contrast often being implicit in the conversation. The PF interface thus realizes contrast in a very different manner in German than in Italian. In fact, the intonation of contrastive topics in Italian is crucially connected with con­ trastive foci (cf. section 3.3 above). On the other hand, in German contrast seems to be asso­ciated with familiar topics that show an L-tone, as we will see below. The implication we can draw is that in the absence of clitics, focus and contrastive topics must be distinguished intonationally, in German. From an informational point of view, contrastive topics can either induce a topicshift or fail to do so. To illustrate the latter, consider the following utterance (speaker E) taken from the Schäuble-file: (24) dass er [Schäuble] sagt er hat das geld bekommen und hat es der Schatzmeisterin Baumeister gegeben während Schreiber sagt er hat es der Schatzmeisterin äh Brigitte Baumester gegeben un Schäuble sagt jetzt... ‘That he says he has received the money and has given it to the treasurer Mrs Bau­meister while Schreiber says he has given it to the treasurer – Brigitte Baumeister and Schäuble now says…’ während Schreiber sagt... while Schreiber say.3sg ‘while Schreiber says…’ In this sequence the main topic of conversation is Schäuble, and Schreiber is introduced with a contrastive statement. But Schreiber does not constitute the topic of the subsequent passage, which remains Schäuble, as is indicated by the fact that the original topic is picked up in the following sentence by the DP Schäuble with a flat intonation. On the other hand, in the following sequence, the interviewed person (speaker B) introduces Putin as a topic in the conversation, in contrast to the topic proposed by the presenter, and Putin remains the major topic of the ensuing conversation: (25) A: wird die u-boot katastrophe die russische gesellschaft verändern – das ist meine frage heute – guten morgen. B: guten morgen – ja hat Putin einen fehler ge­macht? ‘A: Will the disaster with the submarine change the Russian society – this is my question today- good morning. B: Good morning- yes, did Putin make a mistake.’ ja hat Putin einen Fehler gemacht. yes have.3sg Putin a.acc mistake made ‘Yes, did Putin make a mistake.’ The intonational curves of the examples (24) and (25) are given below. As we can see, the peak in the contour of contrastive topics is reached on the post-tonic vowel.

 Mara Frascarelli and Roland Hinterhölzl

Figure 6 a-b.

4.2.3 The L* contour Like in Italian, continuing topics and familiar elements are realised with an L* tone. Often, however, elements that are previously mentioned and phonologically light, in particular pro­nouns, do not form an independent prosodic unit in German and are integrated into the into­national phrase of the main predicate. In this case they are realized with a flat contour. For this reason, we consider the flat realisation as a phonetic variant of the L* tone and only refer to the latter in the phonological description of this type of topics. It is important to note that in German only constituents mentioned in the previous con­text can be realised as flat, while elements that are part of the common ground of speaker and hearer but not mentioned in the previous context are typically realized with the L* tone. This is illustrated in (26). There the topic of the conversation Putin is picked up with the deac­cented pronoun er by speaker A. The topical DPs die Wetterkarten and die Norweger, on the other hand, have not been mentioned in the previous context. However, they must be consid­ered as part of the common ground within a discussion about the events and their causes in the accident of the Russian nuclear submarine “Kursk”, which happened a couple of years ago. Both DPs are realized with the L* tone and do not change the topic, which remains Putin. (26) er [Putin] muss sich beraten lassen von seinen fachleuten – die ham ihn belogen [...] ich meine die wetterkarten lassen sich nachprüfen – daβ dort schlechtes wetter herrschte… auch wenn die norweger jetzt was anderes sagen. ‘He must accept advice from his experts-they have lied to him. I mean the meteoro­logical maps can be checked. that there was bad weather.. even if the Norwegians now claim something different.’ auch wenn die Norweger jetzt was anderes sagen. even if the Norwegians now something else say.3pl ‘Even if the Norwegians say something different now.’



Types of topics in German and Italian 

Figure 7.

From a syntactic point of view, familiar topics can be located either in the left or in the right periphery of the sentence. In the left periphery, they occupy a high position in the CP-system, as is also shown by their position with respect to the sentential adverbs lediglich, tatsächlich and jetzt in (27). In the right periphery, they are extraposed constituents and typically serve as afterthoughts. (27) a. b. c.

oder hat er (L*) sich lediglich anders verhalten. or has he himself only differently behaved ‘or is it simply the case that he behaved differently.’ auch wenn die Norweger (L*) jetzt was anderes sagen. even if the Norwegians now something different say.3pl ‘even if the Norwegians claim something different now.’ dass der Mann (L*) tatsächlich ein Interesse dran hat. that the man indeed an interest in it has ‘that the man indeed has an interest therein.’

Even though monosyllabic continuing topics are typically realized with a flat contour, they may also be realized with an L* tone when they are phrased separately for emphasis. The example (28a) below illustrates a case in which the pronoun er, that continues the topic pre­viously introduced, is realized with a flat contour, while in (28b) the pronoun er, continuing the established topic Putin, carries an L* tone: (28) a. b.

Putin (L+H*) ist an allem schuld [...] er (flat) hat sich Putin is for everything responsible he has himself anders verhalten differently behaved ‘Putin is responsible for everything […] he behaved differently.’ ja hat Putin (L+H*) einen Fehler gemacht… yes has Putin a.acc mistake made ‘Yes, Putin made a mistake…

 Mara Frascarelli and Roland Hinterhölzl

… oder hat er (L*) sich lediglich anders verhalten or has he himself just differently behaved … or has he just behaved differently.’ While pronouns guaranteeing topic continuity are typically deaccented or carry an L* tone when emphasized, we also found a small number of instances in which they carry the accent of an aboutness topic. A case in point is illustrated in (29): (29) Putin (L+H*) ist an allem schuld … Putin is for everything responsible ‘Putin is responsible for everything… … er (L+H*) wird dann sicher auch sehr gelernt haben he will then certainly also very learned have … he certainly must also have learned a lot then.’ The pronoun er in (29) continues the established topic Putin but is itself marked with a topic-contour as if it were to introduce a new topic. We can accommodate this occurrence of a su­perfluous topic-marking by assuming that speakers can make use of two different devices to achieve topic continuity. The primary and most economic device consists in establishing a discourse topic marked with the L+H* tone and resuming this topic with deaccented pro­nouns thereafter until a new topic is introduced, again marked with an L+H* tone, as is illus­trated in (30a). The second device is to iterate the marking of the established topic (T) in each of the ensuing comments (C) on it – cf. (30b). It must be considered a marked option which may be used for special emphasis. (30) a. T1 C1, C2, C3; T2 C1, C2 … unmarked option b. T1C1, T1 C2, …; T2 C1, T2 C2 … marked option Finally, we were interested in the manner in which constituents are phonologically marked when picking up or referring back to entire facts rather than to pre-mentioned individuals. In other words, the question was whether expressions other than individualdenoting DPs can function as sentence topics in the discourse. It is conceivable that in the case of a discussion about the accident of the “Kursk”, the fact that the Norwegians offered help and that the Rus­sian officials refused any help can function as a discourse topic. In fact, cases in which a whole sentence is picked up with the pronoun das occur rather frequently, but we did not find a single case in the corpus in which such a pronoun is marked with an L+H* tone. This im­plies that facts and events cannot function as aboutness topics in a sentence. For instance, the pronoun das in (31) uttered by speaker A is realized with a flat contour despite its referring to a fact that could be considered a valuable discourse topic – the fact denoted by the embedded clause that it will harm Putin: (31) Ich mein nich unbedingt dass es putin schadet – das (flat) muss nicht dasselbe sein. ‘I do not necessarily mean that it will harm Putin – this is not necessarily the same (thing).’



Types of topics in German and Italian 

5. The syntax of German topics In the syntactic analysis of German topic expression we would like to concentrate on the fol­lowing issues. First, we are interested in whether German topics are ordered in the same way as Italian ones. Secondly, the question arises what type of movement is involved in the deri­vation of German topics. Thirdly, the data discussed above raise the question of how con­tinuing topics should be treated in a framework assuming that discourse properties are sig­naled uniformly phonologically and syntactically. Continuing topics are aboutness topics in terms of their discourse properties, but they are treated as familiar topics by syntax and pho­nology. Finally, we address the question of how the German V2-property should be ac­counted for in an approach assuming various functional projections in the C-domain.

5.1

The order of topics

Contrary to Italian, the German corpus does not provide conclusive and sufficient evidence for a specific ordering of the different topic types. We only found three examples containing multiple topics. Furthermore, the example (32) which seems to contain an aboutness and a contrastive contour is inconclusive. It is not even clear whether the sequence wir alle im Westen is to be treated as a single constituent or not. (32)

also das wichtigste wäre, dass wir alle (L+H*) hence the most-important would be that we all im Westen (L*+H) jetzt nicht in den Reflex verfallen… in the West now not into the reflex fall ‘Hence, the most important thing would be that we all in the West do not automati­cally behave…’

More data have to be considered before we can make any firm and reliable judgments about order restrictions of topic elements in German. However, based on the assumption that syn­tactic and phonological properties are not independent of each other, we assume that a par­ticular topic contour signals a particular syntactic position of this topic. Since German topics display three different intonational contours, we conclude that they occupy three different syntactic positions which – in the absence of any direct evidence from the German corpus – are supposed to display the same order as topics in Italian do.14

5.2

The derivation of topic constituents in German

Hinterhölzl (2004a) argues that familiar topics undergo A-movement. It is proposed that fa­miliarity, next to scope, is a trigger for scrambling and that this feature is checked by

 Mara Frascarelli and Roland Hinterhölzl

move­ment into the specifiers of dedicated functional projections above sentence adverbs. Furthermore, it is ar­gued that both types of features are checked via A-movement. A prerequisite for the analysis of German scrambling as A-movement is to explain how minimality effects that block A-movement of one argument across another (cf. scrambling in Dutch and object shift in Scandinavian) can be circumvented in German. In Hinterhölzl (2006) a unified minimality condition is proposed that blocks movement of an ar­gument across a categorically non-distinct argument in German, Dutch and Scandinavian alike and it is argued that the particular Case that German has, namely one that distinctively marks grammatical functions, contrary to Case in Icelandic, renders DP arguments categori­cally distinct. In conclusion, Case can be treated as one type of license that allows for argu­ments to be freely ordered according to their discourse properties (as is argued in Section 3.1 clitic pronouns provide another instance of such a license). If scrambling is analyzed as A-movement that occurs in order to check a pragmatic type of feature, then it is necessary that A-movement is extended to check features other than Case. Hinterhölzl (2004a) proposes that movement checking a non-operator feature counts as A-movement. This derives the well-known fact that scrambling of deaccented material is strictly clause-bound, as is illustrated in (33a) below. Only contrastive topics can undergo long distance movement, as is illustrated in sentence (33b) that is taken from Haider and Rosengren (1998). This implies that contrastive topics are licensed via A’-movement. In the account of Hinterhölzl (2004a) this would follow if contrastive topics can be argued to in­volve an operator feature of some sort. But we remain agnostic with respect to the operator status of contrastive topics. (33) a. * Gestern hat niemand die Maria geglaubt, dass er einladen wird. yesterday has nobody the Maria believed that he invite will ‘Yesterday nobody believed that he will invite Maria.’ b. dass just diese Frage alle glaubten, dass sie unbedingt beantworten müssten that exactly this question all believed that they absolutely answer must ‘that exactly this question everyone believed he absolutely had to answer’ In contrast to Italian, German aboutness topics must be assumed to be derived through movement. Unlike Italian aboutness topics, they show Principle C effects which can be ex­plained in terms of reconstruction. Compare the ungrammatical (34) with the parallel Italian case in (9) in which coreference is possible.15 (34) *Mein Bild von Leoi hat eri wahrscheinlich Maria nicht gezeigt. my picture of Leo has he probably Maria not shown ‘My picture of Leoi, hei has probably not shown to Maria.’ What type of movement is involved in the licensing of aboutness topics? Frey (2000, 2004a) argues that the preposing of “sentence topics”, as he calls them, has many properties in com­mon with scrambling. More specifically he shows that sentence topics cannot undergo long distance movement. If these topics are derived by (non-Opera-



Types of topics in German and Italian 

tor) A’-movement, as is pro­posed by Rizzi (1997) and Grewendorf (2002a), it is not clear what blocks the derivation in the example (35) adopted from Frey (2000). Hence we will assume that aboutness-topics in Ger­man are derived by A-movement as well. (35) *dass Eva dem Hansi wahrscheinlich glaubt [ ti helfen zu müssen] that Eva the Hans.dat probably believes help to must ‘That Eva Hans probably believes to be obliged to help.’

5.3

The proper treatment of continuing topics

Let us now address the question of how continuing topics can be analyzed in our approach. According to Reinhart’s definition of an aboutness topic given in the introduction, continuing topics should – like shifting accented topics – count as aboutness topics, since sentences containing a continuing topic are most naturally interpreted as providing further comments on the pre-established topic that is continued. However, as we have seen above, the phonology in both German and Italian and the syntax in Italian treat them differently from shifting top­ics, as is illustrated in (36) below. While Reinhart’s definition of aboutness differentiates between elements forming the topics of utterances in the discourse and other familiar ele­ments in the clause, syntax and phonology crucially distinguish between shifting and all other kinds of topics, whether they continue a pre-established topic or simply represent other ele­ments familiar from the context, as is illustrated in (36): (36) shifting topics vs. non-shifting topics (including continuing topics) Syntax: high topic field vs. low topic field Phonology: rising intonation vs. non-rising intonation In this respect, the syntactic evidence from Italian is crucial since it indicates that continuing topics are not interpreted as aboutness topics that are simply deaccented due to their familiar­ity. Then, we would expect them to precede wh- and focussed elements, like topics with the L*+H tone do, whereas they follow these elements, like other familiar topics do. There are two possible solutions to this problem. The first option is to reject Reinhart’s (1981) definition as too broad and to restrict the notion of aboutness to shifting topics em­ploying Givon’s (1983) definition of aboutness as topics that are newly introduced or newly changed to. In this approach, continuing topics are to be characterized as familiar topics that refer to a pre-established aboutness topic but are not aboutness topics by themselves. This approach constitutes the simplest solution to the problem described above because it allows to assume that the presence of aboutness topics always implies the typical partition in topic and comment, while continuing topics – like familiar topics – in general are typically integrated into the intonational domain of the comment. The second option is more complicated, but let us see what it takes to assume that Reinhart’s definition is the relevant definition after all. In this approach, continuing

 Mara Frascarelli and Roland Hinterhölzl

topics must be treated as familiar topics that are assigned an aboutness feature. Then, one solution is to as­sume that this feature assignment is a matter of interpreting the sentence as providing a com­ment on a pre-established aboutness topic. This process would occur in the interpretative component and would thus be inaccessible to the syntax-phonology interface. Note, however, that this account is cumbersome given that the aboutness feature must also be treated as a formal feature that is visible to the syntax-phonology interface: a shifting topic that involves an already given element and a familiar topic are only distinguished by the aboutness feature that triggers a different phonological and syntactic realization on shifting topics. A state of affairs in which a feature is, in one case, purely interpretational and has formal correlates in another case is certainly unwanted. The solution within this approach must be to assume that the aboutness feature is a syntactic feature and that topic categories are compositional. Since the aboutness feature is intrinsically related with shifting topics, compositional topics must somehow be associated with the syntactic position of the latter. In Minimalism, the grammar provides two mechanisms to link a constituent with a feature in a higher functional head: Move or Agree. Topics in German can now be analyzed in the following way. Familiar topics, including continuing topics, are marked with the L tone. The aboutness feature is a formal feature that is encoded in the highest topic position. This head also assigns a phonological feature – the H tone – which carries the meaning ‘new x’. This phonological feature is assigned to shifting topics, which therefore receive the interpretation new aboutness topic. Continuing topics are also associated with the aboutness feature through Agree. However, since they are realized in a lower position in the C-domain, they are not assigned the H tone and thus share the L tone with other familiar topics. Like the latter, they are interpreted as non-new topics – as topics that have a discourse antecedent.16 Evidence for this assumption is provided by contrastive topics. We have seen in Section 4.4.2 that they can induce a topic shift or fail to do so: this shows that contrastive topic can also be associated with the aboutness feature located in the highest topic head. In conclusion, we think the second option is superior and propose the following hierar­chy of topic constituents in German and Italian, in which shifting topics are analyzed as being composed of an aboutness feature and a phonological feature (H) meaning ‘new x’, whereas continuing topics, by being linked with the aboutness feature, are analyzed as non-new aboutness topics (the FocP projection is only relevant for Italian since there is no evidence for a left-peripheral focus position in German):17



5.4

Types of topics in German and Italian 

V2 and the functional structure in the C-domain

In this section, we address the question of how the proposed structure of the German C-do­main in (37) can be reconciled with the V2-constraint. In principle, there are two types of possible solutions for this problem. A) One could assume that the verb always lexicalizes the highest functional head in the C-domain that is activated. This would mean that – depending on their information structural roles – clauses come in different sizes. In this account, a clause containing a shifting topic would be larger than a clause with a familiar topic, with the verb moving into different functional projections in each case. The other possibility is B) to as­sume that the verb always moves to the same functional head that has a phonological EPP-feature. This head occurs even higher than the functional projections responsible for licensing topics in (37) and can be identified with the head expressing Force. One can then assume that it is this position in which a complementizer is merged and to which the finite verb is moved in V2clauses, as is illustrated in (38). The highest specifier in the clause will then count as an A’-position, since the corresponding head hosts an operator feature (clausal Force). (38) V2-C – aboutness topics – contrastive topics – familiar topics – S-adverbs – subject How can we distinguish between these two approaches? The first approach can be discarded immediately since it makes wrong predictions about word order. It predicts that in a sentence with a shifting topic, no other material can precede this topic. It is very easy to find or con­struct examples that prove the contrary. (39a) is a constructed and completely natural exam­ple in which a frame adverbial precedes an aboutness topic marked with the L+H* tone. (39b), which is taken from the corpus, shows that a situational adverbial da may precede a familiar topic that continues the topic established in the matrix clause. (39) a. b.

Gestern hat der Hans (L+H*) die Maria getroffen. yesterday has the Hans the Maria met ‘Yesterday Hans met Maria.’ (Putin hat gemerkt) da (L*) hab ich (L*) mich falsch verhalten. Putin has realized here have I myself wrongly behaved ‘Putin realized in this situation I behaved wrongly.’

In the second approach, these data are unproblematic given that the highest specifier in the clause can, and must, be filled by a constituent capable of satisfying the EPPfeature phonol­ogically; that is, any single constituent that can be extracted or fronted via A’-movement.

 Mara Frascarelli and Roland Hinterhölzl

6. Conclusions To summarize, we have shown with a detailed intonational and syntactic analysis of Italian and German corpus data that topics are not freely recursive – contra Rizzi (1997). Alterna­tively, we argued that according to their discourse pragmatic roles, topics fall into three types that are distinguished phonologically and are realized in different syntactic positions. We showed that there is a systematic correlation between discourse roles and grammatical prop­erties of topics, which is encoded in a strict hierarchy of functional heads in the C-domain, as is illustrated in (37). Furthermore we argued that the interpretation of topics is compositional. In this ap­proach shifting topics can be characterized as new aboutness topics while continuing topics are properly characterized as non-new aboutness topics, explaining why they are treated by syntax and phonology on a par with familiar topics. Our corpus data show that only one con­stituent per clause can have an aboutness function. We therefore reject Frey’s (2000, 2004a) claim that a clause can contain several aboutness topics. Also the mere existence of shifting topics directly militates against the assumption that sentences can contain multiple aboutness topics: that the grammar provides a category that marks the shift from one aboutness topic to another presupposes that there is only one aboutness topic per clause. While the two languages distinguish the same types of topic, they differ considerably in their syntactic realization. We can assume that the different topic realization in the two lan­guages is dependent on the specific means the individual grammar provides. As to the free ordering of constituents according to their discourse properties, one requirement seems to be that the grammatical functions of constituents must be identifiable. Above we have argued German uses Case to identify the grammatical function of topics. Therefore, if there is no op­erator feature involved, German topics can be derived by undergoing A-movement from their base position into the respective licensing position in the C-domain. Italian displaying multi­ple topics which are ordered according to their discourse properties predominantly uses clitics to identify topics, as we have seen. Since clitics are related with pros in argument position (cf. Kayne 1994), a co-referent topic can only be merged in an A’-position – given that a pro­noun cannot be locally A-bound. However, if a topic is not clitic-resumed, it shows recon­struction effects and the properties of A-movement as in German – cf. also Hinterhölzl & Pili (2004). While we have been able to shed some light on the realization of shifting topics, con­tinuing topics, and familiar topics and shown that they are phonologically encoded in a simi­lar way in the two languages, the analysis of contrastive topics the realization of which also differs categorically in the two languages awaits further research.



Types of topics in German and Italian 

Notes * We thank Guglielmo Cinque, Werner Frey, Giovanna Marotta, Valeria Molnár, Annarita Puglielli, Kerstin Schwabe, Susanne Winkler, an anonymous reviewer and the audience of the ISAG Workshop in Tübingen for helpful comments and discussion. 1. For the position of topics in the left periphery, see also Benincà (2001) who slightly modifies Rizzi’s (1997) proposal. 2. Here and in the following examples, we mark in boldface the constituent(s) which are later topicalized. The sentence at issue (underlined in the context) is given in detail. 3 Pierrehumbert’s system – generally known as ToBI – was elaborated for transcribing the intonational patterns and other prosodic aspects of English utterances. ToBI transcription was subsequently extended as a general framework and adapted for different varieties and languages (cf. Marotta 2000 for Italian and Grice & Baumann 2002 for German). 4. As is argued in Frascarelli (2004a), broad focus sentences are characterized by a downgrading contour, marked by a final H+L* tone. Narrow focus, on the other hand, is marked as H* both for its informational and contrastive value. 5.

These results confirm the prosodic analysis provided in Frascarelli (2000).

6. Multiple topics are in fact rather rare in spoken corpora. Sequences of three topics have been found in only two cases (out of 1476 topics) in the LIP corpus and there is no occurrence in the Bonvino (2003) corpus. Sequences of two topics are more common, but far from high frequency. As we will show, the limitation imposed on the number of topics is not to be attributed to memory, but to discourse and structural conditions. 7. As discussed in Rizzi (1994), an A’-bound pro is a pro which acts as a variable. Hence, a pro must be locally A’-bound by a non quantificational element to be identified and must be formally licensed by a clitic pronoun. We thus follow Kayne (1994) in assuming that clitics enter the computation as D° heads having the pro as their sister NP. The A’-binder (i.e., the topic) may be connected with an argument clitic-headed DP, but not necessarily, as is shown by sentences like stupido, lo è di certo (‘a stupid, he is for sure’), in which the clitic pronoun lo resumes the predicative AP stupido (which is merged in topic position). 8. Note that the possibility of an object pro in (10), connected with the familiar topic, is independently excluded by the fact that null objects in Italian are only allowed for generic readings (cf. Rizzi 1986). 9. As is well known, an Operator can only be the antecedent of an anaphor it c-commands. Hence, a QP must have scope over pronouns to bind them (whereas this is not necessary for non quantified DPs). 10. A binder in the extralinguistic context is, of course, also possible. 11. For the purposes of the present paper, the GP node simply indicates a functional projection in the C-domain hosting IP-movement. 12. Interestingly, in the corpora examined right-topicalization is crucially connected with verb focussing, yes/no questions and (postverbal) subject focussing, that is to say, with structures that plausibly imply IP-(remnant) movement to a position higher than FamP.

 Mara Frascarelli and Roland Hinterhölzl 13. Consider, for instance, the following contrast: (i) a. Non ho dato un libro a Gianni b. Non glik ho dato un libro, a Giannik ‘I didn’t give a book to Gianni.’ ‘I didn’t give a book, to Gianni.’ Sentence (ia) negates the whole predication (which is new information), while in sentence (ib) the IO-topic a Gianni is excluded from the scope of negation (meaning that ‘I have given something to Gianni, which is not a book’). 14. It is possible that contrastive topics occupying A’-positions occur in a higher position than shifting topics which occupy A-positions in German (cf. Frey 2004b for some discussion). 15. An anonymous reviewer points out that the binding properties of the Italian example in (9a) correspond to those of a hanging topic construction in German (cf. (i)). Note, however, that the anti-reconstruction effect also appears in examples like (ii), in which the DO-topic la mia foto con Leo is preceded by the hanging topic Maria. Given that a sentence can contain no more than one hanging topic (cf. Benincà 2001), the remark is mute. (i) Mein Bild von Leok, erk hat es Maria wahrscheinlich nicht gezeigt. my picture of Leo, he has it Maria probably not shown (ii) Mariaj, la mia foto con Leok, luik non gliejl’ ha ancora mostrata. Maria, the my picture with Leo he not to.her(cl)-it(cl) has yet shown 16. When a speaker moves a continuing topic into the position of the aboutness topic, we derive the marked option of marking topic continuity as given in (30b) above. 17. We assume that focus is realized in situ in German (cf. Hinterhölzl 2004b, Frascarelli 2005). If the focus constituent is displaced, this displacement is due to other factors (contrast or prosodic emphasis).

The Korean particle nun, the English fall-rise accent and thetic/categorical judgements* Jorunn Hetland In this paper the effects of applying the particle nun in Korean sentences are compared to the effects of using the fall-rise pitch accent in English. It is argued that both phenomena are orthogonal to the topic-comment distinction on sentence level. By using accented nun-phrases in Korean – and by using fall-rise accents in English – the speaker conveys that the addressee will find some relevant alternative to the marked constituent within his knowledge store. This function is shown to be independent of the topic-comment distinction in both languages.

1. Introduction This paper focuses on the information-structural status of Korean nun-phrases and compares them to a phenomenon which has been the subject of much discussion and many controversies in modern work on information structure, the fall-rise contour of English sentences, the tone described by Pierrehumbert and Hirschberg (1990) as (L+)H*LH%: a rising or high pitch accent, followed by a low phrase accent and a high boundary tone. As for Korean nun-phrases, I shall argue that these are truly ambiguous in information-structural terms: there is no one-to-one-relation between the socalled topic particle nun and topicality in the aboutness sense of the term. Accented nun-phrases may act as topics, as part of the comment, and even as the core of the comment in categorical as well as in thetic sentences. A similar ambiguity applies to the fall-rise accent (also called the ‘B-accent’) of English sentences. English has – in the tradition going back to Li and Thompson (1976) – been cha­ racterised as a subject-prominent language: English sentence structure is seen as dominated by the subject-predicate dichotomy, cf. Li and Thompson’s example in (1): (1) John hit Mary. [Subject] [Predicate]

(Li and Thompson 1976: 459)

 Jorunn Hetland

with John as the subject and hit Mary as the predicate. In comparison, sentence structure in so-called topic-prominent languages is held not to be dominated by the subject-predicate distinction, but by the topic-comment relation, cf. Li and Thompson’s English example in (2):1 (2) As for education, John prefers Bertrand Russell’s ideas. [Topic ………...] [Comment…………………………] (Li and Thompson 1976: 459) In (2), the sentence-external topic construction names what the sentence is about: the comment that ‘John prefers Bertrand Russell’s ideas’ is predicated about the topic ‘education’. The two construction types exemplified in (1) and (2) are found in both language groups; the difference lies in their relative importance and the degree of integration into basic sentence structure. In important work by the Japanese linguist Kuroda (1972), the theory of sentence topics was related to the theories of human judgements outlined by the nineteenth century philosophers Brentano (1874) and Marty (1895). Brentano and Marty had identified four substantially different types of judgements, two of these being thetic judgements and categorical judgements. Kuroda (1972) demonstrated that the thetic/ categorical distinction also has syntactic relevance. Thetic judgements are said to have a monolithic structure and to correspond to topicless sentences (cf. Sasse 1987, 1996; see also Drubig 1992b and Rosengren 1997): (3) The BUS is coming. [Comment………]

(thetic)

Categorical judgements, on the other hand, are seen as consisting of two parts, an act of recognition of the psychological subject, and a predication, cf. (4): (4) The BUS is COMING. [Topic..] [Comment...]

(categorical)

Categorical sentences are thus taken to correspond to sentences with a topic-comment structure.

2. On Korean sentences with the ‘topic particle’ nun In Korean, categorical structures have traditionally been related to sentences with the so-called topic marker nun, as in (5): (5)

Chelswu-nun CA- N- TA. Chelswu-TOP sleep- PRES- DEC ‘Chelswu SLEEPS.’ ‘Speaking about Chelswu, he SLEEPS.’

(Choe 1995: 282)



The Korean particle nun, the English fall-rise accent and thetic/categorical judgements 

In (5), the topic marker nun is unaccented, whereas the predicate sleeps carries a falling pitch accent and makes up the comment part of the sentence. Chelswu is recognised as the topic, and then, in a second act, it is predicated of Chelswu that he sleeps. Thus, (5) is a categorical sentence. Unaccented nun-phrases are normally found on the left periphery of Korean sentences, but right-dislocated unaccented nun-phrases are also reported, as in (6): (6) TTALKI mek-ul kkeya na- nun. strawberry eat-be-going-to I- TOP ‘I am going to eat STRAWBERRIES.’

(Korean child) (Lee 2003: 349)

An unaccented nun-particle seems to be a sufficient condition for giving the constituent it is attached to the status of a sentence topic (in the aboutness sense of the term), but a nun-particle is not a necessary condition for topic status: in Korean, unlike in Japanese, there is a tendency to avoid double occurrences of nun; thus nun can be deleted. There is, for instance, no unaccented nun-marker for the pronoun I in (7): (7)

(What about you? Did you eat the beans and the peanuts?) Na khong- UN mek- ess- e.2 I bean- CON eat- PAST- DEC ‘I ate the BEANS.’ (Lee 2003: 356)

In (7), the pronoun I is interpreted as an unmarked topic, whereas the beans functions as the core of the comment, the information to be added to the hearer’s knowledge-store. In other cases, accented nun-phrases may serve to mark the aboutness category of Korean sentences, cf. (8): (8)

Chelswu- NUN CA- N- TA. Chelswu- CON sleep- PRES- DEC ‘Chelswu SLEEPS.’ ‘∨Chelswu is SLEEPING.’ (His sister is awake, however.)

Like (5), with an unaccented nun-particle, (8) may be seen as a prototypical categorical sentence – but in (8), with a falling focus accent on sleeps, Chelswu is a marked contrastive topic. In the literature on Korean, however (and similarly in the literature on Japanese), sentences with accented occurrences of nun (or Japanese wa) are normally classified neither as thetic nor as categorical (see Kuno 1972 for Japanese), but as a sentence type of their own: as contrastive sentences. Korean sentences may contain more than one nun-phrase, see (9): (9) Chelswu- {nun/NUN} (ejey) ku chayk- {UN/*un} (ejey) sa- ss- ta. Chelswu- TOP/CON yesterday the book- CON/TOP yesterday buy- PAST- DEC ‘Chelswu bought the book yesterday.’ (Choe 1995: 285) The number of unaccented nun-phrases in a sentence is strictly restricted to one, and – in those cases where a sentence contains more than one nun-phrase – the ordering of

 Jorunn Hetland

accented and unaccented nun-phrases seems to be fixed: it is not possible for an accented nun-phrase to precede an unaccented one, as shown in (9). This means that in (9), the particle nun connected with the sentence-initial phrase Chelswu may be either unaccented or accented. In both cases the nun-phrase will be interpreted as the aboutness-topic of a categorical sentence, the predication being about Chelswu. The accent on the nunparticle associated with the book in the middle of the sentence, however, is obligatory. Sentences with multiple nun-phrases are reported to be comparatively rare in Korean (Lee 2003: 358). But they do exist, even as many as three accented nun-phrases may be found in one single sentence, see (10): (10) I ai- NUN tongsayng- hanthe- NUN inhyeng- UN cu- ess- ta. this child- CON brother- DAT- CON doll- CON give- PAST- DEC ‘This child gave the doll to his younger brother.’ (Lee 2003: 358) Here the initial nun-phrase could have been unaccented – and would in that case have been classified as a standard unmarked Korean sentence topic. In (8)–(10) we have seen that the nun-particle of Korean sentences may carry an accent. But what is more, a nun-particle may carry the only pitch accent of the sentence, cf. (7) again, quoted here as (11): (11)

(What about you? Did you eat the beans and the peanuts?) Na khong- UN mek- ess- e. I bean- CON eat- PAST- DEC ‘I ate the BEANS.’

(Lee 2003: 356)

The accented nun-particle is said to mark ‘contrast’.3 And clearly, in this sentence the beans cannot be interpreted as an aboutness-topic. The sentence is a predication about the unmarked subject I; the beans denotes the core of the predication itself, the core of the comment, corresponding more or less to what has been called ‘primary focus’ (Jacobs 1983), ‘rheme’ (Vallduví 1992), ‘nuclear focus’ (Molnár 1998) or ‘semantic focus’ (Gundel 1999) in the literature. But the functional range of Korean nun-phrases is wider still. Compare the sentence in (12): (12)

Pi- NUN o-n-ta. rain- CON is-coming ‘∨RAIN is falling.’ ‘It’s ∨RAINING.’

(thetic)

(Lee 1999: 339)

Structurally, the Korean sentence in (12) bears great resemblance to thetic English weather sentences like (13) and (14): (13) DARKNESS is falling.

(thetic)

(14) The SUN is shining.

(thetic)



The Korean particle nun, the English fall-rise accent and thetic/categorical judgements 

Subject-prominent sentences like (13) and (14) are of course ambiguous as to their information structure: they may be interpreted as thetic, as all-comment sentences – or as sentences with a narrow focus on the subject. In the context of this paper, the thetic reading is the relevant one. And in one of its readings, the Korean sentence in (12) is arguably a thetic sentence as well: it does not predicate a property of some entity, but simply recognises or ‘poses’ a situation (Sasse 1996: 9). The special flavour given to the sentence by the accented nun-phrase is that of contrasting the whole situation with an alternative situation, for instance ‘I thought it was snowing.’ Summing up: The particle nun may occur on a phrase on the left (or sometimes even on the right) periphery of a Korean sentence. In this position it may be unaccented or accented. It may also occur on a phrase to the right of an unaccented nun-phrase. In that case it always carries an accent. And it may carry the only accent of the sentence and thus constitute the core of the comment part. This may happen in categorical as well as in thetic structures. All cases of unaccented nun-phrases seem to serve as the aboutness-topics of their sentences. The accented nun-phrases, however, are ambiguous as to aboutness-topic status. All cases of accented nun-phrases seem to be associated with some sort of contrastive interpretation.4 It has been noted in the literature (Heycock 1994, McNally 1998b, Lee 1999, Hetland 2003) that accented Korean nun-phrases have important interpretational aspects in common with fall-rise-accented constituents of English sentences. Firstly, nun-phrases and fall-rise-marked constituents have both – in different ways, though – been associated with the topic category. Secondly, the type of contrast associated with accented Korean nun-phrases has been said to closely resemble the type of contrast induced by English fall-rise accents.

3. On the role of the fall-rise accent in English sentences Let us take a quick look at English sentences with so-called contrastive (aboutness-) topics, see (15)–(17), where the contrastive topics are underlined: (15) On ∨weekdays | I \work, || but on ∨Saturdays | I \don’t.5

(O’Connor and Arnold 1973: 66)

(16) ‘We all like it, || but Mr. ∨Smith | \doesn’t.

(O’Connor and Arnold 1973: 67)

\

(17) (The party was fun, wasn’t it?) ∨ Margaret’s parties | 'usually \are.

O’Connor and Arnold 1973: 67)

The fall-rise-accented phrases in (15)–(17) function as topics in the aboutness-sense of the term. (15) contains predications about weekdays and Saturdays, respectively; the second clause of (16) contains a predication about Mr. Smith, and (17) a predication

 Jorunn Hetland

about Margaret’s parties. The topic status of the phrases in (15)–(17) is not a consequence of the fall-rise accent, however. Unmarked constituents, constituents marked by plain rises or by falls might also have resulted in (aboutness-) topic readings for the given phrases, under the condition that the rightmost accents of the sentences were kept intact. In other words: the fall-rise accent is not a necessary condition for aboutness-topic status in English. And the fall-rise accent is not a sufficient condition for aboutness-topic status either: the fall-rise is not restricted to topics, but can mark different parts of the comment. See, for instance, (18)–(21), where the fall-rise is the only pitch accent of the sentence and thus marks the core of the comment, the information to be added to the hearer’s knowledge store: (18) ( A: He came at a quarter past two.) B:  Half past ∨three it оwas.

(O’Connor and Arnold 1973: 187)

(19) ( A: It was quite good.) B: It was very ∨bad.

(O’Connor and Arnold 1973: 187)

(20) ( A: I gave you a list of all the colours.) B: You didn’t say ∨blue. (O’Connor and Arnold 1973: 187) (21) ( A: These sweets are delicious.) B: There’s no need to °take them ∨all. (O’Connor and Arnold 1973: 187) The contrastive aspect of the interpretation of the accented constituents – which should be kept strictly apart from the topic-comment distinction – seems to be more or less the same in (18)–(21) as in the sentences (15)–(17). But in (18)–(21) the fall-rise-accented constituents are not aboutness-topics. On the contrary, they represent the Main News, the information to be added to the addressee’s knowledge store in each case. That is, the contrastive aspect of the interpretation of fall-rise-accented constituents in English is evidently orthogonal to the topic-comment distinction. Half past three in (18) is of course ‘given’ or ‘old’ in the sense that it belongs to our general common knowledge that such a time of the day exists, but this form of givenness pertains to its referential or cognitive status. In spite of its status as ‘given’ or ‘old’ in this sense, half past three is what is meant to function as the new contribution to be added to the addressee’s knowledge store in (18). There are plenty of examples of this use of the fall-rise accent in English, see (22)– (28): (22) ( A: Going by bus?) B: No, I’m ∨walking оthere toоmorrow.

(O’Connor and Arnold 1973: 181)

(23) ( A: What a pretty blue dress she was wearing!) B: It was a ∨black оdress she had оon. (O’Connor and Arnold 1973: 181) (24)

Mabel is very an∨noyed.

(O’Connor and Arnold 1973: 274)



(25) Don’t °bother with those papers now. ∨

(O’Connor and Arnold 1973: 242)



The Korean particle nun, the English fall-rise accent and thetic/categorical judgements 

(26) You could surely find the °money ∨somewhere. (O’Connor and Arnold 1973: 219) Utterances like (18)–(26) should not be explained away as elliptic sentences. Several authors do this, in an attempt to establish a one-to-one relation between the fall-rise accent and sentence topic or discourse topic status. See, for instance, Roberts (1996): “[The (L-)H of the ‘B contour’6, i.e. of the fall-rise] means ‘answer still in progress -another focus to fill’, which explains why it cannot occur by itself (but can iterate, so long as there’s an A focus around somewhere)” (Roberts 1996: 123). However, although the fall-rise accents do induce an implicature of contrast, an implicature which can, of course, be explicitly expressed in a following clause, utterances like (18)–(26) with one single ‘B accent’ – and with no ‘A focus’ around! – are fully-fledged sentences as they stand.7

4. Korean and English: Accented Korean nun-phrases and English fall-rise accents Going back now to Korean nun-phrases, we have already seen that they have similar functions to the fall-rise-accented constituents of English sentences. (This does not mean that the two phenomena are the same, of course. Subtle language-specific factors may be involved here, so one has to take care.) When accented, Korean nunphrases can function as the contrastive aboutness-topics of their sentences, see (8), quoted here as (27): (27)

Chelswu- NUN CA- N- TA. Chelswu- CON sleep- PRES- DEC ‘Chelswu SLEEPS.’ ‘∨Chelswu is SLEEPING.’ (His sister is awake, however.)

But they can also mark the core of the comment, the Main News, as in (12), cited again as (28): (28)

Pi- NUN o-n-ta. rain- CON is.coming ‘∨RAIN is falling.’ ‘It’s ∨RAINING.’

(Lee 1999: 339)

The special contrastive interpretation associated with accented nun-phrases in Korean seems to be the same for accented nun-phrases functioning as sentence topics as for those belonging to the comment, which means that the constrastive aspect of the interpretation of accented nun-phrases in Korean is orthogonal to the topic-comment distinction. This is mirrored in the terminology used for accented nun-phrases in the literature on Korean. One term is normally used across the board for all accented nunphrases regardless of their topic-comment status at sentence level: by most authors

 Jorunn Hetland

they are uniformly referred to as either ‘contrastive topics’ (Lee 1999, 2003), or ‘contrastive foci’8 (Choe 1995), or simply ‘contrast’ (Kuno 1972 for Japanese wa-phrases). Both the use of the English fall-rise accent and the use of accented nun-phrases in Korean seem to imply that there exists a set of alternatives to the marked constituent, if not in the discourse-context, then in the consciousness of the hearer, a set that can be activated (‘discourse-old’ or ‘hearer-old’ material in the terminology of Prince 1992). When the fall-rise accent in English – or an accented nun-phrase in Korean – is chosen by the speaker, this choice apparently carries the implication that the hearer should somehow be able to construct a set of relevant alternatives to the accented constituent – via discourse, personal or general knowledge, or implicature, if the alternative is not readily available. That is, by using the fall-rise – and by using accented Korean nun-phrases – the speaker appears to convey the message that the hearer will find some relevant alternative within his knowledge store. The core of the information intended to be added to the hearer’s knowledge store seems to be uniquely marked in all languages. And it seems to be characterised by a combination of factors. The individual language determines which factors are going to win out here. In the Indo-European languages, accent (and type of accent, when there are accents of different kinds within the same sentence) combined with the position of the accented constituents relative to one another, plays a crucial role in establishing this centre of information, the Main News. In English, a fall-rise accent can mark the Main News if there is no falling accent in the same sentence (see (18)–(26)). In Korean, an accented nun-phrase can constitute the core of the Main News part if there is no other focus in the sentence, as in (11) and (28) above. In languages like Korean and Japanese, morphological marking and syntactic marking are crucial instruments for the structuring of information. Intonation and different pitch accents have not been regarded as particularly important in this scenario. But recent research has shown that accent does play an important role in information structure, also in discourse-configurational languages (see e.g. Lee 1999 and Chang 2002 for Korean, Nakanishi 2002 for Japanese). Korean linguists seem to agree that there are significant differences between the pitch accent involved in the marking of Korean nun contrast, the accent marking narrow preposed foci, and the accent marking the foci of so-called neutral sentences, respectively. As already mentioned, the pitch accent on prominent contrastive nun-phrases is a rising accent; this holds for the accent on preposed narrow foci as well, but the ‘contrastive’ accent on the nunparticle is said to have markedly higher frequency values and stronger stress (Chang 2002: 454). The accent of so-called ‘neutral’ sentences is said to be falling. When there is one single accented constituent in a sentence – whether the accent is rising or falling – it seems to be clear that this accented constituent does belong to the Main News part. This is evidently the case in English, and it appears to be the case in Korean as well. We have seen that an accented nun-phrase may carry the only accent of thetic judgements in Korean, as in (28):

(28)

The Korean particle nun, the English fall-rise accent and thetic/categorical judgements 

Pi- NUN o-n-ta. rain- CON is.coming ‘∨RAIN is falling.’ ‘It’s ∨RAINING.’

(Lee 1999: 339)

Similar thetic judgements with one fall-rise accent are easy to come by in English, see (29)–(38): (29) That ∨parcel’s arоrived.

(O’Connor and Arnold 1973: 135)

(30) Your taxi’s оwaiting.

(O’Connor and Arnold 1973: 181)

(31) The car’s оhere.

(O’Connor and Arnold 1973: 145)

(32) (Look out.) Teacher’s оcoming.

(O’Connor and Arnold 1973: 175)

(33) Your book’s arоrived, sir.

(O’Connor and Arnold 1973: 145)

(34) The milk’s оnearly оboiling.

(O’Connor and Arnold 1973: 266)

(35) Dinner’s оready.

(O’Connor and Arnold 1973: 175)

(36) Your ∨chair’s оslipping.

(O’Connor and Arnold 1973: 181)

(37) (Just my luck!) ∨ Moaning оisn’t going to оhelp matters.

(O’Connor and Arnold 1973: 175)

(38) (Let’s form a committee.) A com∨mittee is оno оgood.

(O’Connor and Arnold 1973: 181)

∨

∨

∨

∨

∨

∨

(29)–(38) are all sentences with an accented subject. (39), on the other hand, shows an event focus with a weather-it and a fall-rise accent on the predicate: (39) […] it’s ∨raining.

(O’Connor and Arnold 1973: 197)

If these sentences can be said to express contrast, this is – in the thetic reading – not a contrast between the accented lexical item and some alternative to this item – but a contrast between the event as a whole and some alternative event. The fall-rise accent, which is certainly not the most ‘normal’ choice in thetic sentences, adds a flavour of concern, warning, reproach or contradiction to the utterance. The sentences in (29)–(39) all seem to belong to (four out of five of) Sasse’s (1996: 48-49) subgroups of possible discourse functions for thetic sentences: a. Annuntiative (out of the blue statements), e.g. (32) (Look out.) ∨Teacher’s оcoming. b. Interruptive, e.g. (36) Your ∨chair’s оslipping. c. Descriptive, e.g. the weather sentence in (39) […] it’s ∨raining.

 Jorunn Hetland

d. Explanative/elaborative, see (39) again as an answer to a question like (40A): (40) A: Why don’t you go for a walk? B: It’s ∨raining. The sentences in (29)–(39) all seem to say, in Sasse’s wording: “[L]ook out, addressee, an assertion is being made that adds a new situation to your presuppositional fundus” (Sasse 1996: 50). Thus, English and Korean turn out to be languages that – in contradistinction to e.g. standard German and Hungarian – can highlight the Main News, the core of the message of a declarative sentence, by rising or fall-rise pitch accents. In such cases – and this seems to go for both the subject-prominent language English and the discourse-configurational language Korean – there will be no falling accent present in the sentence. Like the English fall-rise accent, the Korean particle nun is truly ambiguous as to its information-structural role. It seems to function uniformly as a topic marker (in the aboutness sense of topic) only when it is unaccented. When combined with an accent, there is no one-to-one relation between the particle nun and topicality in the aboutness sense. On the left periphery an accented nun-phrase is interpreted as the marked aboutness-topic of its sentence if there is another pitch accent to the right of it, marking the Main News. If not, it is taken to belong to the comment part – just as is the case with fall-rise-accented phrases in English. And the nun-phrase can carry the only pitch accent of Korean sentences, thetic and categorical, just as the fall-rise accent can be the only pitch accent of thetic and categorical declarative sentences in English. The contrastive aspect of the interpretation of the accented constituents – which should be kept strictly apart from the topic-comment distinction – seems to be more or less the same in (18)–(21) as in the sentences (15)–(17). But in (18)–(21) the fallrise-accented constituents are not aboutness-topics. On the contrary, they represent the Main News, the information to be added to the addressee’s knowledge store in each case. That is, the contrastive aspect of the interpretation of fall-rise-accented constituents in English is undoubtedly orthogonal to the topic-comment distinction.

Notes * I am most grateful to Chungmin Lee at Seoul National University for arousing my interest in the information structure of Korean sentences and for making it posssible for me to learn more about the Korean language and thereby about information structure in general. 1.

See É. Kiss (1995) for a thorough survey of discourse-configurational languages.

2. When a nun-phrase is accented, it is the particle that carries the phrasal accent. After consonants the topic particle appears in the form un. In the interlinear translations of Korean sentences in this paper, all unaccented nun-phrases are labelled ‘TOP’, whereas accented nunphrases are labelled ‘CON’.



The Korean particle nun, the English fall-rise accent and thetic/categorical judgements 

3. Lee (1999, 2003) names all occurrences of accented nun-phrases ‘CT’ (‘contrastive topic’). His notion ‘topic’ seems to be contextually defined with no clear delimitation between the ‘psychological subject’ or the aboutness-topic on the one hand and information belonging to the context on the other. He explains the notion ‘contrastive topic’ as follows: “[…] a potential (noncontrastive) Topic in the discourse or previous question can be partitioned into parts, CT in the current utterance is about one particular part in contrast with the rest of the parts of the potential Topic and the speaker has the alternatives in contrast or contrast set in mind. […] The parts of a potential Topic are conjunctively understood […]” (Lee 2003: 355). 4. As regards the interpretation of ‘contrast’ and its relation to the information-structural concepts ‘topic’ and ‘focus’, cf. the extensive discussion in Hetland (2003). 5. O’Connor and Arnold (1973) mark their so-called ‘word groups’ by vertical dividing lines [|]. Each word group contains precisely one nucleus – or pitch accent – except for the combination High Fall + Low Rise, which contains two. This constellation is carefully distinguished from the Fall-Rise. Prenuclear stress (that is: stress, but not accent) is marked by the symbols [‘] for high head and [] for falling head. The sign [°] is used to signal high preheads and stressed high syllables in the tail. The most important diacritical signs are of course the pitch accents: the examples quoted here contain two of them, the fall-rise [∨] and the high fall [\]. 6. Jackendoff (1972) uses the terms ‘A-accent’ and ‘B-accent’ for falls and fall-rises, respectively, referring to Bolinger. In fact, Bolinger himself does not apply the term ‘B-accent’ to the fallrise, he calls it the ‘A-Rise Accent’ (cf. Bolinger 1958). Jackendoff ’s terminology has nevertheless become well established in parts of the relevant literature. See Ladd (1980) for discussion. 7. This is an area with considerable cross-linguistic differences. Intonation patterns like those in (18) – (26) are possible in English – but in languages like German and Hungarian, for instance, they are not: (High) German and Hungarian declarative sentences do not end on rising pitch contours. 8. The contrastive or exhaustive focus of languages like Hungarian differs from the types of contrast mentioned above in two ways. Firstly, in terms of exclusiveness: by using this kind of focusing, all salient alternatives are excluded. Secondly, what is exhaustively focused in Hungarian at the same time constitutes the Main News of the sentence where it occurs.

Topicalization and null arguments in Malagasy, Tagalog and Tsou* Paul Law This paper argues that there are in principle two syntactic structures for topicalization in Malagasy, Tagalog and Tsou. In one, available in all three languages, the topic is moved from argument position, and is subject to the same constraint as that for questions and relative clauses. In the other, available in Tsou and Tagalog (but with a different information structure), the topic is basegenerated as adjunct to IP and is related to a null pronoun in argument position in the IP. The syntactic structure for topicalization in particular languages thus depends on their general grammatical properties.

1. Introduction The purpose of the paper is two-fold. First, it strives to account for certain grammatical patterns of sentences with a DP in clause-initial position in Malagasy, Tagalog and Tsou (spoken on Mount Ali, Taiwan), languages that are largely predicate-first. These sentences are comparable to topicalization in familiar languages like English in which the clause-initial DP is a topic and what follows is a comment about it. Second, by showing the range of possible and impossible structures, it seeks to give a principled explanation for the limit of syntactic variations of topicalization. The basic facts that need to be accounted for are given in (1)-(6):1 (1) a. Rasoa dia m-an-asa ny lamba. top pres-act-wash the clothes ‘Rasoa, she is washing the clothes.’ b. *ny lamba dia m-an-asa Rasoa. (2) a. ny lamba dia sasa-n-dRasoa. the clothes top wash-pass ‘The clothes, they are being washed by Rasoa.’

(Malagasy)

 Paul Law

b. *Rasoa dia sasa-n ny lamba. top wash-pass the clothes ‘Rasoa, the clothes are being washed by her.’ (3) a. ang babae hihiram ng laruan sa bata. woman borrow.act toy Kind ‘The woman, she borrowed the toy from the child.’ b. *ng laruan hihiram ang babae sa bata. toy borrow.act woman child ‘The toy, the woman borrowed from the child.’

(Tagalog)

(4) a. ang laruan hihiram-in ng babae sa bata. toy borrow-pass woman child ‘The toy, the woman borrowed from the child.’ b. *ng babae hihiram-in ang laruan sa bata. woman borrow-pass toy child ‘The woman, she borrowed the toy from the child.’ (5) a. b.

’e pasuya m-i-ta eobak-o ta mo’o. nom act-rea-3s hit-act obl ‘Pasuya hit Mo’o.’ *ta mo’o m-i-ta eobak-o ’e pasuya. obl act-rea-3s hit-act nom ‘Mo’o, Pasuya hit him.’

(6) a. b.

’e mo’o ∅-i-ta eobak-a ta pasuya. nom nact-rea-3s hit-nact obl ‘Mo’o, he was hit by Pasuya.’ ’e pasuya ∅-i-ta eobak-a ’e mo’o. nom nact-rea-3s hit-nact nom ‘Pasuya, Mo’o was hit by him.’

(Tsou)

These examples are mostly used when the clause-initial DP has previously been mentioned, i.e. old information, and what follows is a comment about it (cf. Chomsky 1977: 90, and the Theme-Rheme structure of the Prague school, Mathesius 1928 and Hajičová 1985). For convenience, I will refer to this DP as the topic, the position it appears in the topic position, and the construction as topicalization, regardless of how it is derived. I argue that there are two different syntactic structures underlying topicalization in the three languages. In one, the topic is moved from argument position, reminiscent of questions and relative clauses. The structure is available in Malagasy, Tagalog and Tsou. In the other, the topic is base-generated as adjunct to a sentence that contains a null pronoun in argument position. This structure is possible in Tsou but not in Malagasy, since Tsou independently has agreement morphology on the auxiliary sanctioning null pronouns in argument position. Tagalog has this adjunction structure as



Topicalization and null arguments in Malagasy, Tagalog and Tsou 

well, but independent constraints on the form of the DP in topic position and on null pronouns lead to a different information structure from that of topicalization. The paper proceeds as follows. I first briefly illustrate two well-known properties of many Austronesian languages that have a bearing on the analysis of topicalization, namely, the relation between verbal morphology and argument-marking or positioning and the restriction on the formation of questions and relative clauses (section 2.1). In light of these two properties, the contrasts between the a- and b-examples in (1)-(5) are shown to be quite similar to those in questions and relative clauses (section 2.2), and the lack of contrast in (6) is argued to be due to something specific to Tsou. I discuss null arguments in the three languages and argue for an additional structure in which the topic is base-generated as adjunct to a sentence containing a null pronoun in argument position. The additional structure is available just in case a null pronoun in argument position is independently possible (section 3).

2. Verbal morphology in Austronesian languages and topicalization In this section, I will first review two typical properties of Austronesian languages having to do with verbal morphology and the formation of questions and relative clauses. I then bring them to bear on the structure of topicalization in Malagasy, Tagalog and Tsou.

2.1

Two typical characteristics of Austronesian languages

It is well-known in the studies of Austronesian languages that verbal morphology correlates with argument-positioning or marking as well as with what can be questioned or relativized. In Malagasy, the actor argument of a verb appears in the end of the sentence in which the verb bears active morphology, as in (7a): (7) a. b.

m-an-asa ny lamba Rasoa. pres-act-wash the clothes ‘Rasoa is washing the clothes.’ sasa-n-dRasoa ny lamba. wash-pass the clothes ‘The clothes are being washed by Rasoa.’

(Malagasy)

When the verb carries passive morphology, the patient argument occurs in the end of the sentence, as in (7b) (Keenan 1976). In Tagalog, the marker ang appears prefixed on the (overt) full DP actor (si for proper name actor) when the verb has active morphology, on the (overt) full DP patient when it has passive morphology, and on the (overt) full DP goal when it has directional morphology (Schachter 1993: 1422):

 Paul Law

(8) a. b. c.

hihiram ang babae ng laruan sa bata. borrow.act woman toy child ‘The woman will borrow a toy from a/the child.’ hihiram-in ng babae ang laruan sa bata. borrow-pass woman toy child ‘A/the woman will borrow the toy from a/the child.’ hihiram-an ng babae ng laruan ang bata. borrow-dir woman toy child ‘A/the woman will borrow a toy from the child.’

(Tagalog)

In the presence of an ang-marked argument, other arguments of a verb are marked with ng (for full DP), ni (for proper name), sa (for full DP Goal/Source), or kay (for proper name Goal/Source). In Tsou, the actor largely occurs in the end of the sentence with the nominative marker ’e or ’o when the auxiliary verb bears active morphology, and the patient does so when the auxiliary verb has passive morphology: (9) a. b.

m-i-ta eobak-o ta mo’o ’e pasuya. act-rea-3s hit-act obl nom ‘Pasuya hit Mo’o.’ ∅-i-ta eobak-a ta pasuya ’e mo’o. nact-rea-3s hit-pass obl nom ‘Mo’o was hit by Pasuya.’

(Tsou)

Arguments other than the nominative-marked argument are marked with the oblique marker ta or to (Szakos 1994, Zeitoun 2000).2 In these three languages, then, specific verbal morphology singles out a particular argument of a predicate, either by positioning it in the end of the sentence as in Malagasy, or by uniquely marking it, ang in Tagalog, ’e or ’o in Tsou. Following Schachter (1993), I will call this particular argument the trigger. Another well-known property of Austronesian languages is that only the trigger can be questioned or relativized (cf. Schachter (1976) for Tagalog, Keenan (1976) for Malagasy, and Chang (1998, 2000) for Tsou). For reasons of space, I illustrate here with only the examples from Malagasy: (10) a. b.

iza no m-an-asa ny lamba? who foc pres-act-wash the clothes ‘Who is washing the clothes?’ *inona no m-an-asa Rasoa? what foc pres-act-wash ‘What is Rasoa washing?’

(Malagasy)



Topicalization and null arguments in Malagasy, Tagalog and Tsou 

(11) a. b.

inona no sasa-n-dRasoa? what foc wash-pass ‘What is being washed by Rasoa?’ *iza no sasa-n ny lamba? who foc wash-pass the clothes ‘Who are the clothes being washed by?’

(12) a. b.

ny zazavavy (izay) m-an-asa ny lamba. the girl that pres-act-wash the clothes ‘The girl that is washing the clothes.’ *ny lamba (izay) m-an-asa ny zazavavy. the clothes that pres-act-wash the girl ‘The clothes that the girl is washing.’

(13) a. b.

ny lamba (izay) sasa-n-’ny zazavavy. the clothes that wash-pass-the girl ‘The clothes that are being washed by the girl.’ *ny zazavavy (izay) sasa-n-’ny lamba. the girl that wash-pass-the clothes ‘The girl that the clothes are being washed by.’

There is by now substantial literature on how the contrasts in (10)-(13) are to be accounted for. On the one hand, Miller (1988) and Kroeger (1993) identify the trigger with the familiar notion of grammatical subject, suggesting that the formation of questions and relative clauses is restricted to phrases bearing the (primitive) grammatical function of subject. On the other hand, Keenan (1976), Nakamura (1998), Richards (2000) and Paul (2002), among others, argue that questions and relative clauses are formed by movement (Chomsky 1977), and that movement of an argument is limited to the trigger in subject position. In this paper, I will simply describe the operation in the formation of questions and relative clauses as involving movement, leaving open the issue of whether these cases may be derived by non-movement. I refer to the grammatical contrasts in (10)-(13) as a direct consequence of the trigger restriction on extraction (TRE), i.e. only the trigger can be extracted. I assume with much of the syntactic literature that overt wh-phrases in questions and their phonetically empty variants in relative clauses, sometimes known as the null operator (Chomsky 1986, Browning 1987), move to SpecCP. This is schematically represented as in (14) and (15), where ti is the trace of the phrase moved: (14) a. [cp whati [ did [ John buy ti ]]]? b. [cp whoi [ did [ you say [ ti bought the book ]]]]? (15) a. The man [cp whoi [ [ John saw ti ]]] b. The man [cp Oi [ [ John saw ti ]]]

 Paul Law

On this view, relative clauses and questions are on a par, insofar they involve the same operation, Wh-movement (Chomsky 1977), and are subject to the same constraints (Ross 1967). Along these lines, the Malagasy example in (10a) would have the structure as in (16a), and that in (12a) would have the structure in (16b):3 (16) a. [cp izai [ no [ m-an-asa ny lamba ti ]]]? (Malagasy) who foc pres-act-wash the clothes ‘Who is washing the clothes?’ b. ny zazavavy [cp Oi [ izay [ m-an-asa ny lamba ti ]]] the girl that pres-act-wash the clothes ‘The girl that is washing the clothes.’ We will see presently how topicalization resembles questions and relative clauses.4

2.2

Topicalization of the trigger

The grammatical contrast in (1) would immediately follow, if the examples have a structure in which the trigger moves to the topic position of the clause, as in (17), just like an overt wh-phrase or the null operator O in (16):5 (17) a. [ Rasoai dia [ m-an-asa ny lamba ti ]] top pres-act-wash the clothes ‘Rasoa, she is washing the clothes.’ b. *[ ny lambai dia [ m-an-asa ti Rasoa]] the clothes top pres-act-wash ‘The clothes, Rasoa is washing.’ The structure in (17a) observes the TRE, since the trigger is extracted. The structure in (16b), however, is excluded by the TRE, the extracted phrase not being the trigger, just like in the b-examples in (10)-(13). In the same vein, the contrasts in (3) and (5) follow since the trigger is extracted in the a-examples, while the non-trigger is extracted in the b-examples: (18) a. [ ang babaei [ hihirami ti ng laruan sa bata ] woman borrow.act toy Kind ‘The woman, she borrowed the toy from the child.’ b. *[ ng laruan [ hihiram ang babae sa bata ]] toy borrow.act woman child ‘The toy, the woman borrowed from the child.’ (19) a. [ ’e pasuyai [ m-i-ta eobak-o ta mo’o ti ]] nom act-rea-3s hit-act obl ‘Pasuya hit Mo’o.’

(Tagalog)

(Tsou)



Topicalization and null arguments in Malagasy, Tagalog and Tsou 

b. *[ ta mo’oi [ m-i-ta eobak-o ti ’e pasuya ]] obl act-rea-3s hit-act nom ‘Mo’o, Pasuya hit him.’ The grammatical contrasts in (1)-(5) clearly show that topicalization is subject to the TRE just as questions and relative clauses are. What is then surprising is the contrast between (5b) and (6b) in Tsou. If these involve movement, they would have the structures in (20a) and (20b) respectively: (20) a. *[ ta mo’oi [ m-i-ta eobak-o ti ’e pasuya ]] obl act-rea-3s hit-act nom ‘Mo’o, Pasuya hit him.’ b. [ ’e/*ta pasuyai [∅- i-ta eobak-a ti ’e mo’o ]] nom/acc nact-rea-3s hit-pass nom ‘Pasuya, Mo’o was hit by him.’ Notice first that the verb in (20b) carries passive morphology, so its patient argument mo’o is the trigger and the actor argument pasuya is a non-trigger (cf. (9b)). Now, if the non-trigger pasuya could be extracted as indicated in (20b), then there is no reason why the non-trigger mo’o cannot be extracted in (20a). An obvious difference between (20a) and (20b) is Case-marking. It is unsurprising that the non-trigger in (20a) is marked oblique, as non-triggers generally are. But it is quite unexpected that the non-trigger in (20b) can be marked nominative. If the ungrammaticality of the example in (20a) is taken to be evidence for the TRE, i.e. (oblique-marked) non-triggers cannot be moved, then it must be that the nominativemarked non-trigger in (20b) does not come from argument position where it would be marked oblique. In other words, it must be that the nominative-marked non-trigger in (20b) is not moved from argument position but is base-generated in its surface position. We will return to the syntactic structure of the example in (6b) in section 3.4. A question internal to Tsou that arises is why the example in (5a) is also ungrammatical with the non-trigger marked nominative, in sharp contrast with the example in (6b): (21) *[ ’e mo’o [ m-i-ta eobak-o ti ’e pasuya ]] nom act-rea-3s hit-act nom ‘Mo’o, Pasuya hit him.’ In fact, we can pose a similar question for Malagasy and Tagalog, i.e. why the examples in (2b) and (4b) are not grammatical the way that in (6b) is.

3. Null arguments and topicalization of non-triggers I argue presently that the grammatical contrast between the Tsou example (6b), on the one hand, and the Tsou ones (5b), (20a), and (21), the Malagasy one (2b), and the Tagalog one (4b), on the other, is largely due to the presence of an independently sanctioned

 Paul Law

null pronoun in argument position in (6b) and the lack thereof in (5b), (20a), (21), and (2b) or to the lack of the required form of the clause-initial DP in (4b). More particularly, I suggest that topicalization of non-triggers has a structure in which the topic is base-generated as adjunct to an independently possible sentence with a null pronoun in argument position. To substantiate my claim, I will first discuss null arguments, the conditions under which they are sanctioned, and the syntactic structures containing null arguments in Tsou, Tagalog and Malagasy (sections 3.1-3.3). I then show how null arguments bear on the syntactic structure of topicalization (section 3.4).

3.1

Agreement and null arguments in Tsou

Tsou differs from many, if not most, Austronesian languages in having person and number agreement on what may be taken to be an auxiliary verb. As shown in (22), the auxiliary verb marking tense and aspect has person and number agreement with the actor argument (adapted from Szakos 1994: 125): (22) a. b. c. d.

m-i-hin’i yon-ta hceu ’e o’oko. act-pres-3pL live-act mountain nom children ‘The children live in the mountain.’ *m-i-ta yon-ta hceu ’e o’oko. act-pres-3s live-act mountain nom children ‘The children live in the mountain.’ *m-i-ta yon-ta hceu na a’o. act-pres-3s live-act mountain nom 1s ‘I live in the mountain.’ m-i-ta yon-ta hceu na taini. act-pres-1s live-act mountain nom 3s ‘He lives in the mountain.’

Significantly, person and number agreement on the auxiliary in Tsou is with the actor argument, not with the nominative argument, most clearly in (23)-(24), where the third person singular agreement with the actor argument remains invariant regardless of the number of the nominative argument:6 (23) a. b.

m-i-ta b-ait-o ta o’oko ’e pasuya. act-rea-3s act-see-act obl children nom ‘Pasuya saw the children.’ ∅-i-ta ait-i ta pasuya ’e o’oko. nact-rea-3s see-pass obl nom children ‘The children were seen by Pasuya.’

(24) a. *m-i-hin’i b-ait-o ta o’oko ’e pasuya. act-rea-3pL act-see-act obl children nom ‘Pasuya saw the children.’



Topicalization and null arguments in Malagasy, Tagalog and Tsou 

b. *∅-i-hin’i ait-i ta pasuya ’e o’oko. nact-rea-3pl see-pass obl nom children ‘The children were seen by Pasuya.’ Tsou thus differs sharply from familiar languages like English where person and number agreement is with the argument in subject position, regardless of its theta-role: (25) a. The children were/*was following the man. b. The man was/*were followed by the children. Null arguments are possible in Tsou. The examples in (26) are grammatical where the nominative trigger argument is not overtly realized: (26) a. b.

m-i-hin’i yon-ta hceu. act-rea-3pl live-act mountain ‘They live in the mountain.’ m-i-ta yon-ta hceu. act-rea-3s live-act mountain ‘He lives in the mountain.’

Comparing the examples in (26) with those in (22a) and (22d), we may take them to have exactly the same syntactic structure. The difference between them, however, is that while the latter have an overt nominative argument, the former have an implicit one. In other words, in (26) there is a phonetically null pronoun, represented here as pro, occupying the same position as that of the overt nominative pronoun in (22): (27) a. b.

m-i-hin’i yon-ta hceu pro. act-rea-3pl live-act mountain ‘They live in the mountain.’ m-i-ta yon-ta hceu pro. act-rea-3s live-act mountain ‘He lives in the mountain.’

Long-distance relativization facts suggest that person and number agreement is not a clitic pronoun incorporated into the auxiliary from argument position. The example in (28a) is a DP with a relative clause containing a phonetically null relative operator that is the actor argument of the verb baito ‘see’: (28) a. ∅-i-si y-ainca to mo’o nact-rea-3s pass-say obl m-i-ta b-ait-o ta yangui ci cou. act-rea-3s act-see-act obl rel person ‘The person who Mo’o said saw Yangui.’ b. [dp [cp [ Aux+tai... ti... ]... ci ] cou ]

 Paul Law

If ta were a clitic pronoun incorporated into the auxiliary from argument position, schematically represented in (28b), then there would be no origin for the null operator, the argument position being occupied by the trace of the clitic pronoun. Consequently, the example in (28a) would not have a structure in which the null operator is in the highest SpecCP position. But the grammatical contrast in (29) shows that the relative operator must be in the highest SpecCP position: (29) a. The person [cp whoi [ John said [cp that [ Mary saw ti ]]]] b. *The person [ John said [cp who [ Mary saw ti ]]] The relative clause in the Tsou example in (28a) would have the same structure as that in (29a) in English if ta is in fact a piece of agreement morphology on the verb: (30) [dp [cp Oi [... [cp Aux+ta... ti... ]... ci ]] cou ] In (30), the relative operator is base-generated in argument position and moves to the highest SpecCP, just like the overt relative pronoun who does in (29a). Binding and cross-over facts (Postal 1971) show that a null pronoun may occupy the position for the trigger (I will henceforth refer to this pro as trigger pro). In (31a) an oblique patient reflexive is understood to be coreferential with an actor pro antecedent, but an overt oblique proper name patient in the same position in (31b) cannot be: (31) a. m-i-ta eobak-o to yachij proi. act-rea-3s hit-act obl self ‘He hit himself.’ b. m-i-ta eobak-o to mo’oj proi. act-rea-3s hit-act obl ‘He hit Mo’o.’ c. [cp Ok [ ∅-i-si y-ainca proj nact-rea-3s pass-say [ ∅-i-tai eobak-a proi tk ] ci ]] cou. nact-rea-3s hit-pass rel person ‘The man he said he hit.’

(i=j) (*i=j)

(*i=k, *j=k)

In (31c), the matrix and embedded triggers, which would be marked nominative if they were overt, cannot be taken to be coreferential with the head of the relative clause. The representation of the covert trigger as pro in (31) thus enables us to account for the coreference facts in exactly the same way as that in (32) in English: (32) a. Hei hit himselfj. b. Hei hit Johnj. (*i=j) c. The man [cp Ok [ hej said [ hei hit ti ]]]

(i=j) (*i=k, *j=k)

Just like the overt pronoun in (32a), the pro trigger in (31a) binds the patient reflexive in accord with binding condition A (Chomsky 1981). Coreference in (31b) and (32b) is excluded, since pro or the overt pronoun he binds the proper name in violation of



Topicalization and null arguments in Malagasy, Tagalog and Tsou 

binding condition C. Coreference in (31c) and (32c) is ruled out, as the null operator moves across a pronoun it binds, a phenomenon known as strong cross-over (Postal 1971). If the trace of a wh-phrase or null operator is an R-expression, then binding condition C would bar it from being bound by a commanding pronoun. The binding and coreference facts in (31) can be given the same account as those in (32), if in (31) there are null pronouns in the same argument positions as those occupied by the overt pronouns in (32). There is then clearly a correlation between agreement on the auxiliary verb and a null pronoun in argument position. A null pronoun in argument position is possible only if there is corresponding agreement on the auxiliary. Since the auxiliary verb has agreement for the actor argument, it comes as no surprise that a non-trigger actor need not be overt: (33) ∅-i-ta eobak-a proi ’e mo’o. nact-rea-3s hit-pass nom ‘Mo’o was hit by him.’ As there is no agreement on the auxiliary verb for the patient argument, one might expect that the patient argument can never be phonetically null. Interestingly, the expectation is not entirely borne out. A non-trigger patient argument may not be null, but a trigger patient argument may: (34) a. b.

*m-i-ta eobak-o’e mo’o. act-rea-3s hit-act nom ‘Mo’o hit him.’ ∅-i-ta eobak-a ta mo’o. nact-rea-3s hit-pass obl ‘He was hit by Mo’o.’

The ungrammaticality of the example in (34a) is readily understandable, there being no agreement on the auxiliary verb to sanction a Patient pro in argument position: (35) *m-i-ta eobak-o pro ’e mo’o. act-rea-3s hit-act nom ‘Mo’o hit him.’ We will see how the impossible structure in (35) bears on the structure of topicalization of a non-trigger argument (cf. section 3.4). As for the example in (34b), I claim that the covert patient argument is not the null pronominal pro, but a trace of a deleted topic (cf. also section 2.2). In fact, Huang (1984) already makes the same point for Mandarin Chinese, although the facts are not entirely identical. He argues that while an overt pronoun in an embedded clause may be coreferential with the matrix subject, its null variant may not:

 Paul Law

(36) a. Zhangsani shuo [ Lisi bu renshi taj ] say not know 3s ‘Zhangsan said Lisi does not know him.’ b. Zhangsani shuo [ Lisi bu renshi ej ] say not know ‘Zhangsan said Lisi does not know him.’

(Mandarin Chinese) (ok i=j) (*i=j)

He suggests that e in the example in (36b) is in fact the trace of a discourse-salient topic that has moved from argument position to the left-peripheral topic position where it is deleted: (37) neige reni [ Zhangsan shuo [ Lisi bu renshi ti ]] that man say not know ‘Zhangsan said Lisi does not know.’ The lack of coreference between the matrix subject and the embedded object in (36b) follows from binding theory. If the two were to be coreferential, then the matrix subject would end up being coreferential with the topic, and the trace of topic would be A-bound by the matrix subject, violating binding condition C (Chomsky 1981, 1986), just like in (32). In fact, the same reason explains why the wh-phrase in (38) cannot bind the matrix subject pronoun: (38) Whoi does hej think Bill knows ti?

(ok i≠j; *i=j)

Huang’s account of non-coreference in (36) thus seems quite plausible, given that the example in (37) with a phonetically overt topic is also possible. Tsou turns out to exhibit a similar binding property. The implicit patient trigger in the embedded clause in (39a) cannot be understood to be coreferential with the matrix argument, while its overt counterpart, expressed by an overt pronoun in (39b), may: (39) a. ∅-i-ta y-ainca ta tainii nact- rea-3s pass-say obl 3s [ ∅-i-ta ait-i ta mo’o ej] (*i=j) nact-rea-3s see-pass obl ‘He said that he was seen by Mo’o.’ b ∅-i-ta y-ainca ta tainii nact - rea-3s pass-say obl 3s [ ∅-i-ta ait-i ta mo’o ’e tainij ] nact-rea-3s see-pass obl nom 3s ‘He said that he was seen by Mo’o.’

(Tsou)

(ok i=j)

The coreference facts in (39) are on a par with those in (36), and can be given the same account if e in (39a) is in fact the trace of a deleted topic. That this is a plausible analysis is supported by the fact that the topic can be overt, like the Chinese example in (36a):



Topicalization and null arguments in Malagasy, Tagalog and Tsou 

(40) ’e cou enivoj [ ∅-i-ta y-ainca ta nom person this nact- rea-3s pass-say obl [ ∅-i-ta ait-i ta mo’o nact-rea-3s see-pass obl ‘This person, he said he was seen by Mo’o.’

tainii 3s tj ]]

(*i=j)

Moreover, the non-coreference betweeen the embedded patient and the matrix pronoun in (39a) can be assimilated to that in (36b), if in (39a) the trigger moves from argument position to topic position, and then deletes: (41) a. ’e cou enivoj [ ∅-i-ta y-ainca ta tainii nom person this nact-rea- 3s pass-say obl 3s [ ∅-i-ta ait-i ta mo’o tj]] nact-rea-3s see-pass obl ‘He said he was seen by Mo’o.’ b. *[ ∅-i-ta y-ainca ta tainii nact- rea-3s pass- say obl 3s [ ∅-i-ta ait-i ta mo’o proi]] nact-rea-3s see-pass obl ‘This person, he said he was seen by Mo’o.’ Non-coreference in (39a) cannot be accounted for if it has the structure in (41b) with a phonetically null pronoun in argument position, coreference with an overt pronoun in the same structure being possible (cf. (39b)). As it turns out, an implicit actor trigger argument in an embedded clause may be coreferential with a matrix argument, as shown in (42a): (42) a. ∅-i-ta y-ainca ta taini [ m-i-ta b-ait-o to mo’o] nact-rea-3s nact-say obl act-rea-3s act-see-act obl ‘He said that he saw Mo’o.’ b. ’e cou enivoj [ ∅-i-ta y-ainca ta tainii nom person this nact-rea-3s pass-say obl 3s [ m-i-ta b-ait-o to mo’o tj ]] act-rea-3s act-see-act obl c. [ ∅-i-ta y-ainca ta tainii nact- rea-3s pass-say obl 3s [ m-i-ta b-ait-o to mo’o proj ]] act-rea-3s act-see-act obl (ok i=j) The example in (42a) can certainly have the derivation in which the embedded actor trigger argument is moved to topic position in the matrix clause where it is deleted, as in (42b), just like the patient trigger argument in (41a). Coreference should then be excluded as a violation of binding condition C. The fact that coreference is possible in (42a) thus suggests that the example has an alternative derivation in which the implicit

 Paul Law

actor argument in the embedded clause is a null pronoun in argument position, as in (42c). The reason why this is possible is due to the presence of agreement on the auxiliary sanctioning a null actor pronoun. In sum, the difference between a non-overt actor argument and a non-overt patient argument is that while the former can either be a null pronoun in argument position (cf. (42a)) or the trace of a deleted topic (cf. (42b)), the latter can only be the trace of a deleted topic (cf. the contrast in (41)). We will see the consequence of the structure with a null pronoun in argument position for the analysis of topicalization of non-triggers in section 3.4.

3.2

Null arguments and discourse in Tagalog

Tagalog differs from Tsou in that it largely does not have an auxiliary verb or verbal agreement. As can be seen in (43) the verb is formally invariant with respect to the number and person of the trigger argument: (43) a. b. c.

pupunta sa Cebu si Juan. go.act ‘Juan is going to Cebu.’ pupunta sa Cebu si Juan at si Maria. go.act and ‘Juan and Maria are going to Cebu.’ pupunta sa Cebu ako. go.act 1s ‘I am going to Cebu.’

Null pronouns in argument position are nevertheless possible, though not always. Himmelmann (1999: 236) points out that ang-marked arguments, i.e. the triggers, freely allow null anaphora; that is, they can be phonetically null. In the example in (44) the trigger in the second conjunct, understood to be ang langsam ‘ant’, is not overtly expressed (glosses and translations are original): (44) at kinuha niya ang langgam and get 3s ant at inilagay niya sa pampang usa lupa. and put 3s river bank or earth ‘And he got the ant and put it on the riverbank or the ground.’ The trigger also need not be overt in answers to questions from which the reference of the trigger can be inferred. Thus, the question in (45) about the referent of (the non-trigger) ng lalaki ‘the man’ can be answered without an explicit expression for the referent:

(45) A: B:

Topicalization and null arguments in Malagasy, Tagalog and Tsou 

ano ang ginawa ng lalaki? what do.pass man ‘What did the man do?’ bumili ng libro. buy act book ‘He bought the book.’

The last conjunct in (44) and the answer in (45) can be given the same analysis as that in (37) or (41a) in which the trigger moves to topic position where it is deleted: (46) a. ... at ang langganj [ip inilagay niya sa pampang u sa lupa tj ] b. ang lalakij [ip bumili tj ng libro ] Coreference facts corroborate this analysis. As shown in (47), in contrast to an overt pronoun trigger, a covert trigger in the embedded clause may not be coreferential with a matrix argument, very much like Chinese and Tsou: (47) a. b.

sinabi niyai na kilala ni Maria siyaj. say.pass 3s that know.pass 3s ‘He said that Maria knows him.’ sinabi niyai na kilala ni Maria ej. say.pass 3s that know.pass ‘He said that Maria knows him.’

(ok i=j) (*i=j)

If e is in fact the trace of the trigger that has moved to topic position in the matrix clause where it deletes, then coreference between the trace and a matrix argument would violate binding condition C, just as in (37a) and (41a), the trace, an R-expression, being c-commanded and bound by the matrix argument. From the perspective of Tsou, it is of special interest that despite lack of agreement Tagalog sometimes allows non-triggers to be phonetically null. Kroeger (1993: 64) gives two examples where a non-trigger patient or actor is not overtly expressed: (48) A: kanino mo ibinigay ang pera? to whom you give .pass money ‘To whom did you give the money?’ B: si Charlie ang binigyan ko (ng pera). give.ben 1s money ‘Charlies is the one I gave it (the/some money) to.’ (49) A: B:

Ano ang ginagawa ni Linda? what do.pass ‘What is Linda doing?’ binabasa ang diyaryo. read.pass newspaper ‘Reading the newspaper.’

 Paul Law

In (48) and (49), the answer need not contain an explicit expression that is already present in the preceding question. As the TRE is well-motivated elsewhere in the grammar, there is no obvious reason to suppose that the examples in (48) or (49) are the result of the deletion of the non-trigger that has moved to topic position. That is, it must be that in these cases a phonetically null pronoun pro is present in argument position: (50) a. si Charlie ang binigyan ko pro. give.pass 1s ‘Charlie is the one I gave it to.’ b. binabasa pro ang diyaryo. read.pass newspaper ‘She is reading the newspaper.’ Given that cases where a non-trigger pro is possible are immediately preceded by a context in which the reference of pro has been explicitly mentioned, it seems that null pronouns in argument position in Tagalog are sanctioned by a discourse condition. Himmelmann (1999: 247-248) in fact suggests that a non-trigger argument may be phonetically null when the referent of the null argument is unknown, irrelevant or unimportant, as in the following naturally occurring, i.e. unelicited, examples (glosses and translations are original):7 (51) a. na iyon bangkay noon lalaki na si Makisig lnk that corpse that man lnk ay huhukayin at i sasama sa kanyang hukay excavate and be with 3s hole ‘That the corpse of that man, Makisig, be exhumed and put together into her hole.’ b. ang ginawa ay hinabol ngayon ng mga kawal made pursue now pl soldier ng mga suldado nitong sultan yon mga natakas pl soldiers this sultan these pl runaway at kinuha iyon lalaki at pinatay ngayon tong si Makisig.

and get this man and die now this ‘(The sultan had already come to know that his daughter had eloped with Makisig. So now) what happened was, the soldiers of this sultan chased the runaways, and (they) got that man and killed him, this Makisig.’ Thus, in (51a), at the time of writing the letter (and also at this point of the telling of the story), it is unknown who would do the exhumation and re-internment.8 Similarly, in (51b) the non-trigger actor of the second and last conjunct is basically irrelevant for the overall story, and their marginal status is indicated by the lack of individuation. No information is given as to how many they were and who in fact did the catching and the killing.



Topicalization and null arguments in Malagasy, Tagalog and Tsou 

Now, as both triggers and non-triggers need not be overt, the former being the trace of a deleted topic and the latter being a null pronoun in argument position, it comes as no surprise that all arguments of a verb may be phonetically null in Tagalog. The example in (52) is from McGinn (1988: 278), and the answer in (53) with no overt arguments is fairly common: (52) ibigay na give.pass already ‘It was already given to someone by someone.’ (53) A: B:

Binili ba niya yung mga dalandan? buy.pass q 3s there p orange ‘Did he buy those oranges?’ Oo, binili. Oh buy.pass ‘Oh, he bought them.’

These can be represented in (54a) and (54b) respectively with the trigger being deleted in topic position (cf. (46)) and the non-triggers being null pronouns in argument position (cf. (50)): (54) a. DPi ibigay na pro pro ti give.pass already b. DPi binili pro ti buy.pass In (54), the deleted trigger is the patient argument, the two pros in (54a) are the actor and goal (non-trigger) arguments, and the pro in (54b) is the (non-trigger) actor argument. In sum, Tagalog allows triggers and non-triggers to be phonetically null. The former is the trace of a deleted topic, and the latter is a null pronoun in argument position, sanctioned by a discourse condition to the effect that the referent of the null pronoun is non-individuated. We will later see how the distribution of null pronouns in Tagalog bears on the structure of the topicalization of non-triggers (section 3.4).

3.3

Null arguments in Malagasy

For completeness, we will consider null arguments in Malagasy. As we will see, null arguments are sanctioned under exactly the same condition as that for topicalization with the topic marker dia.

 Paul Law

Like Tagalog and different from Tsou, Malagasy has no agreement. The form of the verb remains invariant regardless of the person and number of the actor or the trigger argument:9 (55) a. b. c.

m-an-asa ny lamba Rasoa. pres-act-wash the clothes ‘Rasoa is washing the clothes.’ m-an-asa ny lamba ry Rasoa sy Rakoto. pres-act-wash the clothes pl and ‘Rasoa and Rakoto are washing the clothes.’ m-an-asa ny lamba aho. pres-act-wash the clothes 1s ‘I am washing the clothes.’

It nonetheless allows a discourse-salient trigger to be non-overt:10 (56) A: B:

inona no ataon-dRasoa? what foc do.pass ‘What is Rasoa doing now?’ m-an-asa lamba. pres-act-wash clothes ‘She is washing clothes.’

As should be familiar by now, the covert trigger in the answer in (56) is arguably the trace of a deleted topic (along with the topic marked dia), just like it is in Tsou and Tagalog: (57) izyi dia m-an-asa lamba ti top pres-act-wash clothes ‘She is washing clothes.’ Coreference facts corroborate the claim that the covert trigger argument is the trace of a deleted topic. An overt pronoun trigger in the embedded clause may be conreferential with a matrix argument in (58a), but a covert trigger in (58b) may not: (58) a. b.

no-lazain’-nyi fa fantan’i Rakoto izyj. past-say-3s that know.pass 3s ‘He said that Rakoto knows him.’ izyj dia no-lazain’-nyi fa fantan’ i Rakoto tj. 3s top past-say-3s that know.pass ‘Him, he said that Rakoto knows.’

(ok i=j) (*i=j)

Coreference in (58b) is excluded, since the trigger moves from the embedded clause to topic position in the matrix clause where it is deleted (along with the topic marker



Topicalization and null arguments in Malagasy, Tagalog and Tsou 

dia), crossing over the matrix argument, inducing a binding condition C violation, just like in (36b) in Chinese, in (40) in Tsou, and in (47b) in Tagalog. Moreover, Malagasy differs from both Tagalog and Tsou in that non-triggers, including those bearing the actor semantic role, mostly may not be absent: (59) A: B:

inona no ataon-dRasoa? what foc do.pass ‘What is Rasoa doing now?’ *sasa-n(a) ny lamba. wash-pass the clothes ‘She is washing the clothes.’

The ungrammaticality of the answer in (59) thus indicates that Malagasy simply has no null pronoun in argument position. We will see how the lack of null pronouns bears on topicalization of non-triggers in this language (section 3.4).

3.4

Syntactic structure of topicalization of non-triggers

The facts in (2), (4) and (6) show that Malagasy, Tagalog, and Tsou differ with respect topicalization of non-trigger arguments. It is possible in Tsou (cf. the lack of contrast in (6)), but not in Tagalog and Malagasy. Given the well-motivated TRE, topicalization of non-trigger arguments therefore cannot be derived by movement. Now, since the three languages also differ with respect to null pronouns, it is natural to connect these two differences in a non-movement account in which null pronouns play a central role. I would now like to show that the conditions under which topicalization of a nontrigger is possible co-incide with those under which a null pronoun is sanctioned. Specifically, I suggest that topicalization of non-triggers be derived by adjoining a DP to a sentence, presumably an IP, that contains a null pronoun in argument position, as in (60): (60) [ip DPi [ip... proi... ]] The structure in (60) is reminiscent of the examples in (61) for English, where the pronoun in argument position is overt: (61) a. Johni, Mary said hei is a genius. b. Johni, Mary said Bill likes himi. We can take pro or the overt pronoun in these cases to be some sort of resumptive pronoun (Sells 1984) (contra Chang 1998: 123), recalling the Clitic Left Dislocation (CLD) construction (Chomsky 1977: 91) with an overt clitic pronoun.11 Clearly, the structure in (60) can be derived only if the IP is independently possible so that a DP can be adjoined to it. It is here that the distribution of null pronouns becomes relevant to the structure of topicalization of non-triggers. Recall that in Tsou, an actor argument may be pro (section 3.1). It is then a simple matter to adjoin a DP to the sentence

 Paul Law

containing an actor pro, deriving the structure in (60). Along these lines, the example in (6b) with a covert non-trigger actor argument would have the structure in (62): (62) [dp ’e pasuya ]i [ip ∅-i-ta eobak-a proi ’e mo’o ] nom nact-rea-3s hit-nact nom ‘Pasuya, Mo’o was hit by him.’

(Tsou)

Now, as there is no agreement on the auxiliary for the patient argument, a sentence with a patient pro as in (63a) is impossible: (63) a. *m-i-ta eobak-o pro ’e pasuya. act-rea-3s hit-act nom ‘Pasuya hit him.’ b. *[dp ’e mo’o ]i [ip m-i-ta eobak-o proi ’e pasuya ] nom act-rea-3s hit-act nom ‘Mo’o, Pasuya hit him.’ The structure in (63b) is accordingly ruled out because it contains an IP that is independently impossible. Similarly, the Malagasy example in (2b) cannot have a structure like that in (60) in which the patient is base-generated as adjunct to an IP containing a null pronoun in argument position. This is simply because Malagasy generally does not allow null pronouns in argument position (section 3.3). It therefore comes as no surprise that topicalization of non-triggers is generally impossible in this language. We thus have a principled explanation for why in Tsou topicalization of a nontrigger actor argument is possible, but that of a non-trigger patient argument is not. It also follows from the lack of null pronouns in Malagasy that topicalization of non-triggers is generally impossible in this language. Nevertheless, it is not immediately obvious why in the Tagalog examples in (3b) and (4b) a non-trigger in topic position is impossible. If topicalization of non-triggers is in fact derived by adjoining a DP to an independently possible sentence containing a non-trigger pro, then the structure in (60) ought to be possible in Tagalog, at least sometimes, since the language allows non-trigger pro in some cases (section 3.2). Thus, there seems to be no syntactic reason why the examples in (3b) and (4b) cannot have the structures in (64): (64) a. *[ dp ng laruan ]i [ip hihiram ang babae sa bata proi ] toy borrow.act woman child ‘The toy, the woman borrowed from the child.’ b. *[ dp ng babae ]i [ip hihiram-in proi ang laruan sa bata ] woman borrow-pass toy child ‘The woman, she borrowed the toy from the child.’

(Tagalog)

As it turns out, the structures in (64) are in principle possible syntactically, but the examples in (3b) and (4b) are excluded for an independent reason.



Topicalization and null arguments in Malagasy, Tagalog and Tsou 

Schachter and Otanes (1972: 490) point out that a non-trigger indefinite DP with kahit ‘even’ or the pronoun sinuman ‘anyone’ may occur in topic position separated from the rest by a pause (represented by the # sign), as long as it is not preceded by ng, in stark contrast with it being in postverbal position:12 (65) a. [dp (*ng) kahit (na) ilan ] # bibili si Marcos. even lnk number buy.act ‘Marcos will buy any number.’ b. [dp (*ng) sinuman ] # hindi mabuhuhat nang nag-issa ang kahong iyon. any one not lift .pass lnk alone box that ‘No one can lift that box by himself.’ (66) a. bibili si Marcos [dp (ng) kahit (na) ilan ] buy.act even lnk number ‘Marcos will buy any number.’ b. hindi mabuhuhat nang nag-issa ang kahong iyon [dp *(ng) sinuman ] not lift .pass lnk alone box that any one ‘No one can lift that box by himself.’ As the non-trigger DP may occur in topic position in (65), there is no reason why the non-trigger DP in (64) cannot do so. It thus appears that the structures in (64) for the examples in (3b) and (4b) are excluded on a par with those in (65), i.e. the DP in topic position cannot be preceded by the marker ng, for reasons that are unclear.13 The examples in (65) without the marker ng are possible, for principled reasons. Since Tagalog allows null pronouns in argument position in some cases (cf. section 3.2), it is thus a simple matter to adjoin a DP to an independently possible sentence containing a null pronoun pro in argument position, just like the structure in (62) for Tsou: (67) a. [dp kahit (na) ilan ]i # [ip binili si Marcos proi ] even lnk number buy.pass ‘Marcos will buy any number.’ b. [dp sinuman ]i # [ip hindi mabuhuhat nang nag-issa ang kahong iyon proi ] any one not lift.pass lnk alone box that ‘No one can lift that box by himself.’ The left-peripheral DPs in (67) are non-individuated. This is precisely what sanctions a null pronoun in argument position in Tagalog (cf. the discussion of the examples in (51) in section 3.2). In sum, topicalization of non-trigger arguments is possible in Tsou and Tagalog. It has the same syntactic structure in the two languages, i.e. the non-trigger is adjoined to an independently possible IP containing a null pronoun in argument position. However, the null pronoun in argument position is sanctioned differently. In Tsou, it is agreement on the auxiliary verb that sanctions an actor null pronoun (cf. section

 Paul Law

3.1), while in Tagalog it is the non-individuation of the referent of the non-trigger that sanctions the null pronoun (cf. section 3.2).

4. Conclusion An obvious advantage of comparing closely related languages is that the number of differences among them is not too large so as to obscure their similarities. Thus, despite their differences with respect to the distribution of null arguments, the three closely related languages Malagasy, Tagalog and Tsou essentially have the same syntactic structure for topicalization of the trigger argument, i.e. the trigger is moved to topic position. They differ from each other with respect to topicalization of non-trigger arguments, however; the difference is related to their independent differences with respect to null pronouns in argument position. There are several independent syntactic and morphological issues that I have not been able to adequately address. For instance, it remains unclear why Magalasy and Tagalog do not have the kind of agreement in Tsou that is related to an overt or covert actor argument, or why non-individuation of an argument allows it to be phonetically null in Tagalog, but not in Malagasy or Tsou. However, it is worth stressing that the syntactic structure for topicalization in these three languages is necessarily the way it is since it is but a consequence of the general grammatical properties of the respective language. Thus, in spite of their bewildering appearances, the facts considered here are within the range of our expectations. Malagasy, Tagalog and Tsou also do not differ much from more familiar languages like English, insofar they all exhibit the effects of general principles of grammar, e.g. those of binding theory. Investigation of less familiar languages is therefore worth undertaking, as it would enrich our understanding of the grammatical principles of natural language and the possible range of variations.

Notes * An earlier version of this paper was presented at a workshop in the Asien-Pazifik Wochen held at ZAS in September 29, 2003. I wish to thank the audience on that occasion, Hans-Martin Gärtner, Kerstin Schwabe and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. I also would like to thank my Tsou informants: Wang Qisheng, Wang Xinshi, Zhang Youtie, Zheng Yizhong and Zheng Zhongzheng, my Tagalog informants: Carmelita Butenschön, May Dorofino, Monica Villanueva and the respondents from the website http://www2.seasite.niu.edu/tagalogdiscuss/ Default.htm, as well as my Malagasy informants: Hanitry Ny Ala-Gerull, Charles Randriamasimanana, Annita Rasamoely and Zo Andriamilofo. I am responsible for errors of fact and interpretation, however.



Topicalization and null arguments in Malagasy, Tagalog and Tsou 

1. Abbreviations: act=active, ben=benefactive, circ=circumstantial, dir=directional, foc=focus, gen=genitive, lnk=linker, nact=non-active, nom=nominative, obl=oblique, pass=passive, pl=plural, pres=present, pst=past, rea=realis, rel=relative, s=singular, top=topic. These labels are for glossing purposes, and have no theoretical bearing on our concerns here. To maintain some degree of uniformity, the glossing may deviate from the original examples. The morphemes ang, ng and sa in Tagalog are not glossed. While ang/si may conceivably be glossed as nominative (cf. Kroeger 1993), it is not entirely clear how to gloss ng/ni uniformly. It is not quite accusative since it also marks possessor, e.g. ang lapis ni Maria ‘Maria’s pencil’. More extreme is sa, marking an argument as either source (from) or goal (to), depending on the predicate (cf. mag-abot ‘to hand to’). The translations are to help understanding what the sentences (roughly) mean. In no way should this be taken to imply that the examples should have the same analysis as the translations. 2. Tsou has two series of case markers, one for the trigger, what can be taken to be nominative, and the other for oblique (non-trigger) argument. Case-markers in each series are further distinguished among themselves in terms of visibility, distance to the speaker or hearer and whether it is known (Szakos 1994: 74). Thus, ’e marks the trigger that is visible and close to the speaker, si marks the trigger that is visible and close to the hearer, while ’o marks the trigger that is invisible but known. The marker na does not seem to be exclusively for the trigger that is invisible and unknown, as na may be prefixed to the pronoun a’o ‘I’. 3.

Izay does not appear as object of a preposition, and hence is not a relative pronoun.

4. Questions in Tagalog and Tsou are clefts, with two juxtaposed DPs and a copula (zou in Tsou and phonetically null in Tagalog, represented here as be. Recall that these languages are generally predicate-initial): (i) a. be sino ang [dp (lalaki-ng) [ hihiram ng laruan sa bata ]]]? (Tagalog) who man -lnk borrow.act toy child ‘Who will borrow a toy from a/the child?’ b. (zou) sia ’e [dp [ m-i-ta eobak-o ta mo’o ] (ci cou) ]? (Tsou) who nom act-rea-3s hit-act obl rel person ‘Who hit Mo’o?’ What follows ang or ’e is a DP containing a relative clause, most obvious when the head of the relative clause is overt. Since generally nothing may be extracted out of a relative clause, the whphrase sino ‘who’ and sia ‘who’ is not moved from argument position (inside the relative clause) to its surface position. What moves then in (i) is the null operator in the relative clause (not represented) (cf. the structure in (16b) for Malagasy). 5. Should it turn out that dia heads a functional projection, it is conceivable that the topic is in its Specifier position. The analysis in the text remains essentially the same, however. 6. As is usually the case in morphology, the agreement morpheme is not always overt. For instance, with the combination of the actor focus prefix m- and the past infix -o-, the third person singular agreement is phonetically null, and agreement is always phonetically null with the actor focus morpheme moso (Szakos 1994: 127, 130): (i) a. m-o-’u m-salu to fkoi. act-past-1s act-step on obl snake ‘I step on the snake.’

 Paul Law b. m-o-∅ m-salu to fkoi. act-past-3s act-step on obl snake ‘He step on the snake.’ c. moso-∅ m-salu to fkoi. act.past act-step on obl snake ‘I/he/we/you/they stepped on the snake.’ I assume that in cases like (ib) and (ic) agreement are present, albeit phonetically null (represented as ∅). 7. Note that the phrase ng mga kawal ‘the soldiers’ in (51) is a lexical error, being immediately followed by another phrase ng mga suldato ‘the soldiers’ with the same semantic role. 8. According to Himmelmann (1999: 245, 247), examples like those (51) are not cases of zero anaphora, but some other kind of zero. I assume nevertheless that the zero in these cases is syntactically represented as pro. 9. In Tagalog, the active form of the verb in actor focus may have morphology agreeing with the trigger in the plural (Schachter and Otanes 1972: 335): (i) a. magsi-kanta sila/*siya. p-sing.act 3pl/3s ‘They are singing.’ b. k-um-anta sila/siya. sing.act 3pl/3s ‘They/he are/is singing.’ Cases like (ia) do not seem to be true instances of number agreement, however, First, unlike the obligatory number agreement in languages like English, agreement of the sort in (i) is optional. Second, unlike that in Tsou, agreement in (i) is only possible with the active focus form of the verb. It is quite possible that the morpheme magsi- turns the actor focus form of a verb into a plural predicate, on a par with predicates like surround or disperse in English that do not require formal marking on the subject as plural: (ii) a. The soldiers/*soldier surrounded the building. b. The crowd/mob/*person is dispersing. 10. Keenan (1976: 274-276) points out an example where both a trigger and a non-trigger argument are covert: (i) tonga nitady an-dRasoa Rabe fa tsy nahita. came looked-for acc but not saw ‘Rabe came looking for Rasoa but (he) didn’t see (her).’ While the covert actor (in the second conjunct) is most likely the result of deleting the trigger in topic position as discussed in the text, it is not clear to me under what circumstances the covert non-trigger of the sort in (i) is possible, especially when some other examples with a null nontrigger is ungrammatical: (ii) *nividy Rabe sy/ary namono ny omby Rakoto. buy.act Rabe and killed cow ‘Rabe bought and Rakoto killed the cow.’ I will not attempt to account for covert non-triggers in Malagasy, noting that it may have ramifications for the analysis of topicalization.



Topicalization and null arguments in Malagasy, Tagalog and Tsou 

11. A non-trigger DP may appear in topic position in Tagalog when it is related to an overt, resumptive pronoun (Sells 1984): (i) a. si Jose, binili niya ang libro (, at si Maria, binili niya ang laruan) buy.pass 3s book and buy-pass 3s toy ‘Jose, he bought the book (, and Maria, she bought the toy).’ b. si Jose, kilala-ko ang lalaking nagbigay ng libro sa kanya. know.pass-1s man gave.act book 3s ‘Jose, I know the man who gave him the book.’ Significantly, the constructions in (i) differ from topicalization of a trigger argument in Tsou in (60) in that the pause after the clause-initial DP is obligatory, and that the resumptive pronoun to which it is related may lie inside a syntactic island (cf. Cinque’s (1990) Hanging Topic construction in Romance languages). The examples in (i) can be given the same adjunction account as that for Tsou, i.e. the left-peripheral DP is left-adjoined to an independently possible IP, but it remains unclear, why Tsou should differ from Tagalog in that a pause is not obligatory after the adjoined DP. According to Flegg (2003), a resumptive pronoun is possible in Malagasy, just in case the left-peripheral DP, the outer topic according to her, is separated from an independently possible sentence by an inner topic (for uniformity’s sake, the morphemes are reglossed): (ii) a. Mamaky ny boky izay nomen’i Bakoly an-dRabe Rasoa. act.read det book that pst.pass.give acc ‘Rasoa is reading the book that Bakoly gave to Rabe.’ b. *Bakoly vakin-dRasoa ny boky izay nomen’i azy an-dRabe. circ.read det book that pst.circ.give 3s.acc acc c. Bakoly, omaly vakin-dRasoa ny boky izay nomen’-ny an-Rabe. yesterday circ.read det book that pst.pass.give-3s acc ‘Bakoly, yesterday, Rasoa read the book that she gave to Rabe.’ My informants also accept simpler examples like that in (iiia), but reject that in (iiib), which Flegg’s informants accept (possibly due to dialectal variations with respect to the use of pronouns for inanimates): (iii) a. ny lamba, nanasa azy Bakoly. the clothes wash.act 3s.acc ‘The clothes, Bakoly washed them.’ b. *ny lamba dia nanasa azy Bakoly. the clothes top wash.act 3s.acc ‘The clothes, Bakoly washed them.’ Rajaona (1972: 436), cited in Fugier (1999: 89), notes that the example in (iv) is possible, where the left-peripheral DP is related to a pronoun in a position inaccessible to movement: (iv) Rakoto, mandainga ami-ny foana ianao. lie.act to-him simply 2s ‘Rakoto, you simply lie to him.’ The examples in (ic), (iiia) and (iv) may be given the same adjunction analysis as that for Tsou. (modulo dialectal variations with respect to the use of pronouns for inanimates) 12. The original examples are with the inversion marker ay. Schachter and Otanes (1972: 490) note explicitly that there is no meaning difference between a pause and ay.

 Paul Law 13. The examples in (64) remain ungrammatical even if the marker ng is absent on the topic. It is thus an independent issue as to why a DP with kahit ‘even’ without the ang- or ng-marker may occur in topic position, but those without kahit may not. I will not attempt to resolve this issue here.

Focus(ing) from a typological perspective On the discourse configurationality of West Germanic* László Molnárfi Based on evidence from modern Afrikaans, it is argued here that German and West Germanic are discourse configurational, but not focus-prominent languages. Word order variation in West Germanic is not shaped by focus licensing as in Hungarian, but by the antifocus property of definite categories (cf. Molnárfi 2002), requiring all referential definites to be outside the domain of predication for D-linked interpretation. The formal destressing of such definites in a spec-head relation enables for Cinque’s (1993) Stress Rule to apply and wide focus to be projected. On account of their referential properties, definite categories staying within the domain of predication block focus spread and receive an exhaustive interpretation. While exhaustive focus interpretation is not necessarily dependent on derivational history, in German it is often information focus that is licensed by syntactic reordering.

1. Introduction The aim of this paper is to establish that German and, in fact, all West Germanic represent a typologically different type of discourse configurationality than what one encounters in focus-prominent languages such as Hungarian. Unlike Hungarian, German does not relate assignment of narrow focus to operator licensing in designated functional projections. Rather, the only structurally anchored discourse relation is destressing, triggering scrambling of referential definites to (a) designated position(s) in the middle field. This destressing license has been called the antifocus property in Molnárfi (2002). Elaborating on the findings of Molnárfi (2002) and Abraham and Molnárfi (2002), it will be argued that the computationally relevant discourse functional domain is the domain of exhaustive focus in Hungarian, while this domain is the domain of wide (information) focus in German. Given this, formal strategies traditionally employed to describe refocusing effects cannot be automatically applied to

 László Molnárfi

capture discourse correlates of German middle field scrambling. In particular, it will be argued that, on account of its antifocus prominence, exhaustive focus can also be licensed without displacement in West Germanic. This insight makes feasible a revision of approaches that maintain an implicative relation between refocusing and derived word orders (cf. Haider and Rosengren 1998 or Abraham, this volume). The paper is structured as follows. After a few preliminary remarks on the notion of middle field scrambling in section 2, I will assess word order variation in German in terms of derivational theories that see (re)focusing as a necessary consequence of displacement (Sections 3 and 4). In section 5, several problems of focus-based minimalist approaches and of the refocusing concept of Abraham (this volume) will be identified. Investigating the relation between default accent, wide focus and derived word orders in two-place predicates, section 6 argues that in German base word orders can be pragmatically marked, while scrambling may license wide focus. Section 7 will look at word order variation from a broader, West Germanic perspective, showing that scrambling in Afrikaans may induce morphological effects, in addition to prosodic distinctions. Section 8 argues that referential definite categories in German participate in a destressing chain, which ensures assignability of Cinque’s (1993) sentential stress and the proper computation of wide focus. Definite categories have to be interpreted exhaustively if appearing outside this destressing chain. Section 9 will introduce É. Kiss’s (2006) analysis of Hungarian, supporting the view that refocusing effects can be derived without recourse to structural focus positions. Section 10 establishes the antifocus-prominence of West Germanic as opposed to focus-prominence in Hungarian. In section 11, apparent exceptions to the proposed destressing license are discussed. Section 12 gives the conclusions.

2. Scrambling as permutation of maximal projections An important typological question is to which extent languages allow for variation in the linearization sequence of lexical elements in syntactic structure. In some languages, the serialization algorithm allows for the rearrangement or “scrambling” of lexical elements into different orderings (cf. Hungarian), while other languages seem to exclude the possibility of such permutations to a great extent (cf. English). In West Germanic, the empirically relevant domain of word order variation is the middle field, that is, the structural space between the position of the finite verb (i.e. C) and the (right-peripheral) position of the infinite verb or a separable verb particle in main clauses.1 The permutation of lexical elements within this verbal bracket has been shown to display properties that are clearly different from permutations targeting the left edge of the C-domain (i.e. topicalization).2 If one restricts scrambling to the permutability of maximal projections (which is the prevailing view), the simplest case of word order variation



Focus(ing) from a typological perspective 

in West Germanic can be schematically given as the optional serialization of XP and YP, XP and YP being some maximal projections within the domain of middle field: (1) a. [C b. [C

XP YP V] Middle Field YP XP V] Middle Field

In this paper, I will take a broad view on scrambling, not imposing any restrictions on the categorial or argument status of the permutable maximal projections in (1a) and (1b). That is, the notion scrambling is not restricted here to the rearrangement possibilities of DP-arguments in three-place predicates in the spirit of Haider and Rosengren (1998), but also covers “Dutch scrambling”, that is the optional serialization patterns of adjuncts and arguments (cf. Abraham 1997, Neeleman and Reinhart 1998, Molnárfi 2002), as well as word order variation involving pronominal elements (cf. Lenerz 1994 or Molnárfi 2004b).3 Consider the following sentences from German, exemplifying word order variation in the sense discussed here: (2) a. b. c. d.

dass der Prof dem Studenten das Buch geschenkt hat that the prof-nom the student-dat the book-acc given has ‘that the prof has given the book to the student’ dass der Prof das Buch dem Studenten geschenkt hat that the prof-nom the book-acc the student-dat given has dass ich gestern das Mädchen / sie geküsst habe that I yesterday the girl / her kissed have dass ich das Mädchen / sie gestern geküsst habe that I the girl/ her yesterday kissed have

(2a) and (2b) demonstrate the permutability of arguments,4 while (2c) and (2d) show the possible rearrangement of adjuncts and (full nominal or pronominal) arguments in the German middle field. Word order variation arises as the direct and indirect object in (2a-b) and the sentential adverb and the direct object in (2c-d) allow for alternative serialization patterns. While the first type of word order variation is unique to German (cf. Haider and Rosengren 1998), the latter type (with some important variations) can be found in all Scandinavian and West Germanic languages (cf. Holmberg 1999 for Scandinavian, Corver and Riemsdijk 1994 for Dutch, Abraham 1997 and Lenerz 1994 for German and Molnárfi 2002 for Afrikaans). In what follows, I will mainly concentrate on word order variation in the spirit of (2c) and (2d), introducing into the discussion well-known and partly new empirical data from German and Afrikaans. However, the analysis presented here can be extended to account for the properties of scrambling in more complex predicates as well.

 László Molnárfi

3. Identifying the underlying order If one wants to capture variation as rearrangement of a preexisting order, the obvious question to ask is how the underlying order can be identified. This is the question derivational theories of word order variation have to face.5 Consider the schema of German middle field scrambling again, repeated as (3a) and (3b) for the sake of convenience: (3) a. [C XP YP V] b. [C YP XP V] If XP and YP constitute an ordered pair at some level of the derivation, scrambling can be seen as an operation that changes the sequence of this ordered pair. However, the question is which of the possible sequences serves as the input for the operation. A derivational view on scrambling has to presuppose an underlying base word order among the possible permutations in (3a-b), from which the alternative serialization patterns can be derived by displacement. The empirical criterion of identifying this base word order has been proposed to be pragmatic (un)markedness in German (cf. Lenerz 1977). Lenerz (1977) argues that while the permutation of XY and YP in itself is optional, the discourse functional and prosodic correlates of the alternative word orders are always different (cf. Lenerz 1977). The general empirical observation is that only one of the serialization patterns license pragmatic unmarkedness, allowing for the largest set of possible contextual links. On the other hand, a given serialization pattern will count as pragmatically marked if it needs a specific contextual embedding for proper interpretation and/or has to be supported by a specific intonation or strong prosodic signals. According to the prevailing view, the pragmatically unmarked permutation identifies the base word order, while marked word orders signal that some element has left its base position (cf. Höhle 1982, Abraham 1997, this volume, Haider and Rosengren 1998).6 Note that pragmatic markedness as a criterion for identifying deviation from the base word order is only reliable to the extent that it remains empirically verifiable (cf. Lenerz 1977 or Höhle 1982 and Reinhart 1996 for an in-depth discussion). Höhle (1982) was one of the first to develop a reliable test for German to measure pragmatic markedness of a given word order by its focus potential. Höhle’s (1982) observation is that pragmatic markedness arises as scrambling interacts with the structural conditions of focus licensing in the sentence, derived word orders inevitably triggering refocusing effects (cf. also Haider and Rosengren 1998, Meinunger 2000 and Abraham 1997 and in this volume).



Focus(ing) from a typological perspective 

4. Scrambling and focus potential Focus, in the sense as used by Höhle (1982), serves to identify non-presupposed information (cf. also Selkirk 1984). This identification mechanism has two important dimensions. First, focusing has a prosodic dimension, with each focused constituent minimally including an intonational center, which receives pitch prominence. Second, focusing has a computational dimension, given that the prosodic center of focus (the focus exponent) may project to more complex domains, called focus projection (cf. Selkirk 1984). This latter property is referred to as focus potential (cf. Haider and Rosengren 1998). If the focus potential is minimal, focus establishes a quantificational relation, identifying an exhaustive subset of a relevant set of alternatives for which the predication exclusively holds (cf. É. Kiss 1998b). This identificational focus (É. Kiss 1998b) requires an accompanying strong prosodic signal, that is, the assignment of contrastive stress (CA) (cf. Abraham 1997). If the focus potential is wide, focus merely conveys non-presupposed information. The exponent of this information focus (É. Kiss 1998b) is identified by Cinque’s (1993) sentential stress (SA), falling per default on the most deeply embedded dependent constituent (cf. Abraham 1997). According to Höhle (1982), only base word orders allow for the projection of wide focus, while derived word orders license a minimal focus potential. Compare the following sentences from German (SA is marked in bold, CA is marked in capitals): (4) a. b.

dass +F[der Prof dem Studenten das Buch geschenkt hat] that the prof-nom the student-dat the book-acc given have ‘that the prof has given the book to the student’ dass der Prof das Buch +F[dem Studenten] geschenkt hat

(SA) (CA)

In three-place predicates such as schenken, the indirect (dative) object can precede or follow the direct (accusative) object in German (4a) and (4b). However, only the word order N-D-A7 can go together with a neutral stress pattern, licensing wide focus. In case of the N-A-D-order, the indirect object must bear narrow focus and the word order is felt as pragmatically marked (cf. Lenerz 1977). In terms of contextual embedding, (4a) could be a felicitous answer to an out-of-the-blue question, providing the largest set of possible contextual links, while the use of the word order in (4b) is only justified in a specific context where the discourse referent of the indirect object is exhaustively and/or contrastively identified. In terms of focus potential, this identifies the N-D-A-pattern as the pragmatically unmarked base word order for the verb schenken and the N-A-D-pattern as the scrambled (non-canonical) word order, which licenses the pragmatic function of identificational focus (cf. Haider and Rosengren 1998). Let us briefly summarize Höhle’s (1982) view on pragmatic markedness. The basic idea is that base word orders, being a function of lexical mapping, determine VP-internal positions of arguments independently of pragmatic conditions. Scrambling is seen as variation imposed on this lexically determined domain to satisfy discourse functional requirements. Focus potential provides an empirically verifiable, reliable

 László Molnárfi

diagnostics of markedness of word orders. Scrambling changes a pragmatically neutral basic word order into a pragmatically marked derived order by (exhaustive) refocusing (cf. Abraham 1997 or Haider and Rosengren 1998). In the next section, I will address the issue of how such refocusing positions can be formalized. It will be argued that a derivational analysis of identificational focus faces a serious empirical problem in German: Refocusing effects are not triggered on the moved element itself, but in the lexical domain in which the scrambling chain originates.

5. What drives refocusing in German? A question left open in Lenerz (1977) and Höhle (1982) is how the refocusing effects be derived in formal terms in German. If one assumes that properties of the peripheral system are encoded in narrow syntax (cf. Rizzi 1997), focus can be regarded as a regular morpho-syntactic feature, constituting a possible trigger for element displacement in (4b). A case par excellence for such structurally anchored focus licensing is Hungarian. Here, focused phrases target the left edge of a designated functional projection, while the head of the same projection is lexicalized by overt movement of the verb (cf. Brody 1995): (5)

Hungarian [FP A lányti [F láttamj [VP tegnap [VP tj ti ]]]]. the girl-Acc see-PST-1S yesterday ‘It was the girl I saw yesterday’

(CA)

Note that exhaustive focus interpretation in Hungarian is only possible in a configuration where the verb and the focused phrase are strictly adjacent, restricting the domain of focus to a preverbal, structurally designated position. Adjacency indicates that the focused phrase at the left edge and the verb are licensed via a spec-head configuration in the relevant search space (cf. Brody 1995), which – without any theoretical bias8 – I will simply call focus projection (FP) here. In terms of movement type, focus licensing is seen as an instance of A’-movement, creating an operator-variable relation between the focused phrase and its trace. In this scenario, an operator expressing the relation of identification (or contrast) is universally associated with a designated structural position (cf. É. Kiss 1998b). The case of Hungarian seems to corroborate the assumed strong correlate between derived word orders and refocusing. The preverbal position of structural focus in Hungarian is a derived position, licensing word orders with a specific pragmatic function. In the spirit of (5), there has been much effort invested in finding a structurally designated focus position for German and West Germanic too. However, lacking a deeper understanding, the solutions pursued have hardly gone beyond the insight that several focus projections are needed to account for the empirical data (cf. Haftka 1994



Focus(ing) from a typological perspective 

or Krifka 1998, and, recently, Grewendorf 2004). Although rarely mentioned, the reason for the difficulties of focus-based approaches lies simply in the fact that there is but little discourse-configurationality in German with regard to focus licensing. Other than in Hungarian, focus licensing in German cannot be tied to a designated structural domain. Empirical data show that focused phrases may pop up not only at the left periphery, but also in several middle field positions (cf. Molnárfi 2004a). Notice particularly that in (4b), it is the unfocused element that precedes the focused one. If (4a) is the base word order, and (4b) is derived from this order by scrambling the direct object across the indirect object, this is an unexpected observation (cf. also Weiß 2004: 147). According the standard assumptions, it is the target position of scrambling that should be focused and not the element left behind. This observation can be pushed even further. Lenerz (1977) shows that focused elements in German generally do not scramble. Compare the following sentences (cf. Lenerz 2001: 253 or Haider and Rosengren 1998: 91): (6) a. Was hast du gestern dem Touristen gezeigt? what have you yesterday the tourist-dat shown b.?? Ich habe +F[den Wegi]gestern dem Touristen ti gezeigt. I have the way-acc yesterday the tourist-dat shown c. I habe dem Touristen gestern +F[den Weg] gezeigt. The focus-background structure of the question in (6a) requires an answer in which the direct object bears narrow focus. As the contrast between (6b) and (6c) shows, such focused elements can hardly ever be scrambled to the middle field. Rather, the focused direct object prefers to take up the main stress of the sentence in its lexical base position. This indicates that exhaustive focusing seems also possible in the VP domain in German. Obviously, in all proposals that see focus licensing as an instance of movement to some designated position in West Germanic, the do-not-move-focus restriction of Lenerz (1977 or, recently, 2001: 253) needs an adequate explanation. If one wants to stick to the idea that focus is a structurally anchored relation in German, the empirical data necessitate the inflation of the middle field with at least two functional focus projections, in addition to the SpecCP position at the left periphery.9 A recent proposal in this spirit has been made by Grewendorf (2002b: 76-77, and 2004), who argues for an extension of the domain of middle field with discourse-related positions in the spirit of Rizzi (1997) (cf. Abraham, this volume for a detailed discussion). As long as discourse features are freely assigned in the numeration, any minimalist sentence architecture may suffice to derive the required pragmatic distinctions in a purely technical sense. However, such proposals can hardly be in the spirit of conceptually elegant solutions: the machinery of optionally assigned uninterpretable focus features merely restates the empirical facts on a more abstract level, without a real attempt at explaining the observed discourse functional correlates of word order variation. Theories deriving the refocusing effects in West Germanic as deviation from a discourse-functionally optimal base position (cf. Abraham, this volume) face a similar

 László Molnárfi

dilemma. In this scenario, only those elements will be refocused that leave their basic discourse functional chain as determined by categorially or context-bound discourse status (that is in case of pronouns vs. definite and indefinite nouns). Movement changing the base word order is not seen as being triggered by formal morphosyntactic features, but as an optional chain-formation, which is driven by discourse optimization only.10 Given that unfocused definite DPs always have to precede indefinite DPs in German (cf. Lenerz 1977), Abraham (1997) assumes a VP-external base position for referential definites as themes (in the sense of presupposed information) and a VP-internal base position for indefinite categories as rhemes (in the sense of new, or contrastively used presupposed information). Combined with a theory of structurally governed stress assignment (Cinque 1993), this mechanism suffices to explain the refocusing effects of scrambling found to hold for indefinites and definites in the middle field. Being rhematic, indefinite categories will be refocused if moved outside VP, while, definite categories, being thematic, will be refocused if inside VP (cf. Abraham, this volume). Note, however, that this concept of refocusing (even more than minimalist approaches) has to inflate the German middle field with multiple focus positions, in which definite and indefinite categories take up contrastive stress (cf. Abraham and Conradie 2001: Chapter 6). In particular, assuming their different base positions, refocusing of definites and indefinites has to be seen as licensed along different discourse chains, involving distinct focus positions. While definites, being base generated outside VP, have to be lowered into VP to take up contrastive stress, cf. (7a), VP-internal indefinites, if contrastively stressed, have to be assumed to move minimally within VP in order to reach a focus position to the right of sentence adverbs (cf. (7b) and Abraham and Conradie 2001: 104):11

One of the drawbacks of the refocusing concept is that discourse effects can only be achieved by displacement that changes the base-value of a derivational chain. This



Focus(ing) from a typological perspective 

forces the theoretically suspect rightward movement of VP-externally base generated thematic material for purposes of refocusing in (7a)12 and the string-vacuous movement of the indirect object in (7b), which is solely postulated to provide the focused indefinite category with the required [–base]-feature within VP. The main question the previous discussion boils down to is whether the inflation of the sentence structure with multiple focus projections is the most economic solution for deriving the pragmatic effects of word order variation in German. The only theoretical insight to be gained from the data seems to be that exhaustive focus is possible almost everywhere within the middle field in German, in sharp contrast to a discourse-configurational language like Hungarian, where there is only one designated position for focus-licensing at the left edge of the VP (cf. É. Kiss 1998b). The problem lies in the central assumption that the licensing of identificational focus involves derived positions, while information focus is a function of base word order, not requiring any formal licensing mechanism (cf. É. Kiss 1998b or Haider and Rosengren 1998: 1516). I will argue that this assumption cannot be upheld for German. On the one hand, it will be shown that (a) derived word orders are not necessarily pragmatically marked and that (b) it is information focus that sometimes requires syntactic reordering (cf. also Molnárfi 2002). On the other hand, I will argue there is no need for designated positions to license identificational focus in German. Rather, if appearing within the domain of predication or at the left periphery, referential definite categories will be necessarily interpreted exhaustively on account of their specificational semantics (cf. along similar lines, É. Kiss 2006, for Hungarian).

6. Scrambling in two-place predicates – a case of pragmatically marked base word orders While focus potential provides an attractive criterion of identifying base word orders, there are good reasons to believe that a direct implicative relation between derived status and pragmatic markedness cannot be upheld. Investigating the permutability of arguments and adjuncts in two-place predicates in German, Abraham (1997) observes that definite and indefinite object categories show a different degree of pragmatic markedness if appearing to the left or to the right of sentence adverbs. The varying compatibility of the possible word orders with wide focus projection indicates that definite and indefinite categories license different contextual embeddings in German (cf. Molnárfi 2002 or Abraham and Molnárfi 2002). In fact, the structural conditions of pragmatic unmarkedness for definites and indefinites are the opposite in most cases. Consider the following sentences (cf. Molnárfi 2002: 1118-1119): (8) a. Ich habe [ VP gestern +F[ das Mädchen] geküsst] I have yesterday the girl kissed

 László Molnárfi

b. c. d. e. f.?

(*und sie dann +F[ nach Hause begleitet])...CA and her then to house escorted ‘I kissed the girl yesterday and then escorted her home.’ Ich habe das Mädchen +F[VP gestern geküsst] (und sie danach +F[nach Hause begleitet]) ...SA Ich habe [VPgestern +F [sie] geküsst] (* und danach +F [nach Hause begleitet]) ...CA I have yesterday her kissed and then to house escorted Ich habe sie +F[VP gestern geküsst] (und danach +F[nach Hause begleitet])... GA Ich habe +F[VP gestern ein Mädchen geküsst] (und sie danach +F[nach Hause begleitet])...SA Ich habe ein +F[Mädchen] [VPgestern geküsst] (*und sie danach +F[nach Hause begleitet])...CA

Assuming a shibboleth-function of sentence adverbs as VP-markers (cf. Pollock 1989), the attested variation in the ordering of arguments relative to gestern will identify movement to the VP-external domain. In this spirit, the data indicate that referential definite nominal and pronominal categories will only license wide focus potential if outside VP (i.e. staying to the left of sentence adverbs), while indefinite elements will be exponents of wide focus only if appearing in situ (i.e. to the right of sentence adverbs). What this boils down to is that sentential stress cannot be assigned to all elements in the base position. More precisely, the selection of a focus exponent for wide focus projection seems to be sensitive with respect to the semantic property of definiteness in German. On the one hand, personal pronouns and definite full nouns do not accept sentential stress if staying to the right of sentence adverbs and as such cannot appear as exponents of wide focus projection, cf. (8a) and (8c).13 Rather, their discourse functionally optimal position is to the left of sentence adverbs where they are destressed and interpreted as D-linked elements. In the latter case, the participial head is the only candidate to take over sentential stress, enabling wide focus to be computed within VP, cf. (8b) and (8d). Molnárfi (2002) argues that definites have to participate in a derivational chain to reach prosodic and pragmatic unmarkedness.14 Indefinites, on the other hand, are allowed to take up sentential stress in the base position, licensing wide focus projection, cf. (8e). In the case of indefinites, movement out of the predication domain is only possible if supported by minimal (exhaustive) focus, resulting in a highly marked word order, cf. (8f). Similarly to VP-internal definites, the occurrence of definite categories in the domain of the left periphery will induce strong prosodic effects in Germanic. According to standard assumptions, such topicalized elements participate in an A’-chain, targeting an operator position at the left periphery (SpecCP). Consider the following topicalization data from German (cf. Abraham 1997 or Frey 2006):



Focus(ing) from a typological perspective 

(9)

a. [CP [Das Mädcheni/siei] habe ich [VP gestern ti geküsst]]. b.* [CP [Das Mädcheni/siei] habe ich [VP gestern ti geküsst]]. c. [CP Ich habe [das Mädcheni/siei [VP gestern ti geküsst]]. d. [CP [Das Mädcheni/siei] habe ich [VP gestern ti geküsst]]. e.? [CP [Ein Mädcheni] habe ich [VP gestern ti geküsst]]. f.? [CP [Ein Mädcheni] habe ich [VP gestern ti geküsst]].

(CA) (SA) (SA) (CA) (CA) (CA)

Topicalized definite objects (nominal or pronominal) may occur with or without contrastive stress in the SpecCP position. Note, however, that, contrary to scrambling, cf. (9c), the topical status of fronted definites cannot license sentential stress and preserve wide focus potential, cf. (9b). This indicates that topicalization of referential definite categories along an A’-chain will always induce focalization effects (cf. also Abraham, this volume). Such effects can be shaded by the prosodic intensification of some other element in the sentence. In (9a) the prosodic intensification of the sentence adverb creates a minimal focus domain, which overrides the strong prosodic signal induced by the definite object outside its destressing chain. The SpecCP-position is thus not the primary destressing position for thematic or topical elements in West Germanic (cf. similarly Frey 2006).15 The same observations can be made with respect to the fronting indefinite categories in (9e) and (9f). Given that indefinite categories are exponents of wide focus in their base position already, their fronting to a secondary focus position (with or without prosodic shading) results in highly marked word orders (cf. Abraham 1997). The data allow for the following generalizations (cf. also Abraham 1997):

(i) The discourse functionally and prosodically unmarked position for referential definite categories is a destressed position outside VP. Definite DPs appear with strong prosodic signals in any other position. (ii) The discourse functionally and prosodically unmarked position for indefinites is the base position, which bears the main stress of the sentence. Indefinite DPs attract strong prosodic signals in any other derived position.

Unless one is willing to allow VP-external base-generation, lowering and string-vacuous movement in syntax (cf. the discussion in section 5), (i) and (ii) indicate that there are elements that cannot license sentential stress in the base position and that wide focus potential does not have to be destroyed by scrambling (cf. Molnárfi 2002, 2003 and also Fanselow 2003). Prosodic markedness is preserved as long as indefinites stay within VP as primary exponents of information focus and definites scramble to avoid stressattracting positions. This observation renders necessary a revision of the traditionally assumed implicative relation between derived word orders and pragmatic markedness.

 László Molnárfi

7. Scrambling in Afrikaans Looking at the empirical correlates of scrambling from a broader, West Germanic perspective, we find an interesting morphological pattern in the optional linearization of sentence adverbs and arguments in modern Afrikaans (cf. Raidt 1994 or Ponelis 1979). Unless appearing in a scrambled position in the middle field, referential definite objects have to be marked by the focus particle vir in two-place predicates (cf. Molnárfi 1997). The morphological correlates of scrambling in Afrikaans surface in two structural domains: the domain of the predication and the domain of the left periphery. This indicates that that the domains of prosodic and pragmatic markedness for definite object categories in German are marked morphologically in Afrikaans. Witness the following sentences (cf. Molnárfi 1997, 1999, 2002, 2003 for discussion): (10) a. b. c. d. e.? f.

dat ek [VP gister (vir) die meisie gesoen het] that I yesterday for the girl kissed have dat ek [VP gister *( vir ) haar gesoen het] that I yesterday for her kissed have dat ek die meisiei/haari [VP gister ti gesoen het] dat ek [VP gister (*vir ) meisies gesoen het] (SA) dat ek (*vir ) meisiesi [VP gister ti gesoen het] [CP * (Vir) die meisiei/haari het ek [gister ti gesoen]]. for the girl/her have I yesterday kissed

(CA) (CA) (SA) (CA) (CA)

The morphological correlates of scrambling in Afrikaans are reflected in the distribution of the particle vir in two-place predicates.16 While the discourse interpretations of the scrambled and non-scrambled direct objects are very similar to what we have observed in case of German, cf. (8a-f), definite categories to the right of sentence adverbs must be marked additionally by the particle vir in Afrikaans, cf. (10a-b). Note that the insertion of vir is obligatory, if personal pronouns (or proper names) are to follow sentence adverbs or negation particles in two-place predicates in Afrikaans, cf. (10b), while such an insertion is strongly preferred, but not obligatory in case of nonscrambled definite full nouns, cf. (10a) (cf. Raidt 1994: 98-99 or Ponelis 1979: 203). Interestingly, we find no morphological marking on definite (pro)nominal categories if appearing in scrambled positions (10c), or on indefinite categories in general, irrespectively of their syntactic position, cf. (10d) and (10e) (cf. Molnárfi 1997 and 1999). The morphological marking surfaces again with topicalized definite categories, which, if contrastively stressed, must be accompanied by the particle vir, cf. (10f). Note that the category status of of vir in (10a, b and f) is not that of a free morpheme. As extensively argued in Molnárfi (1997, 1999 and 2002), the use of vir in two-place predicates is subjected to certain restrictions that are clearly distinct from the distributional properties of other prepositions in Afrikaans. For reasons of space, I cannot spell out here the list of arguments to support this and have to refer the reader to Molnárfi (1997) and (1999) for a detailed discussion.17



Focus(ing) from a typological perspective 

The question arises of how the distribution of the morphological marker vir in Afrikaans can be accounted for in a theory of word order variation. Note that, while not weakening the relation of syntactic transitivity between the verb and the direct object, vir if used in two-place-predicates has a clear discourse function. Vir renders the object with which it occurs pragmatically affected, that is, more rhematic (cf. Ponelis 1979: 205). The structural domains where such rhematization takes place correspond to the domains outside the destressing chain of definite categories: the domain of the predication (VP) and the domain of topicalization at the left periphery (SpecCP). Thus, while definite categories outside their destressing domain attract strong prosodic signals in German, such definites will be marked morphologically in Afrikaans. The existence of such morphological signals strongly indicates that scrambling in two-place-predicates in West Germanic cannot be accounted for in terms of free adverbial attachment (Zwart 1997, or Haider and Rosengren 1998) or base-generation (Neeleman and Reinhart 1998). Rather, the data in (10a-e) indicate the existence of some formal licensing mechanism for the possible permutations, which cannot be captured by stylistic variation. In Molnárfi (2004b), vir is analysed as a nominal complementizer of the D-domain, signalling the refocused status of definite objects if appearing outside their destressing chain.

8. A discourse functional account An alternative to the refocusing concept (Abraham, this volume) is to assume that lexical mapping may determine VP-internal positions only (cf. Molnárfi 2002). The domain of external merge is thus VP, where all lexical material (definite of indefinite) is base-generated (cf. Bierwisch 1988, Haider 1993). This assumption maintains the close structural relation of constituenthood between subcategorised arguments and V (cf. Chomsky 1965), while deriving all occurrences of definite and indefinite categories outside VP as a result of movement that targets the left edge of a functional domain. In this scenario, a possible explanation for the contrasts in (8a-f) and (10a-f) lies in the way the focus-presupposition structure interacts with structural stress-assignment. Elements belonging to the presupposition should be deaccented for proper interpretation (cf. Terken and Nooteboom 1987), while elements belonging to the assertion should be computed within the domain where the main stress of the sentence is assigned. In case of wide focus, this domain is usually the domain of predication, that is VP (cf. also Lambrecht 2000). Note that the mechanism of sentential stress assignment is blind, not looking at the discourse function of a given element. Cinque’s (1993) Stress Rule simply searches for the most deeply embedded element and assigns prosodic prominence to it, starting the algorithm of wide focus projection at the same time. Given that base word order is a function of lexical and not of discourse mapping (in line with Bierwisch 1988 and Haider 1993 and against Abraham 1997), this leads

 László Molnárfi

to conflict situations where the prosodic prominence assigned according to the depth of embeddedness and the expected discourse status of a given element do not match. Prosodic prominence assigned according to the depth of embeddedness reinforces the expected discourse status only in case of indefinites. Being inherently rhematic, indefinites are ready to take up sentential stress, which identifies them as focus exponents in the relevant structural position. Such focus exponents marked by sentence accent allow the assignment of projecting (information) focus. (11) a. dass ich [VP gestern [VP Mädchen geküsst habe]] b. dat ek [VP gister [VP meisies gesoen het]]

(SA) (SA)

(11a-b) confirms Abraham’s (1997) findings that the VP-domain in German is a domain of information focus proper, harbouring rhematic elements. Such rhematic indefinites will leave VP only reluctantly: by evacuating VP, they would lose their focus exponent status under Cinque’s stress rule and would be forced out of the predication domain which is relevant for their proper discourse interpretation. Hence, such movement results in highly marked word orders, which have to be supported by pragmatically assigned stress patterns: ( 12)?? a. dass ich Mädcheni [VP gestern ti geküsst habe] b. dat ek meisies [VP gister gesoen het]

(CA) (CA)

Following Abraham (1997), contrastive stress in (12a) and (12b) signals that the indefinite object has left its discourse-functionally optimal base position. Such marginal refocusing strategy, preserving the stress of the displacement element, is also called focus-scrambling (cf. Neeleman 1994). In Abraham’s terms, the target position of focus scrambling is an A’- position with the feature markers [-base] and [-def].18 Definites, on the other hand, if they carry a thematic discourse value by virtue of their categorial membership (personal pronouns) or by virtue of their context-bound status (full definite nouns), should not be part of the domain of focus proper (i.e. VP). Referential definite categories get an exhaustive interpretation if being computed in the domain of predication (cf., along similar lines, É. Kiss 2006), disturbing the projection of focus and blocking assignment of sentential stress. This exhaustive interpretation is identified either by strong prosodic signals as in German (cf. 13 a and b) or marked morphologically as in Afrikaans, cf. (13c) and (13d): (13)

a. b. c. d.

dass ich [VP gestern [VP das Mädchen geküsst habe]] dass ich [VP gestern [VP sie geküsst habe]] dat ek [VP gister [VP ( vir ) die meisie gesoen het]] dat ek [VP gister [VP*( vir ) haar gesoen het]]

(CA) (CA) (CA) (CA)

The reason for the discourse functional markedness of definite categories in the domain of predication lies in their referential properties. Consider first full nominal definites. In semantic terms, definiteness represents a choice to single out a candidate from a presupposed set of possible candidates for which the predication holds. Just as



Focus(ing) from a typological perspective 

structural focus, definiteness is thus about identification of a subset among a relevant set of alternatives. This identification process can be licensed in three ways: exhaustively (excluding alternatives), contrastively (contrasting the subset with alternatives) or anaphorically (by linking the subset to a previous choice in the discourse). In the former two cases, the identification is licensed by focusing, while in the latter case, the identification is licensed by D-linking.19 What this boils down to is that the identificational property of definite categories must be discourse-functionally anchored, otherwise the interpretation of definiteness becomes exhaustive and/or contrastive. The discourse anchoring is achieved by linking the definite element to an accessible discourse referent. As, in case of wide focus, the predication domain is also the domain of assertion (cf. Lambrecht 2000), D-linking of a referential definite category must take place outside VP (cf., along similar lines, Adger 1993, Büring 1993 or Molnárfi 2002). The distribution, interpretation and accent distinctions of the inherently definite personal pronouns can be accounted for along similar lines. Not being referential on their own, the dependence of pronominal elements to accessible discourse referents outside the domain of assertion is even more evident. On account of their category-inherently thematic status, VP-internal pronouns can establish a similar form of discourse linking only by deixis, which necessarily triggers an exhaustive interpretation within the domain of predication (cf. Molnárfi 2004b). This suffices to account for the prosodic markedness of VP-internal definites without recourse to structural focus positions. This analysis can be extended to account for prosodic/morphological markedness of topicalized elements. As the left periphery is primarily a stress-attracting position (cf. section 6), the identificational semantics of definiteness will trigger an exhaustive interpretation in this domain. Such effects can be shaded by the prosodic intensification of some other element in the lower structural domains, so that – superficially – fronted elements may appear without strong prosodic signals under specific circumstances. However, such stress shift operations are only ancillary and cannot license (a) wide focus projection, cf. (9b), and (b) fronting of elements that are structurally dependent on the scrambling position in the middle field for their formal destressing. Such an element is the weak object pronoun “es” in German, which is licensed in the scrambled position, but not at the left periphery or within VP: (14) a. Der Prof hat es [VP gestern dem Studenten geschenkt]. the prof-nom has it-acc yesterday the student-dat given b.* Es hat der Prof [VP gestern dem Studenten geschenkt]. c.* Der Prof hat [VP gestern es dem Studenten geschenkt]. The Afrikaans data in section 7, showing that VP-internal definite objects and topicalized definite objects share the same morphological marking underline the discourse functional and prosodic parallels between the predicative and left-peripheral domain.20 On account of their identificational semantics, referential definites thus prefer to leave the domain of the predication, as they would disturb the computation of information focus if appearing to the right of sentence adverbs. Their unmarked position is

 László Molnárfi

outside VP where they are D-linked in a discourse chain for destressing. Additionally, definite object categories (nominal or pronominal) in Afrikaans appear morphologically unmarked in the scrambling position. Consider the following sentences: (15)

a. b. c. d.

dass ich das Mädcheni [VP gestern ti geküsst habe] dass ich siei [VP gestern ti geküsst habe] dat ek die meisie [VP gister ti gesoen het] dat ek haar [VP gister ti gesoen het]

(SA) (SA) (SA) (SA)

As the VP is fully evacuated in (15a-d), the main stress of the sentence can be taken over by the verbal participle under Cinque’s stress asignment rule. In (15a-d), scrambling of the nominal or pronominal definite object restores contextual unmarkedness, rather than destroying it (cf. also Molnárfi 2003 and Fanselow 2003). This indicates the existence of a common trigger for the scrambling of full nominal and pronominal definite categories (in line with Lenerz 1994, Abraham 1997 and Molnárfi 2002, 2004b, and against Haider and Rosengren 1998). Note that, lacking the identificational semantics, non-specific indefinite categories are not expected to participate in destressing chains. In fact, as primary exponents of wide focus, they are predicted to lack the trigger to move at all. This prediction is born out. Recall that, regardless of their syntactic position, non-specific indefinites can never be associated with the focus particle vir in Afrikaans, which is the morphological marker of configurations that disrespect the destressing license (cf. Molnárfi 2004a). This indicates that scrambling of indefinite and definite categories to the left constitute fundamentally different types of movement operations (cf. Neeleman 1994).

9. Refocusing without focus positions In a recent paper, É. Kiss (2006) proposes a similar approach to word order variation in Hungarian, arguing that identificational focus does not involve actual checking of focus features. The empirical basis of her analysis is a semantic difference between the interpretation of definite and indefinite categories in the structural focus position. É. Kiss (2006) observes that focused referential definite phrases necessarily express exhaustive identification, while focused indefinites lack this reading: (16) a. b.

Hungarian [FP A lányti [F láttamj [VP tegnap [VP tj ti ]]]]. the girl-Acc see-PST-1S yesterday ‘It was the girl I kissed yesterday’ [FP Lányokati [F láttamj [VP tegnap [VP tj ti ]]]]. girl pl-Acc kiss-PST-1S yesterday ‘I saw girls yesterday’

(CA) (SA)



Focus(ing) from a typological perspective 

While appearing in the relevant preverbal position and bearing the main stress of the sentence, the indefinite object does not have to introduce alternatives or be contrastive or exhaustive in any sense of the word. Contrary to (16a), (16b) can be an all-new sentence, that is, a felicitous answer to an out-of-the-blue question. This indicates that the focus domain of (16b) is larger than its prosodically prominent focus exponent, i.e. that focus in (16b) has wide potential. On the other hand, the focused definite object in (16a) must be interpreted as the exhaustive or contrastive identification of the subset of the set of girls, for which the truth conditions of the predication hold. É. Kiss (2006) proposes a mechanism that derives the exhaustive interpretation of focused definites in Hungarian from their predicative properties, that is, without recourse to focus projections. It is argued that if predicated about, the identificational listing referential definites semantically represent necessarily becomes exhaustive or contrastive. This is not the case with indefinites, which lack the necessarily exhaustive reading if focused. The central observation is that the interpretation of identificational focus in Hungarian is identical with that of a cleft or pseudo-cleft construction as attested in English (cf. also É. Kiss 2006, for Hungarian): (17) a. A könyvet olvastam tegnap. the book-ACC read-PST-1S yesterday b. What I read yesterday was the BOOK.

(CA)

(17b) has been analysed as a specificational copular sentence, which consists of a subject (the What..-clause), a copula and a predicative complement (cf. Higgins 1973). The predicate in (17b) is specificational in the sense that it exhaustively identifies particular members of a domain delimited by the subject, excluding alternatives. This contrasts to predication in narrow sense (cf. 16b), which involves no exhaustive listing and can only be expressed by bare nominal or non-specific indefinite noun phrases (cf. É. Kiss 2006). It can be argued that, on account of their identification semantics, the only type of predicate referential definite categories can represent is that of a specificational predicate (cf. also Higgins 1973 and É. Kiss 2006). Then, assuming the predicative nature of focus, exhaustive interpretation of VP-internal definites will not be the result of structural focus licensing, but the concomitant of the specificational reading referential definite nouns acquire in the domain of predication. É. Kiss (2006) puts forward the hypothesis that both exhaustive focusing and information focus are a result of movement targeting the left edge of a predicative position (PredP). This position is also the prosodically most prominent position in Hungarian (cf. Szendrői 2003). Movement occurs to ensure assignability of Cinque’s (1993) sentential stress to phrases that are marked as the information focus of the sentence. In this scenario, focused elements can only reach the prosodically prominent position by derivation. The arising semantic differences with the respect to the interpretation of focus can be derived from the different predicative properties of the elements participating in the prosodically driven chain (cf. É. Kiss 2006). This renders unnecessary the postulation of additional functional projections for deriving the accent and focal distinctions in (16a) and (16b).

 László Molnárfi

While I agree with É. Kiss (2006), that narrow focusing is in a sense the function of the predication domain, rather than the result of movement to a focus licensing position, I do not regard contrastive focusing in West Germanic as an instance of raising to a higher predicative position. Rather, I take the exhaustive interpretation of definite objects in (13a and b) to be licensed in situ, without any displacement. First, there is no detectable displacement in the case of contrastively focused VP-internal elements in German, which just appear to be in their base position, attracting pitch prominence in situ. Second, fronted elements in West Germanic can (but need not) have a contrastive interpretation (cf. section 6). Clearly, such elements are in no predicative position, so that an extra refocusing mechanism seems to be necessary in any case. However, what contrastively focused topicalized and VP-internal definite categories do have in common is that they are outside their structural destressing position, which is at the left edge of some VP-external middle field position in German. This is a designated deaccentuation position, which Hungarian does not seem to have. Note further that the similar discourse functional status of VP-internal and fronted definite (but not the indefinite!) categories can be extended to their identical morphological marking in some languages. In section 7, I have presented data from modern Afrikaans to this end. What all this boils down to is that, contrary to Hungarian, referential definites do not target a functional predicative position in German and West Germanic. Rather, on account of a designated destressing position in German, it the sheer presence of referential definites within the domain of predication that will inevitably lead to refocusing and exhaustive interpretation. That is the reason why referential definite categories, other than indefinites, cannot take up sentential (neutral) stress within VP.

10. Defocusing as the trigger of scrambling The question arises of what the movement of definite categories to the left is triggered by in formal terms. Elaborating on the insights of Molnárfi (2002) and Abraham and Molnárfi (2002), I will argue that scrambling in West Germanic creates a destressing chain, which is required by a PF-condition, that safe-guards the preservation of wide focus potential. The computationally relevant discourse domain is thus the domain of projecting focus in German, as opposed to Hungarian, where this domain is the domain of exhaustive focus. Compare the following sentences ((15a) is repeated here as (19) for the sake of convenience): Hungarian (18) [FP A lányti [F csókoltamj [VP tegnap tj ti ]]]. domain of exhaustive focus domain of predication the girl-Acc kiss-PST-1S yesterday ‘It was the girl I kissed yesterday’

(CA)

(19)

Focus(ing) from a typological perspective 

German [C dass ich das Mädcheni [VP gestern ti geküsst habe]] domain of destressing domain of information focus that I the girl yesterday kissed have

(SA)

There is prosodic contrast between (18) and (19), which shows that the movement of the definite object out of the VP-domain achieves the opposite discourse effect in Hungarian and German. In Hungarian, refocusing effects show up on the moved element, while in German, scrambling affects the focus interpretation of the domain in which the movement chain originates. In Hungarian, an operator-variable relation is established, which yields exhaustive focus interpretation of the moved element in a limited search space. This limited search space can be taken to be a focus projection in the spirit of Brody (1995) or a predicative projection in the spirit of É. Kiss (2006). In both cases, the relevant domain in (18) must be accompanied by a strong prosodic signal at the left edge. In German, on the other hand, the scrambled definite is destressed in its target position, while wide focus potential within VP is licensed, cf. (19). Such a displacement does not display properties of an operator movement, but has been argued to license a clause-bound argument chain, which may create (or destroy) binding possibilities (cf. Haider and Rosengren 1998 or Hinterhölzl 2004a). In prosodic terms, wide focus means the assignability of sentential accent in (19) under Cinque’s (1993) stress rule. Sentence accent falling on the most deeply embedded constituent enables wide focus projection and safeguards maximal contextual unmarkedness. This indicates that the trigger for scrambling cannot be the licensing of exhaustive focus in German. Rather, word order variation in German is an enabler of configurations in which wide focus can be computed. That is, if by anything, scrambling is governed by an interface condition that requires referential definite categories to be outside the domain of focus proper, i.e. outside the domain of predication at PF. This interface condition can be stated as follows: (20) PF-condition on the formation of scrambling chains Ensure the assignability of sentential stress. Given (20) and with regard to the contrast between (18) and (19), a typological distinction can be drawn between the Hungarian type of discourse configurationality, which is focus-prominent and the West Germanic type, which is antifocus-prominent (cf. Molnárfi and Abraham 2002). In contrast to focus-prominent languages such as Hungarian, in West Germanic definite elements move in order not to be computed in the focus domain. Other than in Hungarian, discourse functionally driven movement seems to target the prosodically least prominent instead of the prosodically most prominent structural position at the left edge. That word order variation can be shaped by the requirement to avoid prosodic prominence is a plausible assumption in the case of light elements such as pronouns, which have been shown to form specific clusters in West Germanic (cf. Abraham 1997, Weiß 2004). Phonologically reduced clitics, which

 László Molnárfi

parasitize a head-host to escape prosodically autonomous status at clausal level, are a case in point. Let us extend this insight to all referential definite categories, which – on account of their identificational semantics – have to avoid stress-attracting positions if pragmatic unmarkedness is to be preserved. Formalizing this trigger in narrow syntax, we can say that referential definites contain a feature that renders them incompatible with the computation of wide focus. The presence of this feature at PF will block further spread of focus, attracting heavy pitch prominence and/or morphological effects in Afrikaans (cf. section 7). Given focus exponents are identified by prosodic clues at PF, one can take the feature referential definite categories are marked for to encode the prosodic property of destressing. This relation has been called the antifocus property (Molnárfi 2002). The technical spell-out of the (inherently) defocused status of definite categories is a topic that alone could fill many papers (cf. Molnárfi 2002, 2003, 2004a, 2004b in this respect). Due to lack of space, let me here very briefly sketch two possible solutions. First, antifocus can be taken to be encoded by a formal, morpho-syntactic feature [+AF], which projects its own functional domain for anaphoric destressing (cf. Molnárfi 2002, Abraham and Molnárfi 2002, Molnárfi 2003):

In (21) the XP moves out of VP in order to eliminate its antifocus feature in the Specposition of the functional projection which the AF-feature is the head of. The functional domain of the AF-projection(s) corresponds to Abraham’s (1997) thematic domain in the middle field, while the rhematic domain is VP where all lexical material is base-generated. The functional domain of destressing will attract elements associated with the AF-feature to leave their base positions for purposes of feature checking. What is generally called scrambling in (21) is thus overt movement of the object to the Spec-position of AFP. The resulting pragmatic effect is that of anaphoric destressing, enabling the discourse linking of the object on the level of background-focus structure (cf. similarly Zubizaretta 1998). Here, some interesting problems arise (many of them not trivial in a derivational framework), especially with respect to opacity, recursion, feature-strength, and optionality. Having discussed them in great detail elsewhere, (cf. Molnárfi 2002, 2003, 2004a, 2004b, Abraham and Molnárfi 2002), I will have to put them aside here due to space reasons (see, however, below, for a short comment on optionality). Alternatively, one can say that, on a par with Selkirk’s (1984) [+F]-feature, antifocus is a pragmatic feature, which is assigned by default to definite full nouns and which is an intrinsic property of the inherently thematic personal pronouns. In this scenario, scrambling is prosodically driven movement to the left edge, ensuring that (inherently) defocused elements end up in the prosodically least prominent domain in



Focus(ing) from a typological perspective 

West Germanic. In German, there is such a structural domain in the middle field, associated with argument positions between CP and VP. Recall that the mirror image of this movement has been proposed for Hungarian (cf. É. Kiss 2006), where focused elements target the left edge of the prosodically prominent Pred-projection. The crucial discourse configurational difference between Hungarian and West Germanic is that in Hungarian the prosodically prominent position at the left edge can only be reached via displacement. As the Hungarian VP is flat (cf. É. Kiss 2006), this necessitates the involvement of pragmatic features (such as [+F]) to mark elements for information focus status. The free assignment of the focus-feature provides the formal link between information focus and the position where main stress is assigned. In German, there is no need to assign focus-features in the derivation: as the VP is structured, the position of the focus exponent of information focus is determined in terms of depth of embedding. However, prosodic features can be deployed to mark possible candidates for destressing. If assignability of sentential stress in the spirit of (20) is an interface condition that may require the presence or absence of a given element in a certain context, referential definites within the domain of predication have to be made invisible for prosodic interpretation. In a derivational scenario, the way to do it is by remerging a given element in a higher position in the structure and by deleting the lower copy at PF, that is, by displacement. This derives prosodically driven movement for defocusing in West Germanic. While in Hungarian word order variation ensures that an element marked for focus gets its main stress in the prosodically prominent position at the left edge of the predicative part of the sentence, in German, scrambling for defocusing ensures maximal prosodic (and pragmatic) unmarkedness by removing all material which, on account of its referential or predicative properties, would block assignment of sentential stress and projection of wide focus. That is, to avoid unwanted pragmatic markedness, in West Germanic movement of definites is required towards the prosodically least prominent position in the middle field, which ensures that Cinque’s (1993) Stress Assignment Rule works properly and wide focus is projected. That is the reason why in Hungarian the predicative position can also be targeted by indefinites, while West Germanic scrambling displays the well-known definiteness effects. Another striking feature of West Germanic scrambling is its fundamental optionality as opposed to Hungarian focus-movement. In Hungarian, the reason is obvious. As every utterance must have some informative value (cf. É. Kiss 2006) the preverbal position is either filled with referential noun phrases or, by default, by predicative verb modifiers. In West Germanic, scrambling movement ensures pragmatic unmarkedness. However, discourse optimization may make it necessary that referential definites are spelled out in the domain of predication for reasons of exhaustive/contrastive interpretation. We can tackle this dilemma by assuming that definite objects are always shifted to the destressing position, but this movement may or may not induce phonological effects (cf. Molnárfi 2003). Within the copy theory of movement, such (apparent) optionality can be derived if one assumes that non-trivial derivational chains may be

 László Molnárfi

spelled out at the base position as well (cf. Bošković 2002). A conceptual advantage of such an assumption is that the pronunciation conditions of the destressing chain can be exploited by the interface levels for discourse optimizing. While the spell out of the base-copy within the domain of predication will induce exhaustive interpretation of definite categories and minimal focus, the spell out of the higher copy in the position of anaphoric destressing will enable D-linking of definite categories and wide focus projection. The pronunciation alternatives will define different prosodic domains for the computation of information focus (cf. Molnárfi 2004a). As only the copy that is spelled out will be visible for prosody, the interpretation and accent distinctions of insitu or scrambled definites can be derived.

11. On the interpretation of scrambled and non-scrambled definite object categories From the previous discussion it follows that the common property all scrambled definites share is simply their lack of focus (see, along similar lines, Holmberg 1999 for Scandinavian object shift). There is, contra Fanselow (2003), no altruistic trigger for word order variation, nor is there a formalized pragmatic feature such as familiarity (cf. Adger 1993), anaphoricity (cf. Jäger 1995), specificity (cf. Hinterhölzl 2004a) or topichood (cf. Frey 2004a, Meinunger 2000), which should be licensed by scrambling in a matching functional projection. Rather, any pragmatic property scrambled elements display must be regarded as a consequence of their prosodic destressing and not as the trigger of word order variation. Indeed, if scrambling of referential definite categories may enable wide focus projection and maximal contextual unmarkedness (see section 4), word order variation cannot have any pragmatic motivation. In other words, definite categories do not move because they are topical, specific or familiar as encoded in terms of some morpho-syntactic trigger. Rather, scrambled definites are interpreted as topical or thematic on account of their syntactic position and destressed status (cf. also Abraham 1997). This is a conclusion in concert with the findings of the phonological experiments conducted by Terken and Nooteboom (1987) and Nooteboom and Kruyt (1987), showing that during parsing D-linked elements are primarily identified on the basis of accent distinctions.21 A discourse split for VP-internal and VP-external definite nouns in the sense proposed here has been often questioned on empirical grounds. Note that in our scenario definiteness represents a unique selection from a possible set of presupposed candidates (cf. also Lenerz 2001), which necessarily receives an exhaustive interpretation if in the computational domain of focus. However, it has been often argued that there is no one-to-one correlation between definiteness and identifiability or active states of discourse referents (cf. Lambrecht 1994: 108). Such correlation has been said to hold only for pronouns, which are category-inherently thematic, but not for full definite nouns,



Focus(ing) from a typological perspective 

which can be anaphoric or non-anaphoric, depending on the context. Nevertheless, and this has been rarely noted in the literature, the proposed strong link between definiteness and a necessary destressing license can be maintained, once a small group of definites has been controlled for. Such definites are either non-referential or their reference set is maximally narrowed down by the specific common ground between the speaker and hearer or by our general knowledge about the world. The following types may be distinguished:

(i) non-referential definites in idioms (cf. Molnárfi 2002: 1140-1141), (ii) proper salient individuals as ”the president”, ”the pope”, etc. (cf. Lenerz 2001), (ii) novel definites (which are either deictic or can be pragmatically accomodated by the common ground between speaker and hearer, cf. Meinunger 2000: 76-77).

Non-referential, idiomatic definite nouns provide a strong support for the assumption that the destressed status of scrambled definites induces a D-linked interpretation (cf. also Meinunger 2000: 76-77). Being non-referential, such definite elements will remain within the domain of focus proper without disturbing sentential stress assignment. This is to be expected as, being an inherent part of the predication, such definites do not function as specificational predicates, and as such do not trigger exhaustive interpretation within VP. Compare the following sentences (cf. Molnárfi 2002: 1140, and 2004a: 363): (22) a. b. c. d.

dass Peter gestern den Vogel abgeschossen hat that Peter yesterday the bird down-shot has ‘that Peter took the cake yesterday’ dass Peter gestern den Vogel abgeschossen hat ‘that it was the bird that Peter shot down yesterday’ dass Peter den Vogel gestern abgeschossen hat ‘that Peter shot down the bird yesterday’ Den Vogel hat hier gestern Peter abgeschossen. ‘It was Peter who took the cake yesterday.’

(SA) (CA) (SA) (CA)

The assignability of SA to the definite object in (22a) indicates that, being marked as non-referential, definite objects in idioms behave exactly like predicative indefinite objects, which are associated with unmarked prosodic patterns if surfacing in the base position. Note, however, that the idiomatic reading is lost if the definite object (as a default referential definite) participates in a destressing chain or if it is associated with contrastive stress within the domain of the predication as in (22b). The semantic interpretation of the definite object, which is discourse-linked and specificational in (22b) and which is non-referential and predicative in (22a) can be directly read off of the relevant accent distinctions holding in (22a-b). It seems to be the case that, via destressing, scrambling forces the definite object to be interpreted as discourse linked (cf. also Meinunger 2000: 81-82).22 Note that a similar discourse linked interpretation

 László Molnárfi

is not forced in case of topicalization, which may preserve the non-referential status of the idiomatic definite object (cf. 22d). The contrast between (22c) and (22d) indicates that scrambling and topicalization have to involve different chain formation mechanisms (cf. also Haider and Rosengren 1998 for discussion). Similarly, no exhaustive interpretation within the predication is triggered in the case where the reference set of the definite category is trivial, that is, the identification mechanism does not introduce real alternatives. Such definites involve proper salient individuals or objects (the President, the Bible) or novel definites pragmatically accommodated from the discourse (cf. among others Lambrecht 1994: 65-66 and Lenerz 2001: 262 or Meinunger 2000: 76-77). Compare the following sentences, where the respective definite objects are introduced “out-of-the-blue”: (23) a. b.

Ich habe gestern [VP den Präsidenten gesehen]. I have yesterday the president seen Ich habe gestern [VP die Katze gehört]. I have yesterday the cat heard

(SA) (SA)

Neither in (23a) nor in (23b) does the in-situ definite have to attract contrastive stress or exhaustive interpretation, as they do not necessarily form specificational predicates. However, if marked by neutral sentential stress, the entity to which the definite object refers has to be common ground between speaker and hearer, based on extra-linguistic knowledge. In (23a), the reference set is maximally narrowed down by our common knowledge of the world, in (23b) the existence of a cat is pragmatically accommodated, which seems particularly easy with common things belonging to one’s household, such as the car, the house, the washing machine, the telephone, the dog, etc. (see also Lambrecht 1994 for further discussion). As the identification function of definiteness in (23a) and (23b) escapes the mechanisms of anaphoric discourse linking, the occurrence of the definite NPs within the focus domain is prosodically and contextually unmarked. What this boils down to is that the interpretational and discourse functional split between VP-internal and VP-external definite categories can be maintained if a small group of non-referential or non-specificational definites are controlled for.23 Such definites must be explicitly marked as non-anaphoric in the lexicon (cf. Jäger 1995) and are as such not subjected to the destressing license in the sense discussed here (cf. Molnárfi 2002 and 2004a for a detailed discussion).

12. Conclusion The conclusions of the present paper are as follows. It has been argued that word order variation in West Germanic is driven by a prosodic interface condition, which safeguards the assignability of sentential stress and the computation of wide focus. As in Abraham’s (this volume) refocusing concept, this condition defines different optimal



Focus(ing) from a typological perspective 

discourse domains for definite and indefinite categories. Belonging to the presupposition, definite categories should not be marked for prosodic prominence by Cinque’ (1993) stress rule. Such referential definites are to leave the domain of predication (VP), where they would receive an exhaustive or contrastive reading (cf. É. Kiss 2006), disturbing wide focus projection. Indefinites, on the other hand, have their discourse functionally optimal position in the base. As rhemes proper, they are ready to take up sentential stress, enabling wide focus projection. That means that only definite, but no indefinite categories will participate in a destressing chain that evacuates VP, so that the domain of wide focus can be computed at PF. Markedness of a given word order can thus not be measured in terms of derived vs. base positions. Rather, a scrambling chain will count as unmarked as long as it allows for Cinque’s stress assignment rule to apply. The destressing license of referential definites can be taken to be a prosodic feature (called antifocus, cf. Molnárfi 2002) that is assigned to full nominal definites by default and that is intrinsic to personal pronouns. Any element marked by antifocus will have to target the prosodically least prominent structural position in the middle field to ensure the assignability of sentential stress and the computation of wide focus. However, other than morpho-syntactic driven movement, the displacement triggered by antifocus remains fundamentally optional. The optionality of prosodydriven movement can be derived in formal terms if one allows for the pronunciation of the base position of non-trivial derivational chains. In this scenario, refocusing of discourse referential entities falls out as a default mechanism: referential definite categories will attract narrow focus (or be marked morphologically) if outside their destressing chain, while indefinite categories will attract narrow focus if outside their discourse functionally optimal base position.

Notes * I would like to thank Werner Abraham, Andrew McIntyre, Jutta Hartmann, the audiences of the TSSS-Seminar in Utrecht and the ISAG-Workshop in Tübingen as well as an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. 1. In dependent clauses, the middle field is delimited by subordinate conjunctions on the left and by verbal material on the right. 2. Among other things, such differences pertain to binding behavior and the operational range (clause-boundedness) of word order variation (cf. Haider and Rosengren 1998 for a detailed overview). 3. See Molnárfi (2004a) for a detailed discussion on the methodological and empirical advantages of such a broader view versus a strict notion of word order variation as advocated in Haider and Rosengren (1998). 4. Of course, the possible serialization patterns in (2a) and (2b) are not restricted to the scrambling of direct and indirect objects. Given the permutability of the subject argument, a three-place predicate in German theoretically allows for 6 possible word orders.

 László Molnárfi 5. Due to lack of space, I cannot go here into the assessment of base-generation approaches to scrambling in West Germanic (cf. Neeleman and Reinhart 1998 or Fanselow 2003, among others). See Molnárfi (2003: 136-137 and 2004a: 348-349) for an in-depth discussion of the implications of such theories. 6. This position is mirrored in recent discussions on the minimalist notion of derivational economy. In Minimalism, displacement is seen as a costly Last Resort operation to be avoided if possible (cf. Procrastinate or Merge before Move, cf. Chomsky 1995b). 7.

N=nominative, D=dative, A=accusative

8. The technical details of an adequate focus-movement analysis in Hungarian are not crucial at this stage. See Brody (1995) and É. Kiss (2006) for two alternative approaches with respect to the status of FP, and section 9 for some discussion. 9. Frey (2006) argues for a further split of the German CP into three separate functional projections. 10. Within a representational framework, Haider and Rosengren (1998) propose a similar account of scrambling as free chain-formation within the domain of the lexical head. 11. The sentence adverb gestern is assumed to mark the VP-boundary (cf. Abraham 1997). 12. See Kayne (1994) for general objections against lowering. 13. See, however, section 11 for possible exceptions to this observation. 14. Contrary to Abraham (1997, this volume), I do not conclude from the data that referential definite nouns are base-generated in VP-external positions. Such a view not only forces one to assume the theoretically suspect machinery of lowering to derive refocusing effects associated with definites, but is also at odds with general assumptions on constiuenthood (cf. Chomsky 1965), lexical mapping (cf. Bierwisch 1988, Wunderlich 1997) and case assignment in German (cf. Czepluch 1988 or Haider 1993, among many others). 15. This might be the reason why the weak object pronoun “es” cannot be fronted in German. As weak pronouns cannot bear primary stress (cf. Cardinaletti and Starke 1999), “es” is not licensed in stress attracting positions, that is, within VP and at the left periphery (cf. Lenerz 1994 and Molnárfi 2004b for discussion). 16. The term particle is used here to distinguish the occurrence of vir in two-place-predicates from its “normal”, prepositional usage in Afrikaans. See the discussion below for empirical support for this distinction. 17. Among others, such differences pertain to preposition stranding, nominalization or compatibility with elements below the X0-level. I will give here the relevant stranding data (cf. Molnárfi 1999: 81): (i) a. Vir wie het jy die boek gegee? for who have you the book given b. Wie het jy die boek voor gegee? who have you the book for given c. Vir wie het jy gesien? for who have you seen d.* Wie het jy voor/vir gesien? who have you for seen (ia) and (ib) show that preposition stranding is possible in Afrikaans if vir marks indirect objects in three-place predicates. Note that stranding in (ib) licenses the alternate morphological form



Focus(ing) from a typological perspective 

of the preposition, which is “voor”, also to be used in pronominal adverb-contexts in Afrikaans. However, the contrast between (ic) and (id) shows that vir can never be stranded if associated with referential definite direct objects in two-place predicates. Also, vir if used in two-place predicates does not show any morphological alternation in Afrikaans. 18. Scrambling that preserves stress on the moved element has different chain formation properties than middle field scrambling. In particular, focus-scrambling has been shown to be not clause-bound, to be dependent on a special intonation pattern and to affect arguments as well as predicates (cf. Neeleman 1994 or Hinterhölzl 2004a: 174) These properties confirm an analysis of focus-scrambling in terms of A’-movement (cf. Neeleman 1994), as opposed to middle field scrambling which has been argued to be clause-bound A-movement (cf. Haider and Rosengren 1998, among many others). 19. In the sense of Pesetsky (1987). 20. Another case in point pertains to the distributional behavior of weak object pronouns in Dutch (cf. Zwart 1993). The phonologically reduced form of such elements is licensed in the scrambled position, but not in the fronted position, even if strong pronominal forms may other­ wise appear destressed at the left periphery (cf. Molnárfi 2004b for discussion). This indicates that (at least for discourse referential entities such as arguments) topicalization cannot preserve pragmatic unmarkedness and has to be regarded as a stress-attracting position (against Frey 2006). 21. In acoustic experiments, Nooteboom and Kruyt (1987) and Terken and Nooteboom (1987) have shown a strong correlation between the destressed status of an element and its preferred perception as a discourse-linked entity (cf. also Lambrecht 1994: 266-267). 22. Note that this is a strong argument against accounts that regard scrambling to be a fully optional movement without any formal trigger (cf. de Hoop 1997, 2000). 23. This also means that pronouns and definite full nouns can be argued to be subjected to the same formal destressing mechanism (contrary to Haider and Rosengren 1998 and in the line with Abraham 1997).

Topic, focus, and default vs. contrastive accent Typological differences with respect to discourse prominence* Werner Abraham This article discusses critically different approaches to the integration of the discourse functions Thema and Rhema into the grammar. Furthermore, it surveys critically types and defining characteristics of dis­course prominence in sundry languages, among which most prominently German. One question that arises concerns the place of case assignment. Given that pronouns and definite DPs are in the left section of the middle field under clau­sal grammatical (default) accent distribution, while indefinite DPs and bare plurals are so on the right middle field margin, either pronouns have to raise from their discoursefunctionally marked VP-pos­ition to the left compartment of the middle field to arrive at their unmarked position, or they are mer­ged in their unmarked position in the first place. The latter decision would leave case assignment for the LF cycle. The discussion centers around these two options (Abraham, on the one side, and Engdahl, Molnár­fi, Grewendorf, Frey, as well as others, on the other side).

1. The type of German discourse prominence The following everyday life data, (1a-c), demonstrates the intricate link between clausal accent and discourse coherence types. (1a) is the original in writing. (1b,c) highlight different prosodies and consequent meaning disambiguations, (i)-(iii). [small caps for clausal accent]. (1) a. b.

Ihre Sorgen möchten wir haben.> (Vienna 2004: street advertisement for your worries want we have “Erste Bank Austria”) Ihre Sorgen möchten wir haben. (i) ‘Your worries are a lot minor to mine and therefore negligible’ ≡ ≡ “If you don’t like your worriers, count your blessings.”)

 Werner Abraham

c. Ihre/Ihre Sorgen möchten wir haben. (ii) It is your worries that we would like to take care of. (iii) We would like to take care of your worries. What this is to demonstrate is the contingency of meaning of the written code upon application of different clausal accents. In order to make sense of this more generally in an explanatory way the following parameters have been found to be relevant and implemental in the discourse-involving grammar of German.

(2) a. There is a basic word order in German (and Dutch and West Frisian) with rhematic (in­for­ma­tion­ally new) material in VP. The hermeneutic identification of this word order is ‘(one single) gram­mat­ic­al clausal accent’ (GA), which is placed on the head of the deepest (Vo-adjacent) embedding inside VP. b. Any deviation from this basic word order changes the accent status of the clause from GA to CA (‘contrastive clausal accent’). Bridge contours, with double accent distribution per single clause, is contrastive.1 c. In particular, scrambling as well as topicalization yields refocusing identified by CA. d. The features influencing word order in German (and Dutch and Frisian, and, to a cer­tain extent, in the Scandinavian languages; see below) in a straightforward way are: Accent (grammatical/default vs. contrastive triggered by several text links), cat­egory status (pronominal vs. nominal), and referentiality (definiteness/specif­ic­ity vs. indefiniteness/non-specificity) – possibly even Phonetic Structure (viz. the weak-pronominal order do < io inverse to nominal IO < DO). There are other, more intricate, discourse movement triggers, at least in German (such as Doherty’s Balanced Information Structure/BID – for a discussion see below Section 3). e. The distribution of clausal accent diagnosed by GA vs. CA and triggered by move­ment is syn­tactically unambiguous by recourse to Cinque’s Clause Ac­cent Null Hypothesis: Un­less conditioned otherwise, mainly by movement for dis­course accommodation purposes (i.e. to change thema and/ or rhema), the de­fault ac­cent in a German clause lies on the head of the most deeply em­bed­ded con­stit­u­ent in the clause (Cinque 1993; see also Abraham 1995, Chapters 13 and 14). The parameters listed in (2a-e) allow the grammarian of German to match discourse functions such as Thema and Rhema with clausal parts. See Table 1.2



Topic, focus, and default vs. contrastive accent: typological differences 

Table 1.  The link between the clausal structure and discourse functions in German [‘THEMA/RHEMA’ in the 3rd column means that topicalized clausal members can be in both discourse functions simultaneously. Capitals mark focus/rhema: a focus constituent or its head may be GA-marked if the focused element is in its base position; it is CAmarked if it has been moved out of its base position. Base positions: inside VP for indefinites, outside for definites and pronominals; the definite subject is the only constituent which is unmarked in topic position. PART = (modal/discourse) particle] Thema/ rhema

⇐

–

Thema

⇒

⇐ Rhema ⇒

Coord [cp/ip Spec Co/Io WP (klit.) AgrOP [vp CP/IP Pro­no­mi­na i -

-

ii Aber

sie

iii -

Wieso

iv Aber

wieso

v

Wieso

wann -ts

(es) mir des

[vp -

gibt -

Vo -

sie

–

Thema

]]]

Extra­ position

sag-ts

heut

-

gerne

’s ’m

-

denn

-

abgeben?

‘m ‘s

-

denn sofort

-

zeigen

’s

-

denn pünkt­lich

ihm

abgeben?

ga ≠ ca

ga

ga heute?

ga ca

The examples (i)-(v) instantiate regiolectal German (South German), where pronominal clitics occur regularly instead of unreduced pronominals. See the position of the very same pronominals under contrastive stress, as in (ii), Aber sie gibt SIE gerne, and (v), Wieso’s denn pünktlich ihm abgeben? This distribution corroborates the following generaliz­a­tions in (3). (3) Categorially determined definiteness (pronouns and their clitically weakened forms) as well as definite NPs have scrambled out of VP, where they picked up case. This implies: a. unaccented and cliticized pronouns are inherently thematic; b. consequently, the default position of unaccented and cliticized pronouns is outside – i.e. to the left of – VP; see (7) below c. (clitic) pronouns cannot surface as rhematic elements unless they receive contrastive stress – in German with the exception of pronominal es “it”, which never carries contrastive stress and, consequently, has to stay to the left of VP, i.e. in the thematic domain. Cin­que’s (1993) ‚Accent distributional Null Hypothesis (or “Ac­cent default linking rule”; compare Selkirk’s (1984) “Nuclear Stress Rule”) is implemented by the following examples: GA = “grammatical (= default) ac­cent” vs. CA = “contrastive accent”. (4) a. Wir haben sie gestern gesehen we have her yesterday seen ‘We saw her yesterday’

... ga

 Werner Abraham

b. c. d. e.

*Wir haben gestern sie gesehen Wir haben gestern sie gesehen ‘It was her that we saw yesterday’ sie haben wir gestern gesehen ‘It was her that we saw yesterday’ *Sie haben wir gestern gesehen

… -... ca ... ca … --

For thetic sentences (“all-rhematic”, part of which are classified as “presentatives” or “existentials”, as opposed to categorial sentences as illustrated in Table 1 above), see (5) and Table 2 below. (5) a. b.

Es übertölpeltei [vp prinzipiell [vp der Igel den Hasen ti] expl fooled generally the hedgehog the hare Aber es übertölpelni [vp jedesmal [vp Igel Hasen ti] but expl fooled each time hedgehogs hares

Table 2.  All-rhematic presentational/existential clauses Coord

[cp SpecCP

-

-

⇐

Co [ip SpecIP Infl

⇒

Rhemai [vp

[vp

Vo ]]]

-

- Es Expl-it

übertölpeltei prinzipiell fool in prin­ciple

der Igel den Hasen the hedgehog the hare

ti

(ii) Aber But

-

- es Expl-it

übertölpelni fool

Igel Hasen hedgehogs hares

ti

(iii) -

-

- There

appeared

some dogs in the garden]

-

(i)

-

jedesmal every time -

(iii) in Table 2 is called a “bridge contour” (German Hutkontour). See the accent familiarity between such bridge contour sentences and clefts as in (6a,b). (6) a. b.

Es ist mein Vater, der Lehrer ist/wird. it is my father who teacher is Es ist mein Vater ein Lehrer. it is my father a teacher

Apart from (3), scrambling relates between different discourse-cohering processes in the German declarative clause. Scrambling occurs under the following prerequisites for a discourse-prom­in­ent language such as German (Haider and Rosengren 1998).

(7) a. Scrambling presupposes head-final (OV-) projections and re-serializes valence-selected elements as long as they are morphologically identified; b. Scrambling presupposes base word order; basic word order is uniquely identified by valence serialization (Numeration, before Merge) as well as case morphology;



Topic, focus, and default vs. contrastive accent: typological differences 

c. Scrambling yields an A-chain whose head and foot lie in the indemnificatory scope of Vo (diagnostic tests: focus test, scoping test); d. Scrambled constituents do not land in functional Specifier positions, but in an Adjunction position within the VP extended to the left (V-government left direction!); e. Scrambling is syntactically optional; however, it is used at the syntactic interfaces; Scrambling has refocusing as a consequence; f. Scrambling yields a visible reorder;3 g. Scrambling presupposes the unique identification of the discourse categories Thema and Rhema: this occurs either by morphological marking (suffixal as in Japanese or Korean) or by accent discrimination (as in German, Dutch, W-Frisian, Yiddish, and Afrikaans) where GA is clearly and uniquely distinguished from CA; h. Accent identification by GA-/CA- is syntactically uniquely anchored (Focus-Null Hypothesis (Cinque 1993); the distinctness is corroborated by the presupposition semantics. This terminates, for the time being, the main characteristics of the integral projection of clause syntax and discourse functional division and derivation for German. In what follows I dis­cuss briefly radically different options from the literature: Engdahl’s (et al. 2004) flat, i.e. non-con­fig­ura­tion­al approach for SVO-languages such as Swedish, Molnárfi’s (2003) option within the config­u­rational alternative (opposing Abraham’s solution in a crucial detail (see, essentially, Tables 1 and 2 as well as (7) above) and mirroring, with differences to be discussed in detail, Grewendorf ’s (2004) and Frey’s (2004b) solutions), and, finally, Doherty’s (2005) far-reaching option. It will be seen that only Abraham’s and Molnárfi’s alternatives remain under strict methodological and empirical criteria of description and explanation. Doherty’s observations, on the other hand, appear to be valuable extensions under any claim of syntax-discourse functional integration.

2. ‘Flat’ accounts of word order and discourse functions These are the characteristics anchoring word order and the discourse functional description of Swedish, a relatively order-inflexible SVO-language (Engdahl et al. 2004). The following list of word order constraints and their classification prepares the formalization in terms of Optimality Theory. (8) a. Constraints are universal b. Constraints are ranked, but the ranking varies from language to language c. Constraints may be violated; an optimal candidate may violate low ranking constraints and still win, if it satisfies higher ranked constraints d. Only the optimal candidate is ‘grammatical’

 Werner Abraham



(9) a. T-constraints: constraints determining main typological features of the lan­guage. b. A-constraints: constraints aligning certain classes of elements within a particular subtree. The specific instantiation for Swedish (Engdahl et al. 2004: 3) considers the following instantiations of (8)-(9) above. The list is not exhaustive. (10)

T-constraints (for a specific SVO-language): a. subj < obj subjects precede any object b. io < do indirect objects precede direct objects c. v < compl verbs precede their (non-subject) arguments

(11)

A-constraints (‘competition for left’): a. head-l(eft) heads are aligned left of the phrase in the phrase/domain b. proweak-l weak pronouns are aligned left c. subj-l subjects align left d. adv-l adverbials align left e. obj-l objects align left

Following OT-strategies, (10)-(11) prompt the following constraint rankings: (12) head-l(eft) >> proweak-l a. Eva gav honom inte några pengar Eva gave him not any money b. * Eva honom gav inte några pengar (13) subj < obj| proweak-l a. Då gav honom Eva inte några pengar then gave him Eva not any money b. Då gav Eva honom inte några pengar ‘Then Eva probably didn’t give him any money’ (14) [v < compl] >> proweak-l a Eva har inte gett honom några pengar Eva has not given him any money b. * Eva har honom inte gett några pengar Eva has him not given any money This yields the following unmarked linear order: (15) subj < adv-l >> obj Extended for information structure links (Thema/Background, Rhema/Foreground), the linear tableau in (16) is filled in by the illustration in (17). (16) adv < rheme >> subj-l >> adv-l (!S-adverbs precede rhematic constituents)

(17) a. b.

Topic, focus, and default vs. contrastive accent: typological differences 

…, men i år ska Lisa faktisk köpa institutionens julgran … but this year shall Lisa in fact buy.inf department.gen X-mas tree ‘… but this year Lisa is in fact going to buy the department’s X-mas tree’ … för i år ska faktisk Lisa köpa institutionens julgran ‘… because this year it will in fact be Lisa that is buying department’s Xmas tree’

All in all, this is how word order variations in Swedish and, more generally, across Scandinavian can be summarized under an Optimality theoretical perspective. (18) a. Word order in the Swedish midfield varies to a certain degree, but not without rea­son: see (12)–(15). b. The relevant reordering factors can be expressed as OT constraints. c. There is no need for assuming basic word ordering/fixed canonical positions for grammatical relations. d. Constraint ranking is a tool for investigating the interaction between syntactic, semantic, phonological, and information structural constraints. e. The ranking crucially refers to grammatical relations/clausal parts. f. Microvariation between dialects should insightfully be expressed in terms of OT variation. It should be clear that German is not amenable to such an approach be it for the mere reason that Scrambling and Refocusing, the main assets of German’s discourse prominence and word order variation, are not mirrored in Swedish. Swedish does not scramble – i.e., it does not reorder objects and the subject without changing their morphological cases and clause category status (German “Satzgliedstatus”). Further­more, it is hard to see what the account of relative prosody (Cinque’s Accent Null Hypothesis as well as GA vs. CA and the semantic default conclusions) would change in Engdahl’s approach to the Swedish facts. Beyond this typological view, one cannot principally exclude the possibility of a flat account of word order variation for German, e.g., in terms of the optimality framework (cf. Heck 2000). The main concern against thwarting any non-structure-hierarchical account in the present context is that a flat account is incompatible with the accent placement under Cinque’s Accent Null Hypothesis and the hierarchical clausal syntax map­ped out in Tables 1 and 2. Let us return to the syntax-hierarchical aspects of German. What needs to be investiga­ted more closely is the question how accent distribution affects word order and the distribution of the discourse functions Thema and Rhema. The main question is: should Thema and Rhema be introduced as functional categories directly in the syntactic structure (of German, not necessarily of other languages) as advocated by Molnárfi (2002, 2003, this volume), or should it be mapped directly, in unique and unam­bigu­ous ways, on the syntactic structure thereby foregoing extra discourse functional nodes? Let us conclude this section of the paper. By contrast to other approaches to be discussed below in Section 4, the present position (Abraham, ever since Abraham 1997)

 Werner Abraham

takes as a corner stone the fact that definites and indefinit­es have different prosodic default marks: definites are pro­sodically unmarked in the left middle field, close to WP. Indefinites, by contrast, are prosodically unmarked inside v/VP. If the unmark­ed pos­ ition is taken as the merge position avoiding uneconomical Move-α before Merge, case need be matched later, in (Boškovič and Takahashi 1998). This appears to be a natural solution independent of the typological status of the language as long as a scrambling do­main is avail­able and accounting for case matching in terms of unmarked clausal prosody. In what follows I pursue this line of argument confirming, as it were, its empirical status as opposed to other approaches.

3. German discourse prominence vs. English grammar prominence It has been argued at some length in Sections 1 and 2 above that pronouns and their reduced, clit­ic­ized forms obtain overt positions to the left of VP/vP, close to, or inside, WP. As has been argu­ed by Abraham above (and elsewhere, as opposed to Molnárfi 2003, 2004a,b, this volume; see end of Section 2 above) these are base-generated midfield positions. Clearly, not all of the ident­if­y­ing properties are syntactically computable: not all definite-marked NPs are thematic and con­sequently cannot be part of the structural field outside of VP. Vice versa, certain word classes do not take definite articles irrespective of their discourse-information status (proper names most prominently). Spec­ificity cuts across all morphosyntactic information and is certainly to be covered only by semantic or pragmatic characterization. (19) a. pronouns and their clitic forms accompanied by DPs in the left middle field: b. definite NPs … morphosyntactic identification c. specific NPs … semantic identification To the extent that focus identifies and discriminates definite and specific NPs discourse-functionally, English and German differ profoundly. This has been discussed in extenso by Hu­ber (2002) for Swedish-German and for English-German by Doherty (2005). See Table 3. Table 3.  Adverb placement and the generalized information flow: “Thema before Rhema”

English German

Default FOC placement

Thema before Rhema

V-FOC-Adv/TH TH/Adv -FOC-V

– +



Topic, focus, and default vs. contrastive accent: typological differences 

See the supporting illustrations below (gleaned from Doherty 2005; small caps for focus exponency). (20) a. The dinosaurs were bound to die out with the change of the climate. b. With the change of the climate the dinosaurs were bound to die out. (21) a. (Studies at Stanford of one subtype of α interferon, α2, show anticancer activity and side effects very similar to those of the α mixture.) b. However, one potential problem has arisen with the α2. c. However, with the α2 one potential problem has arisen. (22) a. (Für den Interferontyp α2 konnten in Stanford fast dieselben Antikrebs‑ und Nebenwirkungen nachgewiesen werden wie für das α‑Interferon‑Gemisch.) b. Aber ein grösseres Problem ergab sich im Hinblick auf α2. c. Aber im Hinblick auf α2 ergab sich (noch) ein grösseres Problem d. Im Hinblick auf α2 ergab sich allerdings (noch) ein grösseres Problem. We list the specific discourse felicity generalizations under the intended typological viewpoint: [“>” = serially ‘before’] (23) a. English will topicalize to derive Thema>Foc from Foc>Thema. b. German discourse projections are in line with the grammatical structure: roughly the base [CP/THEMA…[VP/FOC-RHEMA…V]; see Tables 1-2. c. Unless (19) can apply, German will exhaust its wide midfield scrambling options to safeguard the discourse-optimal TH > RH. d. In the absence of wide midfield scrambling options as in SOV-German (generally, though with specifics, for which see Haider and Rosengren 1998) the Con­tinental West Germanic languages), English will settle a for less than optimal con­text­u­al­iz­a­tion. This generalization appears to meet a general parsing re­quire­ment: De­viate as little from grammatical patterns as possible to avoid in­ter­pretation-de­fer­ring online reanalysis. e. German, to all appearances, adheres to two parsing requirements: the general grammatical parsing requirement mentioned in (19) and a discourse parsing requirement probing each sentence for contextual fit (see Abraham 1992, 2003) for discussion). The latter, in particular, appears to be indispensable for the spoken code coping with valence identification delays of a left-governing (SOV) language such as German. f. German topicalizes adjuncts and arguments freely, whereas English top­ icalizes hardly any arguments and allows topicalization of adjuncts only under tighter constraints (Doherty 2005: 190). g. Under more-than-binary distributions of THEMA-RHEMA/FOCUS ref­ erents Ger­man, due to its wide scrambling space and free topicalization (i.e., no Subject-Top­ic constraint), aligns discourse referents in strictly

 Werner Abraham

increasing order from lowest new/highest given/background to new­est/ least backgroundable information (Dis­course Referent Ordering Principle = DROP). English, while adhering to the same prin­ciple, due to the SVO/ Topic constraint and its principled lack of structural scrambling space, has more trouble doing so. The main difference between the two languages, in view of movement operations to satisfy context fit and text coherence, is that English is not free to topicalize adjuncts (Doherty’s examples; Doherty 2005: 193). These are the specific processing difficulties and scopal misreadings that appear to arise in English. [“< auf dieser Skala> XP YP ” means “< auf dieser Skala> either before XP YP or after XP YP”] (24) a. On this scale Mt. Helens contributed a DVI of about 100 in 1980 […] b. Mt. Helens contributed a DVI of about 100 c. Mt. Helens steuerte < auf dieser Skala> 1980 ein DVI von ca. 100 bei. Quite obviously, the fact that adverbs in German can scramble to just any position in the clause including the clause-initial one, gives the language sufficient space for placing adequate foci – either as grammatical accents (GA), i.e., in situ (merge with the provision made according to Ta­bles 1 and 2), or in appropriate derived positions under refocusing. Given this variety of serial­iz­ation options, the intuition that English produces more – or, more precisely, cannot avoid – garden paths than a language with rich scrambling options such as German appears to be correct. Usu­ally, English heeds the grammatical linear principle “arguments > ad­juncts” (see Table 3 above). But heavy argu­ments may invert this grammatical order due to the prag­matic principle of heavy end weight. See (25)-(28) (Do­herty 2005, p. 193 her examples; my clausal part bracketing, WA). [“##” in (25b) signals dif­fer­ent reading in context] (25) a. NASA has been involved [adj in recent years] [[arg with a special study of aero­sol particles in the atmosphere], [arg-attribute as part of its contribution to the US National Climate Program]]. b. ## NASA has been involved [arg with a special study of aero­sol particles in the atmosphere] [adj in recent years], as part of its contribution to the US National Climate Program. (25b) is infelicitous since the adjunct in recent years interrupts the plausible cohesion between the argument constituent, with a special study…, and its attributive clause, as part of… allowing for an unintended scope reading. (26) a. Because of the sideways blast as the mountain burst open, the material from the eruption reached a height of only about 24 km – relatively low as such energetic eruptions go.



Topic, focus, and default vs. contrastive accent: typological differences 

b. The material from the eruption reached a height of only about 24 km – relatively low as such energetic eruptions go – because of the sideways blast as the mountain burst open. c. Wegen der seitwärts gerichteten Explosion erreichte das vulkanische Material nur eine Höhe von ca. 24 km, was gemessen an solchen energiegeladenen Ausbrü­chen relativ wenig ist. d. Das vulkanische Material erreichte wegen der seitwärts gerichteten Explosion nur eine Höhe von ca. 24 km, was gemessen an solchen ener­­ giegeladenen Ausbrü­chen relativ wenig ist. Where English places the secondary causative clause in discourse-inappropriate clause-final pos­ition as in (26b), German leaves the clause-final position for the primary discourse-rhema, due to its option to relativize the contrastive focus status in the left middle field position, as in (26d) – an option English does not possess given the total absence of a structural middle field (and, consequently, the scrambling operation). The most frequent typological difference in contrastive accent constructions concerns cases where English has no other option but to (pseudo)cleft as in (27a). (27) a [cp2-cleft The net effect for volcanic particles is [Adj usually]] [cp1 that the stratosphere warms while the surface below cools]. b [cp1 [Adj In der Regel] bewirken vulkanische Partikel [Dp2 eine Erwärmung der Stratosphäre und eine Abkühlung der Erdoberfläche]] While the more elegant German solution in (27b) is due to a lexical solution (bewirken+direct object-NP vs. be net effect that…), constituent length and constituent heavy weight in English (28a) force the shorter predicative nominal (plus its at­trib­utive relative clause, who..) Hubert Lamb, who… in the sentence-initial position, which, given its rhe­mat­ic discourse function, is not the ideal position for the rhema function. Due to lack of structural space (absence of a middle field position), English has no other option, as opposed to German which, due to its prosodic var­iables, places the set-setting DP in sentence-initial position as secondary rhema, irrespective of its length. (28) a. [Significant, long-term effects of volcanic activity on climate occur in historical rec­ords only where a series of eruptions has ensured that the dust in the strato­sphere veils the Earth for a long time.] [rh-primary Hubert Lamb, who founded the Cli­matic Re­search Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia], was [rh-secondary the pioneer of the study of the quantitative effects of the volcanic dust veil over the centuries]. b. [...]. [rh-secondary Der erste, der sich mit den quantitativen Aspekten vulkanischer Staub­schleier wäh­rend der letzten Jahrhunderte beschäftigte, war [rh-primary Hubert Lamb, der Gründer der Climatic Research Unit (CRU) an der Universität von East Anglia.

 Werner Abraham

Doherty (2005) classifies phenomena such as (28a,b) under the rubric DROP and other types of discourse balancing. To be sure, DROP theorizes about multiple, but scalarly organized, rhemat­ic discourse functional material – a phenomenon that any fixed discourse function in the syntact­ic structure fails to account for in the first place. While the last observations corroborate the old Prague School claim that the focus distribu­tion is contingent upon scalar discourse weight and, consequently, avails itself of a principled op­tionality of focus locations in the clause, the question whether or not discourse information should be inserted in specifically fixed structural positions requires theoretical as well as empir­ic­al discriminations. Let us return to the syntax-hierarchical aspects of German. What needs to be investiga­ted more closely is the question how accent distribution affects word order and the distribution of the discourse functions Thema and Rhema. Above, we asked the following question: Should The­ma and Rhema be introduced as functional categories directly in the syntactic structure (of German, not necessarily of other languages) as advocated by Molnárfi (2002, 2003, this volume), or should it be mapped directly, in unique and unam­bigu­ous ways, on the syntactic structure there­by foregoing extra discourse functional nodes? The answer will be: The syntactic structures of PF and LF suffice to unambiguously identify the discourse functions (and, by implication, the placement of clausal accents) in German.

4. Discourse-functional landing sites vs. syntactically computed discourse functions In what follows we sketch one channel deciding between what can be called the discourse function overt approach (represented, in a fundamental way by Molnárfi’s ‘Anti-Focus’ Theory; see the end of Section 2 above) and a true minimalist approach in the sense that no extra discourse categor­ies in the sentential tree are assumed (Abraham ever since 1997).

4.1 The discourse-functional extension by several nodes (Grewendorf 2004, Frey 2004b) Molnárfi’s (2002, this volume) general idea of assuming a discourse-functional category in the syn­tactic configuration of German is driven to an extreme by Grewendorf ’s (2004) extension of the UG-structure by the three fixed topic and focus phrases (bold face in (29) below) to the right of CP/IP – i.e., in the German Middle Field –, but outside of VP in SVOV-German (similarly, for Malayalam, a strict SOV-language, con­sider Jay­aseelan 2001). This converges, in terms of a globalizing harmony, with Rizzi’s (1997) extension of CP to the left for Italian. It is to be noted that this move makes superfluous the movement me­ch­anics of Scrambling.



Topic, focus, and default vs. contrastive accent: typological differences 

(29) a. Discourse-dependent Middle Field division in German according to Grewendorf (2004: 14; his ex. (44)): patterned after Rizzi’s Forefield/left edge division (above CP) lowered into the German Middle Field (between Co and the left edge of VP):

(29) b. Discourse-dependent Middle Field division in German according to Frey (2004b): only one Top position for all topics, namely that above AgrSP. Recall the two polar positions with respect to the insertion of discourse categories such as Thema and Rhema. I have assumed that all thematic material is base-positioned (merged) in the the­mat­ic clausal period, i.e., outside of VP. Rhematic material, on the other hand, is base-pos­ition­ed inside VP. Case is picked up in a post-merge process in LF, when thematic out-of-VP mat­erial is lower­ed into the case-assigning VP (as patterned by Boškovič and Takahashi 1998). The main drive behind this assumption is twofold: a. There is a clear division between inherently thematic and inherently rhematic categories (essen­tially, pronouns/definites vs. indefinite NPs)4; b. and there is an a priori assignment of grammatical accent cleanly divided between these two inherent­ly discourse-dependent categories.

 Werner Abraham

Molnárfi (2004a,b), on the other hand, does not share my position with respect to the two merge-positions of pronominal/definite vs. indefinite material. Rather, it is assumed, as opposed to Abra­ham, that all material, pronominal/definite or indefinite, receives case right after merge in­side VP (either by derivation in the minimalist sense, or lexically dependent, inside VP). Molnárfi assumes only one discourse-determined position for any material to land outside vP: the antifocus node. See below for illustrations of Molnárfi’s line of argument. Gre­wendorf ’s (2004) position is like that of Molnárfi with respect to Merge. However, other than Molnárfi, he partit­ions the German middle field into several discoursedependent positions: two for Top­ic, and one for Focus (one to the left of VP, the other inside VP, the latter in line with Cinque’s (1993) Focus Null Hypo­the­sis). However, this would seem to yield the following problems. (30) Multiple Topic or Focus raising to one of the discourse nodes in the Middle field – viz. the tree in (28) above – does not appear to be possible. Either the high or the low Topic position is filled. (31) There is a principled derivative problem: i.e., if the derivation follows the base sequence of the arguments to be topicalized/focused the question is how to derive the original sequence – unless one makes an appeal to nested raising (for a refutation of this assumption see (35) below).



Topic, focus, and default vs. contrastive accent: typological differences 

(32) The accent distinction of “grammatical accent” (GA) vs. “contrastive accent” (CA) plays no distinctive role in the derivative scenario that Grewendorf unfolds. (33) The strong Minimalist position is adopted by Grewendorf, namely that Top1/2 and Foc1 serve as attractors for feature satisfaction en­compassing categories from base positions to the right, inside VP. Discarded by WA for the very reason that the respective default accent assignment are allotted on precisely the [±def/specif] con­dition. This leaves unconsidered the distribution of default/ gram­matical vs. contrastive accent – a harsh violation of empirical fact, in my eyes. (34) Themata, in my view (Abraham 1997, 2003, 2004), can never be the result of scrambling or movement to the left. Themata are “born” outside, i.e., to the left of VP, whereas Rhe­mata are born inside VP. The distinguishing factors are the bi-factorial definiteness marking, [±def/specif] as well as the accompanying accent distinction, GA vs. CA. (35) What I see as an advantage over Meinunger (2000), Grewendorf (2004) or Frey’s (2004b) (the Top1-Foc1(-Top2) division) is, besides accommodating “multiple topics and foci”, that any topicalizing movement out of VP resulting in contrastive foci needs to preserve the base order of case-laden arguments. This lexical requirement of the base case order can be brought about under the assumption of nested raising to a higher position. However, such nested topicalization has two major empirical drawbacks: a. for one, nest­ed topicalization functions only if all arguments topicalize to an identical discourse function; but what if this is not the case? b. and, second, that balanced, or gradually calibrated, raising, or topicalization (much in the sense of Doherty’s notion of BID/Balanced Information Distribu­tion; Doherty 2005), will not be possible. Compare the discussion of (26)-(28) above. Let us briefly consider Grewendorf ’s main empirical diagnostics for his structural position of TopPhigh: different adverbial classes (Frey and Pittner 1998; Frey 2004b).

4.2

The clause-internal higher Topic position

Sentential adverbs (‘SentAdv’) such as glücklicherweise ‘luckily’, offensichtlich ‘to all appearances’, ver­mut­lich ‘presumably’, etc.: notice that wer ‘who’ “someone”, much like (ir­ gend)­je­mand, (et)was – all in­def­inite pronouns –, are ungrammatical in Top1-positions. (36) a.

weil [Top1 ] vermutlich den Rat since father/he/someone presumably father/he/someone the advice befolgt hat. faher/he/someone followed has

 Werner Abraham

b. c.

weil Simon jedenfalls heute zuhause geblieben ist. ... GA since Simon in any case today at home stayed has weil heute Simon jedenfalls zuhause geblieben ist. ... CA since Simon in any case today at home stayed has

Possibly, counter to the generalization above, wer ‘who’ (with the specific indefinite interpretation ‘someone’) can be placed above a sentential adverb like vermutlich ‘presumably’ after all. Examples like the following do not appear to be completely out5: (36) d. Der Streik ist beendet, weil wer vermutlich den Rat befolgt und die Arbeiter auf­ge­fordert hat, ihre übertriebenen Forderungen aufzugeben und nach Hause zu gehen. (Ich denke, es war der Chef der Gewerkschaft selbst.) ‘The strike is over because presumably someone followed the advice and told the workers to give up their exaggerated demands and go home. (I think it was the trade union boss himself.)’ I leave it at this observation for the time being.

4.3

The clause-internal higher Focus position

The point of this subsection is to show that there can be more than just one contrastive focus per clause. By contrast to the tree graphs (28) and (29) above, however, contrastive foci can appear just anywhere the only limitation being that the accented constituent is licensed there in the first place. Bridge contour constructions are focus constructions with two contrastive elements in the single clause (Steu­be et al. 2004). (37) a. obwohl Vater 1 seine Hemden nie selbst wäscht. though father sorry-to-say his shirts sorry-to-say never himself washes b. da 1 seinen Glücksgulden 2 fast immer im Sack herumträgt. Since John his lucky penny John almost always in.the pocket carries.around c. weil 1 ja verloren 2 fast jedes Mal haben. Since the Czech Part lost the Czech almost every time have d. weil 1 nicht körperlich < Drogensüchtige>2 am Ende sind, since drug addicts not physically drug addicts are finished sondern vor allem seelisch. but particularly mentally.



Topic, focus, and default vs. contrastive accent: typological differences 

Other than Grewendorf (2004), Frey (2004b) considers 2 to be the normal word order. Cf. also Rizzi (1997). (38) Rizzi’s CP-extension forItalian

[Topic1 – Focus1 – Topic2] – SentAdv – CP – …

(39) Grewendorf ’s Middle Field extension for German: C/Vo–[Topic1 – Focus1 – Topic2] – SentAdv – … This concludes the discussion and refutation of Grewendorf ’s and Frey’s “discourse category positions”. Recall that Molnárfi’s position, which shows some convergence with that of Grewendorf and Frey, is based on typological motivations – a background that is shared neither by Grewendorf nor by Frey.6

4.4

The discourse-functional extension by one single node (Molnárfi this volume)

Like myself, Molnárfi (this volume) argues that word order variation in West Germanic is driven by a prosodic interface condition, which safe­guards the ability to assign sentential stress and the computation of wide focus. Based on Abraham’s re­focusing concept (Abraham 1997, 2003; see also Abraham and Molnárfi 2002), this condition de­fines different optimal discourse domains for definite and indefinite categories. Belonging to the presupposition/backgrounded information, definite categories should not be mark­ed for prosodic prominence by Cinque’ (1993) stress rule. According to Molnárfi, but not in line with Abraham’s assumptions, such referential definites are to leave the domain of predication (VP), where they would receive an exhaustive or contrastive read­ing (cf. É. Kiss 2006), disturbing wide focus projection. Indefinites, on the other hand, have their discourse functionally optimal position in the base. According to Molnárfi’s claims, as rhemes proper, they are ready to take up sentential stress, enabl­ing wide focus projection. That means that only definite, but no indefinite categories will part­ic­ip­ate in a destressing chain that evacuates VP, so that the domain of wide focus can be computed at PF. Definites outside their destressing chain induce markedness effects (cf. Molnárfi 2002, Abraham and Mol­nár­fi 2002). For German such prosodic markedness is illustrated by (40a-f). (40) German a. Ich küsste [VP gestern +F[das Mädchen]] (*und begleitete es dann +F[nach Hause]) ...CA ‘I kissed the girl yesterday and then escorted her home.’ b. Ich küsste d.M. +F[VP gestern ] (und begleitete es danach +F[nach Hause]) ...GA c. Ich küsste [VP gestern +F[sie]] (*und begleitete es danach +F [nach Hause]) ...CA I kissed yesterday her and escorted her then home d. Ich küsste sie +F[VP gestern] (und begleitete es danach +F [nach Hause]) ...GA

 Werner Abraham

e. Ich küsste +F[VP gestern ein Mädchen] (und begleitete es danach [nach Hause]) ...CA +F f. ?Ich küsste ein +F[Mädchen] [VP gestern](*und begleitete es danach +F [nach Hause]) ...CA Afrikaans makes this even clearer given that morphological markedness adds up to clausal ac­cent (cf. Molnárfi 1999 and 2002). Afrikaans vir “for” need not, but may specifically mark direct objects. Molnarfi’s argument in (41a-g) is that such preposition marking in Afrikaans is not arbitrary, but it makes the object constituent heavier and thereby more rhematic. However, since def­in­iteness markers such as the definite article and personal pronouns have an inherent discourse functional categorization in the first place, heaviness marking cannot be attached random­ly. (41) a. b. c. d. e. f.

dat ek gister (vir) die meisie gesoen het that I yesterday for the girl kissed have dat ek gister *(vir) haar gesoen het that I yesterday for her kissed have dat ek die meisie/haar gister gesoen het (Vir) die meisie/ haar het ek gister gesoen. for this girl/ her have I yesterday kissed dat ek gister (*vir) 0  meisies gesoen het that I yesterday for girls kissed have dat ek (*vir) 0 meisies gister gesoen het that I for girls yesterday kissed have

Markedness of a given word order can thus not be measured in terms of derived vs. base pos­itions. Rather, a scrambling chain will count as unmarked as long as it allows for Cin­­que’s stress assignment rule to apply. The destressing license of referential definites is en­co­ded in a formal antifocus feature, which projects its own functional domain (Anti-FocusP). However, other than morpho-syntactic features of core grammar, the antifocus trigger is violable under cer­tain conditions. The violability of antifocus licensing can be derived in formal terms if one al­lows for the pronunciation of the base position of non-trivial derivational chains. In Molnárfi’s sce­nario, refocusing of discourse referential entities falls out as a default mechanism: referential definite categories will attract narrow focus (or be marked morphologically) if outside their de­stress­ing chain, while indefinite categories will attract narrow focus if outside their discourse functionally optimal base position.

5. Summary Discourse appropriateness (as opposed to grammaticality) is calculated in terms of syntactic constituency and focus marking. Focused and given constituents are distin-



Topic, focus, and default vs. contrastive accent: typological differences 

guished by inherent category (definite article, personal pronouns are always themata, unless contrastively stressed) and word order, partly also semantically (to the extent that the form of the article alone does not make the required distinction). Pitch accent is the only factor for intonational prominence considered here. Focus marking corresponds to alternatives in the discourse. Grammatical, i.e., nondis¬course-related, rules of syntax and phonology further regulate the placement of clausal accent and focus. From the two points above follows that neither topicalization nor scrambling for discourse linking are pragmatic forms, in the unsystematic sense of the word. Both are linked, in a predictable way, from the syntactic structure and the distribution of accent (grammatical/default vs. contrastive prosody). Topicalization and scrambling out of VP are means to reduce the distance to antecedent referents. They are part of the parsing mechanics to the extent that they reduce the time lapse for the interim memorizer staple. Topic proneness is highly dependent on the typological classification. German, but not English, shows free topic proneness with free availability of Spec,CP/IP and wide mid¬field scrambling space being the determining factors. English, but not German, moves XPs not only for reasons of discourse optimisation, but also, in a wide number of cases, to avoid garden path or ungrammatical read¬ings. DROP (and Doherty’s B(alanced) I(nformation) D(istribution), are means to optimise discourse linking which can only be brought to effect on the basis of typological and structural cha¬r¬¬acteristics germane to German’s SOV. On first sight, the plausibility rating between Molnárfi’s and my own account is on a par. The widely accepted and system-fed assumption of case assignment inside the place of merging, i.e. VP, is in favour of Molnárfi’s ‘case assignment-first-discourse function- later’ approach. I have opted for the inverse sequence led, in essence, by the criterion of greater derivative economy. Under Molnárfi, case is assigned irrespective of clausal discourse-function discerning accent. The level of discourse-functional discrimination is achieved in the next step of raising to the anti-focus category in the functional domain. But this step has nothing in common with the otherwise purely grammatically motivated domain left of VP. Under Abraham’s approach, no extra discourse functional domain is posited in the first place. Therefore, by necessary conclusion, no movement for discourse reasons, such as Molnárfi’s anti-focus raising, has to be assumed. The merge step installs DPs (not NPs!) in their discourse functional positions, fully faithful to their clause accent-motiva¬tion and, by consequence, to their semantic presuppositional value. Molnárfi’s claim with respect to the structural discourse function position is different from that Grewendorf or by Frey to the extent that it is motivated by typological

 Werner Abraham

obser¬va¬tions. Yet, a min¬im¬alist, most-economical, position can be advocated by assuming that un¬ambiguous distributions of clausal prosody and scrambling derivation under refocusing yield the unambiguous com¬pu¬tab¬il¬ity of dis¬course functions without raising to an extra dis¬course functional category (Abraham 1997, 2003). It was between these two po¬lar positions that we located and assessed all other options on the market.

Notes * Parts of this paper have been read at meetings in Tübingen, Leipzig, Mannheim, and Vienna. Thanks are extended to these audiences as well as László Molnárfi/Tilburg. Particular thanks go to an anonymous reviewer. The anonymous reviewer draws attention to the need that prosodic characteristics such as 1. ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� falling vs. rising accent be distinguished to identify default vs. contrastive accent. However, the notion of clausal accent is based on the linear position inside VP – see (2a). Fronting can only yield contrastive accent. This is in line with our intuition that declarative sentences provide only one default accent: that left-next to V-last. Given the focus of this paper, i.e., that discourse functions can be computed, more or less, 2. ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� by the architecture of the Ger­man clause (basic word order or debased under refocusing) and the distribution of clausal accent, I will refrain from a deep-going discussion of such discourse categories as Thema/Given/Background vs. Rhema/ New/Focus/ Fore­ground, assuming that most of this has been clarified in the ample literature. The main tenet on which I proceed is “[…] debased, or default, clausal accent prominence indicates givenness/Thema status” and “Clausal accent prom­in­ence indicates novelty or contrast status”. See Schwarzschild (1999). 3. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� It is not quite clear whether or not this contradicts Haider & Rosengren’s conclusion that scrambling is not string-vacuous. The refocusing concept that I advocate here implies minimal, VP-internal vacuous re­ordering of contrastively focused indefinites (i.e., movement to a position to the right of adverbs). If so, the principled priority extended to the one-to-one correlation between reference (definite vs. indefinite) and the visible distribution of clausal default accent, which is advocated here, renders (7f) of lower relevance. See Molnárfi’s discussion of this issue (Molnárfi, in this volume). However, it is not clear whether the issue raised in (7f) has been thought of in the accent-distribu­tion­al and referential context unfolded and advocated in the present paper. The correlation between pronouns/definites vs. indefinites, on the one hand, and Thema vs. 4. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Rhema, on the other, is an idealization, which is generally – but not always – true in German and other languages. The anonymous reviewer, however, draws attention to the fact that there exist poorly understood phenomena (e.g., in Slavic languages) which show that pronouns can show up in the rhematic part of the clause without receiving a contrastive accent. Needless to say, one should proceed from the general case. Still, the exceptions remain to be explained. This, however, as well as the fact what is the general observation and what is the exception is not the purpose of the present paper. Observation provided by the anonymous reviewer. 5. �����������������������������������������������



Topic, focus, and default vs. contrastive accent: typological differences 

6. ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� There is reason to believe (Abraham 1997) that any fixed (Minimalist) position AgrSP(‑before-Agr­OP) is a mis­con­cept­ion for Ger­man in the first place. The main evidence is that subjectNPs marked as [-definite/spec­ific] are inside vP in their base positions, whereas those marked [-definite/spec­ific] are outside to the right of C/Vo (Abraham 1997). Again, the CA vs. GA distribution is con­clusive evidence for the latter, the anti-Min­im­al­ist pos­ition for a dis­courseprominent language such as German.

i.ii

Focus and focus movement across languages

Identifying inferences in focus* Daniel Wedgwood Conventional approaches to ‘the syntax-semantics interface’ concentrate on matching static syntactic structures directly to semantic forms. This fails to account for the possibility that underspecified and/or procedural meaning may be grammatically encoded, creating observed truth-conditional interpretations only via inferential processes. Here I argue that the so-called focus position of Hungarian provides evidence for the latter kind of analysis, pointing also to a move away from abstract syntactic structures to an incremental parsingbased analysis of linear word strings. This perspective is further supported by comparison with the English it-cleft, which appears to show similar truthconditional effects but is demonstrably different on other levels.

1. The FP phenomenon and conventional analysis Kehler (2002: 1) points out that the following quotation, from the psychologist Abraham Maslow, seems to have some relevance for modern linguistics: “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail” (Maslow 1966: 15-16). In this article, I suggest that the analysis generally afforded to the so-called focus position of Hungarian (henceforth FP – intended here as a theory-neutral label) constitutes a case study of the problem described in this quotation. Specifically, linguists, under the influence of assumptions such as those of Montague and even Grice, have wielded the tools of hierarchical syntactic representations and truth-conditional semantics almost exclusively and have assumed that these can and should be related to each other directly. A fresh look at the FP phenomenon shows (i) that this kind of conventional syntactico-semantic analysis is unsustainable and (ii) that this follows from an over-simplified methodology: the effects of inferential pragmatic processes must be investigated as a prerequisite to identifying the semantic contribution of the relevant parts of the grammar. Comparison with the English it-cleft construction, which shows a similar relationship to truth conditions but demonstrably covers a different range of meanings, supports this argument. This has consequences for the very nature of the grammar itself, since it proves to be the case that crucial in-

 Daniel Wedgwood

ferences are drawn on the basis of the particular kind of expression found in a certain position at a certain point in parsing a Hungarian sentence. This calls for the adoption of a model of grammar that provides partial representations of meaning as they are constructed in the course of processing.1

1.1

Syntax: The ‘focus movement’ analysis

The basic FP phenomenon is illustrated in the contrast between (1a), a so-called neutral sentence (i.e. one conveying a simple positive assertion with a ‘topic>comment’, or ‘broad focus’, information structure), and (1b), which is said to show the use of FP. (1) a. b.

János meghívta Marit. János VM.called Mari.ACC ‘János invited Mari.’ János MARIT hívta meg. János Mari.ACC called VM ‘It’s Mari who János invited.’

As (1b) shows, the putative focus position is located to the immediate left of the tensed verb and its use appears to result in an exhaustive or identificational reading of the expression that appears there, of much the same kind as is conveyed by the use of the it-cleft construction in English.2 The use of this position is accompanied by the postposing of any of a syntactically-defined class of expressions known in the Hungarian literature as verbal modifiers (VMs), such as the so-called ‘verbal prefix’ meg in (1).3 This apparently arbitrary structural effect might appear to be evidence in favor of dealing with FP as a strictly syntactic matter and this appears to have been the conclusion drawn by the majority of analysts. Given a syntactic operation that appears to relate to a certain kind of interpretation, the analysis of FP seems clear enough in the context of contemporary linguistic theory: certain expressions move to a special pre-verbal position, FocusP – possibly accompanied by verb movement which strands any VM, as in Bródy (1990b) – where they are interpreted with respect to an exhaustivity operator at LF.4 Thus, syntactic and semantic structures are simply matched; there is no place for inferential pragmatic processes to have any influence on the relationship between linguistic structure and its interpretation. However, there is another way to analyse the postposing of VMs in the presence of focused expressions. The complementary distribution of these elements in the immediately pre-verbal position could be due to their both seeking to fill a single position, characterized by strict left-adjacency to the tensed verb. If this were the case, it would follow that the semantic contribution of this position must be highly underspecified, its observable effects (such as the exhaustive/identificational reading of pre-verbal foci) being in part derived by inferential processes. Something of the kind can be found in the earlier work of É. Kiss (1987, 1994), but this kind of single position analysis ran into



Identifying inferences in focus 

a number of criticisms which appear decisive in the context of conventional syntactico-semantic assumptions (see, for example, Farkas 1986, Piñón 1992, Dalmi 1998 and the summary in É. Kiss 2002: 83). This kind of analysis has been resurrected in recent work by É. Kiss (2003, 2006; see also É. Kiss 2005a, 2005b), in which she proposes the replacement of FocusP by a PredP position that can host either foci or VMs. Though it is not clear that this avoids all of the syntactic objections previously raised to single position analyses, I believe that É. Kiss is correct to identify pre-verbal foci as being in an essentially predicative position – indeed, this is the analysis that I argue for independently in Wedgwood (2005). However, the latter work goes further than É. Kiss’s PredP idea, by proposing that not only pre-verbal VMs and focused items are occupants of this predicative position, but so are main verbs in neutral sentences that do not contain a VM. Clear evidence for this comes from sentences containing tensed auxiliary verbs and infinitival main verbs, as in (2). The important thing about these sentences is that the main verb is morphologically free of the expression of tense and therefore able to vary in its position relative to tense. Under these circumstances, main verbs prove to be in complementary distribution with VMs and foci, with respect to pre-auxiliary position. (2) a. János meg fogja {hívni Marit / Marit hívni}. János VM will call.INF Mari.ACC Mari.ACC call.INF ‘János will invite Mari.’ b. # János meghívni fogja Marit. János VM.call.INF will Mari.ACC Intended: ‘János will invite Mari.’ c. János látni fogja Marit. János see.INF will Mari.ACC ‘János will see Mari.’ d. János MARIT fogja látni. János Mari.ACC will see.INF ‘It’s Mari who János will see.’ e. * János MARIT látni fogja. János Mari.ACC see.INF will Intended: ‘It’s Mari who János will see.’ It is a major shortcoming of many syntactic accounts of FP (including the prosodically-driven analysis of Szendrői 2003) that they fail to provide a unified basis for VM and main verb (stem) behavior when tense is attached (i) to an auxiliary and (ii) to a main verb. Basic data like those in (2a) and (2c) invite an overarching generalization regarding the positions of VMs and main verbs relative to the expression of tense, but most syntactic accounts of FP require a separate, rather unconstrained operation of ‘VM climbing’ (Farkas and Sadock 1989) to account for position of VMs just when there is a tensed auxiliary (as in (2a)).

 Daniel Wedgwood

What (2) clearly shows, in any case, is that infinitival main verbs act in parallel to VMs when tense is attached to an auxiliary. One could, of course, declare infinitival main verbs to be a kind of VM (as in Koopman and Szabolcsi 2000), but this seems rather incoherent, as well as wholly stipulative – VMs are usually thought to combine with the main verb, so it is unclear how the main verb itself could be a ‘verbal modifier’. Furthermore, the set of VMs is already quite diverse and lacking in a clear motivation for any movement to pre-verbal position; adding infinitives to this would make it lose any semblance of coherence as a class. Otherwise, we must draw the conclusion that the sentences with auxiliaries reflect the ‘real’ relationships between the different elements of the sentence. That is, the position of FP foci and VMs in neutral sentences is not so much pre-verbal as pre-tense, and the main verb in a neutral sentence underlyingly has this same relationship to the position of tense. In terms of linear order and adjacency, this is in fact maintained even when the main verb is finite, although the morphological dependence of verb and tense on each other adds the complication that either the tense morpheme alone or the whole tensed verb can be treated as the expression of tense. Thus, a neutral sentence like (1a) (repeated here as (3a)) is parallel to (2a), with the VM left-adjacent to the tensed element (which in (3a) is the whole tensed main verb, the verb stem being incapable of occupying another position), while the VM-less neutral sentence (3b) is parallel to (2c): the main verb itself is treated as being left-adjacent to the expression of tense (in this case the tense morpheme alone). (3) a. b.

János meghívta Marit. János VM.called Mari.ACC ‘János invited Mari.’ János látta Marit. János saw Mari.ACC ‘János saw Mari.’

The idea that focused expressions effectively usurp what is the unmarked position of the main verb (or its associated VM) strongly supports the idea that the relevant position is in essence some form of predicative position. However, it appears from the above examples that this position is best defined in terms of adjacency to tense, rather than as a pre-verbal PredP projection, as in É. Kiss’s proposal. Furthermore, there is arguably a certain conceptual oddity to the PredP proposal. As is made clear below, this proposal (correctly, in my view) relies on inferences over the kind of expression found in PredP in order to determine what kind of interpretation will be derived, and is thus implicitly an account based in the process of interpretation, yet it attempts to employ purely generative methodology and analysis – notably without invoking (or even identifying the precise contribution of) a theory of pragmatics, hence lacking the benefit of any theory of inferences in the interpretation process. In section 2, I discuss how the assumption of a certain kind of immediately pretense predicative position, in the context of an incremental processing-based approach



Identifying inferences in focus 

to grammar and interpretation, explains the information-structural interpretations of different sentences. First, it is time to look at why the conventional view of the semantics of FP is unsustainable.

1.2

Semantics: exhaustivity and identification in the grammar

1.2.1 The exhaustivity operator analysis As noted above, the conventional analysis of FP, which matches syntactic structures directly with semantic effects, assumes that a FocusP projection contributes an operator that adds an exhaustive or identificational reading to the interpretation of any material found in Spec,FocusP, the effect being very similar to the interpretation of the clefted expression in an English it-cleft. The fact that there are good reasons to reject the syntactic side of this conventional story (as indicated above) suggests that the semantic side cannot be this simple either: if there is a single position for foci, VMs and main verbs, then the only way to maintain a consistent semantic contribution for this position would be to make this something highly underspecified. There are also more concrete reasons to abandon the encoded exhaustivity operator analysis, as I show in this section. It is important to note how the operator analysis has been encouraged, even enforced, by conventional but far from necessary assumptions about the relationship between linguistic structure and truth-conditional semantics (as is argued at length in Wedgwood 2005). As Szabolcsi (1981) notes, examples like (4) suggest that the interpretive effect of FP can affect truth conditions. Here the exclusion of alternatives to the denotation of the focused expression must be taken to be part of the truth conditions of each clause; otherwise, (4) would represent a logical contradiction. (4)

Nem PÉTER aludt a padlón, hanem {PÉTER ÉS PÁL / AZ EGÉSZ not Péter slept the floor.on but Péter and Pál the whole TÁRSASÁG} company ‘It isn’t Péter who slept on the floor; it’s Péter and Pál / it’s the whole company.’

According to conventional semantic assumptions, including those of Gricean pragmatics, truth-conditional meaning must be derived compositionally by the grammar (and, conversely, pragmatically inferred meaning can only be non-truth-conditional). In this case, the analyst has no choice but to force a syntactic representation to map directly onto the appropriate semantic representation. Consequently, the grammar can be required to have a certain form, whatever the side-effects of this may be, in terms of abstraction away from the observable evidence of surface forms. Thus, examples like (4) demand an analysis whereby there is a distinct FP position which grammatically encodes its exhaustive interpretation, as Szabolcsi (1981) argues. Hence, an exhaustivity operator of roughly the form in (5) is often associated with FP.

 Daniel Wedgwood



(5) λx [λP [P(x) & ∀y [P(y) → y = x]]]

However, as will be shown below, this analysis is quite unsustainable. Hence, it seems that quite fundamental assumptions of conventional linguistic analysis can determine empirically inaccurate results. Fortunately, we need no longer be forced into this paradox: good reasons have been independently advanced for rejecting the crucial problematic assumptions regarding the relationships of syntax, semantics and pragmatics. As argued at length by ‘post-Gricean’ analysts like Sperber and Wilson (1986/95), Récanati (1993), Carston (2002), there is no basis for the assumption that inferential pragmatic processes cannot influence truth-conditional meaning; on the contrary, there is copious evidence that this happens regularly. Well-worn examples include the likes of (6a): Carston (2002: Chapter 3) argues compellingly that the various temporal and causal meanings associated with conjunction cannot be encoded in any way, yet they can come under the scope of logical operators – in this case disjunction – and as such demonstrably affect truth conditions (just as in (4)). Similarly, the downward-entailing reading of the numeral in (6b) clearly enters into truth-conditions, but this reading is not generally accepted as being encoded in the lexical semantics of numerals (for good reasons; see Carston 1998, Horn 1992).

(6) a. Either he left her and she took to the bottle or she took to the bottle and he left her. b. Kim can eat 2000 calories a day and not put on weight. The precise contributions to truth conditions made by a wide range of open-class lexical items are also regularly dependent on inferences drawn in context – consider flat in Holland is flat or raw in This steak is raw (as a sincere complaint) versus Steak tartare is made with raw beef. Relevance theorists also emphasize that the process of reference assignment constitutes a form of inferential contribution to truth conditions and that this process is most coherently analyzed as being driven by the same principles of context-dependent, relevance-oriented inference that account for conversational implicatures and thus are independently needed in any complete theory of language understanding (Sperber and Wilson 1986/95: 183-193). There is thus, at the very least, room for wide-ranging, theoretically consequential debate regarding the nature of the relationships between linguistic structure, truthconditional meaning and inference. Still, there is little sign in the mainstream syntactic or semantic literature that anything but the most direct mapping between syntax and semantics is regularly considered.5 This is perhaps because of the potentially far-reaching consequences of considering the role of extra-grammatical inferential processes in the construction of meaning. As argued at length in Wedgwood (2005) and hinted at below, Hungarian FP provides an example of how the very nature of syntax is called into question once one accepts that the mapping from linguistic structure to semantic representation may be quite indirect. After all, if encoded meanings are not what we



Identifying inferences in focus 

have hitherto tended to assume, the structures that we must posit to convey them are unlikely to be the same. In the absence of any antecedently determined assumption that it must involve direct grammatical encoding of exhaustivity, the interpretation of Hungarian FP immediately begins to look like a prime candidate for pragmatic explanation. The exhaustive interpretation of asserted material is predictable in terms of what is known in the Gricean tradition as quantity implicature: in essence, hearers will usually assume that the speaker has mentioned every relevant piece of information, so can infer on the basis of this general communicative principle alone that any contextually relevant alternative to a given assertion is in effect communicated to be untrue.6 Since the phenomenon of conversational implicature shows some such pragmatic mechanism to be independently necessary, an explanation of FP based on this mechanism, and consequently reducing the burden of explanation on the grammar, would be particularly parsimonious on a broader theoretical level. If this is the appropriate explanation of the interpretation of the FP construction, then this construction must in effect only encode a simple assertion – one that involves a rich background, hence involving a narrow focus on a particular expression, but nevertheless just an assertion, with no intrinsic exhaustivity or other associated semantic operator. Is there any evidence for this? There is, although the fact that this evidence pertains to FP is often obscured in practice. This evidence comes from question-answer sequences. Despite the impression given in the literature by the regular translation of FP sentences with it-clefts, FP constitutes the only felicitous response to a Wh-question like that in (7), an example adapted from Horvath (2000: 201). (7)

Kit hívtak meg? ‘Who did they invite?’ Jánost (hívták meg). János.ACC invited.3PL VM ‘(They invited) János.’

If the significance of this kind of example has been missed in the past, this may be simply due to the fact that all ‘given’ material would normally be elided in answer to a Wh-question, as indicated by the parentheses in (7). This means that the FP construction, with its characteristic postposed VM, is not usually observed in such contexts. Nevertheless, native speakers agree that the only possible full sentence answer in such a context would be the FP construction, as seen in this example of Horvath’s. As a result of the invisibility of FP in such cases, the construction tends to be associated with contexts in which the information structure of the sentence is not predetermined by a context-question. These are the kinds of contexts in which an it-cleft is more likely to be used in English, to disambiguate or emphasize the information structure of the utterance. They are also the kinds of context in which a narrowly focused expression is very likely to result in a clearly contrastive reading, for pragmatically predictable reasons. Briefly, relevance-based reasoning would lead us to expect

 Daniel Wedgwood

that the effort of accommodating the rest of the sentence as background material and interpreting the focused expression in terms of this should be justified by some particular communicative effect above and beyond conveying a single proposition; on this basis, an obvious inference is that the rich background material is provided in order to evoke likely completions of the sentence (i.e. potential foci), in contrast to which the actual focus is asserted. Hence, it is not due to a special correspondence in encoded meaning that observable data involving the use of FP tend to be translatable with a cleft, but rather because of the coincidental invisibility of FP structures in certain key contexts.7 That the common usage exemplified in (7) undermines the supposed parallelism of FP and it-clefts is shown clearly in the fact that using It′s János that they invited in a translation of (7) would be decidedly marked, if acceptable at all. The it-cleft thus appears to be significantly restricted in use compared to FP. This is predicted by the analysis outlined below, where elements of interpretation that are directly encoded in the it-cleft are inferred in certain contexts with the FP construction, on the basis of more underspecified encoded semantics. The use of FP in cases like (7) is highly suggestive of a construction that fundamentally expresses something like narrow focus – that is, an assertion made with regard to a largely ‘presupposed’ event – which regularly becomes associated with exhaustive interpretation just because this is the pragmatically unmarked way to interpret such assertions. This is further supported by the fact that, just as in English, a non-exhaustive narrow focus must be specially signalled in Hungarian, using rising intonation and/or phrases like among others (Roberts 1998, Horvath 2000). This is consistent with a pragmatic explanation of exhaustivity, but would seem oddly redundant within a system where exhaustivity were itself added to the meanings of sentences through the use of an encoded operator and explicitly signalled through word order. Nevertheless, since (7) does feature an exhaustive reading, albeit one that seems to be naturally explained by other means, it is not direct counterevidence to the claim that an exhaustivity operator is encoded in FP. Such counterevidence is provided by a test originally applied to the English it-cleft by Horn (1981), in the form of the sentence in (8a). If it were the case that the semantics of the cleft includes an exhaustivity operator, (8a) should be quite coherent, since the exhaustive meaning is precisely what is required to justify the second clause – as shown in (8b), which includes an explicit indication of exhaustivity, in the form of only. However, (8a) is quite clearly incoherent, so one may deduce that the cleft does not inherently convey exhaustivity.

(8) a. # I know Mary ate a pizza but I’ve just discovered that it was a pizza that she ate. b. I know Mary ate a pizza but I’ve just discovered that it was only a pizza that she ate. Translating Horn’s examples into Hungarian, using the FP construction, produces exactly the same pattern of acceptability, as shown in (9). Hence, it cannot be the case that FP introduces an exhaustivity operator as a matter of structurally encoded semantics.



Identifying inferences in focus 

(9) a. # Azt tudtam, hogy Mari megevett egy pizzát, de most That knew.1SG that Mari VM.ate.3SG a pizza.ACC but now vettem észre, hogy egy pizzát evett meg. take mind.to(VM) that a pizza.ACC ate VM b. Azt tudtam, hogy Mari megevett egy pizzát, de most vettem That knew.1SG that Mari VM.ate.3SG a pizza.ACC but now take észre, hogy csak egy pizzát evett meg. mind.to(VM) that only a pizza.ACC ate VM 1.2.2 The identificational operator analysis The evidence presented in the previous section shows that exhaustivity as such cannot be the encoded semantics of FP, even if a focus position can be justified syntactically. There is, however, another version of the hypothesis that FP encodes a semantic operator: on this view, FP does not assert the exhaustivity of the focus, but rather effects ‘exclusion by identification’, through the application of an identificational operator. In essence, the FP construction is said to create a presupposition that there exists a unique (individual or sum) entity with the properties enumerated in the background material in the sentence; the assertion made is that the denotation of the focused expression is identified with the presupposed entity. In its simplest form, this may be represented as in (10) (see Kenesei 1986, Szabolcsi 1994). (10) λx [λP [x = ι y [P(y)]]] Here, the exhaustive reading of FP foci is part of the presupposition, not the assertion, which is purely identificational. The response to the Wh-question in (7) thus means roughly ‘The person they invited is János’, which is at least compatible with the question-answer context (though the arguments surrounding (7) regarding the redundant and unparsimonious nature of the operator analysis still apply). This reading of FP is also compatible with the data in (9) (asserting the identity of an object being plainly infelicitous when the object has already been named). To this extent, identificational semantics therefore seems to capture the data fairly well. Does this mean that one should adopt the identificational operator analysis? Not necessarily. To do so too quickly would be to once again fall into the trap of simply assuming that observed structures and logically characterizable meanings can be directly matched with one another – a strategy that we have already seen to feed back into an inappropriate analysis of the syntax of FP. The evidence in (2) suggests that the significance of the immediately pre-tense position goes beyond recognizable cases of ‘focusing’, hence any consistent interpretive contribution made by it must be broader than any semantics proposed for focused expressions. On a more philosophical level, note that while the identificational focus account re-distributes the explanation across what is asserted and what is presupposed, it fails to address an issue that should ultimately be of more interest to linguists: what is actually encoded in the language versus

 Daniel Wedgwood

what may be inferred on the basis of extra-linguistic principles. Rather than simply stating that the interpretation of FP involves a presupposition plus identification with what is presupposed, we should ask precisely where these elements of the interpretation stem from. To foreclose discussion of this question by simply assuming the given interpretation to be directly linguistically encoded as such is to ignore a whole spectrum of other possibilities. The reasons why we should instead actively investigate this question are plain from even a superficial comparison of FP with the English it-cleft construction. Intuitively, and on the basis of certain tests (see É. Kiss 1998b and section 3, below), these constructions can have similar truth-conditional effects, which in both cases could be captured in terms of identificational semantics ((8) and (9) show both to be incompatible with encoded exhaustive semantics but compatible with an identificational analysis). Therefore, if we were to follow the naïve methodology of simply matching structures to truth-conditional interpretations, we should assume the same identificational meaning to be directly encoded in both constructions. However, the situation within English shows this to be inadequate. This is so because the meaning space occupied by the Hungarian FP construction spans meanings conveyed by both the it-cleft and unmarked sentences containing purely phonological focus, as shown in the case of (7) (see also Wedgwood 2005: 127). Thus, if we are to assume an identificational operator for FP, we would presumably have to assume one for not only the it-cleft but also for English phonological focus. This is not something that most analysts would countenance, especially given the considerable efforts that have gone into demonstrating a distinction between these focusing strategies within English (see in particular É. Kiss 1998b) – in any case, we clearly want any analysis to draw some difference between them. The problem does not arise once one accepts that inference plays a part in determining observed interpretations: linguistic phenomena that encode different underlying semantics can come to express similar meanings under certain conditions – i.e. when the communicative usefulness of the underlying semantics in each case points to a certain kind of interpretation. Indeed, there may be more than one kind of encoded semantics that regularly results in a reading like identificational focus.8 Once this is recognized, it seems rather significant that the it-cleft involves quite overt indicators of identification with a presupposed entity: after all, this construction is based around the use of the copular verb with a pronominal subject. This pronoun is not a canonical ‘full’ pronoun, and is often labeled ‘expletive’, but, as numerous authors have pointed out, it maintains many of the properties of full, referential pronouns, among which are notably those relating to definiteness and hence the ‘presupposition’, in one sense or another, that some uniquely identifiable entity exists (e.g. Bolinger 1972a, Borkin 1984, Hedberg 1990, 2000, Geurts and van der Sandt 2004 and, within a Dynamic Syntax analysis, Cann to appear). Several of these authors point out that the clefting it is regularly interchangeable with demonstrative this and that, while expletive it with weather and raising verbs is not. Geurts and van der Sandt also note that the necessarily neuter pronoun of the cleft is the same one that appears in all identifica-



Identifying inferences in focus 

tional copula sentences, as shown in examples like Guess who I saw at the swimming pool? {It / *He} was Alfred Tarski! Whatever analysis one might give this pronoun in terms of word category membership, it is clear that it maintains the properties of pronouns that interest us here: their definite/presupposed nature. Thus, in connecting this pronoun to an individual-denoting expression (the ‘clefted’ expression) through the copula verb, the it-cleft does indeed encode identificational semantics, overtly and compositionally (exactly how – i.e. the choice between the various possible views of the identificational copula – is immaterial to the present argument). The FP construction, on the other hand, contains no such overt indication of an essentially identificational interpretive process. Nor does it contain any correlate of the iota operator in (10), in the form of any determiner-like element or a nominalization of the background material in the sentence (cf. an arguably determiner-like or relativizing particle found in a focusing construction in Malagasy; Paul 20019). Taken together, the above observations suggest that the FP construction requires an analysis that produces an identificational reading more consistently than English phonological focus does, but not necessarily via the direct encoding of identificational semantics, which appears more appropriate in the case of the overtly identificational and still more pragmatically restricted it-cleft. Such an analysis can be provided by treating the FP construction as just one manifestation of a pre-tense position whose semantic effect is to trigger a certain kind of predicative procedure. This has the distinct advantage of accommodating the syntactic observations made in section 1.1, regarding the positions of main verbs, VMs and foci relative to tense. An analysis of this kind is outlined in section 2. To summarize this section, while identification does seem a more appropriate notion than exhaustivity to use in describing the semantic effects associated with the FP construction, it is not correct to deduce from this that an identificational operator is grammatically encoded in the ‘focus position’. Instead, it seems that the directly encoded semantics of FP is something less highly specified, but something that regularly leads via inferential processes to an ‘exclusion by identification’ reading.

2. A ‘main predicate’ position in an incremental account The aim of this section to show how the identificational reading associated with the FP construction is a straightforward result of applying a certain kind of predicative procedure to non-verbal expressions. Furthermore, the assumption that this procedure applies to any expression found left-adjacent to tense in Hungarian also explains the readings of sentences in which a verb or VM occupies this position. In other words, the identificational reading is the result of how different kinds of expression interact with an underspecified procedural semantics associated with this position (which is notably defined in terms of linearity and adjacency).

 Daniel Wedgwood

There are a number of ways to explain why applying a predicative procedure to non-verbal expressions should result in an ‘exclusion by identification’ reading. One way is outlined by É. Kiss (2006), in her discussion of her PredP approach. É. Kiss argues that the kind of expression that regularly produces the relevant reading in FP, such as a definite or specific indefinite NP, cannot be a predicate in the conventional sense – i.e. it is not property-denoting – so can only fulfil the requirements of a PredP position as a specificational predicate. Following Huber (2002), É. Kiss describes this as follows. The specificational predicate denotes a set whose function is to specify the members of another set: that denoted by the subject of predication (i.e. the rest of the sentence). The ‘subject’ set gets an existential reading because a set whose members can be listed is evidently a set that exists. The act of specifying implies exhaustive listing, hence this kind of predication implies ‘exclusion by identification’. This account seems to capture an important insight. It gives a basic sense of how predication and the identificational reading of FP may be related, as long as one accepts that specification is a kind of predication. In so doing it suggests a particular relationship between the interpretations of foci and VMs (which É. Kiss takes to be primarily predicates over the internal argument of the verb) and thereby facilitates a single position analysis of their syntactic behavior. However, in appealing simply to a special operation of specificational predication, É. Kiss gives only a partial explanation of how and why this particular reading arises from the application of some general predicative procedure to particular kinds of expression. In effect, É. Kiss describes the existence of two distinct procedures, predication and specification, and argues that some expressions cannot undergo the former. What is not clear from her account is exactly in what sense these two procedures have a common basis significant enough for them to share a common syntactic expression. É. Kiss’s specificational predication is, on the face of it, a quite distinct operation, notably differing from the kind of predication that she associates with VMs in the fact that the latter are argued to be predicates over internal arguments, whereas the specificational operation associated with focusing identifies the members of a set denoted by the entire rest of the sentence. Hence, simply referring to two procedures that could be termed ‘types of predication’ does not in itself unify the interpretation VMs and foci. Without a clearer common basis to these operations, this account is very close to being a recreation of the identificational operator analysis – i.e. in effect stipulating the specificational interpretation of certain kinds of expression when they appear in the relevant position. Furthermore, É. Kiss’s analysis at best only brings together foci and VMs, whereas the evidence presented in section 1.1 suggests that any unified account of these should also deal with pre-tense main verbs. In any case, the direction of explanation appears to be wrong. É. Kiss relies on the idea that expressions like definite NPs cannot have a standard predicative interpretation, but according to quite mainstream views within semantics, this is not the case. For example, the type-shifting operations defined by Partee (1987) allow for the possibility that expressions like NPs are in effect ambiguous regarding their type specification. The operation that changes generalized quantifiers into <e,t> predicates is known



Identifying inferences in focus 

as BE; alternatively, if one assumes a shift from type <e> to <e,t>, the relevant operation is Partee’s ident; as a result of applying these operations, the contribution of Marit in FP would be as in (11a) or (11b). (11) a. BE(mari′,t> ): λx [mari′ (λy [y = x])] b. ident(mari′<e> ): λx [x = mari′] The forms of (11a,b) are immediately suggestive of an identificational reading and it is easy to see why: being said to ‘have the property of being Mari’ is plainly equivalent to being identified with Mari, when Mari refers to a unique individual in a model. Hence, asserting that the predicate mari′<e,t> applies to some entity amounts to identifying that entity with the individual known as Mari. In roughly the same way as É. Kiss, one might now say that a logical subject of predication is more or less by definition presupposed to exist, so that the existential reading of the rest of the sentence could be said to follow directly from the use of an inherently specific expression as a predicate. To give more substance to this claim, however, and to make clear the precise interpretive mechanisms involved in deriving identificational readings from non-verbal elements but not typically from verbs or VMs, one must adopt the perspective of incremental processing (rather than semantic interpretation stated over representations of entire sentences). In addition to making the interpretive side more explicit, the real advantage of such a change in perspective is the ability to relate the interpretation of identificational predicates to the syntactic character of FP, as part of a broader account of pre-tense expressions. Indeed, from this perspective, the syntax and even the prosody of FP are to a great extent derived from its semantics and from pragmatic processes that are triggered thereby in the course of interpretation – as opposed to being stipulated via the use of abstract syntactic projections and features. An incremental processing-based account of this nature is presented at length in Wedgwood (2005); for reasons of space, only the broadest outline can be given here. First, note that a pre-tense expression is not just a predicate; it is the predicate that determines the division of the sentence as a whole into logical subject and logical predicate. This is something that simply assuming the existence of a PredP position does not address: if occupancy of this position were determined by a feature [+predicative], then any number of items might be expected to be attracted to it – what happens to all the predicative items that are not checked in this position?10 What appears to be required is not merely the general idea of predication, but some notion of the main predicate of the sentence – of a kind of predication that is unmarkedly associated with main verbs, but which also describes a non-verbal predicate when it takes the rest of the sentence as its term (something that will produce an identificational and narrow focus interpretation). Such a notion would clearly provide a suitable semantic basis for explaining why there should be a common syntactic position for verbs and narrow foci. It is also supported by the following simple but generally overlooked observation: the pre-tense element, whether verb, VM or narrow focus expression, typically initiates the focused, asserted part of the sentence. A narrow focus, uniquely, also

 Daniel Wedgwood

concludes it (subsequent material being part of the ‘presupposed’ background), but this does not affect the fact that all the occupants of the immediately pre-tense position share this significant characteristic regarding the relationship between syntax and interpretation. Thus, we require some notion of main predicate that is suitably general as to unify all pre-tense expressions to an extent, but which also predicts further effects which differentiate verbs and VMs, on the one hand, from non-verbal expressions, on the other. I propose that this notion can be captured in procedural semantic terms as follows: the application of the main predicate, in conjunction with the provision of some temporal anchor, creates a full propositional form. I take the definition of a full propositional form to include some of the basic semantic structure that distinguishes one eventuality from another, such as aspectual and/or argument structure. It is this that predicts the relevant difference between non-verbal expressions and verbs/VMs. In essence, the crucial point is that verbs and VMs carry semantic structure of a rich enough kind to create a full, if skeletal, propositional form, in the sense required, on their own. Thus, at the point at which a main verb is parsed and recognized to be leftadjacent to tense, an eventuality with a certain structure, as determined by the verb, is asserted to exist, and thus a propositional form is created. If, on the other hand, an NP is encountered left-adjacent to tense, no such semantic structure is introduced, merely the assertion that some individual plays a certain role in some eventuality. There is then only one way in which the requirement to perform main predication, hence to create a proposition, can be fulfilled: the appropriate structure must be found in the context. To do so in effect means recovering a presupposed eventuality, and the usual narrow focus reading of the pre-tense NP follows.11 Consider again the FP sentence (2d), repeated here as (12). (12) János MARIT fogja látni. János Mari.ACC will see.INF ‘It’s Mari who János will see.’ According to my reasoning, the interpretation of (12) underlyingly has roughly the following form: “[The assertion that Mari is the Theme of some eventuality creates a full propositional form because] Mari can be identified with someone in a contextually available presupposed eventuality of János seeing someone at some future time”.12 This way of rendering the meaning of such a sentence may be unwieldy, but it shows how the use of certain expressions leads to the relevant kind of identificational reading: the part in square brackets represents part of an inferential process that converts the encoded ‘main predicate’ procedural semantics to a proposition with communicative relevance, the part following the brackets is what gets conveyed as a result. This latter part is intuitively parallel to the it-cleft translation given in (12).13 The application of the main predicate here is to be viewed in a particular way: as a process that occurs upon parsing the pre-tense item (possibly in conjunction with the immediately following expression of tense). This means that the relationship between



Identifying inferences in focus 

linguistic structure and meaning is defined in terms of a dynamic process of building up an interpretation, not a direct mapping between static structural representations. The advantage of this unorthodox perspective lies in its direct interface with processes of inference carried out in the course of parsing and shows through in its potential to unify all the uses of the pre-tense position, thus providing a semantic correlate to the structural observations of section 1.1. With this in mind, let us return to the case of a VM or verb in the pre-tense position and consider how the nature of these items as main predicates fits with the syntactic and prosodic character of such sentences. To take the simplest case, imagine that a simple verb – one that is not associated with a VM anywhere in the sentence – is encountered left-adjacent to tense, as in (2c) or (3b). It is thereby signalled to be the main predicate, which it does straightforwardly; for example, lát ‘see’ creates a propositional form wherein one entity is seer and another is seen. Neither of these entities needs to have been mentioned prior to the parsing of the verb (though one may happen to have appeared as a topic), but this kind of propositional form is still created unproblematically, since such semantic structure is inherent to the verb’s lexical semantics. Therefore, if any of the arguments of the main predicate are subsequently specified explicitly within the same sentence, this will have the effect of elaborating on a proposition that has already been established. Thus, Marit in (3b) asserts the identity of the entity seen in the relevant proposition (in effect replacing a pronoun-like placeholder in the propositional form created by main predication). This is crucially different to the identificational reading of a non-verbal main predicate, because it merely elaborates on some part of the propositional form that is currently being asserted, whereas a main predicate expression must create a fresh propositional form by itself. The possibility of such post-main-predicate elaborative assertion is what allows for the ‘wide focus’ or ‘topic>comment’ information structure that is associated with sentences with verbal main predicates. The idea that such ‘wide foci’ are each in fact made up of a series of assertions – main predicate followed by elaborations on the proposition established – is supported by the prosody of such sentences in Hungarian. While the strongest prominence is associated with the verb or VM in its pre-tense position, post-verbal expressions do carry weaker pitch accents (see Kálmán 1985, Rosenthall 1992, Roberts 1998). This is consistent with the view of these expressions as a series of appositive, elaborative post-main-predicate assertions and is somewhat mysterious on other accounts. Note that an incremental, parsing-based approach is key to this explanation of how word order, information structure and prosody relate to one another. The role of any VM with respect to main predication is a complex issue, only the broadest outline of which can be given here. The key question is how a VM could be said to create a propositional form and thereby effect main predication on its own (i.e. without necessarily triggering a search for a presupposed eventuality that a VM could complete). Above, I suggested that VMs, like verbs, introduce sufficient semantic structure to create a propositional form. In fact, most of the semantic structure (in

 Daniel Wedgwood

the relevant sense) of a sentence that contains a VM is derived from the combination of VM and verb, which form a complex predicate together. However, even in the most opaque of VM+V combinations, the VM makes its own recognisable, albeit possibly quite underspecified, contribution and the nature of this is sufficient to allow for main predication by the VM. Furthermore, as shown immediately below, the main predication analysis predicts the fact that when a neutral sentence contains a VM+V combination, it is the VM that appears in the pre-tense position, not the verb (as in (2a)). Consider one common semantic effect of VMs: to add a terminative or resultative meaning to the verb’s semantics. One may characterize this in terms of asserting the existence of a result state sub-eventuality. Now, a result state entails the existence of a certain kind of complex event: in Pustejovsky’s (1991) terms, a transition from a process to a result. In consequence, the assertion of the result state amounts to an assertion of the existence of the more complex eventuality and, as such, to the creation of a (highly skeletal) propositional form. In this way a VM can effect main predication without recourse to a presupposed eventuality to act as its term (unlike non-verbal main predicates). Furthermore, it is clear that a VM creates a proposition that must be structured around a complex predicate formed out of the VM and verb. On the other hand, once a verb effects main predication, its ‘unmodified’ meaning structures the proposition, leaving no room for the subsequent creation of a complex predicate with any VM (and therefore leaving the VM uninterpretable). It follows that a VM must be main predicate in a neutral sentence; sentences in which a verb precedes its VM must involve a presupposed eventuality, with some other item acting as main predicate.14 In summary, the analysis of the position left-adjacent to tense in the Hungarian sentence as a certain kind of predicative position has the potential to unify the interpretation not only of VMs and identificational pre-verbal foci, as in É. Kiss’s PredP analysis, but also of main verbs in neutral sentences. In so doing, it allows for a semantic analysis that fits with the syntactic observations of section 1.1. This extra step is only possible if one abandons the conventional methodology of mapping static hierarchical syntactic structures to interpretations and instead investigates the effects of inferential processes that may be triggered in the course of interpreting a string of words incrementally. Only this perspective allows one to consider the effects of all relevant processes outside the grammar and thereby to differentiate them from the meaning that is properly attributable to direct grammatical encoding.

3. The putative FP/cleft correspondence The account developed over the previous sections dispenses with a widely held belief: that the English it-cleft and Hungarian FP constructions, being very similar at some fundamental level, both contrast with cases of purely phonological focus in English (i.e. within sentences of unmarked word order). This belief is implicit in the almost universal strategy of using the it-cleft in translations of FP sentences and is explicitly



Identifying inferences in focus 

argued for by É. Kiss (1998b). It is taken to its apparently logical conclusion, given conventional assumptions about syntax and semantics, by É. Kiss (1999), with a common underlying syntax and semantics proposed for the two constructions – involving a FocusP which encodes an ‘exhaustive identificational focus’ operator. Above, I have given reasons to reject this particular analysis and to adopt the position that the it-cleft and FP are not underlyingly the same, despite their frequently similar interpretive effects. Specifically, I have suggested that meaning that is directly encoded in the form of the it-cleft is partly the result of inference in the case of FP. Furthermore, I have argued that FP often resembles English phonological focus rather than the it-cleft. Nevertheless, significant evidence has previously been adduced in favor of a common analysis of the FP and cleft constructions. It is therefore necessary to re-evaluate this evidence and to show how it fits into the kind of account that I have outlined. First, there are the obvious superficial similarities between the constructions. Both FP and it-cleft are typically thought of as involving an ‘early’, accent-bearing focused expression preceding destressed background material.15 In addition, É. Kiss (1998b) makes much of tests like that in (13). The fact that the reply in (13a) is felicitous – implying contradiction yet in fact only adding information – is argued to show a directly encoded exhaustive/identificational meaning in the case of FP and its it-cleft translation. (13b), on the other hand, supposedly demonstrates that the same reading is not associated with English phonological focus. (13) a. A: Mari EGY KALAPOT nézett ki magának. Mary a hat.ACC picked out herself.DAT ‘It was A HAT that Mary picked for herself.’ B: Nem, egy kabátot is kinézett. No a coat.ACC also out.picked ‘No, she picked a coat, too.’ b. A: Mary picked herself A HAT. B: #No, she picked a coat, too. However, this test cannot be taken to show anything so categorical. First, I have found that some native speakers query the felicity of the Hungarian exchange in (13a), without careful contextualisation. But even if this were accepted unequivocally, the apparent distinction between (13a) and (13b) is demonstrably dependent on context. For example, contrast the isolated example (13b) with the partially contextualized (14a,b). (14) a. b.

C: I see that Jane picked herself a coat, a scarf and a pair of gloves. A: Whereas Mary picked herself A HAT. B: No, she picked a coat, too. C: Mary will look pretty stupid in that coat that she picked for herself. A: Mary picked herself A HAT. (B: No, she picked a coat, too.)

 Daniel Wedgwood

The examples in (14) illustrate how English sentences of unmarked word order, with purely phonological focus, regularly express the kind of ‘exclusion by identification’ reading that analysts have been quick to treat as being a special feature of constructions like FP and the it-cleft. Far from indicating a fundamental distinction between FP/clefts and English phonological focus, tests like that in (13) simply emphasize the need to look beyond the methodology of matching observed structures with observed meanings and to recognize that similar results may arise from different sources (including different kinds of grammatically encoded meaning), thanks to the inferential ingredient in the interpretation of natural languages. Given the evidence of (13) and (14), this is plainly true regarding the it-cleft and phonological focus within English; my arguments earlier in this article merely claim that this is also the case (albeit in a more subtle way) with respect to the it-cleft and Hungarian FP. The remaining observations that supposedly favor it-cleft/FP parallelism fit unproblematically into this view. My account entails that the two constructions are underlyingly different, in that one encodes identification while the other encodes a particular kind of predication, but also predicts that their effects will regularly be very similar, given the nature of the predicative reading of certain expressions. Hence, my account predicts that any material following either a clefted expression or a pre-tense non-verbal expression will have a ‘presupposed’ reading (in the cleft case, because of explicit identification with a presupposed entity, signalled by the copula with a pronominal subject; in the FP case, because of the inferences required to make sense of main predication by a non-verbal expression). However, unlike accounts that assume the two constructions to share encoded identificational semantics, it also predicts, without the stipulative use of syntactic projections or semantic operators, that a pre-tense main verb or VM will usually be followed by further asserted material. Hence, what is recognized as the FP construction does appear to bear a close syntactic resemblance to the English it-cleft, but this masks the fact that other, superficially quite different Hungarian sentences involve a common pre-tense position with a common underlying interpretation. The ‘semantics of FP’ is thus of necessity more general than the encoded identificational semantics of the it-cleft.16

4. Summary Returning to the quotation at the beginning of this article, the case of Hungarian FP shows the importance of using a range of analytical tools. The conventional assumption that syntactic and truth-conditional semantic representations can be straightforwardly aligned with one another in the name of compositional semantic analysis has been shown in this case to lead to the assumption of unnecessary entities within both syntactic and semantic theory. Once the effects of extra-grammatical inferential processes are taken into account, the relationship between linguistic structure and its interpretation looks quite different. The apparent pre-verbal focus position proves to be



Identifying inferences in focus 

just one manifestation of a more general word order / meaning correspondence, which accounts also for the position of VMs and verbs in so-called neutral sentences. The meaning encoded in the relevant grammatical configuration is a certain kind of predicative procedure. The identificational and exhaustive interpretations of certain expressions in this position predictably follow by inference on the basis of this procedure and therefore need not be attributed to grammatically encoded semantic operators. In the light of these findings, this article has also looked afresh at the comparison between the Hungarian FP and English it-cleft constructions, concluding that they do not inevitably convey parallel meanings and that when they do, this does not reflect common encoded semantics, but rather shows the same effects arising inferentially from two different sources. More specifically, the it-cleft directly and explicitly encodes an identificational reading, while in the case of Hungarian FP an identificational reading arises on the back of an encoded predicative procedure. The tendency in parts of the analytical literature to maximize the parallelism between these constructions, in spite of both details of linguistic form and evidence from felicitous usage, provides a clear demonstration of how the conventional notion of the syntax-semantics interface, for all the mathematical sophistication that has been brought to it, can be too crude and simplistic a tool, making complex and contrasting mechanisms look like just so many nails, waiting to be hammered into place one way or another. Importantly, the case of Hungarian FP also shows that the conventional interface cannot simply be enhanced by adding an extra layer of semantic representation, such as a formal model of discourse, since the factors that have to be taken into consideration include inferences triggered in the course of incrementally processing strings of linguistic material. This particular example of a meeting place of information structure and grammar thus implies profound challenges for the way we think of both.

Notes * The development of this work was supported by a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship. 1. One existing framework of this kind is Dynamic Syntax (Kempson, Meyer-Viol and Gabbay 2001). It remains to be seen how the formal apparatus of this developing framework could be adapted to accommodate the ideas outlined below, which I present in a largely informal way here. For a more formal treatment, see Wedgwood (2005). 2. The strict left-adjacency of a focus to the tensed verb is uncontroversial (see, for example, É. Kiss 2002: 83), but perhaps worth illustrating, given its importance below. If an expression such as a noun phrase is separated from the verb by, say, an intervening adverb (as in (i)), this expression cannot get the cleft-like ‘focus’ interpretation (though it might be acceptable on another, ‘multiple topic’, reading; É. Kiss 2002: 13):

 Daniel Wedgwood (i) # János Marit kelletlenül hívta meg. János Mari.ACC reluctantly called VM Intended: ‘It’s Mari who János invited reluctantly.’ Superficially, there are two exceptions to the generalization that nothing can intervene between focus and verb: the particle -is ‘also, even’ and negative particle nem. For explanations of these, see Wedgwood (2005: 77 and Chapter 8). Unlike most analyses, my approach treats the unmarked strict left-adjacency to the verb of ‘verbal modifiers’ in parallel to this focus-verb adjacency and also treats their inability to intervene between focus and verb in parallel to other expressions (see below). 3. Other members of the class of VMs include other ‘prefixes’ with directional/aspectual semantics, bare nominal internal arguments and resultative secondary predicates. 4. For arguments against Bródy’s verb movement analysis, see Koopman and Szabolcsi (2000), É. Kiss (2002). The alternatives presented in these works involve movement of the VM to some other pre-verbal position in ‘neutral’ sentences, plus some reason why this movement is blocked when FocusP is occupied. 5. This is not to discount work in ‘dynamic semantic’ frameworks like DRT (Kamp and Reyle 1993). Such frameworks may in one sense make the process of mapping from syntax to semantics less direct, but only by introducing a particular set of (discourse-)semantic processes. The distinction between linguistic and extra-linguistic (i.e. pragmatic) contributions to meaning is, if anything, somewhat obscured by most of these frameworks. Hence, the problem remains of semantic effects being ultimately fed back into syntactic representations that are presumed to trigger them, whether or not these effects might be attributable to some other source. 6. This process is explicable within Sperber and Wilson’s (1986/95) Relevance Theory without recourse to Grice’s (1975) problematic assumption of co--operation between interlocutors and without any specific ‘quantity maxim’. 7. Brunetti (2003) independently comes to similar conclusions regarding foci in a (superficially) left-peripheral position in Italian. 8. Exactly this seems to be the case within English: the it-cleft and phonological focus strategies are in some contexts virtually interchangeable, despite, as argued above, presumably having different encoded semantics and despite on other occasions carrying quite distinct meanings. 9. A reviewer has pointed out that Paul’s description of the relevant Malagasy particle as determiner-like is far from uncontroversial (and Paul herself recognizes it to be somewhat arbitrary). This does not substantially alter my point, however: whatever the Malagasy particle is, it seems likely that it encodes something directly related to cleft-like ‘identificational’ semantics – and the Hungarian FP construction contains no equivalent of it. 10. É. Kiss (2006) suggests another trigger for appearance in PredP, closely related to the proposals of Szendrői (2003): that the main ‘information focus’ of a sentence must be aligned with the main stress-bearing position, which happens to be PredP in Hungarian. Apart from raising conceptual problems (such as maintaining both PredP and abstract focus features and relating them only indirectly, when they are intuitively such closely connected aspects of interpretation that one might expect the one to explain the other) this involves the assumption that in a neutral sentence with a VM, the VM is always the main information focus, since it appears in PredP in this case (a related idea is presented in É. Kiss 2005b). This assumption seems difficult to motivate independently, in particular in the case of the many semantically non-compositional combinations of VM and verb, such as beolvas (lit. ‘in-read’) ‘tell off ’.



Identifying inferences in focus 

11. The ‘presupposed’ material may in practice be accommodated into the context in the course of interpreting the sentence, rather than being truly ‘given’ in the prior context. This does not affect the explanation given here: the important point is that the sentence indicates that certain information must be taken to be presupposed, given the nature of the item that must effect main predication. 12. For purely illustrative purposes, I make the assumption here that accusative case maps directly onto a Theme role. The proper treatment of case is far beyond the scope of this article and does not affect the present argument. 13. See Wedgwood (2005) for a formalisation of this analysis using a novel combination of neo-Davidsonian semantics and the epsilon calculus of Hilbert and Bernays (1939). This allows the creation of a proposition to be defined in terms of a dynamic process of achieving existential quantification over an eventuality variable. 14. See Wedgwood (2005) for some apparent exceptions to this prediction which prove to involve adverbial uses of the would-be VM and therefore no true VM+V combination at all. 15. As Delin (1989, 1992, 1995) shows, this impression is itself inaccurate: the most frequent usage of the it-cleft is the kind in which the non-clefted material is in fact ‘newer’ than the clefted material and the latter is correspondingly stress-bearing, as in (ii). (ii) A: Why are you so fond of Bill? B: Because it’s Bill who taught me how to tango. This kind of usage is also possible with the Hungarian FP construction, though further research is required to establish how frequently it is employed in this way. Since only identification or predication are claimed to be directly encoded in these constructions, the account outlined here is compatible with these facts – Delin argues that the it-cleft always has a ‘presuppositional’ reading, even if the distribution of ‘new’ and ‘given’ material does not always align with this in the stereotypical way. 16. There is another well-known similarity between the two constructions: certain kinds of quantified NP, including universal QNPs, are barred from the clefted part of an it-cleft and from the Hungarian ‘focus position’. Space does not allow me to cover this complex issue here; see Wedgwood (2004, 2005) for evidence that the precise restrictions are predicted only by assuming the Hungarian pre-tense position to be essentially predicative. Though I argue here for a different overall analysis of the it-cleft, it is possible that the restrictions on quantification in that construction are also to be explained by reference to predication: see Partee (1987), McNally (1998a) for the idea that the complement of copula be must have a predicate reading of a certain kind, which effectively rules out universals and other relevant QNPs. Adopting this analysis of the quantificational data would not alter the basic observation that the it-cleft explicitly and compositionally encodes identification, while the FP construction, according to my arguments, does not.

Focus structure and the interpretation of multiple questions* Balázs Surányi The view that multiple movements are necessary and sufficient for a pair list reading to obtain is developed, and is shown to extend to three typologically unrelated languages, Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian and Japanese, once the focus structure of their multiple wh-interrogatives is taken into account. Within a functional approach to multiple questions, a particular combination of the movement and non-movement accounts of wh-in-situ is advocated, according to which variation is limited to two dimensions. First, wh-in-situ is interpreted either via movement or via binding of a choice function variable. Second, a choice function itself can either stay in situ (the standard view), or it can undergo movement.

1. Introduction It is a long-standing assumption that interrogative wh-expressions in single questions are a subcase of focus, an assumption that is evidenced by a variety of prosodic and semantic parallelisms, as well as syntactic similarities (cf. Rochemont 1978, 1986; Culicover and Rochemont 1983; Horváth 1981, 1986; É. Kiss 1987). As for structural descriptions, single overt wh-movement is commonly assumed to target the same syntactic projection in the clausal hierarchy as syntactic focusing (identified as FocP, cf. Brody 1990a, Rizzi 1997). The semantic/syntactic focus status of wh-elements in multiple wh-interrogatives has been much less studied. One notable exception is Bošković’s work, who advocates the view that syntactic focusing figures prominently in the syntax of multiple questions in a number of multiple wh-fronting (MF) languages (Bošković 1997, 1998, 2000). In the present paper I seek to link up two, I believe closely related, topics in the area of multiple wh-interrogatives. One is the focus structure of multiple wh-questions, and in relation to that, the syntactic analysis of their fronted and in situ wh-elements. The other issue this study is concerned with is answerhood conditions in terms of the dichotomy of single pair vs. pair list interpretations. I show that a proper analysis

 Balázs Surányi

of the focus structure of multiple questions plays a crucial role in the explanation of their answerhood conditions. Pursuing this path, I advocate the following generalization, which I demonstrate to hold up cross-linguistically. (1) Pair List Generalization (PLG) A pair list interpretation is generated at the syntax/semantics interface only in the (overt or covert) presence of wh-elements in a single functional projection FP, where F0 bears a [wh]-feature. The paper is structured in the following way. I start by arguing that multiple foci constructions in Hungarian can receive two interpretations and can be mapped to two corresponding LF structures: one with covert movement of the in situ focus, and another without such movement (Section 2). Next it is established that [foc] is not an inherent property of wh-phrases, but is a feature that they can be associated with in the Numeration (Section 3). I then examine variations in multiple wh-questions in Hungarian as a function of the distribution of the [foc] feature (Section 4). Building on the analysis of Hungarian multiple wh-fronting in Surányi (2005) as well as on an analogy with multiple foci constructions examined in Section 2, it is established that a pair list interpretation is generated if and only if multiple movements of wh-phrases target a single FocP, either overtly or covertly. The proposal is qualified in Section 5, where it is extended to Serbo-Croatian MF, for which Bošković’s (1997, 1998) structural analysis is adopted. Finally, Japanese wh-questions are considered, where again it is shown that focus structure plays a central role, and it is demonstrated that the PLG also derives an interpretive effect of wh-islands discussed recently by Kitagawa, Roehrs, and Tomioka (2004).1

2 Multiple foci: Structures and interpretations Hungarian, in contrast to languages such as Italian or Korean, exhibits constructions involving multiple identificational foci (identificational in the sense of É. Kiss 1998b), illustrated in (2): (2) a. b.

János evett meg csak két sütemént. J. eat-past.3sg pref only two cookie-acc ‘It was John who ate only two cookies.’ János hívta meg egy sörre Pétert, J. invite- past.3sg pref a beer-to P.-acc. és nem Péter (hívta meg egy sörre) Sanyit. and not P. invite- past.3sg pref a beer-to S.-acc ‘John treated Peter to a beer, and it’s not the case that Peter treated Alex to a beer.’



Focus structure and the interpretation of multiple questions 

To be able to investigate the focus structure of Hungarian multiple wh-questions, the focus structure of Hungarian multiple foci constructions will be inspected first. As argued by Krifka (1991), multiple foci constructions can receive one of two possible interpretations (see also van Hoof ’s (2003) analogous distinction between ‘conjoined’ focus and ‘matching’ focus, adopting Comorovski’s (1996) terms for the two major types of multiple questions). One interpretation, coined ‘complex focus’ in Krifka (1991), involves two phonological foci, but only one semantic focus, i.e. the alternatives are (ordered) pairs (as in John only introduced SUE to BILL). ‘True multiple foci’ constructions involve the application of two (or more) focus operators at two (or more) points of the semantic derivation (as in Only JOHN fell in love only with SUE). The distinction exists in Hungarian: in fact (2b) above is a case of a ‘complex focus’, while (2a) is an instance of true multiple foci. Concentrating on complex focus now, I examine the following question: Does the second occurrence of focus get associated with the first focus via syntactic movement? Consider first (4) and (5), both continuations of the context in (3). (4) is an instance of complex focus, with a second focus located within an subjunctive complement clause. (5) contrasts minimally with (4): in (4) the subjunctive clause is an adjunct. This syntactic difference produces a difference in acceptability.2

(3) A: I’ve heard that many teachers want to get rid of many first year students this year. B: Well, not quite: (4) (Csak) két tanár szeretné, hogy kirúgjanak két diákot. only two teacher would.like that pref-expel-subj-3pl two student-acc ‘(Only) two teachers would like to get two students expelled.’ (5) ?* (Csak két tanár készített nehéz vizsgát, (only) two teacher prepare-past.3sg difficult exam-acc azért hogy megbuktasson két diákot. so that pref-fail-subj-3sg two student-acc ‘(Only) two teachers made up a difficult exam to fail two students.’ Now compare (6), which is another variation on (4). (6) (Csak) két tanár szeretné, hogy két diákot rúgjanak ki. only two teacher would.like that two student-acc expel- subj-3sg pref ‘(Only) two teachers would like to get two students expelled.’ In (6) the focused phrase in the embedded clause is in a preverbal focus position. This results in an interpretive difference: while (4) receives a complex focus reading, (6) lacks this meaning. On the complex focus interpretation, ‘two teachers’ in (4) can be (and is in fact preferred to be) interpreted as not distributing over ‘two students’, in which case altogether two students are affected. A distributive reading is enforced in (6), a ‘true multiple foci’ construction: assuming a context where the two teachers have two disjoint groups of students, they wish altogether four students to be expelled. As

 Balázs Surányi

for (4) above, even in the case of two disjoint groups of students, it is possible (in fact, preferred) that only two students are involved (in this case, one from each group). Finally, consider (7), once again forming a minimal pair with (4): (7) *(Csak) két tanár szeretné, hogy kirúgjanak csak két diákot. only two teacher would.like that pref-expel- subj.3pl only two student-acc ‘(Only) two teachers would like to get only two students expelled.’ Here the in situ second focus in the embedded clause is associated with its own focus particle csak (only), and the sentence is ungrammatical. In contrast, when the second focus is fronted within the embedded clause (regardless of whether it has a csak particle, or lacks one, as in (6)), the sentence is fully acceptable.3 The following generalizations emerge from these data. First, the interpretation where the first focus does not distribute over the second is unavailable when the second focus cannot move to the position of the first (due to an island boundary), cf. (5), or when the second focus moves (overtly) to a position lower than that of the first, cf. (6). Given that only the semantic composition of Krifka’s (1991) ‘complex focus’ can result in the non-distributive reading, it can be concluded that (8) holds:

(8) The ‘complex focus’ reading requires (covert) movement of the second focus to the (position of the) first focus.

Second, in a bi-clausal multiple foci construction, the ‘true multiple foci’ interpretation is not available when the second focus remains in situ in the embedded clause. Since such an interpretation is forced by the two independent focus particles in (7), the result is plain ungrammaticality.4 Subjunctive clauses, similarly to infinitives, are known to be domains that are transparent for various kinds of syntactic movements. In this regard they differ from indicatives (which have their own independent tense). Targeting a ‘complex focus’ interpretation analogous to that of (4), example (9a), containing an embedded indicative, is severely degraded in comparison to (4). When the in situ focus is located in a third indicative clause (9b), the result is unacceptable.5 (9) a. b.

?* (Csak) két tanár állította, (only) two teacher claim- past.3sg hogy kirúgtak két diákot. that pref-expel-past.3pl two student-acc ‘Two teachers claimed that two students had got expelled.’ *(Csak) két tanár állította, hogy Péter üzeni, (only) two teacher claim. past.3sg that P. message.send-3sg hogy kirúgtak két diákot. that pref-expel- past.3pl two student-acc ‘Two teachers claimed that Peter said that two students had got expelled.’



Focus structure and the interpretation of multiple questions 

This patterning recalls the proposal in Bošković (1998, 2000), according to which covert movement is more local than overt movement (see also Dayal (2002) for related discussion of English wh-in-situ in embedded indicatives, which she also takes not to be able to move out of the indicative to matrix CP). Such a view of covert movement, naturally, needs to be combined with a non-movement analysis of such wh-in-situ elements that appear within islands. The approach that will be adopted in Section 4 below is Reinhart’s (1998) choice function variable binding analysis. If genuine covert movement is local and cannot extract any in situ element out of an indicative clause, then the unacceptability of (9) is explained: on the one hand, the ‘complex focus’ interpretation would require long covert movement to the matrix clause periphery (see (8)), while on the other hand, if the second focus is to be interpreted as independent of the first (a ‘true multiple foci’ reading), then the second focus would have to be fronted to the preverbal focus position of its own clause (see Note 3). With these discoveries about the syntax/semantics mapping in multiple foci constructions in place, we now turn to the role of focus in multiple wh-questions.

3 Focus in multiple wh-interrogatives It is a standard view that wh-operators in single wh-questions are a special case of focus ope­rators (e.g. Rochemont 1978, 1986; Culicover and Rochemont 1983; Horváth 1986), evidenced by certain prosodic and semantic parallelisms, as well as syntactic similarities. Indeed in Hungarian (or Italian, Greek, Catalan, Bengali etc.) single whmovement and focus movement apparently target the same left-peripheral position, identified as FocP in Brody (1990a) and in Rizzi (1997), among others. However, the conjecture that wh-expressions in singular/simple constituent questions play the role of focus does not carry over automatically to multiple wh-interrogatives, in particular for second, third, etc. wh-elements in such questions. I argue that although at least one wh-element needs to be focused in a multiple wh-interrogative too, second, third etc. wh-pronouns are not necessarily focused. Evidence for this view comes from two types of Hungarian multiple wh-interrogatives: the Slavic-type multiple wh-fronting (MF) construction, and English type single wh-fronting constructions, in which latter case one wh-element is fronted, and the rest remain in situ. Concentrating on MF first, a crucial observation to make is that while Hungarian allows maximally one fronted focus constituent, it allows any number of fronted wh-items. Therefore maximally one fronted wh-item can be focused, the rest must be non-focused. That indeed there is a focused wh-element among the preverbal wh-phrases in MF is suggested by several properties. First, just as with lexical focus, the cluster of fronted wh-expressions is immediately followed by the inverted finite verb, and can be preceded by (multiple) instances of topics. Another relevant property concerns the prosody of MF questions: just as in the case of lexical focus, the verb that is right-adjacent to the cluster of fronted wh-phrases is de-stressed. Further, MF can

 Balázs Surányi

co-occur with postverbal identificational focus, as in (10a). This is significant, given that a postverbal identificational focus can only ever appear in the presence of a preverbal identificational focus (cf. É. Kiss 1998b); see (10b) vs. (2a). (10) a. b.

Ki mikor evett meg csak két süteményt? who when eat-past.3sg pref only two cookie-acc ‘Who ate only two cookies when?’ *Péter megevett csak két süteményt. P. pref-eat- past.3sg only two cookie-acc ‘Peter ate only two cookies.’

In fact, it appears that within the wh-cluster in MF it is the linearly last fronted whexpression that functions as focus. For one thing, that is the wh-element that bears emphatic accent analogous to that of preverbal lexical focus; higher wh-elements in the MF cluster (i.e. wh-elements to the left of the immediately preverbal one) only bear regular phrasal stress as assigned to them by the Nuclear Stress Rule (NSR) (see É. Kiss (1994) on the application of NSR in Hungarian). In addition, it is the immediately preverbal wh-phrase that corresponds to identificational focus in congruent answers; higher wh-phrases correspond to topicalized XPs in answers, see (11). Note also that higher wh-expressions must be presuppositional (quantifying over presupposed sets), while the immediately preverbal wh-expression needs not be.6 (11) a. Mit ki olvasott el? what-ACC who read- past.3sg pref ‘Who read what?’ b. [TOP Az LI-t [FOC János olvasta el, a Lingua-t Péter... the LI-acc J. read- past.3sg pref the Lingua-acc P. ‘john read LI, Peter read Lingua...’ c. #[TOP János [FOC az LI-t olvasta el, Péter a Lingua-t... J. the LI-acc read- past.3sg pref P. the Lingua- acc ‘John read LI, Peter read Lingua...’ From these facts the following conjectures can be distilled. First, the [foc] feature cannot be an inherent property of wh-elements in questions, but is apparently an optional feature assigned to them in the Numeration (NUM) (i.e. the appropriate Lexical Array). Second, this [foc]-assignment in NUM appears not to be unconstrained (just as inappropriate patterns of assignments of optional features, such as Case and phi-features, are filtered out at the interfaces if feature-matching, and hence checking, cannot take place properly). In particular, it appears from the (widely assumed) focus status of wh-phrases in single questions that in a single question the single wh-phrase must bear [foc]. From the obligatory focus status of the immediately preverbal wh-element and the non-focus status of higher wh-phrases in MF, it can be concluded that minimally one wh-element must bear [foc] in Hungarian MF too (where one, at the same time, is the maximal number of wh-elements carrying [foc]). This pattern points to the fol-



Focus structure and the interpretation of multiple questions 

lowing generalization (an essentially similar suggestion is made by Horváth 1998): in order to be interpreted as a question-operator, a wh-element must bear [foc].7 For ease of reference, the two conclusions are repeated below. (12) The feature [foc] is assigned to wh-elements in the Numeration. (13) In order to be interpreted as a question-operator, a wh-element must bear [foc]. In fact, conclusion (12) finds confirmation in English-type multiple questions (i.e. multiple questions with exactly one fronted wh-phrase), found in Hungarian.8 The relevant property of such questions is that in bi-clausal syntactic contexts, when the in situ wh-phrase is located in the embedded clause, this in situ wh-element can appear in either one of two positions: it can either be fronted to an immediately preverbal focus position within the embedded clause, or it can stay in situ. (14) a. b.

Melyik fiú állította, hogy ismeri melyik lányt? which boy claim- past.3sg that know-3sg which girl-acc Melyik fiú állította, hogy melyik lányt ismeri? which boy claim- past.3sg that which girl-acc know-3sg ‘Which boy claimed to know which girl?’

(14) serves as a contrast to bi-clausal multiple foci constructions with a second focus in an embedded indicative clause. Recall that such constructions are severely degraded with an in situ second focus (cf. (9a)), but are fine when the second focus is fronted to the focus position of the embedded indicative (cf. Note 5, (i)). Then, the second, in situ, wh-phrase in (14a) cannot be focus, otherwise (14a) should be just as degraded as (9a). In (14b), by contrast, the second wh-phrase is focused, and sits in the focus position of the embedded indicative clause. In short, the second wh-phrase in English-type multiple questions seems to bear [foc] only as an option. This conforms to the prediction made jointly by (12) and (13): in English-type multiple questions there is a [foc]-bearing whelement in the sentence (namely, the matrix wh-expression), hence the second wh-item either does or does not carry [foc], reflecting the relevant choice made in NUM. Further evidence that the second, in situ wh-phrase in (14a) is non-focus comes from the distribution of superlative predicative adjuncts (SPA). É. Kiss and Farkas (2000) show that in constructions with an SPA, the focus operator introduces the set that serves as the ordering domain for the ordering property denoted by the adjunct appearing in the superlative. What is worth noting is that while in a mono-clausal context an SPA can be associated either with a preverbal, or with a postverbal, in situ wh-phrase (see (15a), which is accordingly ambiguous), an SPA cannot be related to an in situ wh-element in the embedded indicative clause (15b) – cf. (14a) vs. (15b).9 Observe that an SPA can be associated with a wh-element in an embedded indicative when that wh-element is fronted within the embedded clause (see (15c)).

 Balázs Surányi

(15) a. b. c.

Melyik fiú vette észre melyik lányt a legelőbb? which boy take- past.3sg mind-to which girl-acc the earliest ‘Which boy noticed which girl first?’ *Melyik fiú állította, which boy claim- past.3sg hogy észre vette melyik lányt a legelőbb? that mind-to take- past.3sg which girl-acc the earliest Melyik fiú állította, which boy claim- past.3sg hogy melyik lányt vette észre a legelőbb? that which girl-acc take- past.3sg mind-to the earliest ‘Which boy claimed that he noticed which girl first?’

This pattern once again suggests that while the second wh-phrase that is fronted within the embedded clause is focus (and hence can be associated with an SPA), the second wh-phrase that is in situ in the embedded clause is non-focus (and hence cannot be associated with an SPA). The fact that (15a) allows the SPA to be construed with the in situ wh-phrase shows that an in situ wh-expression in a monoclausal multiple question may bear [foc].10 In this section I have examined the focus structure of both the MF and the English-type multiple question pattern, and found that (i) in the former, it is only the immediately preverbal wh-element that bears [foc], and (ii) in the latter, while the immediately preverbal wh-expression carries [foc] invariably, the in situ wh-phrase bears [foc] merely as an option. Next I demonstrate how the distribution of the [foc] property affects the interpretive options of multiple wh-interrogatives as mediated by syntactic movements.

4 Multiple questions: structure and interpretation In this section I will argue that the distribution of the [foc] property in multiple questions has an indirect effect on their interpretation, in particular, on the nature of possible answers they allow. Before turning to that issue, I identify what structural analysis is appropriate for the two syntactic patterns of multiple wh-interrogatives investigated above.

4.1

Movements

First I consider MF. It was argued above that multiple syntactic focusing (à la Bošković) is not a viable analysis for Hungarian. High wh-phrases in MF seem to be topical on the counts of the properties reviewed in the preceding section: they are invariably presuppositional, and they correspond to topicalized phrases in appropriate answers.11 However, that alone does not entail that high wh-phrases in MF are syntactic topics



Focus structure and the interpretation of multiple questions 

(cf. e.g. Gundel’s (1985, 1988b) distinction between pragmatic and syntactic topics; see also Reinhart (1981)). Indeed, they seem not to be. First, topics can intersperse with certain adverbs (e.g. temporal, epistemic) or parentheticals, while high wh-expressions cannot. Second, long movement of a topic to a matrix clause is possible, but long movement of high wh-phrases to a similar position is severely degraded. Third, as illustrated in (16), topics containing pronouns bound from a lower A-bar position reconstruct, unlike analogous high wh-phrases. Binding of the pro possessor within the initial topicalized DP by the immediately preverbal whphrase is possible in (16a), but pro in the first fronted wh-phrase cannot be bound by the immediately preverbal wh-operator in (16b). (16) a. b.

A fia melyik apának jelent nagy büszkeséget? [the son.his [which father-dat mean-3sg great pride-acc ‘Which father takes pride in his son?’ *Melyik gyereke melyik férfinek jelent nagy büszkeséget? [which child.his [which man- dat mean-3sg great pride- acc ‘Which man takes pride in which of his children?’

It can be concluded that high wh-phrases cannot be collapsed syntactically with topics: their fronting cannot be put down to topicalization.12 Surányi (2002, 2005) proposes to treat MF in Hungarian, in line with Richards (1997), as involving multiple [wh]-checking in a multiple specifier configuration in FocP (for discussions of multiple specifiers, see Koizumi 1994, Chomsky 1995b, and Ura 1996). The proposed structure is as in (17) below. (17)

With the potential role of syntactic focusing or syntactic topicalization rejected for high wh-elements, this picture of Hungarian MF is a straightforward way of deriving multiple fronting of wh-phrases forming a non-disruptable cluster. On this analysis, there is exactly one [foc]-checking and multiple [wh]-checking in a single projection. This, in the relevant sense, is the inverse of Bulgarian MF, if the analysis of the latter by Bošković (2000, 2002) is essentially correct. According to Bošković, in Bulgarian

 Balázs Surányi

exactly one [wh]-checking and multiple [foc]-checking take place in a single CP-projection. Whether MF is triggered by a strong [wh]-feature in wh-phrases themselves or by a (multiply checkable) strong [wh]-feature in the attracting head Foc (an ‘Attract-All[wh]’ property, cf. Bošković 1999), it seems clear on either one of these two views that the [wh]-feature of in situ wh-phrases in English-type questions is inactive: otherwise those phrases too would have to be moved to Foc, contrary to fact. I propose to adopt Reinhart’s (1998) choice function approach for the treatment of these wh-in-situ elements. By combining with a choice function variable (which belongs to the category of determiners and occupies a determiner position syntactically, according to Reinhart (1998)), in situ wh-elements will not be attracted, or as a matter of fact, attractable, by a [+wh] functional head.13 Choice function variables associated with wh-elements are bound long-distance, are quantified existentially, and by definition they ‘choose’ (i.e. output) an individual from a set (they are of type fkketlel). The mechanism entails that island boundaries or quantificational interveners (e.g. Beck 1996, Chang 1997, Cheng and Rooryck 2000) will not disrupt the dependency. This is indeed the case, as illustrated by (18a) and (18b) below, respectively. (18) a. b.

Melyik fiú lett ideges miután felhívta melyik lányt? which boy become-past.3sg angry after call- past.3sg which girl-acc ‘Which boy got angry after he phoned which girl?’ Ki ismertetett mindenkivel össze kit? who introduce- past.3sg everybody-with pref who-acc ‘Who introduced who to everybody?’

That the syntactic relation between the Foc0 head and wh-in-situ elements can be construed as a non-movement dependency also provides an explanation for why a whphrase is able to remain in situ in an embedded indicative clause (which is apparently opaque for covert extraction), as in (14a) above, in contrast to focused phrases in an analogous syntactic context, as in (9). While the only construal for the latter in situ focused phrase would be covert focus movement to the matrix clause (not possible out of an indicative CP, hence the ungrammaticality of (9)), the in situ wh-element in (14a) does not need to undergo movement at all: it may lack a [foc] feature (an available option in NUM), and its [wh]-property is rendered inactive by a choice function variable (cf. Note 13). With these structural descriptions in mind, we now turn to the interpretational options available to multiple questions in Hungarian, specifically, to the distribution of two prominent readings, the pair list reading and the single pair reading.

4.2

Interpretation

Multiple questions in general can be answered in either of two ways: with a pair list (PL), or with a single pair (SP). More specifically, certain multiple interrogative con-



Focus structure and the interpretation of multiple questions 

structions may allow both of these answer types as appropriate, others may be expected to be answered only by SP, or only by PL. I begin by identifying the basic interpretive options available in MF and in English-type questions, offering a generalization concerning the availability of PL and SP at the syntax/semantics interface. The first fact to observe is that MF questions in Hungarian must invariably receive a PL interpretation. A question like (19a) can be answered as in (19b), but not as in (19c). (19) a. b. c.

Melyik lány melyik színésznőre hasonlít? which girl which actress-to resemble-3sg ‘Which girl resembles which actress?’ Éva Nicole Kidmanre hasonlít, Anna Julianne Moore-ra, … ‘Eve resembles Nicole Kidman, Ann resembles Julianne Moore, …’ # Éva Nicole Kidmanre hasonlít. ‘Eve resembles Nicole Kidman.’

As for English-type questions, they are apparently ambiguous between the PL and the SP readings. A question like (20a) can be answered either as (20b) or as (20c).14 (20) a. b. c.

Melyik lány hasonlít melyik színésznőre? which girl-nom resemble-3sg which actress-to ‘Which girl resembles which actress?’ Éva hasonlít Nicole Kidmanre. ‘Eve resembles Nicole Kidman.’ Éva hasonlít Nicole Kidmanre, Anna hasonlít Julianne Moore-ra, … ‘Eve resembles Nicole Kidman, Ann resembles Julianne Moore, …’

The pair list reading has often been derived by moving both wh-elements to the periphery of the clause (by LF at the latest) and by positing a semantic operation that composes them there. One such proposal is Higginbotham and May’s (1981) Absorption mechanism, another one is Comorovski’s (1996) and Dayal’s (1996) approach, according to which multiple questions with a PL reading are essentially functional questions, as analyzed by Chierchia (1993). On this latter approach, multiple questions involve a functional dependency between the wh-elements. (21b) is Dayal’s (1996) representation of the (pair list) interpretation of a question like (21a). (21b) employs a function f from the set of men to the set of women. Each proposition p in the denotation of the question (21b) is the conjunction of a set of atomic propositions p′ of the form “a resembles b”, where b=f (a). (Dayal (1996) defines an answerhood operator that selects the unique ‘maximally true’ proposition p.) (21) a. Which girl resembles which actress? b. λp ∃ fke,el [Dom(f)= λx.girl(x) & Range(f)= λy.actress(y) & p = ∩ λp′ ∃x [p′ = resemble(x, f(x))]] In English, according to Barss (2000), both wh-phrases must move to CP (by LF) to provide an appropriate input for Absorption; analogously, according to Dayal (2002),

 Balázs Surányi

both wh-elements must be fronted in English (by LF) to allow the semantic operation producing the functional interpretation to assign range and domain to the function. I propose, following Barss (2000) and Dayal (2002), that multiple fronting of whelements to the left periphery (whether overt or covert) is a necessary and sufficient condition for a PL reading more generally, hence in Hungarian as well (see Surányi 2002). Hungarian MF involves multiple overt wh-fronting to FocP, therefore a PL interpretation is readily generated. For the sake of concreteness, I adopt a functional approach to the PL reading. Specifically, I will assume, following Dayal (1996), that Hungarian MF is interpreted as exemplified in (21). If this approach is on the right track, then the fact that English-type questions in Hungarian can receive a PL reading predicts that they can involve multiple movements by LF. This is fully consonant with the conclusions of the preceding section. English-type questions involve a single overt wh-movement, whereby the fronted wh-element checks both [wh] and [foc] in FocP (cf. (13) and (17)). Given that the in situ wh-element may carry [foc] as an option (as determined in NUM), these multiple questions may then involve covert focus-movement of the in situ wh-phrase to FocP. If the in situ wh-phrase bears [foc], and is thus raised covertly to FocP, this derives the pair list interpretation of English-type multiple questions (like (20a) above), since on this construal, English-type multiple questions involve multiple movements to FocP (by LF).15 As I have assumed that in situ wh-phrases involve a choice function variable (as their syntactic determiner, following Reinhart (1998)), accordingly, the interpretation of English-type PL questions will be minimally different from (21b): it can be represented as in (22) (CH being the set of choice functions, whose type is 〈〈et〉e〉). Following a recent trend of work, I am making the reasonable assumption that the restriction of the in situ wh-phrase itself is not in FocP at LF. This is achieved if the choice function itself moves alone (which then must be taken to be a syntactic specifier element), an analysis advocated in Hagstrom (1998) (the idea is traceable to Watanabe’s (1992) seminal work on Japanese wh-in-situ). Alteratively, we get the same result if reconstruction of the NP-restriction is assumed within a copy theory (see Chomsky 1993). In distinction to (21b), where Range(f)is a set of individuals, in (22) Range(f)is a set of choice functions.16 (22) Pair List interpretation of English-type multiple questions λp ∃ f〈e,ch〉 [Dom(f)= λx.girl(x) & Range(f)= λg.ch(g) & p = ∩ λp′ ∃x [p′ = resemble(x, f(x)(actress))]] When the in situ wh-phrase does not bear [foc], it remains in its A-position throughout the derivation. In that case, the functional interpretation (hence PL) cannot be triggered. On Reinhart’s view, existential closure takes place over choice function variables: an appropriate existential quantifier is introduced at the edge of the nuclear scope of some operator (cf. Heim 1982). For Reinhart (1998) and Winter (1997) this existential closure can take place at any point in the structure, however, Chierchia (2001) shows



Focus structure and the interpretation of multiple questions 

that existential closure of a choice function g is restricted to the immediate (nuclear) scope of the quantifier that binds the argument of g, assuming choice functions to be Skolemized.17 Then the interpretation of English-type questions with an in situ non-focus wh-phrase (i.e., the other reading of questions like (20a)) is the following: (23) Single Pair interpretation of English-type multiple questions λp ∃x [girl(x) & ∃g [ch(g) & [p = resemble(x, g(actress))]]] The two existential operators are not adjacent in the syntactic (or in the semantic) representation, as only melyik lány ‘which girl’ is in FocP, and the second wh-phrase is in situ throughout the syntactic derivation. Hence the semantic operation composing a single complex operator (i.e. an existential quantifier over functions) cannot apply. In short, when the in situ wh-element does not carry [foc] and does not covertly raise to FocP, the PL reading is unavailable, and an SP interpretation is generated instead.18 These ideas represent a particular combination of the movement and the choice function variable binding approaches to wh-in-situ, in two senses. On the one hand, wh-in-situ is argued to be relatable to the left periphery either via syntactic movement or via binding of a choice function variable (through existential closure). The present account shares this property both with Barss (2000) and with Dayal (2002). On the other hand, in contrast to Barss and Dayal, I have extended the movement mechanism to wh-phrases with choice function determiners: such wh-phrases (or their choice function) can either stay in situ, or they can undergo syntactic movement. It is proposed independently by Hagstrom (1998) that choice functions can undergo syntactic movement (for him, they move qua an existential quantifier over choice functions, leaving behind a choice function variable, and the moved element surfaces as a question particle). Hagstrom (1998) differentiates PL and SP readings based on what exactly moves from what position, whereas in the model developed in the preceding sections the difference between the two readings is derived by exploiting the distinction between the movement and the non-movement mechanism of interpreting wh-elements. Nothing in the present model hinges on the identity of the formal feature driving the movement that is required for a PL interpretation, and indeed I have suggested for Hungarian (much in the spirit of Bošković’s work, investigating the division of syntactic labor between [wh] and [foc]) that in MF it is [wh], while in English-type questions with a PL reading it is [foc] that plays an instrumental role in triggering multiple movements.

4.3

Predicitons

The approach developed here makes several predictions with regard to the availability of PL and SP. First, it predicts that in contexts where the in situ wh-phrase in Englishtype questions is situated in a strong island (as in (18a) in Section 4.1 above), or is below a quantificational intervener (as in (18b)), only the SP reading should materialize,

 Balázs Surányi

since that reading does not require movement of the in situ wh-item. This prediction is verified: (18a) and (18b) both lack the PL interpretation.19 Recall now (from Section 3) instances of wh-in-situ within an embedded indicative illustrated by (14a), which were demonstrated not to involve any covert movement at all, alongside minimally different examples like (14b), which involve focus fronting of the wh-item within the embedded indicative. Both types of sentences admit an SP answer only.20 This once again follows, since neither has the two wh-elements sufficiently close to each other at LF: in (14a) the second wh-element remains in situ throughout the derivation, while in (14b) it is located in FocP of the embedded clause. As a result, the single complex functional wh-operator cannot be formed, and the PL reading does not obtain. Another observation concerns cases that differ from (14a) above only in that the embedded clause itself is headed independently by a wh-phrase, as illustrated below. Assume a context of a press conference after the general elections where the winning political party introduces its candidates for Minister of Health, Minister of Education and Minister of Defense. These young and previously little known candidates have been announced to be proven experts of some major notorious problem area belonging to the field of the ministry that they are to become head of (i.e., the three candidates and the three major problem areas are given). A journalist arriving late and not knowing which candidate is supposed to be an expert of which area then asks a colleague at the press conference (24a), which can be answered as (24b), by a pair list.21 Melyik miniszterjelölt tudja hogy which minister-candidate know-3SG that hogy lehet megoldani melyik nagy problémát? how possible PREF-solve-INF which major problem-ACC ‘Which candidate knows how it is possible to solve which major problem?’ b. A tudja, hogy hogy lehet megoldani X problémát, B tudja, hogy hogy lehet megoldani Y problémát, és C tudja, hogy hogy lehet megoldani Z problémát. ‘A knows how problem X can be solved, B knows how problem Y can be solved, and C knows how problem Z can be solved.’ (24) a.

In contrast to (14a), (24a) is amenable to a PL interpretation. The availability of PL in (24a), on the view presented above, is the result of covert focus movement of the in situ wh-element (or at least its choice function determiner) to matrix FocP.22 Construing the in situ wh-phrase as [+foc] and raising it covertly to matrix FocP is not possible in (14a), since the covert movement of the in situ wh-phrase (to check its focus feature) is not licensed out of an embedded indicative clause, as we saw in (9a) (see also Note 3, (i)). Hence a PL reading is not available to (14a). The question is then begged: How come covert focus movement of the wh-in-situ is legitimate in (24a), resulting in PL? Before attending to that question, let me add a further type of example to the pattern, this time involving a fronted focus phrase in [Spec,FocP] of the embedded



Focus structure and the interpretation of multiple questions 

indicative clause. Consider a context with three hypermarkets, each hypermarket advertising that they are the sole retailer of a certain product. Given the three products in question and the three hypermarket chains, not knowing which chain advertises which, one can felicitously ask (25). (25)

Melyik áruház állítja, hogy CSAK NÁLUK lehet which hypermarket claim-3SG that only by.them possible megvenni melyik terméket? PREF-buy-INF which product-ACC ‘Which hypermarket claims which product to be available only by them?’

Questions of this form can once again be interpreted either as PL (as illustrated here), or as SP. Now (24a) and (25) differ from (14a) merely in having the FocP of the embedded indicative clause filled by a wh-expression (hogy ‘how’), and by a focus phrase (csak náluk ‘only by them’), respectively. The question then is why covert movement of the wh-in-situ out of the embedded indicative is licensed in (24a) and (25), resulting in PL, but not in (14a). The answer, I submit, is provided by Fox’s (2000) proposal according to which the covert movement of QR can be long distance, passing through Spec of CP or adjoining to CP in an intermediate step, if this intermediate movement is licensed by Scope Economy (if it results in a new scope relation).23 Apparently, covert focus movement of wh-in-situ in Hungarian follows the same pattern. The intermediate step in the long movement gets the in situ wh-element in (24a) and (25) above the preverbal wh-phrase and preverbal focus phrase, respectively, which produces new scope relations, hence this intermediate movement step is licensed by Scope Economy. The next movement step raises the wh-element on to matrix FocP. Since the preverbal focus position is vacant in (14a), the intermediate movement step fails to be licensed by Scope Economy: it creates no new scope relations. Long movement of the in situ wh-element to matrix FocP is therefore blocked, consequently no PL reading is generated.24 This account predicts that if the wh-in-situ element located within an indicative complement clause in a multiple question is not in the same clause where preverbal FocP is filled by a wh-phrase or by a focused expression (as in (24a) and (25)), but sits in the next lower indicative complement clause, then a PL reading should not be available. This case is illustrated by (26). (26)

Melyik jelölt tudja, hogy hogy fogja elmagyarázni, hogy which candidate know-3SG that how will-3SG PREF-explain-INF that meg kell oldanunk melyik problémát? PREF must solve-INF-1PL which problem-ACC ‘Which candidate knows how to explain that we must solve which problem?’

It is predicted that the (first) intermediate movement step raising the in situ wh-element to the CP projection of its own clause, which houses no wh-phrase, will not be licensed by Scope Economy. Given that the successive cyclic long movement required for PL is

 Balázs Surányi

illegitimate, only an SP reading is expected. This prediction is borne out by (26): a PL interpretation is absent even in a context comparable to that provided for (24a).25 In summary, the generalization concerning PL readings that emerges from the discussion in this section is the following: (27) Pair List Generalization (to be revised) A PL interpretation is generated at the syntax/semantics interface only in the (overt or covert) presence of multiple wh-elements in a single functional projection. In Hungarian, the immediately preverbal wh-phrase is raised to the focus position due to both [wh]- and [foc]-checking; a second wh-element is fronted by virtue of [wh]checking in MF constructions, while in English-type questions receiving a PL interpretation it is moved up covertly to perform [foc]-checking. Finally, in SP English-type questions, wh-in-situ does not undergo movement. In the remainder of the paper, I examine the distribution of PL and SP readings as well as aspects of the focus structure of multiple questions in two other, unrelated languages: Serbo-Croatian and Japanese, suggesting that the proposal developed thus far can be extended to them as well.

5 Serbo-Croatian: MF as focus movement Serbo-Croatian (SC) MF has received much attention recently due to the work of Bošković (1997, 1998, 2002). According to Bošković (1997, 1998), MF in simple matrix clauses involves focus feature driven movement to a position lower than the [wh]checking position (CP).26 True wh-movement in such syntactic contexts takes place only in covert syntax from the focus position, and in this sense then, fronted wh-phrases count as wh-in-situ elements. Bošković assumes that multiple focus movements can (apparently) violate Superiority (see (28)), since the totality of nodes crossed (i.e. distance covered) by the totality of movements will be identical in every order of applying the fronting transformations. In contrast, in a variety of other syntactic contexts (including embedded domains, as well as long-movement scenarios) Superiority must be obeyed (compare (29a) and (29b) below). Bošković explains this by arguing that [wh]-attracting C is not overtly merged in (28), while it has to be overtly merged in (29) (as well as in all embedded contexts), where overt wh-movement takes place to C. Wh-movement attracts the closest wh-phrase, hence Superiority is respected in (29). (28) a. b.

Ko šta kupuje? who what-ACC buy-3SG ‘Who buys what?’ Šta ko kupuje?

(29) a. b.

Focus structure and the interpretation of multiple questions 

?Ko koga kažeš da je istukao? who who-ACC say-2SG that is beaten ‘Who do you say beat whom?’ *Koga ko kažeš da je istukao?

Simple matrix questions like (28) in SC, in difference to Hungarian, can receive either a PL or a SP reading (Bošković 2001).27 It seems that multiple movements to a non-whposition does not suffice to warrant that a PL interpretation will be generated. Evidence from SC apparently points to the conclusion that (27) must be sharpened to (30): (30) Pair List Generalization (PLG) A PL interpretation is generated at the interface only in the presence of multiple wh-elements in a single functional projection FP, where F bears [wh]. This revision over (27) means that the semantic operation creating the complex wh-operator (on the functional approach: the function relating elements of the sets quantified over by the wh-phrases) can only apply in the functional projection headed by a [+wh] head.28 Given that on Bošković’s analysis fronted wh-phrases in (28) are not housed by a head F that bears [wh], the formation of the complex wh-operator does not take place in their overt position. The [wh]-feature of C (merged in (28) in covert syntax above the overt position of fronted wh-elements, according to Bošković) needs to be checked nevertheless. Recall from the preceding section that in situ wh-phrases can be related to the functional head F bearing [wh] via either of two basic mechanisms: through movement, or alternatively, without movement, through binding of a choice function variable associated with the in situ wh-item. Granting Bošković’s structural description of matrix MF in SC, according to (30) the creation of the single complex wh-operator, and hence PL, obtains in (28) only if both wh-phrases are wh-moved to CP in covert syntax (covert focus-movement is not an option: MF itself involves multiple overt focus-fronting). Given that in (28) no factor (e.g. island boundary) prevents the application of either movement to CP or binding, both may potentially apply in principle. Thus, the realization of the two options is what yields the two readings: PL and SP.29

6 Japanese: An interpretive Subjacency effect Japanese is widely known as a wh-in-situ language. According to the present account, in principle in situ wh-phrases can relate to [wh]-bearing C either by syntactic movement, or by binding of a choice function variable. In a simple multiple question where no island is present, one option is that both wh-elements undergo (covert) movement to C; another choice is that only one of the two raises to C, the other is associated with a choice function variable and is bound in situ; a third option is that both wh-elements are associated with a choice function variable and are bound in situ. The first choice results in PL, the latter two choices yield SP. Accordingly, the prediction is that Japanese

 Balázs Surányi

multiple questions should be ambiguous between a PL and a SP reading. This prediction is apparently correct (cf. Miyagawa 1997, cited in Kitagawa, Rhoers, and Tomioka (2004); Bošković (2002) p.c. to Mamoru Saito). One debated issue in the syntax of Japanese wh-in-situ has been whether wh-elements in Japanese are sensitive to wh-islands. For instance, Lasnik and Saito (1984) and Takahashi (1993) argue that a wh-island can be crossed by a wh-dependency; Watanabe (1992) claims that wh-islands are obeyed in this language too; while Nishigauchi (1990, 1999) reports that the wh-island constraint is usually obeyed, though not for all speakers. Recently, Deguchi and Kitagawa (2002) and Ishihara (2002) have argued that in order to examine this issue properly, prosody crucially needs to be taken into account. Specifically, when the domain of deaccenting triggered by the wh-in-situ extends to the matrix scope marker (i.e. the question particle), the wh-phrase takes matrix scope whether or not it is situated in a wh-island. Generally in Japanese, in situ wh-elements receive an emphatic accent and are followed by pitch compression, a prosodic pattern referred to as Emphatic Prosody (EPD). As illustrated in (31) below (where pitch compression is marked by underlining), if pitch compression extends from the wh-in-situ element to the embedded question particle, the wh-element is interpreted with scope over the embedded clause, and when pitch compression reaches the matrix question particle (‘long EPD’), the wh-item receives matrix scope. (31) a. John-wa Mary-ga nani-o katta ka kikimasita ka? J.-TOP M.-NOM what-ACC buy.PAST Q ask.PAST Q ‘Did John ask what Mary bought?’ b. John-wa Mary-ga nani-o katta ka kikimasita ka? ‘What did John ask whether Mary bought?’ Apparently, a wh-in-situ can take scope out of a wh-island in the presence of long EPD.30 The emphatic accent followed by pitch compression triggered by wh-in-situ is analogous to the prosody triggered by focalized elements, which is why the pattern involved is also referred to as the Focus Intonation Pattern (FIP). It is then the covert scope of focus elements, including wh-items, that requires appropriate(ly long) EPD / FIP. Kitagawa, Roehrs, and Tomioka (2004) demonstrate that although a wh-island can apparently be violated in Japanese, the wh-island will still have an interpretive effect. Consider the examples in (32). In all three examples there is a matrix verb embedding an interrogative clause, which in turn embeds another clause containing two wh-phrases. Now if this most deeply embedded clause is declarative, as in (32a), the wh-in-situ ‘which promising player’ will have no problem being associated with the Q morpheme of the middle CP. It can do so even when the middle clause contains a question-embedding verb, i.e. even when it needs to ‘cross’ (i.e. scope out of) a wh-island, as in (32b). However, when the matrix predicate specifically requires a PL interpreta-



Focus structure and the interpretation of multiple questions 

tion, and disallows a SP interpretation of the middle clause (e.g. the predicate ‘make a list’), the wh-island all of a sudden has an effect, resulting in unacceptability, cf. (32c). (32) Scope of embedded WH in middle CP (PL reading OK) a. [Supo-Niti-ga-desune, [DO’no-kyuudan-ga DO-no-yuuboo-sensyu-o Japan-Sports-NOM which-ball.club-NOM which-promising-player-ACC itii-simee-siyooto-siteiru-to ] kangaeteiru-ka ] risuto-ni-site-mimasyoo. intend.to.select.as.No.1-that think-Q make.a.list-let.us ‘Let’s list with respect to which ball club Sports Nippon thinks it will select which promising player as No.1 draft pick.’ Scope of embedded WH in middle CP, across a wh-island (SP reading OK) b. [Supo-Niti-ga-desune, [DO’no-kyuudan-ga DO-no-yuuboo-sensyu-o Japan-Sports-NOM which-ball.club-NOM which-promising-playerACC itii-simee-siyooto-siteiru’oka ] sirabeteiru-ka ] gozonzi-desu-ka intend.to.select.as.No.1-whether investigating-Q know-Q ‘Do you know with respect to which ball club Sports Nippon wants to know whether it will select which promising player as No.1 draft pick?’ Scope of embedded WH in middle CP, across a wh-island (no PL reading!) c. #[Supo-Niti-ga-desune, [DO’no-kyuudan-ga DO-no-yuuboo-sensyu-o Japan-Sports-NOM which-ball.club-NOM which-promising-player-ACC itii-simee-siyooto-siteiru’oka ] sirabeteiru-ka ] risuto-ni-site-mimasyoo. intend.to.select.as.No.1-whether investigating-Q make.a.list-let.us ‘Let’s list with respect to which ball club Sports Nippon wants to know whether it will select which promising player as No.1 draft pick.’ Thus, in (32a) where there is a PL-requiring matrix predicate ‘make a list’ and there is no wh-island, the wh-dependency is well-formed. In contrast, in (32c) where we find the same PL-requiring predicate ‘make a list’ but there is a wh-island, the PL reading associated with the wh-dependency is not generated, and as a result, the sentence is not interpretable. This pattern receives a rather simple explanation on the present account. In (32b) and (32c) the wh-island blocks syntactic extraction, but allows binding of a choice function variable. Accordingly, only an SP reading is allowed (as in (32b)), a PL reading is not (as in (32c)). Interestingly, Kitagawa, Rhoers, and Tomioka (2004) have also detected what can be called an interpretive additional wh-effect. When one of the two wh-elements is located outside the wh-island, then the PL reading unexpectedly becomes available again. This is illustrated below: (33) [Rekidaino DO’no-daitooryoo-ga [ DO’no-tosi-ni senoo-ni past which-president-NOM which year-in war-to totunyuu-subeki-kadooka ] sinkenni kentoosita-ka ] risuto-nisite-mimasyoo.

 Balázs Surányi

go-should-whether seriously considered-Q make.a.list-let.us ‘Let’s list which president, past or present, seriously considered whether to go to war in which year’ Hagstrom (1998) makes the proposal, discussing Japanese, that choice function variables can be attached not only to wh-phrases, but also to larger syntactic units, like wh-clauses. Now on this account, the interpretive additional wh-effect above follows directly. This is because if in (33) a choice function variable is attached to the most embedded wh-clause itself, then in addition to the wh-expression within the middle CP, this most embedded wh-clause can raise too (a form of large scale pied-piping, cf. e.g. Nishigauchi (1990)). This movement can be analyzed as pure focus movement, assuming that the choice function variable itself saturates the active wh-property of the wh-clause (as in the case of Hungarian wh-in-situ). Therefore, two movements can be directed at the middle CP projection, producing a PL reading.31

7 Conclusion In this paper I have explored the idea suggested for English by Barss (2000) and Dayal (2002), and for Hungarian by Surányi (2002), namely that multiple movements of wh-elements is a necessary and sufficient condition for pair list readings to be generated in multiple questions. I have sharpened this generalization to the form below (repeated from (30)). (30) Pair List Generalization (PLG) A PL interpretation is generated at the interface only in the presence of multiple wh-elements in a single functional projection FP, where F bears [wh]. The PLG was shown to extend to Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian and Japanese, and was related to the creation of the complex functional operator in Dayal’s (1996) implementation of the functional approach to the pair list interpretation. In these languages taking the focus structure of multiple questions into account and investigating the division of syntactic labor between the [wh] and the [foc] feature proved crucial for uncovering the deeper regularities concerning their interpretation along the pair list/single pair dimension. Focus structure of multiple questions was argued to figure in determining their covert structure in Hungarian; it governs their overt structure in Serbo-Croatian; appropriate focus structure as reflected in Emphatic Prosody makes possible apparent wh-island violations in Japanese, in which language wh-in-situ participating in a pair list reading nevertheless does respect wh-islands. The model explored here represents a particular combination of the movement and the choice function variable binding approaches to wh-in-situ. Specifically, in contrast to Barss (2000) and Dayal (2002), I have extended the movement mechanism to wh-phrases with choice function determiners: such wh-phrases (or their choice func-



Focus structure and the interpretation of multiple questions 

tion) can either stay in situ, or, if they check a [foc] feature in the CP-domain, they too can undergo syntactic movement. In researching the syntax–semantics interface, one often has to abstract away from focus structure in order to see the relevant facts clearly. The syntax–semantics interface of the pair list/single pair dichotomy in multiple wh-questions appears to be yet another domain where precisely the opposite is necessary.

Notes * The analysis of the structure and interpretation of Hungarian multiple questions that I build on in this paper goes back to Chapter 6 of my thesis (Surányi 2002) (which was prepared independently of Dayal (2002)). Ideas laid out in Section 2 derive from Surányi (2002: Chapter 2), and they formed part of a talk presented at the Linguistics Colloquium 38. I would like to thank the audience there as well as at the ISAG conference in Tübingen for questions and remarks, as well as an anonymous reviewer and the editors of this volume for helpful comments and questions that have resulted in clarifications at various points in the paper. This work was supported by grant No. D-048454 of the Hungarian National Scientific and Research Fund, which is hereby gratefully acknowledged. 1. Throughout the paper double questions will be examined for the sake of simplicity of presentation; extension to multiple questions with more than two wh-phrases is straightforward in all cases. Glosses in this paper employ the following abbreviations: NOM=Nominative, ACC=Accusative, DAT=Dative, PAST=Past, SUBJ=Subjunctive, POS=Possibility, SG=Singular, PL=Plural, PREF=Verbal Prefix (Preverb), TOP=Topic Marker, Q=Question Particle. 2. The second focus in (5) can at best receive an information focus interpretation (or else, a metalinguistic reading): as a continuation of (3), (5) is degraded. 3. Apparently, the relevant empirical generalization can be stated as in (i). (i) may be understood in terms of Feature Balance (of focus goals and probes), applying to the lexical input (Array) constituting clauses, cf. Müller (2004). (i) If in some CP there is an element E which is interpreted as an ‘independent focus’ (i.e. a focus not participating in a ‘complex focus’ construction), and no other focused element occupies the preverbal focus position of that CP, then E must be fronted to the preverbal focus position of CP. The association of the focused phrase in the embedded clause in (7) with its own focus particle csak ‘only’ makes sure it is interpreted as an ‘independent focus’ (cf. (i) above). Csak ‘only’ in (4) and (5) is associated with the respective pairs of focused elements, while in (6) it is associated with the preverbal focused phrase alone. 4. Then, (5) is out because it cannot receive either a ‘complex focus’ interpretation (covert movement of its second focus is blocked), or a ‘true multiple focus’ reading (which would require its second focus to be fronted within the embedded clause, see (i) in Note 3). In terms of features, the movement pattern associated with ‘complex focus’ (cf. (4)) is best captured (in Chomsky’s (1995b) terms) by assuming the [foc] feature of FocP to be ‘strong’, and the [foc] feature of focused phrases to be ‘weak’ (which is conveniently transposable to more recent terminology of the probe/goal system).

 Balázs Surányi 5. A context for (9a) would be something like the following. A: “I’ve heard that many teachers claimed that many students had got expelled” B: “Well, not quite…(9a)”. When the second focus is fronted to a preverbal position in the embedded indicative, the sentences improve to full acceptability; cf. (i), a variant of (9a). (i) (Csak) KÉT TANÁR állította, hogy KÉT DIÁKOT rúgtak ki. (only) two teacher claim-PAST-3SG that two student-ACC expel-PAST-3PL PREF ‘(Only) TWO TEACHERS claimed that TWO STUDENTS had got expelled.’ 6. Bolinger (1978) calls the wh-phrase in a multiple question that contributes the sorting key (cf. Kuno 1982, Kuno and Takami 1993) (mit ‘what-ACC’ in (11) above) the ‘topic’ of the multiple question (as well as the phrase corresponding to it in a congruent answer, cf. also ErteshikShir 1986). Note that in English-type languages, the sorting key can be provided either by the fronted or by the surface in situ wh-elements (see É. Kiss 1993). 7. Bošković assumes that in (what he refers to as Variety I of) (Slavic) MF languages, wh-phrases (or at least one of them) must bear [foc], otherwise they are not interpretable (see Bošković (2002: Fn. 7)). 8. As noted in Wachowitz (1974) (and in Pesetksy (1987)), Polish and Russian (and Czech and Romanian) also allow English-type multiple questions. Just as in Hungarian, in other Eastern European MF languages too, this is possible only when the in situ wh-phrase is D-linked (nominal wh-pronouns like who or what can be interpreted as D-linked depending on the context). 9. The ambiguity in (15a) can be paraphrased as ‘Which girl was the first to be noticed by which boy?’ vs. ‘Which boy was the first to notice which girl?’. 10. Confirming the proposed focus-structure for the MF construction, an SPA in MF can only be associated with the immediately preverbal wh-phrase, but not with any of the higher wh-phrases. 11. See also Grohmann (2000, 2006), Boeckx and Grohmann (2004), and Wu (1996, 1999) for discussion of the topicality of wh-phrases, and wh-topicalization in Chinese. Jaeger (2003) argues that topicality is a crucial factor responsible for the ordering of fronted wh-elements in Bulgarian. 12. É.Kiss (1993, 1994) puts forward an analysis according to which high wh-items are interpreted as universal quantifiers (Ki mit olvas? ‘lit. Who what reads?’ can be paraphrased as ‘For everbody, tell me what (s)he reads’), and are in fact fronted by universal quantifier fronting (which routinely places universal quantifiers to the left of the focus position, filled by a wh-element in MF constructions). Surányi (2002, 2005), however, presents forceful arguments against that syntactic analysis, citing a host of discrepancies between high wh-phrases and universal quantifiers in Hungarian. 13. This can be implemented by assuming choice function variable Dets themselves to carry a [wh]-feature, which can check the [wh]-feature of the wh-pronouns. It is relevant to point out that wh-pronouns in Hungarian are of the bare, non-quantified variety (e.g. Lipták 2001). Note also that as predicted by the choice function analysis, in situ wh-phrases cannot be non-referential adjuncts such as hogy ‘how’ or miért ‘why’, since choice functions pick out an element from a set, which must be definable. Discourse-linking obviously satisfies this condition (see also Note 8 above). However, discourse-linking does not necessarily need to be very strong; see for instance (ii) below (in the context of (i)). (i) A: I don’t agree that this is a non-loving world and that people just don’t love one another. (ii) B: Ó, igen? Miért, ki szeret kit? oh, yeah why who love-3SG who-ACC ‘Oh, yeah? So, who loves who?’



Focus structure and the interpretation of multiple questions 

14. Given that the PL reading can be unambiguously expressed by a corresponding multiple question with an MF pattern, the PL reading of English-type multiple questions is somewhat less prominent (though confirmed by all informants consulted). One interpretive difference between the two patterns is that while the immediately preverbal wh-phrase (i.e., the focus) in MF does not need to be D-linked, D-linking is obligatory for all wh-phrases in Englishtype questions in Hungarian. This is explained insofar as in English-type multiple questions the fronted wh-phrase serves as the sorting key (see Note 6), while the in situ wh-elements are all interpreted via choice function variables (cf. Note 13). Another hitherto unnoticed discrepancy is that while the set quantified over by the high wh-phrase in MF multiple questions must be exhausted in congruent answers (see Comorovski 1989, 1996, É. Kiss 1993), this is not necessarily so with English-type multiple questions. For instance, consider a situation where thirty players have registered for a singles tennis competition, but maximally ten games can be squeezed into a day due to lack of enough tennis courts, so the organizers decide to break down the first round of games to two days. A player can then ask the organizers the English-type question in (i), whereas an MF question would be inappropriate. (i) Akkor ma melyik játékos játszhat melyik játékossal? then today which player play-POS-3SG which player-with ‘Which player can then play today against which player?’ Context is an obvious disambiguating factor in the case of the otherwise ambiguous (SP/PL) English-type questions. To check for a PL reading, English-type questions can be embedded under verbs like ‘list’ or ‘enumerate’, or can be simply prefixed by an imperative sentence like ‘Make a list’. 15. Note that the assumed focus structure of multiple questions in such cases (both wh-items are [+foc]) is reflected in appropriate answers, such as (20c): both of the two phrases corresponding to the two wh-expressions show properties of focus (word order, emphatic accent). Similarly, in congruent answers to (14b) the phrase corresponding to the [+foc] second wh-phrase in (14b) is also fronted to a focus position within the embedded clause. 16. That function f is not limited to being a Skolem function seems necessary quite apart from the present discussion if the wh-constituents involved are of a more complex type. Dayal (1996, 2002) even makes the case that in so-called ‘wh-triangle’ examples (going back to Baker), e.g. Which student knows where Mary bought which book?, function f operates on a set of questions (a set of sets of propositions). 17. Or, irrelevantly here, to the top (i.e. to the root node). For sake of simplicity of presentation, I have not included choice function parameters in the representations. Chierchia (2001) applies parameterized choice functions (cf. Kratzer 1998) (aka Skolemized choice functions) that map not simply from sets to some member of that set, but from individuals and sets into some member of that set. Simplifying somewhat, for instance Every man likes some woman translates as ∀x(man(x)→∃g.like(x,g(x,woman))). Here it is the universal quantifier that binds x in g(x, woman), hence existential closure of g is limited to the nuclear scope of the universal quantifier. In SP multiple questions of the English type, it is the overtly fronted wh-operator that binds the argument of the choice function variable in the in situ wh-phrase. Chierchia’s generalization over the position of existential closure then derives why existential closure of the choice function variable of the wh-in-situ is restricted to a position immediately below the fronted wh-phrase, a point left unaddressed in Reinhart (1998). 18. Depending on further assumptions, adopting a choice function-based interpretation for English-type pair list questions may account for another property of this question type, which contrasts it with MF pair list questions. For, whereas appropriate answers to MF PL questions

 Balázs Surányi (e.g. Ki kit látott? lit. ‘Who whom saw?’) may have sets of individuals as second members of the list of pairs (e.g. ‘Mary saw Bill and John, Susan saw Bill, Peter and Fred,...’), this is not possible with English-type PL questions. The latter question type (e.g. Ki látott kit? lit. ‘Who saw whom?’) may only be answered by a list of pairs whose second member is a single individual (e.g. ‘Mary saw Bill, Susan saw Peter,...’). On the present account, the range of the function in an MF type question like Ki kit látott? ‘Who saw who?’is the denotation of the bare NP (predicate) (see (21b)): in the case of bare wh-pronouns like ki ‘who’, vhuman. The range in English-type PL questions is a set of choice functions, see (22). In terms of Link’s (1983) join semilattice structure for the treatment of plurality (see also Landman 1989), the denotation of number neutral bare NPs of the kind featured by Hungarian, Turkish, Chinese, Korean, etc. (e.g., Corbett 2000, Farkas and de Swart 2003) can be taken to include sums (see Rullmann and You 2003) (in Chierchia’s (1998) formulation, Chinese nouns have ‘plurality built in’). Given a bare wh-pronoun like ki ‘who’ (see Note 13), this means that in an MF PL question, f can output a sum individual when applying to it (i.e., when applying to vhuman). By contrast, in an English-type question, where f selects among members of a set of choice functions, it can only output a single choice function (which in turn selects a single individual from a set). This effectively derives the difference noted in appropriate answers. 19. See Dayal (2002) and Pesetsky (2000), respectively, for similar facts in English. 20. (14a), for some informants, extremely marginally allows a PL reading when supported by an appropriate context. This may well be related to the fact that the corresponding multiple foci construction in (9a), though extremely degraded, is not completely impossible. This would suggest that covert long focus-movement, even if extremely marginally, is apparently available for the speakers in question. It is of interest in this regard that, as expected, constructions analogous to (14a) but with an embedded subjunctive admit a PL reading a whole lot more easily than (14a): (i) Melyik fiú szeretné, hogy megismerhesse melyik lányt? which boy would.like that PREF-know-POS-SUBJ-3SG which girl-ACC ‘Which boy would like to be able to get to know which girl?’ 21. See Horváth (1998: 47) for a similar example (discussed in a very different context) with the same judgment given as to the availability of the PL reading. 22. Irrelevantly, of course in a discourse with one relevant candidate and one problem area, (24a) can also be read as an SP question, similarly to (14a) – a reading that is derived if the whin-situ bears no [foc]. 23. This is what Fox (2000) uses to explain the availability of non-clause-bound wide scope of the universal quantifier over the matrix subject expression in (i). Miyagawa (2005) shows that the predictions extend to long scrambling in Japanese. In Japanese a long scrambled QP is able to take scope over a matrix subject precisely in cases where at the intermediate movement step to the subordinate CP layer it (newly) obtains wide scope over another QP within the subordinate clause. (i) One girl knows what every boy bought for Mary (one > every, every > one) 24. The same account can be extended to an analogous contrast in English between sentences with a wh-in-situ in an indicative embedded clause (where PL is unavailable), and wh-triangle examples (where PL involving the wh-phrase in matrix [Spec,CP] and the wh-in-situ in the embedded clause is available). See also Note 25. 25. Dayal (2002), building on Dayal (1996), suggests for ‘wh-triangle’ scenarios such as (24a) that the embedded wh-clause is interpreted as a second-order question, and given that the matrix verb selects for a first-order question, it undergoes QR as a whole into the matrix clause, resul-



Focus structure and the interpretation of multiple questions 

ting in a list interpretation. This account of the re-emergence of a PL reading, however, does not extend to cover either (25), or (26) below: in the former, the complement clause is not a second order question to begin with, yet a PL reading is available, while in the latter, even though the complement clause (CP2) is a second order question, the PL reading is absent. See also Note 24. 26. The analysis of MF in SC as focus movements follows Stjepanović (1995), who provides support for this view from the distribution of sentential adverbs. 27. Judgments are murky in the case of (29) (see Bošković (2002): Fn. 10). 28. This can be implemented technically in several ways. An obvious one would be to assume the (abstract) semantic element responsible for the creation of the complex operator (a quantifier over functions) to be realized by the [+wh] functional head itself. The choice itself is tangential to the main point of the present paper, and will not be discussed here. 29. Russian and Polish MF is apparently similar in all syntactic contexts to what is attested in SC MF in simple matrix clauses (e.g. lack of Superiority effects) (cf. Stepanov (1998) for this claim for Russian). Indeed, these languages too allow both a PL and an SP answer, as expected. Bulgarian and Romanian seem to pattern with Hungarian (according to Bošković (1998, 2000), Bulgarian MF targets CP, and involves a single [wh]-checking movement and multiple [foc]checking movements (i.e. the inverse of Hungarian in the relevant sense)). As predicted, these languages only allow a PL interpretation for MF. 30. Hirotani (2003, 2005) demonstrates that long EPD is required for matrix scope, but it does not enforce matrix scope (i.e. the pairing is not strict). Accordingly, (31b) is actually ambiguous between a matrix and an embedded scope reading. Hirotani advocates the following generalization: (i) Scope Prosody Principle The scope of wh-in-situ is (preferentially) contained in the same major phonological phrase as the wh-in-situ. 31. An alternative treatment could rely on Richards’ (1998) Principle of Minimal Compliance (PMC): given that the upper wh-phrase can satisfy Subjacency (paying the ‘Subjacency-tax’), the wh-element within the wh-island is able to move across the wh-island boundary. Multiple movements to the middle CP projection in turn will result in a PL reading. However, this type of analysis would predict that an interpretive additional wh-effect should arise with other types of Subjacency islands as well, which is contrary to fact. The account proposed above can derive this latter contrasta ssuming that [+wh, +foc] choice function variables are only allowed to attach to wh-type (i.e. [+wh]) units (wh-phrases or wh-clauses).

Focus structure, movement to spec-Foc and syntactic processing* Carsten Breul The paper elaborates on some aspects of the theory developed in Breul (2004). Three questions are addressed: What are the reasons for assuming that utterances like I ordered a coke display a different type of focus structure than utterances like A coke I ordered? Why is movement of an object or subject complement to spec-Foc in English distinctly more exceptional than of a subject? Why is movement of an object or subject complement to spec-Foc in English distinctly more exceptional than of an object or subject complement in German? The last two questions are dealt with in terms of syntactic processing.

1. Introduction The present paper highlights and elaborates on some aspects of the theory developed in Breul (2004), according to which the checking of [±foc] features in the specifier position of FocP is crucially involved in the syntactic manifestation of two of the three types of focus structure as conceived of by Lambrecht (1994). Within this theory, what is commonly known as fronting (preposing, ‘topicalisation’) is overt and visible movement of a non-subject to spec-Foc for the purpose of [±foc] feature checking.1 Subjects, however, may also move to spec-Foc, this movement being invisible in languages like English and German. The aspects singled out for elaboration in the present paper are to do with the following three questions: First, what are the reasons for assuming that sentences like that in (1a) display a different type of focus structure than sentences like that in (1b)? (Here and in the following small capitals signal the word that carries the primary sentence accent.) (1) a. I ordered a coke. b. A coke I ordered. Second, why is it that the movement of an object or of a subject complement to specFoc in English is distinctly more exceptional (‘marked’) than that of a subject? Third,

 Carsten Breul

why is it that the movement of an object or of a subject complement to spec-Foc in English is distinctly more exceptional (‘marked’) than that of an object or subject complement in German? The last two questions are addressed in terms of syntactic processing. It will actually turn out that the issues raised by the first question on the one hand and by the second and third on the other hand are related. These questions will be discussed in sections 4–6 after having sketched the basic focus-structural, syntactic and semantic assumptions of the theory in sections 2–3.

2. Focus structure Lambrecht (1994) distinguishes three types of focus structure, which he calls predicate focus, argument focus and sentence focus. These types are exemplified by the B-utterances in (2) below (see Lambrecht 1994: 223). A sentence with predicate focus structure corresponds to what other authors call a categorical sentence; a sentence with sentence focus structure corresponds to what other authors call a thetic sentence; and ‘identificational sentence’ is an alternative term suggested by Lambrecht for a sentence with argument focus structure. I will use the terms ‘categorical’, ‘identificational’ and ‘thetic’. (2) a. b. c.

predicate focus = categorical A: What happened to your car? B: My car/It broke down. argument focus = identificational A: I heard your motorcycle broke down? B: My car broke down. sentence focus = thetic A: What happened? B: My car broke down.

The phonological realisation – including intonation – of a thetic sentence is always identical to a potential phonological realisation of either a corresponding categorical or identificational sentence. While the phonological realisation of the thetic (2cB) is identical to the identificational (2bB), the realisation of the thetic Marcel proved completeness in (3b) is identical to that of the corresponding categorical utterance in (3aB) (see Steedman 2000: 657). (3) a. A: What do you know about Marcel? B: Marcel proved completeness. b. Guess what? Marcel proved completeness. It is true, thetic sentences like Marcel proved completeness in (3b) are often uttered with a secondary pitch accent within the subject. But, according to Steedman and other



Focus structure, movement to spec-Foc and syntactic processing 

authors, this is not compulsory. As Steedman (2000: 657, fn. 8) points out in connection with (3a, b): In this and all examples in the article such “backgrounded” elements of the sentence appear without any tonal marking. Such material may include stresses or “secondary” pitch accents, which on occasion phoneticians notate as H*, and so on. Secondary accents are distinct from the primary accents that convey focus and contrast […] – see Selkirk 1984 and Ladd 1996 for further discussion. The crucial point is that [(3a, b)] can be uttered with the same intonation.

The A-utterances in (2) evoke contexts in which the respective type of focus structure for the respective B-utterance is appropriate. Generally, contexts can only be said to suggest a certain type of focus structure for an utterance but not to require it. For example, although (2aA), uttered on perceiving that B’s usual mode of transportation has changed, can be said to suggest a reply with categorical focus structure and with B’s car as topic (as in (2aB)), a dialogue such as in (4) is also conceivable. (4) A: What happened to your car? B: My husband uses it now. The presuppositional structure of (4B) with identificational focus structure (associated with the relevance presupposition ‘x uses B’s car now’) will have to be pragmatically accommodated by the addressee, and some additional pragmatic inferencing will easily lead to the result that this utterance constitutes a felicitous reply to (4A). The ease with which identificational focus structure can be pragmatically accommodated in this case is due to the specific properties of the utterance on other levels, notably its semantic properties and those of information structure apart from focus structure (such as the information-structurally relevant fact that the speaker of (4B) uses the pronoun it to refer to her car, whereby she acknowledges that her car is an entity whose representation is active in her and her interlocutor’s minds at the time of the communicative exchange; on the activation status of discourse entities see Lambrecht 1994: passim). On the other hand, it seems to be much more difficult to pragmatically accommodate the presuppositional structure of (2bB) (My car broke down) in the context of (4A) in the given situation. However, even this does not seem to be impossible. For example, we could interpret (2bB) in this case as conveying that B was trying to remember which of her vehicles broke down when she was addressed with (4A) and that this utterance of (4A) caused her to suddenly realise that it was her car. The artificiality and marginality of this interpretation and thus the effort employed in pragmatic inferencing in order to come up with it at all is due to the specific interplay of the semantic, focus structural and other informational structural properties of (2bB). Thus, the fact that My car broke down (and not My car broke down) would be a much more plausible reply to the context question (4A) might lead the addressee to believe that the utterance is due to an intonational slip of the tongue rather than to a meaning that is complicated to pragmatically recover. That is, the degree to which the properties of the focus structure

 Carsten Breul

of a sentence are considered to be compatible with what the properties of the context suggest is, all other things being equal, inversely related to the effort employed in the pragmatic inferential process that leads to an interpretation.2 (If the process does not lead to an interpretation at all, the focus structure will be considered inappropriate in the given context.) However, there is no direct (or entailment) relation between focus structure properties on the one hand and context properties on the other hand independent of pragmatic inferencing. Consequently, focus structure can be argued to be a component of sentence grammar structurally independent of properties of the context. The ways in which focus structure properties and context properties appear to be interdependent are due to principles of pragmatic inferencing which mediate between them.3

3. The FocP-hypothesis The basic idea of the way in which the categorical, identificational and thetic types of focus structure are syntactically encoded is as follows: Categorical and identificational root clauses are characterised by the presence of a FocP, which is topmost and left-specified in many languages, including English and German, i.e. the languages which I will be concentrating on here. (The question of whether there are still higher functional projections above FocP, such as CP or ForceP (see Radford 2004, especially ch. 9 and the references given there), is irrelevant for the purposes of the present paper.) In a categorical sentence a [–foc]-featured topic phrase moves to spec-Foc. In an identificational sentence a [+foc]-featured identificational focus phrase moves to specFoc.4 Thetic sentences do not have a FocP. If a subject is topic or identificational focus phrase, it moves invisibly from spec-AgrS to spec-Foc. This is illustrated in Fig. 1.



Focus structure, movement to spec-Foc and syntactic processing 

This approach provides a solution for the problem of the apparent optionality of fronting in languages like English, which arises in theories that assume the projection of a FocP only in those cases where fronting is visible (as in Rizzi 1997 and work based on these in this respect, such as e.g. Grewendorf 2002b: passim, Radford 2004: ch. 9). It is well known that fronting shows syntactic characteristics essentially identical to those of what has traditionally been analysed as wh-XP movement to spec-C and is thus clearly a core syntactic operation (rather than a ‘stylistic’ one). In the minimalist program optional movement in the core syntax is ruled out.5 The movement of topic and identificational focus phrases to spec-Foc is due to a feature checking requirement, that is, to the fact that a matching checking partner is located in the head of FocP. I conceive of all the functional phrases in the domain of a clause, that is, all the functional phrases above vP/VP to be projected from the main and/or auxiliary verb. Syntactic features may be such that they do or do not pied-pipe the phonological form of the head or phrase of which they are components. This accounts for the distinction between what has traditionally been called overt and covert movement. For example, in both English and German the [±foc] feature on a topic or identificational focus phrase pied-pipes the phonological form of the phrase into spec-Foc. By contrast, the phonological form of the finite verb, which is the carrier of the corresponding [±foc] head-feature is pied-piped into the Foc-head position in German root clauses, but is not pied-piped there in English. This accounts for the ‘verb second’ property of German root clauses, given that in thetic sentences the finite verb is in the head position of the AgrSP and the clause initial phrase in spec-AgrS. The distinction of the three types of focus structure in terms of type-logical, truthfunctional semantics may be sketched with respect to the examples in (2) above as follows: In the categorical sentence (2aB) there is a referential phrase of semantic type e, my car/it, which serves as argument to the semantic function broke down, which is of type <e,t>. In the identificational sentence (2bB) there is a phrase of the quantificational semantic type ,t>, my car, which is a semantic function that takes the expression broke down as argument.6 In the thetic sentence (2cB) the semantic type of my car is indeterminate between e and ,t> and thus the direction of functional application for the semantic combination of my car and broke down is equally indeterminate. So far I have spoken of ‘a [±foc] feature’ in the Foc-head and ‘a [±foc] feature’ in the phrase which moves to spec-Foc. More precisely, there are sets involved of purely syntactic, i.e. uninterpretable, and semantic, i.e. interpretable, [±foc] features. In particular, it is a semantic [–foc] feature which determines the referential semantic type e for the topic phrase in spec-Foc; it is a semantic [+foc] feature which determines a quantificational semantic type for the identificational focus phrase in spec-Foc. In thetic sentences, where [±foc] features are missing, there is no such determination of semantic types. Languages may differ along several parameters with respect to the manifestation of the three types of focus structure. The following list of parameters can be interpreted as establishing a framework for empirical studies of the manner in which and/or the

 Carsten Breul

degree to which the languages of the world exhibit the characteristics implied by the FocP-hypothesis. 1st parameter: The [±foc] features, those on the verbal head and those on the topic or identificational focus phrase, may or may not have morphological reflexes. The various cross-linguistic topic and focus markers that have been discussed in the literature may be investigated with respect to whether they can be analysed as manifesting such morphological reflexes. See e.g. Siewierska’s (1998: 484) remark on “special pragmatic particles such as topic or focus particles which in subject-first languages often accompany fronting of the object (e.g. in Hausa, Efik, Yoruba, Sentani, Chavante) and in verb-first languages the fronting of both the subject and object (e.g. in Nandi, Yapese, Ixil)”.7 2nd parameter: The phonological form of the carriers of the [±foc] features may or may not be pied-piped into the Foc-head or spec-Foc position respectively. That is, the movement induced by the [±foc] features may or may not be overt. This means, even if there are neither topic or focus markers nor topic or identificational focus related movements in a language, we may still assume that there is a syntactically represented distinction between types of focus structure. It may turn out that a complete lack of surface indicators to focus structure in terms of morphology and constituent order is compensated for by intonational devices. (This parametrical difference between languages must not be confused with optionality of overt and covert movement within a language, against which, as far as English is concerned, I will argue in section 4). 3rd parameter: Languages may vary with respect to the location of the FocP. That is, if present, FocP may not necessarily be the topmost functional phrase in a clause (see e.g. É. Kiss 1998a). 4th parameter: Instead of one FocP which is projected by either a [+foc] feature or a [–foc] feature there may be two distinct functional phrases, conveniently called FocP and TopP, then. The first of these is projected by [+foc], the second by [–foc]; [–foc] of a topic phrase is checked in spec-Top and [+foc] of an identificational focus phrase is checked in spec-Foc. Alternatively, if we allow for multiple specifiers (see e.g. Chomsky 1995a: 432, 2000: 126), an identificational focus phrase may check its [+foc] in the first specifier of the Foc-head and a topic phrase may check its [–foc] in the second specifier of the Foc-head. For both these alternatives we will have to assume the existence of a fourth type of focus structure, a mixed categorical-identificational type, for then there is both a topic and an identificational focus phrase in a single sentence. Work by É. Kiss (e.g. 1994, 1998a) and Puskas (1997), for instance, suggests that Hungarian is a language that allows for the projection of distinct TopP and FocP and thus for the categorical-identificational type of focus structure. 5th parameter: If we do not assume a universally left-headed and left-specified phrase structure à la Kayne (1994), there are a great number of theoretically possible locations for the head and specifier of the FocP relative to those of the other projections in addition to a number of locations provided for by the parameters 2 to 4.



Focus structure, movement to spec-Foc and syntactic processing 

All five parameters together allow for a cross-linguistically bewildering array of distributions for topic and identificational focus phrases. In actual languages, though, this array will be considerably restricted by principles which facilitate the acquisition of the language and by those architectural features of the grammar which have been shaped by processing principles of the kind to be mentioned later.8 On the other hand, languages do show a bewildering variety in expressing focus structure, and it may well be that all of the parameters just mentioned are actually exploited in one way or the other. The syntactic integration of focus structure as just sketched is not subject to the points of criticism which have been leveled from a minimalist perspective against other analyses which make use of focus and topic features and the corresponding projections, especially in accounts of scrambling (recently e.g. Abraham and Molnárfi 2003, Fanselow 2003; see also Molnárfi 2003). My FocP-hypothesis as such is independent of scrambling theories; actually I do not believe that scrambling plays a role in expressing focus structure in terms of categorical, thetic and identificational sentences. Whereas the postulation of topic and focus features may be ad hoc in accounts of scrambling, it seems to me that the presence of morphologically manifest topic and focus markers, of agreement phenomena in connection with focus phrases and of focus and topic related intonational features in many languages across the world provide sufficient independent motivation for the assumption of such features also in languages which do not show them morphologically. Moreover, one of the motivations for my FocP-hypothesis is to account for fronting constructions within a broadly minimalist framework, in which it would be discordant to say that fronting is optional or stylistic, given that fronting shows clear characteristics of a core syntactic operation (see also fn. 5 and its context). Finally, even Fanselow, who is a critic of theories which assume topic or focus features in accounts of scrambling, seems sympathetic to the assumption that there are topic or focus positions at the left periphery of root clauses in languages such as Dutch and German (see Fanselow 2003: 195, 217, 223).

4. Identificational and informational focus Consider the following example, where (5A) followed by (5Ba) is an authentic dialogue taken from Ward (1988: 115), and where (5A) followed by (5Bb) would also constitute an appropriate exchange: (5) A: Have you finished it yet? B: a. Half of it I’ve read b. I’ve read half of it Does this mean that there is no difference in the nature of the focus expression half of it in (5Ba) as opposed to (5Bb)? What has so far been said about the FocP-hypothesis entails that only in the former is half of it an identificational focus phrase, and the sentence consequently of the identificational type, while the latter is of categorical type

 Carsten Breul

and, as hinted in footnote 4a, the focus phrase an informational one. However, if there are no contexts in which it makes a difference whether a focused object is fronted or not, then it will be difficult to make a convincing case for a difference in terms of identificational versus categorical focus structure and a concomitant distinction between identificational and informational focus phrase for such pairs as (5Ba) and (5Bb). To be sure, it is possible to argue that both (5Ba) and (5Bb) are identificational in the given context, with the identificational focus phrase having optionally moved to spec-Foc – if basic minimalist assumptions are suspended. However, while I consider it indeed a cross-linguistic option for a language to have the phonological form of an identificational focus phrase pied-piped by a moving [+foc] feature or not (overt versus covert movement; 2nd parameter mentioned in section 3), I would only reluctantly concede that there is an optionality for overt or covert movement of an identificational focus phrase within English (and German, for that matter). Let us consider this problem somewhat further.9 It has been shown by Ward (1988) that what he calls focus preposing (my ‘movement to spec-Foc of an identificational focus phrase which is not the subject’) is subject to discourse constraints that are different from those for the ‘canonical’ constituent order. Consider, for instance, the B-utterances in (6), which are adapted from Ward (1988: 74) by indicating the carrier of the primary sentence accent and by adding the version with the ‘canonical’ constituent order. (Here and below ‘#’ indicates a contextually inappropriate utterance, i.e. an utterance which is hard or impossible to pragmatically accommodate.) (6) a. A: Do you want to see a movie? B: i. I have to walk the dog. ii. # The dog I have to walk. b. A: Why is it so noisy on the second floor? B: i. They’re listening to the television. ii. # The television they’re listening to. According to Ward (1988) – but in the terminology of Birner and Ward (1998) – the preposings are inappropriate in the given contexts for the following reason: Preposing requires a “salient linking relation” (e.g. Birner and Ward 1998: 33) between the denotatum of the preposed constituent and another denotatum evoked in the prior discourse; no such relation can be established for the denotata of the dog in (6a) and the television in (6b). Unfortunately, contrasts like those displayed in (6) do not entail that the dog and the television respectively are different kinds of focus phrases in the ‘canonical’ versions as opposed to the preposing versions. Actually, in Ward’s (1988) and Birner and Ward’s (1998) explanatory framework, it is the preposing that makes the difference in cases like the B-utterances in (6), with no implications for the nature of the focus phrases as such.



Focus structure, movement to spec-Foc and syntactic processing 

However, the explanation given by Ward (1988) and Birner and Ward (1998) is not the only possible one. It may alternatively be argued that it is precisely the fact that the appropriate B-utterances in (6) are categorical which makes them appropriate and that it is the fact that the inappropriate B-utterances are identificational which makes them inappropriate. Indeed, the relevance presupposition ‘I have to walk x’ associated with The dog I have to walk does not appear to be relevant at all in the context of (6aA); the assumption that there is something which the speaker has to walk is not an issue at all in this context. The analogical point can be made about The television they’re listening to in the context of (6bA): The assumption that the referents of they are listening to something is not an issue at all in the context of the question Why is it so noisy on the second floor?10 Moreover, there is at least one class of cases where a preposing construction cannot be substituted for by its ‘canonical’ counterpart. Consider the following (where nobody is not to be interpreted as a name): (7) A: Who does Paul like? / Who does nobody like? B: a. Nobody Paul likes. / Nobody nobody likes. b. Paul likes nobody. / #Nobody likes nobody. If it was only the (non-)preposing as such which is responsible for the (in)felicity of a ‘canonical’ sentence as compared to its preposing counterpart, then it would be hard to account for the fact that the substitution of Paul by nobody in the ‘canonical’ (7Bb) renders the sentence infelicitous in identical contexts.11 By contrast, it seems that the semantic implications of the FocP-hypothesis sketched above provide an explanation for these data: The sentence Nobody likes nobody can only be thetic since nobody is a quantificational (non-referential, non type e) phrase that cannot function as a topic phrase. A thetic sentence, however, is inappropriate in the given context. By contrast, Paul being potentially referential (of type e) and thus eligible for constituting a topic phrase, Paul likes nobody can be taken to be categorical. This categorical sentence is appropriate in the given context, just like its identificational counterpart (7Ba). If this explanation is correct, then, within the present theory, Paul occupies spec-Foc (with Foc being [–foc]-featured) in (7Bb), and the accented nobody cannot be the same kind of focus phrase (identificational) in (7Bb) as in (7Ba). For if they were, then its [+foc] would target spec-Foc just as [–foc] of Paul would in the first sentence of (7Bb); the derivation would crash, i.e. Paul likes nobody would be ungrammatical, contrary to fact. These considerations render it sufficiently plausible that preposing sentences and their ‘canonical’ counterparts as in (5)–(7) are indeed different in their type of focus structure and consequently different with respect to the nature of their focus phrases.12

 Carsten Breul

5. The exceptionality (‘markedness’) of object fronting in English Under the FocP-hypothesis as conceived of here there is nothing derivationally special about English sentences which show fronting. The canonical constituent order is the one we get in thetic sentences and in categorical or identificational sentences where the subject is topic or identificational focus phrase and moves to spec-Foc. What is commonly known as fronting (or preposing or, rather infelicitously, ‘topicalisation’) is the movement to spec-Foc of a topic or identificational focus phrase that is not the subject. This is exemplified in (8) and (9), where the corresponding German sentences are given as well. (8)

a. a’. b. b’. c. c’.

[IP Peter likes beans] (thetic) [IP Peter mag bohnen] (thetic) [FocP Peteri [IP ti likes beans]] (categorical) [FocP Peteri magj [IP ti tj bohnen]] (categorical) [FocP Peteri [IP ti likes beans]] (identificational) [FocP Peteri magj [IP ti tj Bohnen]] (identificational)

(9)

a. a’. b. b’.

[FocP Beansi [IP Peter likes ti]] (categorical) [FocP Bohnenj magi [IP Peter ti tj]] (categorical) [FocP Beansi [IP Peter likes ti]] (identificational) [FocP Bohnenj magi [IP Peter ti tj]] (identificational)

This theory raises the following questions which will be dealt with in the sequel: First, why is it that the movement of an object or of a subject complement to spec-Foc in English is distinctly more exceptional (‘marked’) than that of a subject, although there is no difference in terms of syntactic licensing? Second, why is it that the movement of an object or of a subject complement to spec-Foc in English is distinctly more exceptional (‘marked’) than that of an object or subject complement in German, although there is no difference in terms of syntactic licensing?13 The exceptional character of object and subject complement fronting in English is reflected in a paper by Plag and Zimmermann (1998: 220), for instance. They asked 16 native speakers of English whether they considered the sentences in (10) acceptable, allowing for the answers ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘I don’t know’. The sentences, which were presented without context, got the scores given in brackets on a scale from 1.0 to 3.0 where 1.0 means ‘was accepted by every test person’ and 3.0 means ‘was rejected by every test person’.14 It may be noted that no native speaker opted for the ‘I don’t know’ answer (see Plag and Zimmermann 1998: 216). (10)

a. b. c. d.

This world-famous book I read. (2.5) Her last boy friend I haven’t met. (2.0) The most recent paper we haven’t discussed yet. (1.6) John F. Kennedy his name was. (2.6)



Focus structure, movement to spec-Foc and syntactic processing 

I assume, of course, that such results do not raise doubts about the grammaticality of object and subject complement fronting but are to be accounted for by factors independent of grammar. In order to empirically support my intuition-based guess that German analogues of sentences such as those in (10) would score much better, German translations or analogues of (10) with the direct object or subject complement in clause-initial position as given in (11) were submitted to 22 native speakers of German (students of English). The informants were asked to judge whether they considered the sentences grammatically acceptable or not, the options for answers being ja (‘yes’), nein (‘no’) and Ich weiß nicht (‘I don’t know’), just as in Plag and Zimmermann’s (1998) study. The scores on the same scale as used in their test are given in brackets.15 (11) a. b. c. d.

Dieses weltberühmte Buch las ich. (1.1) this world-famous book read I ‘This world-famous book I read.’ Ihren letzten Freund habe ich nicht getroffen. (1.0) her last boy-friend have I not met ‘Her last boy friend I haven’t met.’ Den neusten Aufsatz haben wir noch nicht gelesen. (1.1) the most-recent paper have we yet not read ‘The most recent paper we haven’t read yet.’ Schneider war sein Name. (1.0) Schneider was his name ‘Schneider his name was.’

The results indicate that German translations / analogues of English sentences with fronted direct object or fronted subject complement are indeed generally judged better than their English counterparts under the condition of being presented out of context.16

6. A processing account The answer that I would like to suggest to the two questions about the exceptionality of non-subject movement to spec-Foc in English raised by my FocP-hypothesis is one in terms of processing along the lines of John Hawkins’s performance theory of constituent order (e.g. 1990, 1992, 1994, 1998). Essentially, it is the verb second property of German and the lack of it in English on the one hand, and the morphological case contrast between these languages on the other hand that play the decisive roles here.

 Carsten Breul

6.1 The principles of early immediate constituents (EIC) and dependent nodes later (DNL) According to Hawkins, the constituent order actually used in linguistic performance in those cases where the grammar provides for options is determined most importantly by the processing principle of early immediate constituents (EIC). The basic idea underlying EIC is that “words and constituents occur in the orders they do so that syntactic groupings and their immediate constituents (ICs) can be recognized (and produced) as rapidly and efficiently as possible in language performance.” (Hawkins 1994: 57.) In English, sentences in which a non-subject is moved to spec-Foc fare principally worse in terms of EIC compared to the cases where there is subject movement to specFoc. In order to illustrate this, I will briefly present some key aspects of Hawkins’s EIC theory and apply them to a simple example. The insight gained on the basis of this example will be shown to carry over to all relevant cases. The central claim of EIC theory is as follows: Early Immediate Constituents (EIC) The human parser prefers linear orders that maximize the IC-to-non-IC (or ICto-word) ratios of Constituent Recognition Domains. Orders with the most optimal ratios will be preferred over their non-optimal counterparts in the unmarked case; orders with non-optimal ratios will be more or equally preferred in direct proportion to the magnitude of their ratios. […]. (Hawkins 1998: 734.)

An IC-to-non-IC ratio, or its more easily calculable (but less fine grained) IC-to-word ratio alternative, is calculated over a constituent recognition domain, then, which is defined in the following way: Constituent Recognition Domain (CRD) The CRD for a phrasal mother node M consists of the set of terminal and nonterminal nodes that must be parsed in order to recognize M and all ICs of M, proceeding from the terminal node in the parse string that constructs the first IC on the left, to the terminal node that constructs the last IC on the right, and including all intervening terminal nodes and the non-terminal nodes that they construct. (Hawkins 1998: 733.)

Let us compare the IC-to-word ratios, also called EIC scores, of the sentences I can give you a bran-muffin and A bran-muffin I can give you, whose syntactic structures reduced to the relevant nodes are given in (12a, b). (12) a. [FocP I [Foc’ can give you a bran-muffin]] b. [FocP A bran-muffin [Foc’ I can give you]] Both sentences are FocPs with the ICs spec-Foc (I and a bran muffin respectively) and Foc’. We concentrate on the EIC scores for the FocP-nodes in these two sentences.



Focus structure, movement to spec-Foc and syntactic processing 

What are their CRDs? In order to determine the terminal nodes that construct ICs, the following principle for mother node construction has to be taken into account. Mother Node Construction (MNC) In the left-to-right parsing of a sentence, if any word of syntactic category C uniquely determines a phrasal mother node M, in accordance with the PS rules of the grammar, then M is immediately constructed over C. (Hawkins 1998: 733.)

In generative syntax it is the phrasal head which “uniquely determines the phrasal mother node”. Although it is not true for generative syntax that there is always a word heading a phrase – there being functional phrases headed by abstract heads – this does not seem to pose a problem for applying Hawkins’s idea to syntactic structures from a more recent framework of generative grammar than the more traditional one used by Hawkins. For such functional projections are in any case extended projections of a lexical head (word). Thus, the word which uniquely determines the phrasal mother node in the case of a functional projection headed by an abstract functional head is the respective lexical head of which the functional projection is an extended projection. This is the pronoun I for the spec-Foc constituent and the auxiliary can for the Foc’ constituent in (12a). It is the determiner a for the spec-Foc constituent and the auxiliary can for the Foc’ constituent in (12b). That is, the CRD of the FocP in (12a) in terms of words is the set {I, can}, whereas it is the set {a, bran-muffin, I, can} in (12b). Consequently, the EIC scores for (12a) and (12b) are as given in (13). (13) a. (12a): 2 ICs / 2 words = 100.0% b. (12b): 2 ICs / 4 words = 50.0% With respect to EIC, then, (12a) is preferred over (12b). It is clear that the presence of an overt subject in spec-AgrS always leads to a lower EIC score for the CRD of a FocP compared to the case where there is a trace in spec-AgrS. For the number of ICs is always 2, and the numbers of words in the respective CRDs, i.e. the denominators in the fractions which give the respective EIC scores, always differ by at least 1, the variant with the overt subject in spec-AgrS always having the larger figure. Note that the processing of the lower nodes than those of FocP and its ICs in (12a, b) and analogous sentence pairs does not play a role for EIC considerations. The internal structure of the direct object in both cases is the same; and so are the nodes projected by the other lexical heads. What may play a disfavouring role for fronting constructions in addition to EIC is a processing principle called “Dependent Nodes Later” by Hawkins. Based on work by Primus (1995; see also 1999, 2001), it is discussed in Hawkins’s 1998 article and presented as a supplement to EIC: Dependent Nodes Later (DNL) If a node Y is semantically and/or syntactically dependent on a node X, then the human parser prefers to receive and parse X before Y. (Hawkins 1998: 761)

 Carsten Breul

An object is syntactically and semantically dependent on the main verb so that its coming before the main verb in fronting as opposed to coming after it in the canonical constituent order adds to the processing disadvantage entailed by EIC. The idea behind DNL as applied to the comparison between cases like (12a, b) is this: The direct object has to be kept in working memory before it can be structurally integrated by the main verb in the fronting construction whereas it can be immediately integrated by it, without burdening the working memory in the canonical construction. The burden to the working memory increases relative to the time that passes until the main verb is processed. That is, the longer the direct object and the subject, the higher the cost of keeping the direct object in working memory in fronting constructions. Ultimately, both EIC and DNL conspire to keep the burden to the working memory in the parsing process optimally minimal. According to Hawkins 1998, it is not yet clear what the precise manner of interaction between them is. But what has been said so far seems sufficient to make the point that fronting does indeed entail a processing disadvantage over the canonical constituent order in English. EIC and DNL considerations can also be applied to a comparison of fronting constructions and corresponding passive sentences. The passives always result in a better EIC score than a corresponding active sentence with non-subject fronting. Consider (14). (14) a. [FocP One mistake [Foc’ was made by everyone]] b. [FocP One mistake [Foc’ everyone made]] In this kind of pairs too an overt subject in spec-AgrS in the b-alternative makes the CRD of FocP larger. Moreover, the fronting construction has two constituents, the subject and the object, coming before the verb on which they are dependent, whereas the passive version has only one, the subject, a fact which disfavours fronting over passive also in terms of DNL. Thus, if there is no communicative reason for a text producer to front a non-subject or if there are no communicative and syntactic reasons which prevent the choice of a corresponding passive sentence instead of an active one with a fronted non-subject, then one of these alternatives is preferred over non-subject fronting. But note that we do have examples like (12b) and (14b), where the processing disadvantage is overridden by the communicative intention which requires a specific sentence, namely an active, identificational or categorical one, with the direct object as identificational focus or topic expression. See the attested passages in (15). (15) a. b.

Customer: Can I get a bagel? Waitress: No, sorry. We’re out of bagels. A bran-muffin I can give you. (from Ward 1988: 109) I made two minor mistakes. One apparently everyone in the class made. (from Ward 1988: 6)



Focus structure, movement to spec-Foc and syntactic processing 

Note that examples like (15), where there is direct object movement to spec-Foc provide additional evidence for the view that the focus expressions in pairs like (16a, b) are indeed essentially different ones (cf. section 4 above). (16) a. I can give you a bran-muffin b. A bran-muffin I can give you The point is this: If there was no difference in the nature of the focus phrase a branmuffin in (16a) and (16b) respectively (and thus no difference in terms of categorical versus identificational focus structure), then there would be no explanation for why a fronting construction should be produced at all, as in (15), given that it is more difficult to process than the ‘canonical’ construction. I would consider (16a) a categorical sentence with I as topic expression and a bran-muffin as informational focus expression; (16b) on the other hand is an identificational sentence with a bran-muffin as identificational focus expression.

6.2 EIC and DNL differences for movement to spec-Foc between English and German The verb-second property of German causes the construction of the FocP by its lexical head, i.e. the finite verb, immediately after the phrase in spec-Foc was processed. As pointed out by Hawkins (1994: 366), “[t]he second-position verb seems to be the crucial higher node constructor”. The fact that, in contrast to English, there is no constituent intervening between the phrase in spec-Foc and the finite verb, causes the EIC scores of German sentences with non-subjects in spec-Foc to be always higher than those of corresponding English sentences, as shown in (17) (where EIC scores are given in parentheses). (17)

a. a’. b. b’. c. c’.

[FocP Chessplayers [Foc’ he admired]] [FocP Schachspieler [Foc’ bewunderte er]] [FocP Her younger sister [Foc’ they admired]] [FocP Ihre jüngere Schwester [Foc’ bewunderten sie]] [FocP Her sister [Foc’ the boys admired]] [FocP Ihre Schwester [Foc’ bewunderten die Jungen]]

(66.7%) (100.0%) (40.0%) (50.0%) (40.0%) (66.6%)

Let us now have a look at the variations in EIC scores between German sentences which differ minimally as to whether the subject or an object has moved to spec-Foc. In these cases the variation depends on the length of the phrase in spec-Foc, but there is no systematic bias in favour of the subject being in spec-Foc, as there is in English. If the subject and the object are of equal length, then there is no difference between the EIC scores for the respective minimally different sentences. If the object is longer, then the subject being in spec-Foc results in a higher EIC score; if the subject is longer, then

 Carsten Breul

the object being in spec-Foc results in a higher EIC score. This is illustrated in (18) (with EIC scores given in parentheses). (18) a. [FocP Einige Schachspieler [Foc’ verlieren schnell die Geduld]] Some chess-players lose quickly the patience ‘Some chess-players quickly lose their patience.’ b. [FocP Die Geduld [Foc’ verlieren einige Schachspieler schnell]] c. [FocP Wir [Foc’ fürchten die Nacht nicht]] We fear the night not ‘We are not afraid of the night.’ d. [FocP Die Nacht [Foc’ fürchten wir nicht]] e. [FocP Der Chef [Foc’ versteht nichts]] The boss understands nothing ‘The boss understands nothing.’ f. [FocP Nichts [Foc’ versteht der Chef]]

(66.7%) (66.7%) 100.0%) (66.7%) (66.7%) (100.0%)

Note that also in terms of DNL it does not make a difference in principle whether a subject or an object is in spec-Foc. If the main verb moves to second position, it is in any case one phrase, either the subject or the object, which comes before the verb on which it is syntactically and semantically dependent. If not the main verb but an auxiliary moves to second position, both the subject and object precede the main verb irrespective of which of them is in spec-Foc. Thus, the significantly less exceptional character of object fronting in German compared to English can be accounted for in part by the completely symmetrical behaviour in terms of EIC and DNL of subjects and objects in minimally different sentences in German, which contrasts with the EIC and DNL bias in favour of fronted subjects in English.

6.3

Processing advantages due to case morphology

The contrast between English and German with respect to morphological case distinctions is potentially a second factor which contributes to the differences between these languages as regards movement to spec-Foc. The basic idea in this context is that “case marking is also a higher node constructor” (Hawkins 1994: 405). Following Hawkins in spirit and adapting his terminology to the grammatical framework in which my FocPhypothesis is set, we can say that a DP in spec-Foc which is unambiguously morphologically accusative causes the parser to construct the FocP (if we disregard impersonal constructions of the somewhat archaic and marginal type Den Jungen fror (literally *TheACC boyACC froze, i.e. ‘The boy was cold’)). A nominative-accusative distinction allows the immediate identification of the grammatical role of the respective DP within the clause. In a sense, then, case morphology neutralises the negative effect in terms of DNL of having a syntactic dependent of the verb coming before it. In contrast to German, English non-pronominal DPs do not show morphological case distinctions.



Focus structure, movement to spec-Foc and syntactic processing 

Consequently, “a subject in English is not recognizable as such until a finite V or Aux is encountered to which the initial NP can be attached” (Hawkins 1994: 362). The processing advantage effected by the nominative-accusative distinction in non-pronominal DPs pre-empts the EIC advantage effected by the verb-second property in German. That is, EIC effects for the construction of the FocP play a role only in those cases where this function is not already performed by the case morphology of the DP in clause-initial position. In German, case morphology rather than EIC is perhaps more often the factor involved in this respect.17 However, German case morphology is not distinctive throughout all nominal categories so that there remain cases in which EIC effects become operative. The non-pronominal DPs involved in examples (18a-d), for instance, are morpho-phonologically identical in the nominative and the accusative. Note also that EIC is needed in any case for considerations such as those in sub-section 6.1, where the processing of fronting is compared to that of canonical and passive constructions within English.

7. Summary The main purpose of the present paper has been the discussion of three questions that are raised by the theory developed in Breul 2004, which is based on the FocP-hypothesis. The first question is to do with the status of the focus phrases in sentence pairs such as in (19) and the concomitant focus-structural status of such sentences as categorical or identificational. (19) a. I ordered a coke. b. A coke I ordered. It has been argued that sentences like (19a) are categorical with the subject being the topic phrase and the focus phrase being informational. Sentences like (19b) are identificational with the XP in spec-Foc being an identificational focus phrase. The second question addresses the exceptionality (‘markedness’) of non-subject movement to spec-Foc as opposed to subject movement to spec-Foc in English. The third question addresses the exceptionality of non-subject movement to spec-Foc in English as compared to German. These phenomena are accounted for in terms of the processing theory developed by John Hawkins. As it turns out, this explanatory approach yields an additional argument for the distinction between sentences like (19a) and (19b) in terms of focus structure type and the nature of focus expressions: If processing considerations favour subject movement over non-subject movement to spec-Foc in English, then the fact that sentences like (19b) do occur in performance can be accounted for by the semantic/pragmatic specificities associated with their focus structure as opposed to those of sentences like (19a).

 Carsten Breul

Notes * I am grateful to Werner Abraham, Edward Göbbel, Katalin É. Kiss, Valéria Mólnar, László Molnárfi, Ellen Prince and Susanne Winkler for questions, comments and suggestions concerning various aspects of my paper as presented at the ISAG-workshop. I am also thankful to an anonymous reviewer, who raised several very important points with respect to my theoretical assumptions. Some of these points I will be able to react to in the present paper, the discussion of all of them would go beyond its scope and the limits set for it. 1. Whereas the present approach is set within a generative framework along minimalist lines, Lambrecht’s (1994) syntactic background is construction grammar. 2. This way of formulating the relation is inspired by relevance theory (e.g. Sperber and Wilson 1986/1995, Wilson and Sperber 2004). 3. For Lambrecht too information structure, which comprises focus structure, belongs to sentence grammar. But his line of argumentation is different. See Lambrecht 1994: 6–13. 4. a) On the distinction between informational and identificational focus phrases see É. Kiss 1998a, 1998b, 2001. b) I will use the term ‘FocP’ for the functional phrase headed by the functional head Foc. I will use the term ‘identificational focus phrase’ for the [+foc]-featured XP whose [+foc] is checked in spec-Foc. c) The anonymous reviewer objects that “[i]f a feature such as [+F] signals an ‘edge-related’ property (i.e. ‘identificational focus’), which must be implemented by means of displacement, its polar opposite should mark the absence of this property, hence also the absence of a computational need for dislocation. […] I think every topic has particular properties, which do not reduce to the absence of focussing properties.” I fully agree with the second sentence in this quotation. But I do not think that my use of ‘[±foc]’ presupposes a theory of binary feature specification in which ‘[–foc]’ cannot signal anything else than “absence of focussing properties”. My use of ‘[±foc]’ is to be understood in a way similar to binary distinctive features in phonology, where [–sonorant], for instance, does not only imply absence of resonance, but also presence of turbulent noise. Actually, in Breul 2004: ch. 8 I associate [–foc] with a very specific semantic topic property, namely the determination of semantic type e for expressions whose lexically determined properties make them eligible for type e or higher, quantificational types. See also below. 5. The realisation that optionality of fronting would pose an essential problem for the minimalist program was one motivating factor for the work that resulted in Breul 2004. The point is also hinted in Drubig 2003: 15, 17, and it causes Tappe (2000) to propose a version of minimalism enriched by optimality theoretic ideas. 6. a) To assume that the identificational focus phrase is a semantic function which takes a syntactic predicate as semantic argument is the type-semantic correlate of what É. Kiss (2004: 2) means when she characterises an identificational focus phrase as “a specificational element predicated of the rest of the sentence”. b) For reasons explained in Breul 2004: 245–246 I actually assume the type of broke down to be <e,e> and of my car in the identificational sentence to be ,e>. These reasons will play no role in the present paper so that I may use the traditionally assumed types here in order to avoid unnecessary complications.



Focus structure, movement to spec-Foc and syntactic processing 

7. As concerns focus markers see also Drubig and Schaffar 2001, Drubig 2003 and the references given there. 8. On the plausibility of the idea that architectural features of grammar are shaped by processing principles as suggested by Hawkins (see below) see Newmeyer 1998: 128–129. 9. But see also Drubig 2003: 17–25 and the references given there. 10. With respect to my discussion of (5) and (6) the anonymous reviewer asks whether this means “that focus in situ is in principle open to more than one interpretation, while focus fronting reduces the interpretive options to just one, namely the identificational reading?” This is indeed one way of seeing it, a way which would have to be implemented within the framework of Breul 2004 by saying that [+foc] optionally does or does not pied-pipe the phonological form of the phrase that carries the feature into spec-Foc in English. The further observation made by the anonymous reviewer that “in languages where focus is visibly displaced and marked by a particle or such like, the ‘identificational reading’ seems generally to be absent where focus is in situ” could then be accommodated by assuming that the option of not pied-piping the phonological form is not given in these languages. However, there is still the alternative view that the difference between (5Ba) and (5Bb), for instance, is not one between [+foc] pied-piping or not pied-piping the associated phonological form, but between identificational focus ((5Ba): half of it is [+foc]-featured) and informational focus ((5Bb): half of it is not [+foc]-featured). The latter is the view taken in Breul 2004, where the semantic function of [+foc], determining a quantificational semantic type for the DP that carries it, is argued to remain without (perceptible) semantic effect in these cases. My discussion of (7) in the main text is supposed to provide a piece of evidence in support of this latter view. It remains to be seen if future work provides further evidence and arguments that allow a decision between the two views. 11. The phenomenon exemplified by (7) holds analogically in German as well: (i) A: Wen mag Paul? / Wen mag niemand? (translation of (7A)) B: a. Niemanden mag Paul. / Niemanden mag niemand. nobody-ACC likes Paul / nobody-ACC likes nobody-NOM ‘Nobody Paul likes.’ / ‘Nobody nobody likes.’ b. Paul mag niemanden. / #Niemand mag niemanden. ‘Paul likes nobody.’ / ‘Nobody likes nobody.’ 12. a) The argument based on (7) strikes the anonymous reviewer as circular. I fail to see why. (7Ba) and (7Bb) show an interesting contrast (which I have not yet seen pointed out and discussed in the literature); my theory provides an explanation for it. In no way is the phenomenon (i.e. the contrast) dependent on prior acceptance of the theory. b) In Vallduví’s (1992) theory the difference just discussed is related to a difference with respect to information packaging instructions. For example, by the utterance She was Korean the hearer is instructed to go to the mental address linked to the referent of she and to substitute Korean for the variable in the open proposition ‘referent of she is x’ listed under this address. By the utterance Korean she was the hearer is instructed to go to the mental address ‘Asian nationalities’ and to substitute Korean for the variable in the open proposition ‘referent of she is x’ listed under this address (see Vallduví 1992: 133–136; see also Vallduví 1993: 24–25). 13. I do not want to pretend to be aware of a theory of markedness which covers exactly the kind of exceptionality (‘markedness’) that I feel to be relevant here. This is the reason for my equivocating on these notions here. However, the reader will have an intuitive grasp of the kind

 Carsten Breul of exceptionality (‘markedness’) that I have in mind (and which will be made more explicit immediately). 14. Plag and Zimmermann actually submitted 57 test sentences to their informants, 24 items concerning inversion, 23 items concerning fronting and 10 distractors. Of the items concerning fronting they give numeric scores only for the sentences in (10). The individual results per item and test person are displayed in diagrams. 15. I actually submitted 21 test sentences to my informants, 12 of which German translations / analogues of items from the fronting set of the Plag and Zimmermann (1998) study, the others distractors. The highest score among the 12 relevant items was 1.2 (for 2 items), which is still very close to 1.0 indicating complete acceptance. 16. It was suggested by Ellen Prince (in ISAG-workshop discussion) that the scores for the English sentences in (10) are probably due to the fact that they were presented out of context. I certainly agree. The point, however, is that their German counterparts get much better scores under the same condition of being presented out of context. This argument, however, was based only on my intuition at the time of the workshop discussion and was not yet supported by the informant test. I gratefully acknowledge that Ellen Prince’s comment provided the motivation for carrying out this test. 17. I am grateful to Werner Abraham for having made me aware (in ISAG-workshop discussion) of the pre-emptiveness of case morphology vis-à-vis EIC.

Focus and marked positions for VP adverbs* Edward Göbbel This paper studies the distribution of English manner adverbs in broad and narrow focus contexts. It is argued that manner adverbs may be merged in two structural positions, which accounts for their transportability within the extended verbal phrase. Marked positions of manner adverbs which disrupt the natural linear order of constituents within the verbal phrase are associated with a narrow focus effect. This effect is captured by the possibility of focused adverbs to move to a structural focus position at the edge of the verbal phrase. The theoretical goal is to substantiate previous proposals that English has a complex middle field which replicates the left periphery of the clause.

1. Preliminary remarks The rapidly growing literature on focus within the generative tradition has uncovered two main areas in sentential structure in which structural focus positions are located. Most Romance languages exhibit movement of focused constituents to a position within the CP area (Rizzi 1997). On the other hand, several typologically unrelated languages, like Hebrew (Belletti & Shlonsky 1995), Hungarian (É. Kiss 1998b), Kirundi (Ndayiragije 1998), Georgian (Bush 2000) and Malayalam (Jayaseelan 2001) have a structural focus position in the vicinity of the verb phrase. For English it is generally assumed that only the CP area can be the target of F(ocus)-movement (cf. Breul 2004 for recent discussion). However, considerable evidence from different types of constructions has been discussed in recent years which suggests that an IP-internal focus position is also available in English. Kayne (1998) proposes that putative in situ negative and focus operators move to a position in the lower IP area. Johnson (2003), López & Winkler (2003) and Winkler (2003) argue that the contrastive remnants in gapping constructions move to the edge of the verbal phrase, while Jayaseelan (2001) argues that the focused remnant in pseudogapping constructions targets a FocP in the lower IP area with subsequent deletion of the remnant verbal phrase, as in (1).

(1) Mary hasn’t dated Bill, but she has [FocP HARRY Foc [vP Ø]]

 Edward Göbbel

In this paper I discuss additional evidence for focused constituents at the edge of the verbal phrase from the distribution of manner adverbs. For example, it has often been observed that manner adverbs, which are generally satellites of the verb and its complement(s), are relatively uncomfortable in a position following a PP adjunct (cf. (2) from Ernst 2002: 209). This position, however, is available for the adverb if it is narrowly focused. I will eventually argue for a movement analysis of the adverb to a structural focus position in the lower IP area. The data and analysis fully endorse recent proposals that the verbal phrase, as a cyclic derivational domain, has a CP-like periphery (Jayaseelan 2001, Belletti 2004, Butler 2004). (2) a. She was working (very slowly) with that drill (?very slowly). b. Sarah delivers messages (efficiently) for the office (?efficiently). The paper is organised as follows: In section 2, I will discuss unmarked positions for manner adverbs. Whether an adverb is marked in a certain position depends on the distributional class it belongs to. Therefore, it is necessary to determine the unmarked positions first. In section 3, I will discuss how transportable adverbs are licensed in a feature-based approach to the syntax of adverbs. Since influential feature-based approaches (e.g. Cinque 1999, Laenzlinger 2002) and other defenders of strict association theories like Shaer (2003) rule out multiple positions for adverbs that belong to the same class or that receive the same interpretation, in section 4 I will discuss objections against genuine transportability. Finally, section 5 deals with narrow focus on manner adverbs and its structural representation.

2. Unmarked positions for manner adverbs This section illustrates some representative patterns of unmarked positions for manner adverbs. I use the term ‘manner adverb’ in a relatively standard way, namely for adverbs which provide information on how a process is carried out. Numerous studies, like Jackendoff (1972), McConnel-Ginet (1982), Travis (1988) and Ernst (2002), to name a few, have shown that the interpretation of an adverb often depends on its position in the sentence, and that within certain clausal domains an adverb is ‘transportable’ under a constant interpretation. Consider example (3) from Huddleston & Pullum (2002: 579). The adverb frankly is event-related in (3a), and means in an open, honest, and direct manner. In (3b), it is a speaker-oriented pragmatic adverb and can be paraphrased as ‘frankly speaking’. (3) a. Chris won’t (frankly) talk (frankly) about it (frankly). b. (Frankly) Chris (frankly) won’t talk about it. In this paper I will only be concerned with the lower occurrences of such adverbs. Syntactically, they are constituents of the (extended) verbal phrase (cf. section 3 be-



Focus and marked positions for VP adverbs 

low). Sentential adverbs and clausal readings of basic manner adverbs will not be considered.1 Since many adverbs in preverbal position (e.g. carefully, politely, cleverly) are ambiguous between a clausal and a manner reading, a useful way to distinguish the two readings is to consider the comparison classes. Ernst (2002) and Mittwoch, Huddleston and Collins (2002) argue that the comparison class of manner adverbs is events of the same type, whereas the comparison class of clausal adverbs may be other possible events in the context of utterance. For example, Mittwoch, Huddleston and Collins (2002: 675-676) argue that (4a) is ambiguous between a manner and what they call an ‘act-related’ (i.e. agent-oriented) reading. The two readings of an adverb like carefully can be disambiguated if we place the adverb in the two different positions indicated in (4b) and (4c). They also clearly involve different comparison classes: in (4b) closing the door carefully can be compared with closing it noisily, slamming it, etc., whereas in (4c) the act of closing the door can be compared with other possible acts in the context, such as opening the door or leaving it open, closing the window, etc.2 (4) a. He carefully closed the door. b. He closed the door carefully and then answered my question. c. Carefully, he closed the door before answering my question. In order to determine the unmarked positions of different distributional classes of manner adverbs I will rely on their distribution in broad focus contexts. F(ocus)-projection (i.e. the possibility of focus-ambiguous readings) has a long tradition as a test for the determination of normal order (i.e. unmarked positions) of arguments and adjuncts, particularly in languages with freer word order, such as German. The theoretical framework assumed here is the argument-structural approach to focus projection (Gussenhoven 1984, Selkirk 1984, 1995). Concretely, focus can only ‘project’ from a prominent internal argument or a head, not from a prominent external argument or adjunct. Adjuncts, like external arguments, can be included in a broad focus. If they are new to the discourse, they are phonologically prominent. If they are ‘given’ information, they are deaccented in postnuclear position or have reduced prominence in prenuclear position (e.g. a default H* accent). Hence, in an example like (5), the adverb in pre- or postverbal position is included into the sentential focus due to the presence of a prominent internal argument. In both positions it will also be associated with pitch accents. The focus structure of this sentence is represented in (6). (5) a. What happens in the Jones household in the morning? b. (#Quickly) Jones (quickly) reads the paper (quickly) while his wife makes breakfast.

(6) [F/TP Jones [F/VP (quickly) reads [F/DP the paper] (quickly)]]

Studies on German word order within the generative tradition have shown that a neutral accentuation pattern is not a sufficient enough condition for a sentence to occur in a broad focus context. It must also exhibit natural linear order (cf. Höhle 1982, and von

 Edward Göbbel

Stechow & Uhmann 1986, Maienborn 2001 with respect to adverbials). The upshot of these studies is that noncanonical word order blocks F-projection. Although such tests have not been employed to English adverb ordering, the example in (4) shows that quickly in sentence initial position makes the sentence inappropriate for the context question.3 VP-final position of an adverb may also result in a marked word order, as the following three distributional patterns illustrate. The patterns in (7) illustrate the positions of manner adverbs which may require an agentive controller (e.g. carefully, secretly, hastily, politely, attentively, competently, skilfully), and rate adverbs like quickly. (7) a. (Adv) V DP (Adv) b. (Adv) V (Adv) PP (Adv) c. (Adv) V DP (Adv) PP (#Adv) As can be seen in the following examples, these adverbs readily occur in preverbal position, but not after a second complement or a PP adverbial.4 (8) a. What did Melinda do after the meeting? [V-DP] b. Melinda (carefully) read the paper (carefully). (9) a. What are the children doing? They are unusually quiet. [V-PP] b. They are (attentively) listening (attentively) to their granny (attentively). (10) What did John do next?5 [V-DP-PP] a. He (quickly) put the money (quickly) on the table (??quickly). b. He (carefully) put his glassware (carefully) into padded boxes (??carefully). (11) a. Why was the accountant arrested? [V-DP-PP] b. He had (secretly) transferred the money (?secretly) to his own account (??secretly). (12) a. How did they get rid of the corpse? [V-DP-Adverbial] b. They (hastily) buried the burglar (hastily) in the cellar (#hastily). (13) a. Tell me something about the new pilot. b. Pilot Jones (competently) flies a small jet (?competently) for Air Canada (??competently). Another distributional pattern is formed by what Bowers (1993, 2002) calls ‘strictly V-licensed’ adverbs. It is mainly made up of degree of perfection adverbs like perfectly, poorly, beautifully, horribly and terribly, but also certain agent-oriented manner adverbs (e.g. intimately) exhibit the same pattern. As can be seen in (15) and (16), these adverbs do not occur in preverbal position or after a PP adverbial, but occur naturally after a second PP complement. (14) a. (*Adv) V DP (Adv) b. (*Adv) V DP (Adv) PP (Adv)



Focus and marked positions for VP adverbs 

(15) Tell me something about the new jockey. a. Melinda can (*perfectly) jump her horse (perfectly) over high fences (perfectly). b. Melinda performs (perfectly) on wet days (#perfectly). (16) John spoke French (intimately) to Mary (intimately). (Bowers 1993: 609) The last distributional class considered here are monosyllabic or ‘light’ adverbs (e.g. hard, well, fast, loud). These occur only in postverbal position; the preverbal position is uniformly ungrammatical in English, while the right-peripheral position in (17b) may become available under certain conditions (cf. section 5).6 (17) a. (*Adv) V DP (Adv) b. (*Adv) V (Adv) PP (#Adv) (18) a. Jason (*well) plays football (well). b. Jason (*loud) speaks (loud) to grandma (#loud) because she is almost deaf. (19) The big man turned and came fast towards Holly and caught his throat. [Gerald Seymour, Archangel. Fontana Press, London, 1983] A sentence final marked occurrence of an adverb can be acceptable if the adverb is phonologically heavy. Compare, for example, the acceptable example (20) to (13) above. (20b) is a case of heavy constituent shift (HXPS), which is possible even in broad focus contexts (cf. Williams 2003: 34). The conditions for such shifts are notoriously difficult to define and production factors like intonational phrasing seem to play a predominant role. Note that heavy AdvPs do not necessarily show up in S-final position if the arguments of the verb are of roughly the same phonological complexity. Example (21b) conforms to pattern (7) above. Since shifts like (20b) cannot be associated with a syntactic trigger (e.g., rightward movement of a narrowly focused constituent), I will assume that they are the result of a PF operation.7 (20) a. Tell me something about the new pilot. b. Pilot Jones flies a small jet for Air Canada extremely competently. (21) a. What happened in the emergency room? b. Dr. Bean (quickly but carefully) connected an oxygen tube (?quickly but carefully) to the nose of a girl (??quickly but carefully). Then he gave her a thorough examination. Another way to determine whether a certain position is unmarked for a certain distributional class is to test whether it can be defocused in that position. Examples (22) and (23) show that when competently and perfectly are given in the context they have the same distribution as when they are new to the discourse and included into a broad focus.

 Edward Göbbel

(22) a. I hear Mr. Jones is a competent pilot. b. Oh, yes. He (competently) flies a small jet (?competently) for Air Canada (??competently). (23) a. I hear Melinda is the perfect jockey. b. Oh, yes. She can jump her horse (perfectly) over high fences (perfectly). Summing up, in this section I have identified three distributional classes of manner adverbs and I have shown that adverbs of the carefully-class and light adverbs do not readily occur after a (second) PP complement or adjunct. I have also shown that adverbs of the carefully-class and the perfectly-class are ‘transportable’ because they may occur naturally in two positions within the verbal phrase. In the next section I turn to their syntactic representation.

3. Licensing transportable adverbs Recent feature-based approaches to the syntax of adverbs, like Cinque (1999) and Laenzlinger (2002), deny the possibility of multiple positions for adverbs of the same class. Adverbs of the same class are merged in the specifier of well-defined functional projections; the transportability of adverbs is then analysed as movement of arguments, lexical verbs/auxiliaries or more complex constituents which may even contain adverbs. Such an approach inherits much from the different ‘Criteria’ of the late ’80s (i.e. the Wh-, Neg- and Focus Criteria) which also tried to resolve a mismatch between the scope and the actual position of certain operators. The difference between these Criteria and the licensing of adverbs is that operators may move, while adverbs may not. However, this approach has recently come under heavy attack, mainly because it complicates the syntax in other areas of the grammar (cf. in particular Ernst 2002 and Svenonius 2002). Without relinquishing a feature-based approach, this section shows how the transportability of adverbs can be captured in terms of feature-checking under Agree (Chomsky 2000). Confining the discussion to manner adverbs, I first outline my assumptions concerning the structure of the verbal phrase. I assume a relatively standard view of the structure of the verbal phrase. In Figure 1, a functional projection vP – occasionally identified as an AspP (Baker 1997) or a Transitivity Phrase (Bowers 2002) – is sandwiched between VP, which hosts the internal arguments, and VoiceP, where the external argument is merged. I further assume that the direct object is raised from SpecVP to SpecvP, an operation triggered by an EPP feature on v.8 I follow Alexiadou (1997: 135) and Cinque (1999: 101-103) and assume that manner adverbs are licensed by Voice. A similar view is defended in Adger & Tsoulas (2000), where manner adverbs are associated with a v-head that introduces the external argument, and which corresponds to Voice in my analysis. Adger & Tsoulas also point to several sources in the literature for the association of these adverbs with gram-



Focus and marked positions for VP adverbs 

matical voice. For example, a close connection between passivisibility of verbs and manner modification was noted by Chomsky (1965). Chomsky observed that verbs which do not take manner adverbials freely cannot be passivised (e.g. resemble, have, weigh, fit, marry on the relevant interpretation). He argued that manner adverbials participate in subcategorisation, a fact which was built into his formalisation of the passive transformation.

Figure 1

More recently, Hale & Keyser (1997) link manner with the possibility of the ergative/ transitive alternation, exemplified in (24) and (25). In their l(exical)-syntactic structure in Figure 2, both verbal heads are associated with an adverbial component: V2 with a ‘classificatory’ component, which is internally oriented (i.e., the theme must have the required viscosity) and V1 with a ‘manner’ or ‘means’ component. Verbs like smear, besides having a classificatory component, also incorporate the manner component and require an agent. V1 corresponds to Voice in Figure 1 and is responsible for licensing manner adverbs.9 (24) a. We splashed mud on the wall. b. Mud splashed on the wall. (25) a. We smeared mud on the wall. b. * Mud smeared on the wall. I will henceforth assume that manner adverbs can be merged with a projection of Voice. There are in fact languages in which this is the only possibility. In Romanian, manner adverbs precede both external and internal arguments in unscrambled configurations (i.e. broad focus sentences). Example (26) has the subject in its predicate-

 Edward Göbbel

internal position (SpecVoiceP) and the lexical verb raised to T. The example in (27) shows that a manner adverb cannot follow an object.

Figure 2

(26) a. b.

Ce s-a întîmplat cu portarul? what CL-has happened to goalkeeper-the ‘What has happened to the goalkeeper?’ Cred că l-a lovit (prosteşte) Munteanu (*prosteşte). think.1SG that him-has hit (stupidly) Munteanu (stupidly) ‘I think that Munteanu hit him stupidly.’

(27) Nu simţi curentul? Închide (repede) uşa (*repede)! not feel draught-the close (quickly) door-the (quickly) ‘Can’t you feel the draught? Close the door quickly!’ In order to account for lower occurrences of manner adverbs, I follow Rubin (2002), who has proposed a checking approach for adverbial modifiers. Rubin (1996, 2002) argues that all modifiers, regardless of category, have an extended functional layer, which he identifies with a new category Mod. Mod is a generalised subordinator, which surfaces in unrelated languages like Tagalog (na), Chinese (de) and Romanian (de) in various modificational structures, but may remain phonetically empty, as in English. All modifiers are unified under the Mod hypothesis (28).10 (28) The Mod Hypothesis (Rubin 1996, 2002) [ModP Mod [XP … ]] As can be seen in the following Romanian examples, the particle de links all sorts of modifiers to the modified constituent: a locative adverbial in (29), a temporal adverb in (30), a relative clause in colloquial register in (31) and an adverb modifying an adjective in (32).11



Focus and marked positions for VP adverbs 

(29) cartea *(de) pe masă book-the DE on table ‘the book on the table’ (30) Mă preocupă ziua *(de) mâine. 1SG.REFL worry day-the DE tomorrow ‘I am worried about tomorrow.’ (31) casa de/care se vede pe deal house-the DE/which CL see on hill ‘the house which can be seen on the hill’ (32) o situaţie deosebit *(de) dificilă a situation.FEM.SG extremely DE difficult.FEM.SG ‘an extremely difficult situation’ Rubin argues that Mod plays a role similar to root projections of other lexical categories: it introduces modifiers and ‘links’ them to clausal, nominal or adjectival functional projections. In this respect it is similar to D, which relates arguments to predicates and to clausal functional projections (e.g. T or Voice) for the assignment of case to N. He further argues that the functional projections associated with different types of modifiers have an uninterpretable Mod feature and Mod an uninterpretable feature matching that of the functional head. For manner adverbs I will assume the feature configuration in (33), where [uF] represents an uninterpretable feature. I take the uninterpretable feature on the modifier to be valued by Voice. The uninterpretable feature on Voice is an optional selectional feature which may be checked by direct merger, in which case the adverb probes, or at a distance. In the latter case it is Voice that probes for a matching feature. (33) [VoiceP Voice[uMod, MANNER] ... [ModP Mod[uMod:MANNER] [AdvP carefully]] Since the association between the modifier and the licensing functional projection can be subsumed under the operation Agree, the modifier only has to occur in the c-command domain of the licenser. I therefore assume that postverbal adverbs can be merged with a projection of the lexical verb. The adverb is merged after the selectional properties of V are satisfied (i.e. after the internal arguments are merged, cf. Chomsky 2000: 132; Bowers 2002), the order V-DP-ADV-PP arising from SOM, as in (34). Agree will check and Spell-Out will delete the uninterpretable features on Voice and Mod. (34) [VoiceP he [Voice' puti [vP the glasswarej [v' ti [VP carefully [V' tj [V' ti into boxes]]]]]]] The three distributional classes of manner adverbs identified in section 2 are accommodated as follows then: the adverbs are merged either with VP, the constituent which they select semantically, or VoiceP, the functional category with which they are associated syntactically. Adverbs belonging to the carefully-class, which are most clearly

 Edward Göbbel

agent-oriented, can be merged with either category. Light adverbs and adverbs belonging to the perfectly-class are only merged with VP, as shown in Figure 3.12

Figure 3

4. Objections to genuine transportability In the previous section the transportability of manner adverbs was effectively reduced to two possible merger positions. The licensing approach crucially relies on the fact that these positions are unmarked (i.e. base positions), and they are not due to other factors such as interpretative distinctions or different informational status. However, several objections have been raised against such a view. For example, Ernst (2002: 272) claims that manner adverbs in preverbal position are backgrounded, only postverbal adverbs are focused or part of the focus. While defocused adverbs may preferably occur in preverbal position, it is not difficult to find examples in which preverbal manner adverbs are hardly less informative than the information provided by the verb and its internal argument. In (35), an example from an online course description, the coordinated adverbs are integrated into the focus projected by the internal argument. (35) We will begin each class session with a five-minute free-write whose sole purpose is to demonstrate that you have carefully and completely read the assigned selection. [Mari H. O’Brien; Wright State University] A more serious objection comes from defenders of strict association theories, like Cinque (1999) and Shaer (2003), who claim that different base positions of the same adverb correspond to different interpretations even if the distinction is not always apparent. I will only address Shaer (2003) because he specifically discusses manner adverbs.13



Focus and marked positions for VP adverbs 

I noted in section 2 that many preverbal adverbs may have a clausal or a manner reading and that these readings can be disambiguated by considering their comparison class. However, Shaer claims that there are clear interpretative differences between preverbal and postverbal occurrences of adverbs for which such clausal/manner contrasts have been denied in the literature. For example, adverbs like loudly and woodenly, which have been classified as ‘pure’ manner adverbs due to the fact that they are restricted to qualify events with purely physical manifestations (Ernst 2002: 87), are claimed by Shaer to share certain interpretative aspects with sentence adverbs if they occur in preverbal position. The distinction is often ‘semantically neutralised’, but different contexts can reveal it. Consider in this respect (36) and (37). In the former, but not in the latter, the adverb seems to qualify the action denoted by the verb. Example (37) seems to say something about the prisoner, namely that he is vehement, and not just noisy, in proclaiming his innocence. Examples like these seriously threaten my claim that two unmarked merger positions are in principle available, so I will have to consider Shaer’s arguments. (36) The prisoner proclaimed his innocence loudly. a. He woke up all the other prisoners. b. # He really believed that he had been framed. (37) The prisoner loudly proclaimed his innocence. a. # He woke up all the other prisoners. b. He really believed that he had been framed. (Shaer 2003: 229) Shaer, following suggestions by Peterson (1997), argues that preverbal manner adverbs, as opposed to postverbal ones, are not part of the main assertion of the sentence, and their contribution is similar to that of non-restrictive relatives in nominal constructions, namely a secondary assertion. The different contributions of preverbal vs. postverbal adverbs to the assertion structure of the sentence can be revealed by their behaviour in temporal since-clauses. As can be seen in (38), postverbal manner adverbs are excluded from temporal since-clauses, but not preverbal ones. Postverbal adverbs can only induce a causal interpretation. (38) a. Since John quietly entered the room, he’s been looking for a seat. b. # Since John entered the room quietly, he’s been looking for a seat. c. Since John entered the room quietly, no one noticed him. (= causal) Shaer argues that postverbal adverbs, as opposed to preverbal ones, are part of the information asserted in the sentence and asserted information is prohibited from temporal since-clauses. Temporal since-clauses introduce presuppositions, while causal since-clauses introduce assertions and are therefore compatible with postverbal adverbs (cf. Wickboldt 1998, 2000). In other words, preverbal adverbs have a commenting, non-restrictive function.14 In this respect they are similar to sentence adverbs. However, I will argue that the restrictive vs. non-restrictive distinction is an information-structural one. Once we clarify the informational contribution of the adverb on

 Edward Göbbel

its restrictive vs. non-restrictive readings, I will be able to show that non-restrictive readings are not excluded from postverbal position. The latter point is already implicit in Peterson’s (1997) original discussion. Peterson (1997) compares the ‘restrictive’ vs. ‘non-restrictive’ readings of adverbs with the restrictive vs. non-restrictive readings of adjectives in sentences like (39). On the restrictive reading (39a) a set of chairs is presupposed, and it is asserted that the old one was sold. The non-restrictive reading (39b) amounts to a double assertion, namely, ‘I sold the chair’ and ‘it was old’. (40) provides contexts for the two readings. (39) I sold the old chair. a. I sold the chair which was old. b. I sold the chair, which was old. (40) a. I sold the old chair. But I didn’t sell any of the others, the new one, the one you hate, etc. b. I sold the old chair. Now I have nothing to sit on. Translating this into a focus-theoretical framework, the adjective is narrowly focused on the restrictive use and the whole DP is focused on the non-restrictive use (i.e., the adjective is integrated into a broader focus; it may, but need not, be associated with a pitch accent).15 (41) a. I sold the [F OLD] chair. (restrictive) b. I [F sold [F the old CHAIR]]. (non-restrictive) Peterson argues that the same distinction holds of adverbs in gerundive constructions. The sentences in (42) favour either the restrictive reading (a) or the non-restrictive reading (b). (42) a. The candle’s burning brightly was seen by Harold. b. The candle’s burning brightly ignited the curtains. He argues that in (42a) the NP subject refers to a complex event of the candle’s burning being bright. In this case it is asserted about an event e1, namely the candle’s burning, that it is bright (e2 = e1 is bright). It is the brightness of the burning candle that was seen by Harold. In (42b), the NP subject does not refer to the same complex event; it refers to the candle burning itself. The whole sentence asserts two things, namely, that the burning ignited the curtains and that the burning was bright. Peterson argues that the same two readings can be found with adverbs in sentential constructions and that different contexts can disambiguate the two interpretations. This can be seen in (43) and (44). Peterson crucially makes use of presupposition and assertion in describing examples of this kind. On the restrictive reading in (43b), the event of the candle burning (e1) is presupposed to exist and it is referred to in the assertion (e2 = e1 is bright). (44b) does not involve a complex event, but simply asserts that the candle was burning and that the burning was bright. Hence it is not structured into a presupposition and an assertion.



Focus and marked positions for VP adverbs 

(43) a. How could you see any of the notes with only a candle to illuminate the music? b. The candle burned brightly. (44) a. What caused the curtains to catch on fire? b. Well, there are a number of possibilities. One of the smokers may have dropped a live ash on them. Or maybe Harold’s chafing dish did it. The candle (on the windowsill) burned brightly (all evening). That may have done it. (Peterson 1997: 238-239) It should be clear from the discussion of the parallel adjectival cases (39/40) above that what is at issue here is the structuring of the propositions into a focused part and a background or presuppositional part. For me, the contextualised examples (43) and (44) only show that the ‘restrictive’ vs. ‘non-restrictive’ distinction corresponds to narrow focus on the adverb vs. broad sentential focus.16 The two sentences can be given the focus-structural representations in (45). Typical intonational contours can be seen in Figure 4. In (45a), only the adverb is associated with a focal accent; candle is associated with a default peak accent because the focal accent comes late in the utterance. In (45b), the adverb is included into the broad focus projected by the internal argument, which has moved to SpecTP. The adverb is associated with an L* pitch accent and set off in its own prosodic phrase. The H-H% boundary tones mark a continuation rise since the sentence is non-final in the text (44b). H* L+H* L-L% (45) a. The candle burned [F BRIGHTly]. L+H* L- L* H-H% b. [F [F The CANdle burned] BRIGHTly].

Figure 4

 Edward Göbbel

Having established that the non-restrictive reading discussed by Peterson has to be identified with the occurrence of an adverb in a broad focus, we can return to Shear’s diagnostic, namely an adverb’s acceptability in temporal since-clauses (cf. (38) above). Note that Shaer adopts Peterson’s restrictive/non-restrictive distinction, but rejects his claim that postverbal adverbs can be non-restrictive. Rather, he correlates the restrictive reading with preverbal position and the non-restrictive reading with postverbal position due to the fact that postverbal adverbs are unacceptable in temporal since-clauses. However, I do not think temporal since-clauses can successfully be used to demonstrate interpretive distinctions between preverbal and postverbal adverbs due to independent focus-structural restrictions. Firstly, the whole situation described by the temporal clause must be presupposed. To include an adverb into the presupposition it has to be defocused, and defocused adverbs preferably, but not necessarily, occur in preverbal position. Secondly, a restrictive/focused adverb may occur in temporal since-clauses as long as the temporal anchor condition is not violated. The focused adverb in (46), regardless of position, evokes alternative events of John entering the room in different manners (e.g. he entered the room noisily, then he entered the room quietly, but only since he entered the room quietly has he been looking for a seat). Focus in this case is contrastive and a contrastive focus is a D-linked focus (Göbbel 1998, Bush 2000). Hence the whole event description consisting of the predicate, its arguments and adjuncts must be presupposed.17 (46) a. Since John QUIETLY entered the room, he has been looking for a seat. b. Since John entered the room QUIETLY, he has been looking for a seat. The adverb can also occur in postverbal position if it is defocused. Let us consider an example in which the adverb does not trigger the inference of a causal dependency. Example (47) does not readily allow the temporal reading of the since-clause. The reason is this: under normal intonation the subject and the adverb are accented. The last accent is always perceived as the most prominent, which, in the absence of any further context, may lead to a narrow, non-contrastive focus interpretation of the adverb. (47) ??Since the Titanic sank quietly, ship builders have refrained from building large vessels. (temporal) There are two ways to improve such an example: either by deaccenting the postverbal adverb, as in (48), where the quiet sinking of the Titanic is contrasted with, for example, the quiet sinking of the RMS Tayleur, or by adding a complement, as in (49). In either case, final stress is removed from the adverb and shifted to a different constituent. (48) Since the TITANIC sank quietly, ship builders have refrained from building large vessels. (49) Since the Titanic sank quietly to the depths of the Atlantic, ship builders have refrained from building large vessels.



Focus and marked positions for VP adverbs 

Concluding this section, we have seen that a manner adverb may be integrated into a broader focus in both preverbal and postverbal position. I have also argued that temporal since-clauses are not a good diagnostic for distinguishing different interpretations because they allow only D-linked adverbs regardless of whether they are focused or not. What about Shear’s examples (36/37) above? Example (50) is similar; the context question requires broad focus in the answer and the adverb seems acceptable in both preverbal and postverbal position. According to my informants, loudly in preverbal position may indicate that the prisoner was vehement, but the manner reading (‘in a loud voice’) is also available. The availability of a ‘higher’ subject-oriented reading is in fact expected since the cognate adjective exhibits the same reading. In (51), the newspapers are vehement, not noisy in their condemnation of British sentimentality. Having established that manner adverbs are genuinely transportable in broad focus contexts, I turn to marked positions of such adverbs. (50) a. What happened at Old Bailey’s this morning? b. One of the prisoners (loudly) proclaimed his innocence (loudly). (51) Northcliffe’s newspapers were loud in their condemnation of British sentimentality. (Collins Cobuild)

5. Narrow focus on manner adverbs 5.1

A marked position for manner adverbs

We saw in section 2 that adverbs which require an agentive controller (carefully, secretly, etc.), but also rate adverbs like quickly, do not occur after PP complements or adverbials in broad focus contexts. The following examples, however, show that the VP-final position becomes available if the adverb is narrowly focused. (52) a. How did John put his glassware into padded boxes? b. He put his glassware into padded boxes very CAREFULLY. (53) a. How did he put the money on the table? b. He put the money on the table QUICKLY. (54) a. How did the accountant transfer the money to his own account? b. He transferred the money to his own account SECRETLY. (55) a. How did they bury the burglar in the cellar? b. They buried the burglar in the cellar HASTILY. Examples (56) and (57) show that a narrowly focused adverb does not readily occur in VP-initial position in question-answer contexts. (56) a. How did they bury the burglar in the cellar? b. ? They HASTILY buried him in the cellar.

 Edward Göbbel

(57) a. How did the accountant transfer the money to his own account? b.?? He SECRETLY transferred the money to his own account. The examples in (58) and (59) show that the occurrence of focused manner adverbs between the object and the PP complement or adjunct may also result in degraded acceptability. Since my informants’ judgements in (56) through to (59) were somewhat variable, I do not consider them completely unacceptable.18 Adverbs, like arguments, may be focused in situ because this is the main focusing strategy in English. However, the VP-final position of the adverb is clearly preferred in these cases. This is corroborated by further tests: replacive negation in (60) also favours VP-final position for the focused adverb. (58) a. How did John put his glassware into padded boxes? b.? He put his glassware very CAREFULLY into padded boxes. (59) a. How did they bury the burglar in the cellar? b.? They buried the burglar HASTILY in the cellar. (60) He didn’t (??POLITELY) lead the guests (?POLITELY) into the reception room (POLITELY), but condescendingly.

5.2

Where’s the focused adverb?

Since the VP-final position is associated with a narrow focus effect with a subset of manner adverbs, it could be the result of scrambling of backgrounded material or movement of the adverb to a structural focus position. I consider both alternatives below. 5.2.1 PP scrambling The simplest analysis that suggests itself is scrambling of the PP in front of the adverb, which is focused in the unmarked position following the object. Example (53) could have the derivation in Figure 5. This analysis, however, is not unproblematic. It cannot capture the fact that further extraction from the PP is possible, as in (61). Other scrambling configurations in English, like heavy NP shift and presentational-there insertion, are well known to exhibit island effects (cf. Rochemont & Culicover 1990; Chomsky 2001). This is illustrated in (62) and (63). Extraction of the whole PP is considerably better in these cases. (61) a. Which tablei did he put the money [on ti] QUICKLY? b. Whati did he put his glassware [into ti] VERY CAREFULLY? c. Which accounti did he transfer the money [to ti] SECRETLY? (62) a. * Whoi did Bill purchase [for ti] last week an all expense paid ticket to Europe? b. For whom did Bill purchase last week an all expense paid ticket to Europe? (Rochemont & Culicover 1990: 132/133) (63) a. * Which airporti did there arrive [at ti] three strange men? b.? At which airport did there arrive three strange men? (Chomsky 2001: 21)



Focus and marked positions for VP adverbs 

Figure 5

In recent approaches to the syntax of wh-movement (Chomsky 2001), the wh-phrase is first extracted to the edge of the phase,19 then it moves on to SpecCP. If the PP were scrambled as in Figure 5, the island would have already been created before Voice is merged. The Extension Condition rules out a counter-cyclic derivation in which the wh-phrase is first merged with a projection of Voice followed by scrambling of the remnant PP. Clearly, the wh-phrase must get a chance to escape. It could escape if a larger constituent than the PP were displaced. Fortunately, there is evidence that larger constituents than the PP can move. Certain adverbs, like ostentatiously, which, in examples like (64) occur in preverbal position in broad focus contexts, preferably surface in VP-final position if they are narrowly focused. In (65a), the phrasal verb including the weak pronoun is an indivisible unit, hence the VP including its extended projections must have been moved. (64) a. What was Mary doing at the wedding? b. She was (ostentatiously) showing off her new dress (#ostentatiously). (65) How was Mary showing off her new dress at the wedding? a. She was showing it off OSTENTATIOUSLY. b.? She was OSTENTATIOUSLY showing it off. (66) She was [showing it off]i OSTENTATIOUSLY ti.

 Edward Göbbel

But if the VP including its extended projections is scrambled, we have a problem with adverbs which cannot occur in preverbal position. For example, light adverbs (e.g. well, fast) occur only between the verb and a PP complement or adjunct. Examples (67) through to (70) show that they may follow the PP if they are focused or contrasted (cf. also Costa 1998). I can see only one way out of this dilemma, namely by removing the focused adverb from its unmarked position and then scramble the remnant VoiceP. (67) I had driven up the hill and stopped by the small hut near the top. Then another vehicle came (??FAST) up the hill FAST. I thought it was pursuing me. (68) Did he walk to the grocery store FAST? (69) Firm it down with the fingers well, if it is John Innes compost, but compress it only lightly if soilless. [Ann Bonar, Herbs. Ward Lock, London, 1989] (70) a. How did the nine-year old read to the smaller kids? b. He read to the kids remarkably well. An interesting piece of evidence for the possibility of local scrambling of adverbs can be found within the perfectly-class. These do not occur in front of the verb, but Ernst (2004: 771) notes that they become grammatical if they are quantified by so and serve as antecedent of an extraposed result clause, as in (71). Although he did not have an explanation for the grammaticality of these examples, there are good reasons to believe that they are cases of short focus preposing. These examples actually show an intermediate step in an operation that is generally available in English, namely movement of extent-phrases to the left periphery of the clause. This operation is accompanied by subject-auxiliary inversion (cf. 72). Furthermore, Drubig (1992a: 6-7) notes that so bears focal stress, regardless of whether the extent-phrase is moved or not, and remarks that the preposing of the extent-phrase has the same inherent connection with focus-backround structure that has been attributed to negative preposing. An example of negative preposing with a similar focus structure is (73).20 (71) a. Rose so beautifully sang the aria that we were left breathless. b. Lucy so perfectly performed the moves that she was hired on the spot. (72) So perfectly did Lucy perform the moves that she was hired on the spot. (73) Nothing have I seen that could rival the pyramids. (Baker 1989: 413) In the wake of Rizzi (1997), both negative preposing and movement of the extent-phrase would be analysed as movement to a FocP at the left periphery of the clause.21 An immediate conclusion concerning the examples in (71) is that the extent-phrases are extracted to the edge of the vP-phase, but they are not accompanied by VP-remnant movement. 5.2.2 Focus-movement in the lower IP area In order to account for the narrow focus effect of VP-final adverbs, I will adopt proposals by Jayaseelan (2001), Belletti (2004), Butler (2004) and Drubig (this volume),



Focus and marked positions for VP adverbs 

who argue that the verbal phrase has a CP-like periphery in the sense of Rizzi (1997), including a FocP and a TopP. Focused adverbs move to SpecFoc; in a second step the remnant, backgrounded VoiceP is moved in front of the focused adverb, to the specifier of TopP. The derivation of (70b) is illustrated in Figure 6. Independent evidence for the representation of focused adverbs at the edge of the vP-phase comes from gapping. Adverbs are possible remnants in these constructions, as can be seen in (74).

Figure 6

(74) a. Some ate the porridge quickly, and others ate the porridge slowly. b. Some do the job carelessly, and others do the job well. c. Some drive to work carefully, and others drive to work fast. Winkler (2003: section 4.3.1) argues extensively that the first remnant in gapping constructions is a contrastive topic and the second remnant a contrastive focus. As can be seen in (75), the two older kids are the (contrasted) topics of the two conjuncts, whereas the adverbs are focused. (75) a. How do the older kids read to the smaller ones? b. The ten-year old reads to the smaller kids perfectly, and the nineyear old remarkably well. Gapping is restricted to coordinate structures, and the conjuncts are subsentential (cf. Johnson 2003 and references cited there). Example (76) shows that the subject of the first conjunct can bind the pronoun in the second conjunct, which would not be possible if the conjuncts were sentential due to lack of a c-command relation between the

 Edward Göbbel

QP and the pronoun. Johnson also shows that the focused remnant moves out of the verbal phrase and obeys restrictions that are similar to long-distance scrambling in Dutch, which is only possible with restructuring verbs. This can be seen in (77). The examples in (78) show that adverbs may also be extracted ‘long-distance’. (76) No boyi joined the navy and hisi mother joined the army. (Johnson 2003) (77) a. Some tried to eat natto, and others tried to eat rice. b. * Vivek wanted for Nishi to buy the video, and Carrie wanted for Nishi to buy the ice-cream. (Johnson 2003) (78) a. Some tried to do it quickly, and others tried to do it carefully. b. Some tried to eat the porridge quickly, and others tried to eat the porridge slowly. c. Some tend to drive to work carefully, and others tend to drive to work fast. For Johnson, gapping is the result of ATB extraction of the verbal predicate from which the remnants have been removed. Figure 7 represents Johnson’s analysis. In the analysis developed here, the remnants would be extracted to a TopP and a FocP, respectively.

Figure 7



Focus and marked positions for VP adverbs 

An immediate consequence of an F-movement analysis of the focused adverb is that the grammaticality of subextraction from PP, noted in section 5.2.1 and repeated in (79), can be captured straightforwardly. If wh-phrases ultimately land in the FocP in the CP area (Rizzi 1997, Bošković 2002), it is natural to assume with Jayaseelan (2001) and Butler (2004) that wh-movement uses the lower FocP as an escape hatch. Assuming that FocP allows several mergers (or specifiers), presumably because it has both a [uWh] and a [Foc] feature, the derivation proceeds as in (80). First the adverb merges with Foc, then the wh-phrase does. In a third step the remnant VoiceP could merge with Top. A potential problem for this analysis is the fact that the subject would be trapped inside the raised VoiceP. However, since the verbal phrase has a CP-like periphery, the edge of the phase cannot be defined as the specifiers of Voice. It is the functional projections which make up the verb phrase periphery that constitute the edge of the phase. Due to the Phase Impenetrability Condition (Chomsky 2001), the subject has to raise from VoiceP regardless whether the latter is scrambled or not. Since the subject is defocused in these examples, I will tentatively assume that it mer­ ges with Top before VoiceP does.22 (79) Which tablei did he put the money [on ti] QUICKLY? (80)

[VoiceP he put the money quickly on which table] Movement of Adv to FocP: [FocP quickly Foc [VoiceP he put the money on which table]] Movement of wh-phrase to FocP: [FocP which table [Foc' quickly Foc [VoiceP he put the money on]]] Movement of subject to TopP: [TopP he Top [FocP which table [Foc' quickly Foc [VoiceP put the money on]]]] Movement of remnant VoiceP to TopP: [TopP put the money on [Top' he Top [FocP which table [Foc' quickly Foc ]]]] Movement of subject to TP: [TP he did... [TopP put the money on Top [FocP which table [Foc' quickly Foc ]]]] Movement of wh-phrase to CP: [FocP which table did [TP he... [TopP put the money on Top [FocP quickly Foc ]]]]

6. Concluding remarks The theoretical goal of this paper was to argue for a complex middle field in English. Derivations in current minimalist syntax proceed in terms of phases, which are standardly identified as vP and CP. Crosslinguistically, focused constituents are represented at the edges of these two phases. The theoretical prediction is that the edge of the vPphase is a possible movement site for focus in English, a claim explicitly or implicitly found in other recent work as well. By studying the distribution of English manner adverbs in both broad and narrow focus contexts, this paper has shown that focused

 Edward Göbbel

adverbs can be locally scrambled to the edge of the vP-phase. The analysis radically departs from the generally accepted view that adverbs are immobile, but restricts movement to well-defined triggers. Concerning the transportability of adverbs, I have argued that they can be subsumed under a feature-based approach (Cinque 1999) without having to resort to movement of other constituents, like verbs and arguments. My claim that genuine transportability only occurs in broad focus contexts, in which case adverbs are integrated into the focus projected by a prominent argument, has also been defended against objections in the literature that different positions should not be treated as interpretively and informationally equivalent.

Notes * This paper has benefited greatly from comments and suggestions by Carsten Breul, Luis López and the audiences at the ISAG Workshop (Tübingen), TABU-Day 2004 (Groningen) and the Annual Meeting of the LAGB 2004 (Roehampton). Extensive and careful comments by one of the two reviewers had a great and positive impact on the final version of the paper. I am also particularly grateful to Elsa Lattey, Carol Geppert-Jolly and Steve van Vlack for their patience and invaluable help with the data discussed here. 1. Sentence adverbs (probably, fortunately) and manner adverbs on their higher clausal readings (frankly, rudely) may also occur as parentheticals within the verbal phrase with so-called ‘comma intonation’ (i.e. set off in a separate intonational phrase with an L* L-H% sequence of tones). Hence, the parenthetical in (ii) can be interpreted as agent-oriented (it was rude of his son to speak to my wife), but the manner reading is also available (the way he spoke was rude; cf. Shaer 2003), probably with a different intonational contour (H* L-L%, cf. Stowell 2003). For lack of space these cases will not be discussed further here. (i) a. Marion rinsed the board, probably. b. He won’t talk about it, frankly. (ii) Your son spoke, rudely, to my wife. (Shaer 2003: 240) 2. While the manner reading is the most natural in (4a), Heny (1973: 230, FN 8) notes that, in an example like John carefully ate all the bagles, the agent-oriented reading is clearly preferred (i.e., John made sure that the event in question actually ocurred). 3. Examples of quickly in S-initial position can often be found in narratives like (i), in which the preceding text suggests swiftness of action. (i) She glanced at the clock, it was a wonder mother wasn’t banging on the floor with her stick by now, it was way past dinner time. Quickly, Hari ladled the soup into bowls and cut a few thick pieces of bread… [Iris Gower, The shoemaker’s daughter, Corgi Books, London 1992] Noncanonical order of adjectives in English also blocks focus projection. Drubig (1997) and Scott (2002) argue that ‘direct’ adjectival modifiers of a noun, which occur in a strict order (Sproat & Shih 1988), are associated with narrow focus if the natural linear order is disrupted. Hence, (iia) allows for maximal projection of focus, the focus being projected from girl, the head of the NP. In (iib) and (iic), Swedish is narrowly focused.



Focus and marked positions for VP adverbs 

(ii) a. He is looking for a pretty little Swedish girl. b. He is looking for a pretty SWEDISH little girl. c. He is looking for a SWEDISH pretty little girl. (Drubig 1997: 38) 4. Since manner adverbs are satellites of the verb and its complement(s), it is often sufficient to consider VP focus. Sentence focus with complex constructions is relatively difficult to control. I will use one ‘?’ to indicate a less preferred, but nonetheless acceptable occurrence of an adverb, ‘??’ and ‘#’ for unacceptable occurrences in the context in which the sentence is uttered and ‘*’ for an ungrammatical occurrence. 5. A reviewer suggests that a context question like ‘What did John do next?’ favours a higher position of quickly, indicating event delay, over a lower position, indicating the speed of John’s action. Admittedly, the two readings are difficult to tell apart with preverbal quickly due to the short process stage of the accomplishment. However, I do not really think that this question really forces the ‘temporal’ reading of quickly. In (i), for example, quickly does not seem to indicate event delay, but modifies the process itself (i.e. he moved quickly). Furthermore, the temporal reading does not seem to be restricted to preverbal position. In example (ii), from the British National Corpus (BNC), the adverb seems to indicate event delay (i.e. he was quick to add), not the rate at which he was saying it. (i) (What did John do next?) He quickly walked to the store. (ii) He added quickly that there was no hurry any more. 6. The patterns here are only illustrations of manner adverbs. Another class that occurs within the boundaries of the VP and its extended projections are mental attitude adverbs. These adverbs have a wider distribution (i), may, but need not, have a manner reading (cf. Ernst 2002), and also occur in the auxiliary area. They will not be considered any further here, nor will domain adverbs (morphologically, politically) and measure adverbs (partially). Note that adverbs of the perfectlyclass and light adverbs may occur in preverbal position if they are used as measure adverbs (cf. Ernst 2004), as in (ii). They also occur in this position if the verb is in the passive (iii), but this is due to the fact that the participle does not undergo short verb movement (cf. Blight 1997). (i) a. Why did they fire the accountant? b. He had (deliberately) transferred money (deliberately) to his own account (deliberately). (ii) a. This guy perfectly fits your description. b. He could well understand why his daughter was so smitten with the boy. (iii) a. The refugees are not always well treated. b. The oboe was beautifully played by John. 7. The effect of relative heaviness of the AdvP on word order can also be seen in (i). Statistically, the string extremely+Adv, an otherwise frequent collocation, occurs extremely rarely in front of lexical (non-passive) verbs. A search performed in the BNC yielded only one match. Although I will have to leave the phonological details to future research, the proposal that certain cases of rightward movement are PF operations can be demonstrated with examples of extraposition from subjects, subjects being classical islands for movement. An example like (ii) is used in presentational contexts and it is structured into two intonational phrases (ip). The relative clause is extraposed in order to allow the subject and the predicate to form a thetic subject-prominent pattern. (i) a. With the new technology, we can (quickly) melt gold (quickly). b. With the new technology, we can (very quickly) melt gold (very quickly). c. With the new technology, we can (#extremely quickly) melt gold (extremely quickly).

 Edward Göbbel

(ii) [ip A MAN arrived] [ip who she had never seen before].

8. Cf. Johnson (1991), Koizumi (1993), Bowers (2002), Göbbel (2003) and López (2004) for discussion and different motivations for short object movement (SOM). The prevalent opinion for SOM is case valuation by a functional head, which is also associated with an EPP feature. I will not enter this debate here. For arguments that the external argument is introduced by Voice see Kratzer (1994) and Marantz (2001). 9. I leave open the possibility for additional l-syntactic v-heads to act as licenser of VP adverbs. Rate adverbs, which happily modify unaccusative verbs are presumably licensed by unaccusative v. A Voice head is a plausible candidate in middle constructions where adverbs are obligatory. The fact that agent-oriented manner adverbs are excluded in these two constructions is naturally accounted if these adverbs include a PRO argument in their extended projection (on which see below). Unaccusatives and middles, unlike passive constructions, do not have an implicit agent that could control PRO. 10. Rubin (1996: 435-436) argues that the universality of Mod finds support in languages with no overt realisation for it. In English, adjuncts of different categories can be coordinated, but not arguments. Example (ia) actually involves coordination of ModPs. See also Bowers (2001) for a similar analysis of conjunction of predicates (e.g., I consider him crazy and a fool) in terms of PredPs. (i) a. The packages will arrive at noon or subsequently. b. * They expected a telegram and that it would rain. 11. In (32), the adverb precedes de, which may be the result of movement of the adverb to SpecMod. Mod is rarely spelled out with clausal modifiers (e.g., de tot ‘DE completely’, de abia ‘DE hardly’), but it surfaces if they are bare nominals (de obicei ‘DE habit, usually’) or nominalised adjectives (de-a binelea ‘DE-A good-the, thoroughly’; with a presumably a case particle). Hence, the full structure of the latter is Mod-K-N-D, the order N-D arising from N-to-D movement. It is noteworthy that Manninen (2003) reaches a similar conclusion on the basis of Finnish. She argues that all modifiers are headed by essentially the same functional projection in the extension of the modifier, a p-head selecting PPs and a k-head selecting KPs with lexical case. Furthermore, K may select nominal, adjectival or verbal roots. She argues that p/k values the case feature of N/A/V and it also has an adverbial feature which acts like an instruction with which functional head in the clause to combine. Note also that Vinokurova (1999) has argued that the English affix -ly is an instantiation of K, hence Mod actually selects KP in English as well. 12. I have to stipulate here that adverbs of the perfectly-class can also be right-adjoined in order to account for their ocurrence to the right of PP complements. Lower PP adverbials (locative and instrumental phrases, temporal adverbials identifying event time) are also assumed to be right-adjoined to VP. There is considerable evidence that direct objects c-command adverbials (cf. Pesetsky 1995), which follows from SOM. 13. For Cinque, different interpretations of the same adverb are due to its being merged into the specifier of distinct functional heads. Cinque’s approach, however, also allows for a certain amount of flexibility. If no interpretative differences can be established, the transportability of the adverb can be the result of movement of other constituents. For example the verb and its complement could move in front of a manner adverb merged with Voice. 14. This view can be traced back to Heny (1973) who remarks that “adverbs placed before the verb rather than after the VP may turn out to have a sort of nonrestrictive force, being an interpolation or comment by the speaker” (p. 230, FN 8).



Focus and marked positions for VP adverbs 

15. Luis López informs me that in Spanish the two readings are reflected in the position of the adjective. The postnominal adjective in (i) is restrictive, and the prenominal one in (ii) is nonrestrictive. Since a phrasal stress rule is operative in Spanish, this word order is expected and supports my analysis of the English data. The defocused noun in (i) has to be removed from the position to which nuclear stress is assigned. (i) Vendí la silla vieja. sold.1SG the chair old (ii) Vendí la vieja silla. 16. A complex event analysis of (43b) does not seem to capture its focus structure in any straightforward way. Larson (2003), however, has recently argued, following Herburger (2000), that narrow focus on an adverb can be captured in a neo-Davidsonian framework by mapping the presupposition into the restriction of the existential quantifier which binds the event variable and the focus into its nuclear scope. Hence, an unstructured (broad focus) proposition can be assigned the (simplified) logical form in (i), where C is an argument for a standard of comparison (cf. Larson & Segal 1995: 497). A structured proposition with narrow focus on the adverb, but also predicational structures like The candle’s burning was bright, are assigned a logical form like (ii) by Larson. Note that such predicational structures lie at the heart of Peterson’s complex event analysis. (i) ∃e[burn(e) & Patient (e, the candle) & bright (e, C)] ‘There is a burning of the candle and it was bright (for such an event).’ (ii) ∃e[burn(e) & Patient (e, the candle)] (bright (e, C)) ‘For some burning with the candle as patient, it was bright.’ 17. Wickboldt (1998, chapter 5) discusses a whole range of adjuncts in since-clauses and concludes that adverbial modification overwhelmingly results in causal readings if the event descriptions of the since-clause and the root clause allow a causal inference. Even sentence adverbs of different subclasses are excluded from temporal clauses, which makes Shaer’s point even more difficult to prove. Wickboldt, however, acknowledges that time adverbials may occur in temporal clauses if the are contrastively focused (p. 145), but gives a different explanation for manner adverbs. While discussing only postverbal manner adverbs, she argues that focused adverbs suspend the telicity of a telic description by allowing reference to the stages of the event (cf. (i); without the adverb the follow-up sentence is unacceptable). This effect is supposed to violate the temporal anchor condition yielding unacceptability, the temporal anchor being determined by the transition of the achievement. I used this argument in a previous version of this paper, but a reviewer, correctly, has pointed out that the adverb only provides a firmer basis for inferring that the follow-up sentence is an elaboration of the first. (i) The police entered the apartment illegally. They smashed in a window, climbed through, and started searching for drugs. (Wickboldt 2000: 367). 18. At least one of the consulted informants found the question-answer pairs in (56) through to (59) acceptable, and at least one found them completely unacceptable. Similar judgements were elicited for (65b) below. Therefore, I refrain from drawing any conclusion besides the one stated in the main text. A reviewer points out that contrastive focus is possible for her/him in preverbal position (cf. also my example 46a). 19. In the structure of the verbal phrase assumed here, which is more elaborate than Chom­sky’s, the wh-phrase would move to a second specifier of Voice or even higher (cf. section 5.2.2)

 Edward Göbbel 20. Focus movement of an adverb to the CP-area is not necessarily associated with narrow focus on the adverb. In (i) both the preposed adverb and the VP are focused. The adverb re­ceives additional emphasis and relates to the preceding context. One would expect that a similar situation can be found with postposed adverbs. In (ii), which is inspired by a reviewer’s example, the VP is focused, but that adverb is emphasised and it relates to the following adjunct clause. (i) Many bands define their decade. The Beatles in the 60s, The Sex Pistols in the 70s, The Smiths in the 80s – it’s inconceivable that these bands could have arisen in any other time, so perfectly did they reflect the cultural landscape of their day. (BBC Radio 2, 19 October 2002) (ii) a. Tell me something about Jason. b. He drives to work fast because he gets up late. 21. On the syntax of negative preposing see Haegeman (2000). For discussion of result phrase extraposition see also Rochemont & Culicover (1990). 22. Merger of the subject with Top and then T is a case of what is generally assumed to be improper movement. However, the A/A’-distinction is not well-defined in current minimalism. A clear case in standard phase theory is the status of the specifiers of v. The subject merges as an A-specifier, whereas wh-phrases, topics etc. which use merger to v as an escape hatch would require the second specifier of v to be defined as an A'-position. The distinction boils down to what moves through a certain position and where it will ultimately land. Cf. Butler (2004) for critical discussion of this problem.

Ellipsis and inversion A feature-based focus account* Remus Gergel, Kirsten Gengel, Susanne Winkler This paper provides an account of the syntactic and prosodic licensing conditions of VP-ellipsis under inversion in different historical varieties of English. Recent studies (e.g., Fox & Lasnik 2003, Lasnik 1999, Merchant 2003) have proposed PF-repair strategies according to which VP-ellipsis takes place to repair an otherwise illicit configuration. Concentrating on one particular instance of VP-ellipsis, occurring in comparative constructions both with and without inversion, we argue against the syntactic repair accounts and for an information structural approach. The account proposes that the necessity of VPellipsis in comparative constructions under inversion is directly related to a more general parallelism condition (cf. Fox 1999, Lang 2004) and to an interfacebased and partially syntactically implemented concept of focus isolation.

1. Introduction In recent publications, strong syntactic arguments have emerged which support the claim that certain types of ellipses, in particular VP-Ellipsis (VPE), can be explained on the basis of the so-called Repair-by-Deletion hypothesis (cf. Kennedy & Merchant 2000, Lasnik 1995, 1999, Merchant 2003, among others), which assumes that a structural defect can be repaired by PF-deletion of the offending structure. Previous research pertinent to the phenomenon of repair strategies also suggests that there is a connection to focus (cf. Baltin 2003, Depiante 2000, Kim 1997, Reglero 2004).1 However, most studies only consider one aspect of focus, either the redundancy of the deleted constituent or the contrastive character of the remnant. Concentrating on the syntax and information structure of VPE in comparative constructions with and without inversion in English, we will propose a focus hypothesis which connects the apparent necessity of VPE in comparative constructions under inversion to two requirements: the parallelism condition and a new syntax-based concept of Focus Isolation. The goal is to show that such an account, which is based on a feature-driven focus approach (cf.

 Remus Gergel, Kirsten Gengel, Susanne Winkler

Winkler 1997, 2003, 2005, Winkler & Schwabe 2003, among others), can accommodate the different types of comparatives with and without inversion.2 The constructions which we start out with in this paper were investigated for the first time by Merchant (2003) and are exemplified in (1). (1) a. Abby knows more languages than her father does. b. Abby knows more languages than does her father. (Merchant 2003: 56) Example (1a) illustrates a comparative construction with canonical subject-auxiliary word order and VPE. Example (1b) differs from (1a) only in that Subject-Auxiliary Inversion (SAI) has taken place. We will refer to the former case as Comparative VPEllipsis without Inversion (CE–Inv) and the latter case as Comparative VP-Ellipsis with Inversion (CE+Inv). Merchant (2003: 55) proposes a generalization which states that SAI in comparatives can only occur when VPE has occurred. According to this generalization, example (2a) is ungrammatical because VPE has not taken place despite SAI. Example (2b) is grammatical because it illustrates the noninverted counterpart. (2) a. *Abby knows more languages than does her father know. b. Abby knows more languages than her father knows. (Merchant 2003: 56) While this proposal accounts for a considerable range of data, we extend the empirical basis of the investigation and account for cases which are not expected under the original generalization. In particular, we propose that the information structure of the comparative constructions at hand becomes a critical factor in capturing the ultimate underlying mechanisms as well as the distributions found at the PF-level. Consider (3) and (4), where capitalization signals pitch accent assignment of a high tone, the acute accent marks secondary stress and italics signal backgrounding via deaccentuation. Phonologically silent material is represented by strike-through. VPE is represented initially as ∆. (3) Comparative VPE without Inversion: a. Manny plays the piano better than his MOM díd ∆. b. Manny claimed he played the piano better than he actually díd ∆. (4) Comparative VPE with Inversion: a. Manny plays the piano better than did his MOM (did) ∆. b. *Manny claimed he played the piano better than did he (did)∆. The claim is the following: Although CE–Inv and CE+Inv both involve VPE, they differ with respect to their information structural function. The CE–Inv in (3a,b) constitutes a case of VPE and functions (like other cases of anaphora) as a means of marking givenness, as proposed in López & Winkler (2000) for VPE in coordinated constructions. The remnants are typically free to assume various discourse functions depending on the context, as seen in (3a,b). The subject remnant is either a contrastive topic like



Ellipsis and inversion: a feature-based focus account 

his mom in (3a) or a pronominalized topic like he, as in (3b). The CE+Inv, however, constitutes a case of Contrastive Focus Ellipsis (CFE) and requires that the remnant in the comparative clause be contrastively focused, as in (4a). Contrastive foci cannot be pronominalized and deaccented, as the ungrammaticality of (4b) illustrates. The isolation of the contrastive focus is achieved by deleting phonological material from the domain of focus and by moving the auxiliary out of the focus domain, here informally described as the right edge of the sentence final phonological phrase(s) (cf. Truckenbrodt 1999 on the containment relationship of syntactic phrases within phonological phrases). This is schematically represented in (5).3

(5) Main VPE Configurations: Correlate Clause – Comparative Clause

CE–Inv: [ correlate ] than [TOPIC XP

[FOCUS AUX] ∆ ]

CE+Inv: [ correlate ] than [ aux [FOCUS XP (aux) ] ∆] auxiliary inversion (isolation of XP) A comparative construction consists of the Comparative Clause, or than-XP, and its Correlate Clause. A high pitch accent is assigned to the sentence final position, which is prosodically realized in both constructions. In CE–Inv, a high tone is assigned to the auxiliary and to the preceding XP if it constitutes a contrastive topic. In CE+Inv a high pitch accent is assigned to the sentence final XP realized as a fall (H* L%). A contrastive focus interpretation of this remnant is subject to the parallel information structures of both sentences and the prosodic isolation of the focus constituent by inversion of the auxiliary and the deletion of the VP represented by ∆. The schematic structure in (5) also implements the claim that comparative constructions are coordinated constructions, as proposed by Corver (1993) and Lechner (2004), which require parallel information structures.4 The paper is organized as follows: In section 2, we discuss Merchant’s (2003) initial data, the related generalization, and the PF-output constraint. In section 3, we show that there are two pieces of counterevidence to the PF-output constraint account drawing on both diachronic and synchronic sources. In a second step, we propose an information structural account. We introduce the Focus Isolation Hypothesis and its connection to the syntactic analysis of comparative constructions and show how it explains the ungrammaticality of both (2a) and (4b), as well as the grammaticality of the examples that cannot be captured by Merchant’s (2003) proposal. The focus isolation account capitalizes on the parallelism condition in comparatives and the nature of a contrastive focus remnant. In section 4, we suggest extensions of our analysis, in particular with respect to pseudogapping. Section 5 concludes the article.

 Remus Gergel, Kirsten Gengel, Susanne Winkler

2. The PF-output constraint account Merchant (2003) suggests an explanation of the generalization concerning the cooccurrence of SAI and VPE in comparative clauses. Following general practice, SAI movement is analyzed here as T-to-C movement. Merchant’s generalization is given in (6). (6) Merchant’s Generalization T-to-C movement in comparative clauses can occur only if VP-ellipsis has deleted the VP complement to T0. (adapted from Merchant 2003: 55) The claim is that although VPE is usually optional, in comparative clauses in which T-to-C displacement has occurred it is obligatory. The crucial minimal pairs are given in (7) and (8). (7) a. Abby can play more instruments than her father can ∆. b. Abby can play more instruments than her father can play. (8) a. Abby can play more instruments than can her father ∆. b. *Abby can play more instruments than can her father play. (Merchant 2003: 56) In comparatives without T-to-C movement, VPE may occur, as in (7a), or it may not, as in (7b). However, if T-to-C movement occurs in comparatives, VPE must apply, as in (8a). If it does not apply, ungrammaticality results, as can be seen in (8b). The generalization expresses the intuition that VPE seems imperative in CE+Inv, but not in its uninverted counterpart (CE–Inv). The lucid consideration of the empirical issues in Merchant (2003) supports this claim on the basis of corpus data, samples of web-based searches, and introspective data. Theoretically, Merchant’s explanation of the contrast in (8) is situated in the context of the PF-repair hypothesis via PF-deletion advocated in recent publications (cf., e.g., Lasnik 1999, Merchant 2001, among others). A PFrepair strategy requires ellipsis processes to take place in order to salvage otherwise illicit structures. There are two questions. First, what role does inversion play? And second, what is the role of VPE? Relating the two issues, we can ask: Why is the inverted nonelliptical example in (8b) ungrammatical, while the noninverted nonelliptical example in (7b) is fine? Merchant proposes for (8b) the derivation given in (9): (9) a. *Abby can play more instruments than can her father play. not PF-governed b. ...than [CP Op1 can [IP her father tcan [VP *t1’ [VP tSU play t1 ]]]] The analysis of (9b) obviously is closely connected to the derivation of comparative clauses. It is assumed that the object of the verb play is wh-moved to the specifier posi-



Ellipsis and inversion: a feature-based focus account 

tion of CP. Merchant’s explanation of the ungrammaticality of (8b) is as follows. The intermediate trace of the wh-moved operator at the left periphery of VP, marked as t1’, is not PF-governed.5 However, the trace is PF-governed in the noninverted comparative clause in (7b), as shown in (10): (10) a. Abby can play more instruments than her father can play. PF-governed b. ... than [CP Op1 her father can [VP t1’ [VP tSU play t1 ]]] Merchant proposes that traces are subject to PF-output constraints, in particular, to the Empty Category Principle at PF, as formulated in (11). (11)

The Empty Category Principle at PF At PF, a trace of A’-movement must either be i. PF-head-governed, or ii. PF-antecedent-governed.

The intermediate trace in (9b) is not PF-head-governed and not PF-antecedent-governed since these conditions would require a PF-visible or PF-active antecedent, which is not present in (9b). Let us turn to the second question, and ask why the comparative construction with inversion and VPE in (8a) is grammatical while (8b), in which the VP is overt, is ungrammatical. Merchant proposes a specific version of the PF-repair strategy for CE+Inv, as shown in (12): (12) Repair Strategy for Comparatives with Inversion at PF VP-ellipsis repairs some kind of defect brought about by SAI. (Merchant 2003: 59) The VPE process here targets the complete VP, including the non-PF-governed trace, as symbolized by strike-through in (13). VPE thereby repairs the defect brought about by the non-PF-governed trace, which is caused by SAI. (13) ... than [CP Op1 can [IP her father tcan [VP t1’ [VP tSU play t1 ]] ]] To summarize Merchant’s proposal: The generalization that inversion in comparatives as in (8a) can only occur when VPE has occurred is accounted for by the repair strategy in (12). VPE in (8a) is obligatory in order to repair an otherwise illicit structure. If VPE does not take place, as in (8b), ungrammaticality results.

 Remus Gergel, Kirsten Gengel, Susanne Winkler

3. An information structural account The goal of this section is twofold: in section 3.1, we provide new data from diachronic and synchronic sources for which the generalization in (6) cannot be upheld.. In 3.2 and 3.3, we will propose an information structural account of ellipsis and inversion. The main claim is that VPE in comparative constructions with inversion depends on a syntactically defined parallelism condition and the isolation of a contrastively focused remnant. More precisely, we claim that the function of these grammatical operations is the achievement of a contrastive interpretation of the variable under comparison, which is identified by the remnant at the edge of the focus domain.6 Connecting these information structural notions to a syntax-based focus isolation account, we show that the information structural approach accounts for both the data that led to the generalization in (6) and the data adduced as counterevidence.

3.1

Diachronic and synchronic evidence

Diachronic evidence as in (14) and (15) constitutes a first piece of counterevidence to the generalization in (6). The than-XP occurs in square brackets. (14) 1 My Ladies beawtie passeth more / The best of yours, I dare well sayen,  2 [Than doth the sonne, the candle light:] (R. Tottel, Songes and Sonettes 1557, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey) Example (14), line 2, exhibits a comparative construction with inversion. However, in contrast to the generalization in (6), the VP-constituent is not deleted as a whole. Only the verb passeth seems to be deleted. The object the candle light escapes the deletion process. A further diachronic example is (15), from the prose text An Orthographie by John Hart. (15) 1 And as I would gladly counterfeit his speech with my tongue, 2 [so would I his writing with my hand]. (J. Hart, An Orthographie, 1569) Example (15) constitutes an equative construction with inversion which is introduced by so. The deletion process in this example again does not target the complete VP but only the verb counterfeit. Constructions like examples (14) and (15) are known in the literature on ellipsis as pseudogapping (cf. Levin 1978). According to the PF-repair theory put forward by Merchant, pseudogapping should be ruled out in comparative clauses with inversion.7



Ellipsis and inversion: a feature-based focus account 

Moreover, the Early Modern English (EModE) example in (16) constitutes a further counterexample to the generalization in (6):8 (16) 1 No more can I be severed from your side 2 [than can yourself yourself in twain divide:] (Shakespeare, Henry VI,1; 4,5) In (16), line 2, inversion of the modal can occurs despite an overt VP in twain divide. Two informal observations are in order: First, the comparative clause and its correlate clause are not syntactically parallel since they differ in voice, the correlate clause being passive and the comparative active. Second, the VP in line 2 is an idiomatic expression to divide oneself in twain with archaic V-end word order, which is semantically close to the VP in the correlate clause but not identical. We will come back to the observation that VPE in CE+Inv requires syntactic parallelism between the comparative clause and its correlate clause. Further evidence from later Modern English (ModE) texts, like (17), also shows exceptions to the generalization in (6). (17) 1 Fifty-four what? Men? No, minds – the capablest in the world; 2 a force against which mere animal might may no more hope to prevail 3 [than may the idle waves of the sea hope to prevail against the granite barriers of England.] (M. Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, 1889) In (17), line 3, we witness a comparative clause with inversion. However, in contrast to the generalization in (6), VPE does not occur. Instead, the full VP hope to prevail is repeated. Synchronic texts also show that the generalization in (6) does not cover all the cases in question. Different types of examples can be produced in which CE+Inv structures are licit although various kinds of remnants may be stranded. (18) The royal figures on modern playing cards no more represent specific persons [than do the kings and queens in chess sets].  (courier-journal.com) (19) But the fields do no more represent astral energy [than do the forests reveal the etheric energy].  (www.csf.colorado.edu) (20) No two birds ever felt more exquisite joy in building their nest in the fork of a tree-branch [than did we in planning and placing, altering and rearranging our pretty country home]. (www.bravewc.com/haven/booksonline) (21) Bill studied chemistry a lot longer than did any of his friends linguistics. (Levin 1986) Examples (18) to (21) are all comparative constructions with SAI. Example (18) is, on one structural account, a case of pseudogapping. It deletes the VP represent specific persons, and leaves the adjunct PP in chess sets overt. However, it might be argued that this does not represent a case of pseudogapping, but of VPE. In this scenario too, though, overt material would be spelled out and the structure would be licit. A third

 Remus Gergel, Kirsten Gengel, Susanne Winkler

structural possibility (a plausible one, we think) would involve a coordinated subject in SAI. The PF-repair account starts out from the idea of free application of inversion in comparatives, restricting its occurrence only in the positive case, i.e., when inversion does take place. We will discuss examples, however, in which focus isolation of particularly heavy subjects interferes and thus makes markedness an issue in noninverting comparatives as well. Example (19), moreover, spells out a complete VP instead of deleting it despite inversion. Example (20) involves a PP remnant left after VP deletion, and (21) shows that classic synchronic pseudogapping situations, as described in Levin’s work, are also possible with CE+Inv (as is well known, some intricate additional issues arise in these cases).9 Finally, cases in which there is a reason to recycle pertinent structure between comparative and correlate also present a matter of interest. Shared-node configurations offer a testing ground in point, and (22) shows how they can occur in germane comparative contexts. (22) This means that the language of literature is no longer regarded as subordinated to the message supposedly carried by the text, and this emptiness of content illustrates far more powerfully [than could anything else the primacy of language itself] (BNC: Modern literary theory. Jefferson, A. and Robey, D., BT Batsford Ltd, London 1986) Example (22) shows structural variability and may specifically invoke one particular type of right-node-raising structure. Though it is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss right-node-raising configurations per se,10 it is worthwhile to consider the configuration very briefly since it interacts with VPE. The bottom line is that the object DP the primacy of language itself can structurally form a constituent with the first and the second conjunct, i.e., in the present case, both the antecedent and the elided instance of the verb illustrate. This prima facie runs into problems with respect to our assumption that contrast is crucially involved, since then it is puzzling that one (notably identical) constituent functions as a potential complement both in the antecedent and in the ellipsis configuration. But if we try a CE+Inv rephrasing of (22) in the context of prosodically present objects in both potential positions, the structures degrade considerably, as is shown in (23). (23) *this emptiness illustrates far more powerfully the primacy of language itself [than could anything else _ the primacy of language itself] To summarize the observations so far: Diachronic and synchronic evidence of various kinds shows that the generalization in (6) does not hold for all cases and must be further qualified. The central issue is twofold: (i) How can we explain the impression of the necessity of VPE in CE+Inv that led to the generalization in (6)? and (ii) how can we, at the same time, account for the exceptions to this generalization? An answer to these questions requires an investigation of the different focus structures of the comparative constructions with and without inversion.



3.2

Ellipsis and inversion: a feature-based focus account 

The Focus Hypothesis

The main claim of this section is that the information structure of VPE in comparative constructions without inversion (CE–Inv) differs from that in comparative constructions with inversion (CE+Inv). More precisely, while CE–Inv and CE+Inv both involve VPE on technical narrow-syntactic grounds, they differ with respect to their information structural functions, as stated in the Focus Hypothesis in (24). (24) The Focus Hypothesis There are two types of VPE in comparative constructions, which differ with respect to focus: i. CE–Inv: constitutes a case of VPE and functions like other cases of anaphora as a means of marking givenness. The remnants are typically free to assume various discourse functions depending on the context. ii. CE+Inv: constitutes a case of Contrastive Focus Ellipsis and requires that the remnant in the than-XP, which occurs in the scope of a strong focus head, be contrastively focused. The Focus Hypothesis predicts that there are two types of comparative constructions, which differ with respect to their focus requirements, as seen in (3a) and (4a), repeated as (25) and (26): (25) CE–Inv: Manny plays the piano better than his MOM DID ∆. (26) CE+Inv: Manny plays the piano better than did his MOM (did) ∆. While the CE–Inv in (25) behaves like other VPE-constructions and basically has the function of marking given information, the CE+Inv comparative in (26) involves movement of the auxiliary, leaving a contrastively focused remnant in its scope. More specifically, this remnant is the subject, which has itself moved to Spec,T. With respect to the syntactic part of this strategy, we propose a feature-based implementation. First, a temporal-aspectual element – here a [+T]-feature projecting the head T and the category TP – is needed to capture VPE licensing through an auxiliary at least in some languages on independent and more general grounds.11 Second, treating the VPE cases at hand, we propose the implementation of a further relevant feature: the isolation effect comes about through a contrastive feature, which we refer to as [+C]. The [+C]-feature requires a contrastively focused constituent in its scope. In the case of SAI, the [+C]-feature is carried along and requires that the subject, which is the isolated constituent, be contrastively focused. In the uninverted VPE, the [+C]-feature remains in T and leads to the effect sometimes more generally assumed in polarity and in particular polarity-contrast cases that the auxiliary is itself accented.12 The relevant merge and move steps are shown in (27).13

 Remus Gergel, Kirsten Gengel, Susanne Winkler

In the following, we consider three arguments in support of the claim that the CE–Inv differs information structurally from the CE+Inv: (i) pronominalization; (ii) VPE (deaccentuation vs. deletion); and (iii) heaviness. Let us turn to pronominalization first. VPE in comparatives occurs in single-variable comparisons and can occur in the canonical word order as in (25), or with inversion as in (26). If we apply the pronominalization test to (25) by simply pronominalizing his mom, the result is not acceptable, as is seen in (28a). But note that (28a) increases in acceptability if we enrich the context in such a way that the variable of comparison applies to the inflectional heads (did vs. could), as in (28b). In (28b), the subject pronoun in the comparative clause has the same referent as the subject pronoun of the correlate clause. Both pronouns occur without accents, and the sentence is grammatical. We call this the like-subject phenomenon. (28) a. *Manny plays the piano better than he DID ∆. b. He said he could play the piano better than he actually did. In CE+Inv cases, the inverted auxiliary is phonologically unmarked. In its landing position, it takes the subject, which is realized as a contrastive focus, in its scope, as in (29a). The pronominalization test results in ungrammaticality with the weak pronoun, as seen in (29b) and (29c). (29) a. Manny plays the piano better than did his FATHER. b. Manny plays the piano better than did HE/*he. c. He said he could play the piano better than did HE/*he. Note that the pronominalization test is a heuristic test which must distinguish accented from weak pronominal forms. Pronouns are only excluded from the CE+Inv if they occur in their weak forms. Accented or deictic pronouns which signal contrastive focus are acceptable, as, e.g., in the ME example from Chaucer in (30), or the ModE cases in (31).14



Ellipsis and inversion: a feature-based focus account 

(30) That sal be my desport. / For, Iohn, in faith I may been of youre sort, I is as ille a millere as ar ye. (G. Chaucer, The Reeve’s Tale) ‘I am as bad a miller as are YOU.’ (31) a. The Greek schoolboy had no long summer vacation, as do American children. Is there any special reason why we need it more [than did THEY]? (Cubberley, Ellwood Patterson, The History of Education; www.gutenberg.org) b. You might find this gentleman’s interpretation to be of interest, as he appears to have done his homework, yet arrived at a slightly different image [than did YOU]. (listhost.uchicago.edu) c. And the veterans this war of choice is, and will continue to produce will fare no better [than did WE, who were sent to Vietnam, when we came back]. (www.oldamericancentury.org) In (30) and (31), the subject pronouns in the correlate and the equative/comparative clauses are contrastively focused. The discussion so far has shown that subject remnants in CE–Inv can only be pronominalized with a weak pronoun under suitable conditions, as in (28b). In this case, the focus is solely realized on the auxiliary. The subject remnant in CE+Inv, however, must be contrastively focused. It cannot be realized as a weak pronoun. It might be realized as a pronoun, but then it must be accented, as assumed for ye in (30) above. More generally, the constituent at the right periphery of CE+Inv requires a contrastive focus interpretation. In this sense, the CE+Inv constitutes a case of CFE. Contrastive foci cannot be pronominalized and deaccented, as the ungrammaticality of (29b-c) illustrates. The CE–Inv, on the other hand, constitutes a case of VPE and functions like other cases of anaphora as a means of marking givenness, as proposed in López & Winkler (2000) for VPE in coordinated constructions. The remnants are typically free to assume various discourse functions depending on the context. The subject remnant is either a contrastive topic like his mom in (25) or a pronominalized topic like he in (28b). The second argument for the claim that CE–Inv and CE+Inv obey different information structural requirements is based on the observation that in CE–Inv VPE deletion is not mandatory. As in other cases of VPE, in CE–Inv the VP can optionally be realized as long as it is deaccented as in (32): (32) Manny plays more instruments than his FATHER DID play. The overt realization of the VP in CE+Inv is somewhat more acceptable with a contrastive accent on the subject father, but is still marginal, as seen in (33): (33) ??Manny plays more instruments than did his father play. The explanation is straightforward. The CE–Inv patterns with other cases of redundant VPs. Either they are deleted or deaccented. The CE+Inv, in contrast, is a CFE, which requires the subject of the than-XP to be contrastively focused.

 Remus Gergel, Kirsten Gengel, Susanne Winkler

The third argument is based on the heaviness requirement. The observation is that the subject remnant in CE+Inv is preferably heavy whereas this need not be the case for CE–Inv. The role of focus isolation through movement also becomes apparent in further complementary contexts. Unstressed pronouns cannot be stranded under VPE and auxiliary movement. Consider now the converse situation. The following examples are on one reading just cases of VPE in which an auxiliary is followed by a particularly heavy subject (in Spec,TP) with a contrastive interpretation. That means that no VP-internal remnants can be invoked to disturb the PF-felicitousness of the structures, and one would expect free variation (as in (7a) vs. (8a)). However, attested sentences such as (34) to (36) below degrade, intonation being kept constant, if the auxiliary does not invert. (34) Tests under conditions which are periodically changed can, by imposing changing stresses on a pack, reveal inadequacies more quickly [than can storage at a constant temperature]. (BNC: The fundamentals of stability testing. IFSCC, Weymouth 1992) (35) Descriptions of free learning sequences cannot automatically determine the structure of contrived instruction any more [than can descriptions of attested language use]. (BNC: Aspects of language teaching. Widdowson, H. G., OUP, Oxford 1990) (36) For instance, the use of cannabis by the young is far more likely to be branded as drug-taking/drug addiction and hence a social problem [than is the consumption of thirty cigarettes a day by adults or half a bottle of brandy by middle-class businessmen]. (BNC: Introductory sociology. Sheard, K. et al., Macmillan, Basingstoke 1992) Example (36) is a particularly good example to show that the sentence would degrade if the auxiliary is were realized in its canonical position.15 The claim of the Focus Hypothesis is that CE–Inv differs from CE+Inv with respect to information structure. Arguments from pronominalization, VPE deletion vs. deaccentuation and the heaviness requirement have shown that CE+Inv constitutes a contrastive focus ellipsis construction whereas CE–Inv is a givenness marking construction. Assuming with Chomsky (2001) that syntactic derivation and semantic interpretation are connected via the level of surface semantic representation, we propose that the syntactic derivations of the two constructions differ. A schematic representation of the CE–Inv construction is given in (37), while CE+Inv is illustrated in (38).



Ellipsis and inversion: a feature-based focus account 



While CE–Inv is a comparative construction with deletion of the redundant material in the VP, CE+Inv involves various processes. Carrying a contrastive feature [+C] and a [+T]-feature, the auxiliary moves to the focus position C. The latter feature is crucial for VPE to be licensed at all, while the former is essential in the isolation process of CE+Inv, to which we turn next.

3.3

The Focus Isolation account of comparative ellipsis with inversion

In this section we take a closer look at the case of VPE in comparative constructions with inversion. In a first step, we propose that VPE in CE+Inv depends on a syntactically defined parallelism condition and the isolation of a contrastive focus, as formulated informally in the focus hypothesis in (39): (39) CE+Inv: Focus Isolation Hypothesis (First approximation) VP-ellipsis in single-variable comparative constructions with inversion depends on two conditions: i. the parallelism condition; ii. the prosodic isolation of a contrastive focus. The parallelism condition in (39i) is based on the more general observation that ellipsis in the comparative clause occurs when the comparative clause and its corresponding correlate clause are coordinated (cf. Corver 1993, Lechner 2004) and are parallel across all levels of derivation, as defined in (40).16

 Remus Gergel, Kirsten Gengel, Susanne Winkler

(40) Parallelism Condition for CE+Inv (VP-)ellipsis requires that the comparative clause and its correlate clause be syntactically coordinated and exhibit a syntactically, semantically and prosodically parallel structure. The parallelism condition in (39i) is a complementary condition to the prosodic isolation of contrastive focus condition in (39ii) since contrastivity arises on prosodically isolated constituents which interrupt pure parallelism (cf. Winkler 2005). The condition in (39ii) is based on three processes, the first two familiar, the third less well known. The first familiar process of prosodic isolation of contrastive focus is simply (i) accent assignment to the most prominent syllable of the focus constituent, and, arguably, movement of the constituent itself (cf. Drubig 1994, Krifka 2006). The second well-known process is (ii) the complete phonological reduction or deletion of given or redundant material, as in the case of VPE. The third process achieves phonological isolation by (iii) inversion of the auxiliary, thereby removing phonological material from the right edge of the final phonological phrase, which is reserved for the contrastive focus. The focus isolation processes in CE+Inv are given in (41): (41) The Focus Isolation Processes Prosodic isolation of a contrastive focus constituent in CE+Inv is achieved by three processes: i. accent assignment to the focus constituent (and possibly movement); ii. (VP-)ellipsis; iii. Subject-Auxiliary Inversion. All three operations, contrastive focus assignment, VPE, and SAI are generally understood as syntactic operations with direct effects on the phonological form. The notion of prosodic isolation or foregrounding of a focus constituent is achieved by deleting phonologically redundant material or moving material away which is apt to divert phonologically. The information structural function of these grammatical operations is the achievement of a contrastive interpretation of the variable under comparison. Contrastive readings are enhanced under the parallelism condition, highlighting the elements which vary in an otherwise parallel structure. With the additional definitions in (40) and (41) in mind, we can investigate the predictions of the focus isolation hypothesis in (39). Recall that the hypothesis in (39) accounts for CE+Inv, in which the comparative clause is syntactically parallel to the correlate clause, and which involves a single-variable comparison which must be prosodically isolated in order to achieve a contrastive interpretation. Thus, it accounts for the examples covered by the generalization in (6). It predicts that the ungrammatical example (2a), here repeated with a default intonation in (42a) should become more acceptable with heavy stress on her FATHER and deaccentuation of know in the comparative clause, as in (42b). (42) a. *Abby knows more languages than does her father know. b. ?Abby knows more languages than does her FATHER know.



Ellipsis and inversion: a feature-based focus account 

c. ABBY knows more lánguages than does her FATHER. According to native speaker judgments, (42b) is better than (42a), but still marked. According to the focus hypothesis the parallelism condition is met in (42b), but the second condition, the prosodic isolation of a contrastive focus requirement, is only partially met. A focus accent is assigned to her FATHER, the constituent that is contrasted with Abby. Inversion has taken place as well, as specified by (41iii), but not VPE, as required in (41ii). In (42c) both the parallelism condition and the focus isolation requirement are met. Moreover, the focus isolation hypothesis in (39) makes two predictions with respect to the exceptions to the generalization in (6). The first prediction is the following: If the comparative construction involves more than a single-variable comparison, VPE (understood as a process that deletes the complete VP) cannot occur. Instead pseudogapping occurs, as seen in (14), here repeated as (43) with the relevant focus assignments. (43) Pseudogapping in a two-variable comparative construction with inversion 1 [My Ladies beawtie] passeth more / [The best of yours], I dare well sayen,  2 Than doth [the sonne], [the candle light:] 3 Or [brightest day], [the darkest night] The example in (43) constitutes a comparative construction which involves a two-variable comparison. The parallelism condition is observed and the two variables are prosodically isolated and interpreted as contrastive remnants of this construction. Hence, from an information structural perspective, the function of CE+Inv with two variables is to isolate two contrastively accented remnants by omitting the background information under the parallelism condition. The remnants must occur in a contrastive relation to their correlates (Kuno 1976a: 309, Sag 1976: 280–281, Pesetsky 1982: 640–659, Kuno 1981, Johnson 1996, Kim 1997, Winkler 1997, Hartmann 1998, Schwabe 2000). Note that the contrastive remnants convey the information structure of multiple whquestions and convey an exhaustive topic-focus structure, as originally proposed in Kuno’s (1982) Sorting Key Hypothesis and applied to gapping constructions in Winkler (2005). More specifically, the first remnant in two-variable comparative constructions receives a contrastive topic (sorting key) interpretation and the second remnant a contrastive focus interpretation. We propose reformulating principle (39) as principle (44), which applies to two-variable comparative constructions leading to a typical pseudogapping configuration: (44) Focus Isolation Hypothesis (Second approximation) Ellipsis in two-variable comparative constructions with inversion depends on two conditions: i. the parallelism condition; ii. the prosodic isolation of a contrastive topic-focus structure.

 Remus Gergel, Kirsten Gengel, Susanne Winkler

The prosodic isolation of the contrastive topic-focus structure proceeds as follows. First, pitch accents are assigned to the variables of comparison. The first remnant is realized with a rise and is interpreted as a contrastive topic, while the second remnant is realized with a fall and interpreted as a contrastive focus. Second, the redundant verbal material is elided. And third, auxiliary inversion takes place in the comparative clause. Note that pseudogapping in (43) occurs in coordination with gapping.17 Both constructions exhibit parallel focus structures: in line 2, the first remnant the sonne is a contrastive topic and the second remnant the candle light is a contrastive focus; in line 3 both remnants have a parallel focus structure, which leads to a contrastive interpretation of the two variables under comparison. The second prediction of the focus isolation hypothesis in (39) is that if the parallelism condition is violated, (VP-)ellipsis cannot be obligatory. The relevant example is (17=45).

In (45), wh-extraction of against which changes the surface order of the constituents in the correlate clause, now to a prepositional wh-phrase before the subject. The two variables in the comparative clause are still in their base-generated subject-object word order and thus cannot easily contrast with their antecedents. The parallelism condition is violated and the repetition of the complete VP is witnessed. Let us draw a preliminary conclusion: VPE in comparatives is not a prerequisite for inversion to occur; it is rather an epiphenomenon of the prosodic isolation of the contrastive focus constituent in single-variable comparisons and the isolation of contrastive topic-focus structures in two-variable comparisons. The function of inversion and VPE is to highlight and prosodically contrast the variables under comparison. In the next section, we will discuss the feature-based focus account with respect to its extension to comparatives and inversion in pseudogapping.

4. The extension of the Focus Isolation account: Evidence from pseudogapping In this section, we will show that, along with the single-variable comparisons, the focus isolation account can explain the interaction of SAI and VPE in comparative constructions with two variables. To this end, we consider the information structure and the feature-based mechanics of pseudogapping (PSG) more closely. First, we briefly es-



Ellipsis and inversion: a feature-based focus account 

tablish how PSG patterns with the conditions and processes established for the subject remnant in VPE constructions. Thereby we illustrate how the focus isolation account can be extended to cover a further instance of SAI in closely related elliptical constructions. Second, we concentrate on the second variable in PSG, i.e., the object remnant. Applying the processes of the focus isolation account, we will see that the object remnant, too, can be derived by means of a contrastive feature, [+C], for the second variable. Thus, the focus isolation account can provide a nearly parallel derivation of subject and object. Information structural contrastive isolation is essentially involved with both variables in PSG, yielding a contrastive topic-contrastive focus structure. We start out by reformulating the focus isolation hypothesis in (39) in such a way that it can account for all types of comparatives we have considered which allow inversion, as in (46). (46) Focus Isolation Hypothesis (Final version) CE+Inv (and PSG+Inv) are functional structures triggered by a contrastive feature [+C]. A contrastive feature on the clausal node T will (after movement) take scope over (i) an isolated contrastive focus in single-variable comparisons and (ii) an isolated contrastive topic-focus structure in two-variable comparisons. (VP-)ellipsis occurs when the parallelism condition is observed. The contrastive interpretation in comparatives is subject to the parallelism condition and the prosodic isolation of the focus constituent. The general idea is that the information structural function of the isolating mechanisms in comparatives is the achievement of a contrastive interpretation of the variable or variables under comparison.18 PSG patterns with VPE with respect to the effects surrounding SAI. More specifically, PSG in conjunction with inversion (PSG+Inv/PSG–Inv) follows the distinction of CE+Inv/CE–Inv, yielding similar results in the pronominalization tests and in the applicability of VPE (cf. 3.2.). Concerning the third difference, the heaviness requirement in the CE+Inv cases, one observation needs to be made. In PSG, we might expect heaviness to be observed more strictly than in VPE, since there are two focused variables present (the object remnant being contrastive as well). This intuition was confirmed by native speakers, who tended to accept inverted PSG cases only when the subject displayed a fair amount of heaviness. This became clear when we asked speakers of American English to judge the following sentences: (47) ??Manny plays the piano better than does his mom the trumpet. (48) ?Manny studied biology a lot longer than did any of his friends linguistics. The informants agreed that the second sentence was better than the first. This confirmed previous empirical judgments which rated (49) as degraded and (50) as acceptable. (49) ??Abby plays the piano better than does her father the trumpet.

 Remus Gergel, Kirsten Gengel, Susanne Winkler

(50) Bill studied chemistry a lot longer than did any of his friends linguistics. (Levin 1986) Further, the contrast realized on a PSG subject differs in a subtle way from the one in VPE. Let us consider an empirical consequence. Levin (1986: 35) notes that nonlike subjects (i.e., distinct subjects in the antecedent and the ellipsis clause) are “exceedingly uncommon in casual speech.” In inverted comparative clauses, however, this important requirement on the acceptability of PSG is precisely reversed: similarly to what we have shown for VPE, only nonlike subjects are permitted under inversion, as seen in (50) above. This distributional observation is predicted on the basis of the [+C]-feature.19 The basic claim is that the focus isolation hypothesis in (46) can account for inverted VPE cases and for PSG alike. We start the extension of the focus isolation account with the phonological part. In VPE, we have the pattern of [Subj Aux] [VP] as a basis for the arguable VP deletion process. SAI realizes the contrast on the subject yielding [Aux] [SUBJ] on the surface, as seen in (51a). In PSG, the realization of the contrastive accent seems to only partially concur, as seen in (51b). (51) a. Bill studied chemistry a lot longer than did any of his friends. b. Bill studied chemistry a lot longer than did any of his friends linguistics. While in (51a), the contrastive accent is realized on the subject friends, two contrastive accents are observable in (51b), one with a rising pitch on friends and one with a falling pitch on linguistics – a contrastive topic-focus structure, as observed in (46ii) above. The central question is: How can we explain the contrastive topic on the subject and the contrastive focus on the object in the than-XP in (51b)? The answer is straightforward for the subject. The contrastive interpretation of the subject is triggered by the [+C]-feature of the inverted auxiliary. The contrastive interpretation of the object, however, demands further investigation. The analysis is based on two assumptions: First, we assume with Gengel (in prep.) that the object moves out of the VP for reasons of focus and contrast, as opposed to the givenness observed in the VPE cases. Second, we follow Lasnik (1995) and assume that PSG is a case of VP-deletion. The relevant processes listed in (39) are observed: (i) accent assignment to the moved constituent, and (ii) VP-deletion. In this case, following Drubig (1994) and Krifka (2006), we propose that syntactic displacement triggers accent assignment at PF and a contrastive focus interpretation at the level of semantic interpretation. There are two focus isolation processes involved in PSG+Inv. The first focus isolation process involves the same syntactic mechanism as in the standard CE+Inv, where a contrastive focus is isolated in a single-variable comparison. The assumption that the T head bears a [+C]-feature in these cases is supported by the observation that the auxiliary in PSG often contrasts with the inflectional properties given in the antecedent with respect to tense and mood. In fact, the mere presence of the auxiliary in PSG indicates a certain amount of contrast, since otherwise (i.e., if that contrast were not



Ellipsis and inversion: a feature-based focus account 

needed) the gapping construction would be preferred (cf. Winkler 2003, 2005, on the information structural analysis of gapping). The second focus isolation process concerns the second comparison variable, i.e., the object. The question that arises is how the contrast on the second variable can be expressed in terms of features. We propose that the contrastive interpretation of the second variable of comparison is achieved in a similar fashion to the contrast interpretation of the first variable, i.e., through a feature-based implementation applied to the corresponding configuration. More specifically, we propose a contrastive feature on a lower functional projection. This contrastive feature triggers contrastive focalization. For ease of exposition, we employ the previously established AgrO (cf. Lasnik 1999) in the construction and propose the derivation in (52). The contrastive feature [+C] resides on the head position above the VP, i.e., in AgrO. It thus affects the object, which moves to [Spec,AgrO], and the desired contrastivity effect follows. VPE, apart from being responsible for the object movement, then serves to focus the remnant, which, via movement, ends up at the right edge of a phonological phrase, where contrastive focus results.20 Example (51) has the derivation as sketched in (52):

Thus, the syntactic derivation of (52) involves the following steps: (i) T-to-C movement applies triggered by the [+C]-feature on T. After movement of the auxiliary to C the [+C]-feature takes scope over the subject any of his friends, which receives a contrastive interpretation; (ii) movement of the object linguistics out of VP triggered by the [+C]-feature in AgrO; and (iii) deletion of VP. While this analysis presupposes no constraint on the distribution of PSG+Inv cases, i.e., nothing limiting them to special contexts, we find that the instances of PSG+Inv occur less frequently than the standard PSG–Inv cases. It seems that the preferred surroundings for the occurrence of PSG+Inv are sentences in which the subject carries contrastive focus with an exhaustive interpretation, as seen by the exclusive alternatives illustrated in (50) (Bill vs. any of his friends). Although this difference between inverted and noninverted PSG may have contributed to Merchant’s hypothesis,

 Remus Gergel, Kirsten Gengel, Susanne Winkler

it receives a straightforward explanation under our analysis, where SAI is employed to isolate the contrastive foci. As has already been noted above, not only does the subject in inverted PSG cases have to be unlike the subject in the first clause, i.e., contrasted, but the contrast with respect to the previous subject requires the competition of alternatives from the relevant set. The PSG discussion yields corroborating evidence for the focus isolation approach since it accommodates both subject contrast and object contrast. The focus isolation hypothesis finds a natural extension beyond VPE in comparatives, namely to PSG. Contrary to Merchant’s hypothesis that PSG is impossible with SAI, the focus isolation account in (46) predicts that, although somewhat restricted, PSG occurs in exactly those cases where the parallelism condition is observed, and where the comparison ranges over more than one variable. Furthermore, we have shown that the creation of the topic-focus structure in two-variable comparisons patterns with the derivation of contrastivity in single-variable comparisons. Since both instances of VPE can display an SAI structure, distributional evidence from PSG further supports the idea that the inversion mechanism has an impact on the information structure and focalization processes in both constructions.

5. Conclusion The surface interaction between grammaticalized elliptical phenomena and the possibilities of T-to-C displacement in English has largely been neglected in the literature. A notable exception is Merchant’s (2003) perspicuous syntactic proposal, the observations of which we have sought to qualify by extending the present account to further cases from both modern and earlier English. Our claim has been that the theory of information structure offers a suitable basis which naturally encompasses both inversion and ellipsis, via the contrastivity requirement it invokes on parallel structures in general, and through focus isolation on the comparative configurations at hand in particular. The information structural function of the grammatical operations involved is the achievement of a contrastive interpretation of the variable(s) under comparison. A contrastive interpretation arises on prosodically isolated constituents which interrupt pure parallelism. Thus, VPE is an epiphenomenon of the contrastive interpretation requirement and serves, as one process, to achieve prosodic isolation of the focus constituent.

Notes For helpful discussions related to this paper, we thank Kirsten Brock, Jonny Butler, Peter Culicover, Tom McFadden, Kyle Johnson, Jason Merchant, Sabine Mohr, Ekkehart König, Ingo Reich, Hubert Truckenbrodt, and the members of the SFB-441 center at the University of Tübingen. *

1.

Ellipsis and inversion: a feature-based focus account  See Boeckx and Stjepanović (2001) for argumentation to the contrary.

2. The feature-based focus approach defended here explains the empirical data more adequately than the stress-based focus approach proposed in Niinuma & Park (2004). The stress-based focus approach relies on the notion of default focus and unmarked rules of sentence stress assignment and does not distinguish between different types of foci. 3. We will focus on relevant aspects of the internal mechanics of the comparative. The operations are largely compatible with various versions of the outer syntactic integration of the correlate with the comparative. The argument does not necessitate a flat structure. We assume that comparatives are in essence coordinated structures, as argued below. 4. Regarding coordination theory (see Munn 2000, among others), one feasible approach subordinates the second conjunct to the correlate. This approach is similar to the concept of asymmetric coordination, in which the first conjunct in linear order c-commands the second. Reversing the linear order of the comparative structure can also reverse c-command. For instance, a preposed elliptical comparative can c-command a correlate, as in (i): the negative feature within the comparative triggers the inversion in the correlate. We assume that c-command is standardly involved in the inversion at hand. (i) [No more than in Britain] [should a colonial administration continue without the confidence of the elected chamber]. (Desmond Morton, A Short History of Canada, Hurtig Publishers Ltd., p. 41) 5. The technical definitions in the versions used by Merchant (2003) are as follows. (i) α PF-head-governs β iff i. a. a is a head, and b. a c-commands b, and c. a respects Relativized Minimality wrt b, and ii. a is PF-active (ii) A link ai in a chain < a1,..., an > is PF-active iff ai is the link at which lexical insertion occurs. (iii) a PF-antecedent-governs b iff i. a. a and b are co-indexed, and b. a c-commands b, and c. a respects Relativized Minimality wrt b, and ii. α is PF-visible (iv) An expression a is PF-visible iff a has phonetic exponence. 6. See also Quirk et al. (1985) and Huddleston & Pullum (2002) on some of the possibilities correlating with the terms of comparison. 7. More precisely, “pseudogapping with SAI in comparatives is impossible” is the logical consequence ultimately drawn under the PF-repair account (Merchant 2003: 65). 8. This example was pointed out to us by Ekkehard König in the discussion of a preliminary version of this paper. 9. Cf. Levin (1978, 1986), Gengel (in prep.), and section 4 below. 10. Cf. Erteschik-Shir (1987), Hartmann (1998, 2003), and Moltmann (1992), among others, for proposals on the core issues of right node raising. 11. Cf. Cyrino & Matos (2002), Dvořák & Gergel (2004), Gergel (2005), and Fox & Lasnik (2003), among others, for further discussion and proposals on the role played by T(ense) and

 Remus Gergel, Kirsten Gengel, Susanne Winkler Asp(ect) licensers of VPE in at least some languages. Gergel (2005) proposes deriving this aspect from a more general condition on [+interpretability] of the licensing remnant for VPE. 12. Cf. Winkler (2003, 2005) and references therein for further discussion. 13. Note that following Chomsky (2001), Uriagereka (1999), and Winkler (2003), among others, we assume a close interaction of the syntactic component with the interfaces. Thus, the representation given in (27) is simplified and “projected down” to the processes taking place on the syntactic plane and to the relevant projections only. We return to the pertinent prosodic interface observations for focus isolation. 14. Focus marking in the comparative clauses has been added by us, as throughout the paper. 15. Another argument has been the contrastiveness requirement of the subject remnant in CE+Inv, which does not exist in CE–Inv. We return to this argument in section 4. 16. See Fox (1999: § 2.3), Lang (2004: 16), Lasnik (1972: 74), and Winkler (2003, 2005), among others. 17. See in particular Johnson (1996), López & Winkler (2003), Reich (this volume), and Winkler (2005), among others, on further relevant issues relating to gapping beyond the scope of the present inquiry and to the role of contrast in gapping. 18. The proposal thereby also offers a suggestion as to why inversion should occur in CE+Inv in the first place, though this is not our main concern. 19. Note that the contrastivity on the subject is made possible by the presence of the auxiliary, which (apart from encoding tense and mood features) serves to disambiguate a comparative with two variables. In the corresponding gapping cases, which are exactly like PSG but lack the auxiliary, there are two possible readings: the first element can be either subject or object: (i) Manny gave Danny a book and BILL a MAGAZINE. a..... and Bill (gave Danny) a magazine. Subject Reading b..... and (Manny gave) Bill a magazine. Object Reading The presence of the auxiliary classifies the subject as such and prohibits the (otherwise available) object reading. In the prosodic realization, only in PSG may the subject be unaccented; in gapping it must be accented. 20. In contrast to Niinuma & Park (2004), we analyze pseudogapping as a contrastive focus construction. The presence of contrastive focus on the object remnant in pseudogapping constitutes a second argument against their analysis, which, as mentioned in fn. 2, is not able to capture the differences between different types of foci and hence cannot explain the fact that the pseudogapping remnant needs to bear contrastive focus.

Subject/object-asymmetry in Northern Sotho* Sabine Zerbian Northern Sotho, a Bantu language spoken in South Africa, shows a subject/ object-asymmetry with respect to focus. Whereas objects are focused in their canonical position, subjects have to appear either in a cleft construction or postverbally. They cannot be focused in their canonical preverbal position. The article presents the relevant data, reviews the literature on this phenomenon and proposes an analysis within Optimality Theory (OT). OT provides one framework to model how functional restrictions of the subject determine syntax in this language.

1. Introduction Languages show differences between constituents that function as subjects and those which function as objects. Some encode the difference in their morphology, like Greek, Latin, Sanskrit or Japanese. Others show a difference between subjects and objects in certain syntactic contexts. The contexts in which the syntax of subjects differs from that of objects is language-dependent. English, e.g. shows a subject/object-asymmetry with respect to do-support in matrix clauses, in relative clauses and with that-trace effects (Pesetsky & Torrego 2001, Dekkers 1999 within OT). The example of do-support given in (1) is an illustration of the subject/object-asymmetry in English. (1)

Do-support in English a. Which books did he read? b. *Which books he read? c. Who read these books? d. *Who did read these books?

The data in (1) show that subjects and objects behave asymmetrically with respect to the insertion of do in questions. The generalization holds that when a wh-phrase other than the subject is fronted, an auxiliary is inserted. A different subject/object-asymmetry reveals itself in Australian languages (e.g. Dixon 1994). The literature on case marking in Australian languages establishes that

 Sabine Zerbian

it is common for nouns to be overtly case marked when they function as subjects of transitive clauses, but to be unmarked as objects or as subjects of intransitive clauses. As these examples from different languages show, the contexts and ways in which subject/object-asymmetries reveal themselves are not universal. The current paper deals with a subject/object-asymmetry in Northern Sotho. Northern Sotho (also known as Sepedi after its standardized dialect) is one of the eleven official languages of the Republic of South Africa. It is spoken in the northern provinces of South Africa by approximately 3,840,000 speakers (1995 The Economist, cited from Ethnologue).1 Like other Bantu and other African languages more generally (see e.g. Hausa, Hartmann & Zimmermann, this volume), Northern Sotho shows a subject/object-asymmetry in focus-related contexts. The data in (2) illustrate this asymmetry by means of questions. (2) Subject/object-asymmetry in Northern Sotho a. Mo-kgalabje o nyaka mang? cl1-old.man sc1 look.for who2 ‘Who is the old man looking for?’ b. Go fihla mang? sc17 arrive who ‘Who is arriving?’ c. Ké mang a nyaka-ng ngaka? cop who sc1 look.for-rel cl9.doctor ‘Who is looking for the doctor?’ The examples in (2) show that objects are questioned in their canonical postverbal position, as in (2a). Logical subjects, on the other hand, can only be questioned postverbally, as in (2b), or by means of a cleft construction, as in (2c), dependent on the valency of the verb. Crucially, they cannot appear in their canonical preverbal position. More examples can be found in section 2. The data in (2) raise the question of how the restriction concerning the subject can be accounted for. The restriction has been related to discourse-sensitive notions. It has been argued in the literature that, if questioned or focused, the logical subject cannot appear in the preverbal position as constituents in this position encode discourse-old information (Louwrens 1979, Demuth & Johnson 1989). The current paper follows this approach in relating the ungrammaticality of focused subjects in preverbal position to their information status. The paper uses an optimality-theoretic approach (Prince & Smolensky 1993) in order to integrate the arguably highly relevant discourse function of topic into the account of information structure-sensitive syntax in Northern Sotho.



Subject/object-asymmetry in Northern Sotho 

2. The subject/object-asymmetry 2.1

Basic observations

Northern Sotho, like all other Bantu languages, displays SVO word order in basic declarative sentences, as exemplified in (3). (3) Declarative sentences in Northern Sotho a. Mo-nna o ngwal-ela ba-sadi lehono.3 cl1-man sc1 write-appl cl2-woman today ‘The man writes to (the) women today.’ b. Ba-sadi ba ngwal-ela mo-nna lehono. cl2-woman sc2 write-appl cl1-man today ‘The women write to (the/a) man today.’ The sentences in (3) display the basic word order SVO. The grammatical subject in Northern Sotho, as more generally in Bantu languages, is characterized by the following properties: It is selected by the verb and encodes the highest thematic role; it appears in preverbal position preceding the verb; and it shows agreement with the verb in its noun class features, as shown in (3). The highest argument of the verb will be referred to as logical subject throughout the paper. The distinction into logical and grammatical subject becomes important in focus-related contexts. In basic SVO word order, the object follows the verb. In Northern Sotho, there is no agreement between the object and the verb in basic SVO structures as displayed in (3). Adverbials denoting time, place, or manner follow the object. In focus-related contexts subjects and non-subjects show asymmetric behaviour: Whereas non-subjects can be focused in situ, grammatical subjects in preverbal position cannot be focused. This is illustrated in examples (4) – (6) in a variety of contexts. (4) Asymmetry with questions and narrow focus a. Mo-kgalabje o nyaka mang? cl1-old.man sc1 look.for who ‘Who is the old man looking for?’ b. Mo-kgalabje o nyaka [ngaka]F. cl1-old.man sc1 look.for cl9.doctor ‘The old man is looking for the doctor.’ c. Mo-kgalabje o nyaka ngaka kae? cl1-old.man sc1 look.for cl9.doctor where ‘Where is the old man looking for the doctor?’ d. Mo-kgalabje o nyaka ngaka [mo-tse-ng]F. cl1-old.man sc1 look.for cl9.doctor cl3-village-loc ‘The old man is looking for the doctor in the village.’

 Sabine Zerbian

e. f. g.

Ké mang (yo) a nyaka-ng ngaka? cop who rprn.cl1 sc1 look.for-rel cl9.doctor ‘Who is looking for the doctor?’ Ké mo-kgalabje a nyaka-ng ngaka. cop cl1-old.man sc1 look.for-rel cl9.doctor Lit. ‘It is the old man who is looking for the doctor.’ #Mo-kgalabje o nyaka ngaka. cl1-old.man sc1 look.for cl9.doctor ‘The old man is looking for the doctor.’

The examples in (4) show non-subjects and subjects in wh-questions and narrow focus-context as in answers to these questions. With objects and adverbials the wh-word appears in situ (4a, c), whereas a cleft construction is necessary (4e) with logical subjects of transitive verbs. The focused object in the answer (4b) appears in its canonical position after the verb, as does the focused local adverb (4d) which follows the object. However, the logical subject does not appear in its canonical preverbal position (4g), but in a cleft construction (4f). Evidence for the cleft construction in (4f) comes not only from the use of hightoned ké in sentence-initial position but also from the change in the verbal morph­ ology. High-toned ké is the copula and also appears in other copula-constructions in Northern Sotho. With respect to verb morphology, the subject marker a is used instead of o and furthermore -ng (or -go as a dialectal variant) is affixed onto the final vowel of the verb stem. The asymmetry observed in questions and narrow focus also appears with focussensitive particles (examples in (5)), and in focused negation (examples in (6)). (5) Asymmetry with focus-sensitive particles a. Mo-sadi o tliša ba-na fela se-kolo-ng. cl1-woman sc1 bring cl2-child only cl7-school-loc ‘The woman only brings the children to school.’ (not the teenagers) b. Mo-sadi o tliša ba-na se-kolo-ng fela. cl1-woman sc1 bring cl2-child cl7-school-loc only ‘The woman only brings the children to school.’ (not to church) c. Ké mo-sadi fela a tliša-ng ba-na se-kolo-ng. cop cl1-woman only sc1 bring-rel cl2-child cl7-school-loc ‘Only the woman brings the children to school.’ (not the man) The word fela is the Northern Sotho equivalent to English only. The data in (5) show how fela appears after its focus constituent. In (5a) this is the object, in (5b) the reading is ambiguous between the local adverb and the whole VP being the focus of fela. However, if fela associates with the logical subject, it is not grammatical to place it after the grammatical subject in preverbal position. Again, a cleft construction is necessary, as shown in (5c).



Subject/object-asymmetry in Northern Sotho 

The preverbal negation in examples (6a, b) can associate either with the object or with the adverbial, as the continuation of the clause indicates. However, the negation cannot associate with a subject in preverbal position. In order to negate the subject, a cleft construction is necessary, as in (6c), again indicated by a change in the subject marker and in verb morphology. (6) Asymmetry in focused negation a. Mošemane ga se a rekiše borotho maabane, o rekišitše bupi. boy neg sc1 sell.pst bread yesterday sc1 sell.pst porridge ‘The boy didn’t sell bread yesterday, he sold porridge.’ b. Mošemane ga se a rekiše borotho maabane, o rekišitše lehono. boy neg sc1 sell.pst bread yesterday sc1 sell.pst today ‘The boy didn’t sell bread yesterday, he sold (it) today.’ c. Ga se mošemane o a rekišitše-ng borotho, ké mokgalabje. neg cop boy rprn sc1 sell.pst-rel bread cop old.man Lit. ‘It wasn’t the boy who sold bread, it was the old man.’ The data in (4)–(6) illustrate the syntactic asymmetry of subjects and non-subjects that appears in different focus-related contexts. Whereas non-subject constituents can remain in situ, subject constituents have to appear in a cleft construction (for examples of focused subjects in postverbal position in the case of intransitive verbs see Zerbian 2006a). Placing a question-word in preverbal position leads to ungrammaticality, as does placing a non-subject wh-word in any position other than in situ.4 This is shown in the wh-questions in (7a) for subjects, and in (7b,c) for objects. Example (7b) shows that there is no sentence-final focus position for non-subjects as in Dzamba (Bokamba 1976: 159), (7c) shows that there is no focus movement to sentence-initial position. (7) Ungrammatical questions in Northern Sotho a. *Mang o nyaka ngaka? who sc1 look.for cl9.doctor ‘Who is looking for the doctor?’ b. *O bona ka mehla mang? 2 see always who ‘Who do you always see?’ c. *Mang o bona? who 2 see ‘Who do you see?’ Furthermore, double object constructions show that the focus position for objects is not verb-adjacent, but in situ. In double object constructions, the underlying structure is determined by aspects other than information structure (e.g. thematic hierarchies or person hierarchies) in Northern Sotho (see Hyman & Duranti 1982).5 The examples in (8) illustrate this. There is no overt case-marking in Bantu languages.

 Sabine Zerbian

(8) Double object constructions a. O fa mo-kgalabje se-hlare. sc1 give cl1-old.man cl7-medicine ‘He gives the old man medicine.’ b. O fa mo-kgalabje eng? sc1 give cl1-old.man what ‘What does he give the old man?’ c. *O fa eng mo-kgalabje? sc1 give what cl1-old.man Intended: ‘What does he give the old man?’ d. O tlišetša mang se-hlare? sc1 bring who cl7-medicine ‘Whom does he bring the medicine?’ e. *O tlišetša se-hlare mang? sc1 bring cl7-medicine who Intended: ‘Whom does he bring the medicine?’ The example in (8a) shows the basic order of two objects in double object constructions. The constituent bearing the thematic role of beneficiary precedes the one bearing the thematic role of patient. If one of the object constituents is questioned, it can only be questioned in situ. The data in (8c, e) show illicit structures where the wh-word does not appear in situ. The examples presented in this section show that, depending on the grammatical function a constituent fulfills, a different syntax is required in focus-related contexts. The following sections discuss how this asymmetry has been accounted for in the literature.

2.2

Functional approach

As seen in the preceeding subsection, there is a distinction between the syntactic behaviour of subjects and non-subjects in focus-related contexts. Whereas non-subjects are focused in situ, subjects are focused by means of a cleft construction in the case of transitive verbs and preferrably postverbally in the case of intransitive verbs. As for agreement, subjects agree obligatorily with the verb whereas objects agree only optionally. These two facts have been related to each other in functional approaches. It is a widely accepted scenario that agreement systems evolve from a topic construction, in which a full (morphologically unreduced) pronoun is used to refer anaphorically to the topic NP, as in (9a). The anaphoric pronoun is then reduced to a clitic-like element, though still retaining the pronominal content, as in (9b). It is then further reduced to a morphologically dependent affix — resulting in a loss of pronominal content — to a mere agreement marker, as in (9c) (Givón 1976, going back to at least Boas 1911).

(9)

Subject/object-asymmetry in Northern Sotho 

Diachronic development of agreement (a) Topic Pronoun (b)Clitic pronoun (c) Subject Agreement The man, he came. → The man he-came. → The man he-came. Top Pro Top Pro Subj Agr

Assuming the development as outlined in (9), one possible stage in the grammatical development of a language is one between (9b) and (9c), in which the reduction of the full topic pronoun to a mere agreement marker has happened but where the preceding NP has still retained its discourse function, namely topichood. This has been described as the state of development a language like Northern Sotho is in: there is obligatory, thus grammaticalized, subject agreement with the verb, whereby the subject itself always represents discourse-old information (Louwrens 1979). Preverbal constituents in Northern Sotho therefore show both subject and topic properties. Among the subject properties is that a preverbal constituent in sentences as (3) is selected by the verb of the sentence, a property that is common to subjects but not to topics (Li & Thompson 1976). On the other hand, Northern Sotho is not a purely subject-prominent language that always encodes the highest thematic role selected by the verb as the grammatical subject. It shows a characteristic that, on the continuum from topic-prominent to subject-prominent languages, shifts it in the direction of topic-prominent languages (Li & Thompson 1976: 461-66): the functional role of the subject in Northern Sotho is constant across sentences in that it always refers to given information. Therefore, its role is defined within discourse not within the sentence as is common for subjects. However, it needs to be mentioned that not every preverbal topical constituent can trigger agreement with the verb in Northern Sotho.6 This is in contrast to languages such as Kinyarwanda and Kirundi (see e.g. Bokamba 1976, Kimenyi 1980, Morimoto 2000) where objects in preverbal position can also initiate agreement.7 Topic in the following can therefore be understood as the grammaticalized, preverbal position for logical subjects that represent discourse-old information. The claim for the topicality of subjects in Northern Sotho is consequently not only based on the incompatibility with focus, as shown in the preceding section, but also on diachronic evidence, as discussed above. Furthermore, Louwrens (1979) provides many examples from Northern Sotho texts that support the view that the subject is discourse-old information. Examples are given in (10) that show that a constituent cannot appear in preverbal subject position when it is discourse-new information. (10) Impersonal construction a. Go be go na le di-nonyana le di-phukubje tš-eo di sc17 was sc17 have cl10-bird and cl10-jackal rprn sc10 be-go di dula le-šoke- ng. (Matabane & Leshilo 1998) was-rel sc10 live cl5-wilderness-loc ‘There were birds and jackals that lived in the wilderness.’

 Sabine Zerbian

b. c.

Go tsena Matalebele. (Makwala 1958) sc17 enter Matalebele ‘Matalebele enters.’ Go bina mang? sc17 dance who ‘Who is dancing?’

The use of impersonal constructions, which are defined as showing invariable class 17 agreement, at the beginning of stories, as in (10a), or in stage directions, as in (10b), supports the claim that grammatical subjects. i.e. preverbal constituents that agree with the verb, are discourse-old. As in the beginning of stories all information is new, no grammatical subject is employed. In (10c) the logical subject, i.e. the only argument selected by the verb, appears in postverbal position. It does not agree with the verb, instead impersonal cl17-agreement is used. The grammaticality of the question with the logical subject in postverbal position in (10c) shows that logical subjects can be focused postverbally. The generalization that grammatical subjects tend to be topics is not only found in Givón (1976) for Bantu languages but also cross-linguistically (Chafe 1976, Keenan 1976 and many others). The importance of the observation that subjects are topics for the grammar of Northern Sotho has been acknowledged by Louwrens (1979, 1981, 1991). The author thereby provides an explanation as to why the subject cannot be questioned in preverbal position in Northern Sotho. The reasoning is that the inherent topic status of subjects is in conflict with the focus status of wh-constituents. As seen in the examples in (4)–(6), the same incompatibility of subjects in preverbal position occurs in other contexts as well. The reasoning is well suited to being extended to these other focus-related contexts. Focus in answer to questions and focus as induced by particles or by negation also creates a conflict with the inherent topic status of subjects.

3. OT-approach This section shows how the interplay of information structure and syntax in the case of the subject is modelled in the framework of OT. It makes use of an interface constraint that accounts for the ungrammaticality of a focused logical subject in preverbal position. Section 3.1 introduces the reader to the essentials of Optimality Theory. Section 3.2 shows how uncontroversial basic syntactic assumptions concerning agreement are translated into OT. The syntactic constraints Subject, Stay and Foc-Spec are thus introduced. In section 3.3 the in situ focusing of non-subjects is derived. Section 3.4 considers focus-related contexts with logical subjects in which the interface constraint is in conflict with purely syntactic requirements. It will be shown how the interaction and ranking of these constraints can account for the appearance of a focused logical



Subject/object-asymmetry in Northern Sotho 

subject in postverbal position in the case of intransitive verbs. Section 3.5 addresses the special case of subject clefts. The OT-account proposed here for the subject/object-asymmetry in Northern Sotho is compared to the approach proposed by Sabel & Zeller (2006) for a parallel asymmetry in Nguni languages (which are the Southern neighbour of Sotho languages). This is done for two reasons: first, the account by Sabel & Zeller (2006) is to my knowledge the only theoretical account for the subject/object-asymmetry in Bantu languages. Second, Sabel & Zeller (2006), though integrating information structural aspects into the syntax via a Focus Phrase, eventually propose a purely syntactic approach to the asymmetry in Nguni. The comparison of the two approaches is therefore meant to show in exactly which points a syntactic and the functionally oriented OTapproach differ.

3.1

Essentials of OT

Optimality Theory (OT) originated in phonology (Prince & Smolensky 1993) in order to represent competing tendencies in grammar. It is a formalism of constraint interaction in Universal Grammar and is therefore also applicable to other areas of grammar (for discussion of its application to syntax see Pesetsky 1997, Müller 2000). For syntax, the formal theory of OT is used with different substantive theories of syntax, such as Government & Binding Theory, LFG, and the Minimalist Program. (For an introduction to OT-syntax see Boersma et al. 2000, Müller 2000, Legendre 2001.) The OT-mechanism consists of two components: the Generator (Gen) and the Evaluator (Eval). For every input, Gen produces a candidate set. For the phenomenon dealt with in this paper, the input contains the verb as a lexical head with its argument structure and an assignment of lexical heads to its arguments.8 Nominal constituents are thus encoded as subjects and objects in the input (Grimshaw 1997). Furthermore, constituents in the input may bear the morphosyntactic feature [F] which indicates their discourse status as focused constituents (Grimshaw & Samek-Lodovici 1998). The candidate set produced by Gen contains output structures which are alternative realizations of the input. Gen produces outputs that conform to X-bar theory but which can include e.g. additional functional structure. Gen also introduces functional heads that do not appear in the input (Grimshaw 1997), which is crucial for the phenomenon dealt with here. Competing candidates are evaluated as analyses of the same lexical material because of the way the input is defined. Eval evaluates the output candidates against a set of universal constraints that regulate the well-formedness of linguistic forms. The constraints themselves are simple and general. However, they may come into conflict with each other and these conflicts are resolved through hierarchical ranking of constraints. The effect of a certain constraint is determined by its ranking in relation to other constraints. Ranking consists of domination: for two constraints A and B, either A dominates B or B dominates A. Constraints can, in principle, be ranked in any order. Languages differ in the ranking

 Sabine Zerbian

of constraints, which results in language-specific grammars. Output candidates for a given input structure are evaluated against the set of ranked constraints. The candidate that best satisfies or minimally violates the set of ranked constraints is considered the optimal output for a given input structure. Only the optimal structure is grammatical. Constraints comprise faithfulness, structural and economic constraints (Legendre 2001: 12). Faithfulness constraints ban any change of the output structure from the input structure. Their effect depends on what structure is assumed in the input. Structural constraints put well-formedness requirements on syntactic structure. Economy constraints ban the creation of superfluous syntactic structure (*Structure) or movement (Stay). The present paper claims that the subject/object-asymmetry in Northern Sotho as presented in section 2 is a phenomenon that results from competition of constraints relating to syntactic well-formedness and economy with a further constraint relating to information structure. The following section will spell out the constraints relevant to the analysis of the subject/object-asymmetry, their motivation based on independent, typological evidence and the resulting analysis.

3.2

Agreement

The canonical sentence in Northern Sotho shows agreement between the preverbal subject and the verb. One can therefore argue that sentences in Northern Sotho need subjects in SpecIP-position, where agreement is established via Spec-Head-Agreement. The tendency of sentences to have subjects is captured by the constraint Subject (Grimshaw & Samek-Lodovici 1998) in (11). (11) Subject ‘Sentences have overt subjects in SpecIP.’ This constraint is violated whenever a sentence does not have an overt subject. The constraint in (11) is reminiscent of the EPP (Extended Projection Principle, Chomsky 1982). It is violated by impersonal constructions, both in languages like English and German which use expletives (Speas 1997, Legendre 2001), as well as in Northern Sotho where class 17-agreement appears with the verb and the logical subject appears postverbally. In Northern Sotho, the subject is assumed to be base-generated in VP-internal position (Demuth & Gruber 1995, Demuth 1995, van der Spuy 1993). The constraint Subject in (11) is therefore in conflict with a constraint that bans movement. This constraint is given in (12). (12) Stay ‘Don’t move constituents.’ This constraint is violated once for every trace.



Subject/object-asymmetry in Northern Sotho 

The constraint in (12) is a basic faithfulness constraint that bans movement of constituents (Grimshaw 1997, Legendre et al. 1995). The more complex a movement is, i.e. the more traces it creates, the more it is violated. If the constraint in (12) is ranked high, the structure and order of the input is preserved in the output. Assuming that the subject rises from VP-internal position to SpecIP-position, the occurrence of the preverbal subject in Northern Sotho shows that the constraint Subject has to be ranked above the constraint banning movement. This is shown in tableau 1 for the sentence in (13). (13) Mo-nna o a fihla. cl1-man cl1 a arrive ‘The man arrives.’ Tableau 1.  Subject-verb agreement Subject a. [IP [I’ go fihla monna]  ���� b. [IP monna [I’ o a fihla t ]

Stay

*! *

Candidate a shows class 17 default agreement on the verb, which is an indicator for a subject missing in SpecIP position. It violates the constraint Subject. As Subject is ranked higher than Stay, the violation is fatal and candidate b emerges as the winner. By moving the subject from VP-internal position to SpecIP, candidate b violates Stay. This violation can be accommodated as Stay is ranked below Subject. Although there is no universal restriction that prevents Gen from creating candidates showing additional functional structure (see also Grimshaw 1997: 376), I follow Grimshaw (1997) in assuming that the least complex syntactic structure emerges as a winner, all else being equal (see also Demuth 1995). This can be accounted for by the constraint in (14). (14) *Structure ‘Avoid structure.’ This constraint is violated once for every layer of structure added. The constraint bans any additional structure and therefore prefers simpler expressions. Its presence is decisive when comparing candidates that differ only in the wealth of syntactic structure displayed. For tableau 1, a candidate such as (15) loses because it always shows one violation more than the winning candidate on the constraint given in (14). (15) [CP [IP monna [I’ o a fihla t ]]] Candidates such as (15) which show additional structure will not be considered in the tableaux unless the actual winner is among them. The reason for neglecting them in the following is that they are harmonically bound by competing candidates like the actual

 Sabine Zerbian

winner in tableau 1. Harmonically bound means that under no constraint ranking they can emerge as winner because they always show exactly the same violations as a competing candidate plus at least one further violation (Prince & Smolensky 1993: 162). The constraints used in tableau 1 in order to account for subject agreement in Northern Sotho reflect the fact that subjects rise to SpecIP for reasons independent of information structure in Northern Sotho. The account of agreement does not differ substantially from the treatment of agreement in other generative approaches (Demuth & Gruber 1995, Sabel & Zeller 2006, van der Spuy 1993). In all these accounts, the preverbal subject position is considered a derived position to which the subject has moved from VP-internal position. Analyses differ with respect to the denomination of the phrase in which the subject occupies the specifier position between SpecIP (van der Spuy 1993), SpecAgrP (Demuth & Gruber 1995) and SpecTP (Sabel & Zeller 2006). As this difference is not important for the phenomenon under consideration, it can be neglected. It is not surprising that the account of agreement does not differ when comparing the derivational approaches with the output-oriented OT-approach. As OT is a metatheory of how grammar works, it relies on substantial syntactic theories with respect to input form and candidates.

3.3

In situ focus of non-subjects

In some languages, focused constituents should preferably occur in a certain syntactic position. This is the case for wh-words in languages like English or German, where wh-words have to occur in a Specifier position. In Northern Sotho, non-subjects are focused in their canonical position. However, because of the universality of constraints in OT, the constraint favouring movement of wh-words in some languages is also present in Northern Sotho. It is called Op-Spec (Operators must be in Specifier position, Grimshaw 1997). As focus structure behaves parallel to wh-structure in Northern Sotho, this constraint will be re-formulated as in (16) for reasons of illustration. (16) Foc-Spec ‘Focused constituents must be in Specifier position.’ This constraint is violated whenever a focused constituent is not in a specifier position. The constraint in (16) is in conflict with Stay. Because postverbal constituents do not move in Northern Sotho if focused, neither in questions nor in other focus-related contexts, the constraint Stay must be ranked above a constraint favouring movement of wh-constituents in other languages. Tableau 2 illustrates the OT-account of in situ focus in Northern Sotho. The example sentence is given in (17) and shows a double object construction in which the direct object is questioned.



Subject/object-asymmetry in Northern Sotho 

(17) Mo-nna o fa mang se-hlare? cl1-man sc1 give who cl7-medicine ‘To whom is the man giving medicine?’ Tableau 2.  In situ focus of non-subjects focused direct object

Stay

���� a. [CP MangF [IP monna o fa [VP t sehlare]]]†

*!

c. [CP Ke mangF [IP monna a fa-ng t sehlare]]

*!

b. [IP [IP Monna o fa t sehlare] mangF] d. [IP Monna o fa mangF sehlare]  ����

*!

Foc-Spec

*Struc *

* * *

† In Northern Sotho, the verb moves from its base position for discourse-independent reasons. Its trace and the resulting violation of Stay are not included in the following tableaux as they are constant across all candidates. Neither is the movement of the subject to SpecIP position considered in this tableau as it is constant across all candidates.

A moved constituent to sentence-initial position (candidate a) fulfills the requirement that a focused constituent (such as a wh-operator) be in Specifier-position. However, it violates the constraint against movement (Stay), and as the latter is ranked higher in Northern Sotho, the violation is fatal. A wh-word moved to sentence-final (candidate b) or cleft position (candidate c) also violates the Stay-constraint crucially and these two candidates are ruled out as winners. Candidate d, which does not show movement, satisfies the high-ranked constraint Stay. Though candidate d violates the constraint Foc-Spec, the violation is not fatal as Foc-Spec is ranked below Stay.9 The alternative account proposed for questions in Nguni by Sabel & Zeller (2006) is briefly outlined here. Their account is based on the feature checking machinery as proposed in the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995b) and on the analysis of wh-constructions as proposed in Sabel (2000 a.o.). According to these approaches, wh-phrases check not only [+wh]-features but also [+focus]-features. That wh-words must also check a [+focus]-feature is motivated by the observation that wh-words correspond to the focused constituent in an answer to a question. The [+wh]-feature that needs to be checked by the wh-word is located in C0, whereas the [+focus]-feature is located in Foc0, the head of a Focus Phrase. This Focus Phrase is activated automatically in all wh-questions and is generated above VP/vP and below TP (see also Ndayiragije 1999). Features can be strong and weak, subject to language-specific variation. Generally, only strong features need to be checked via a local head-specifier constellation. Zulu (Nguni) has a weak [+wh]-feature as wh-in situ is possible in embedded sentences (Sabel 1998). In in situ questions, both the [+wh]- and the [+focus]-feature are weak. Since weak features do not need to be checked in a specifier-head relation, both features can be checked by ‘unselective binding’, i.e. non-local licensing via binding through

 Sabine Zerbian

a [+wh]-head (see Chomsky 1995b: 291). Consequently, the non-subject wh-phrase remains in situ. A feature checking account of wh-questions in Nguni is attractive because the semantic interpretation of focus is ensured by the Focus Phrase. However, the low Focus Phrase does not correspond to a designated syntactic position into which overt movement is obligatory in Northern Soho (see Zerbian 2006a). Consequently, the explanatory value of a Focus Phrase, whose features can be checked non-locally, remains weak. The non-local checking relation of the feature cheking approach is mirrored by a morphsyntactic feature in the OT-approach proposed here.

3.4

Focus with subjects of intransitive verbs

The canonical position for logical subjects in Northern Sotho is preverbal. This generalization is derived by ranking the constraint Subject over Stay, as shown in section 3.2. However, the logical subject does not appear in this position in Northern Sotho when it is focused. In an OT-approach, this is captured by competing constraints. The constraint that competes with Subject and Stay is the constraint in (18). (18) Subject=Topic ‘The grammatical subject of the sentence must not be F-marked.’ This constraint is violated whenever a grammatical subject is narrowly focused. It was already noted in section 2.2 that it is a cross-linguistic tendency of subjects to be topics. The constraint in (18) is similar to the constraint *Su/x proposed in Aissen (1999, Lee 2000) and can, like the latter, be derived through harmonic alignment of prominence scales. *Su/x together with *Su/X are constraints that encode pressure on subject choice which is grounded in discourse prominence (Aissen 1999: 684). Uppercase X represents a more prominent element, lowercase x a less prominent one. Prominence is to be understood as thematic prominence which equals topicality in the discussion here. *Su/x therefore means that subjects should be avoided which are low in thematic prominence, i.e. which are discourse-new.10 The observation that in Northern Sotho a focused logical subject does not appear in preverbal position leads to the conclusion that the constraint in (18) outranks Subject and Stay. Tableau 3 illustrates the interplay of the three constraints presented so far by means of a focus-related context, as in (19). (19)

Intransitive sentence Go bina mang? sc17 dance who ‘Who is dancing?’



Subject/object-asymmetry in Northern Sotho 

Tableau 3.  Focus in intransitive sentences focused subject a. [IP mangF [I’ o bina [VP t ]]]  ���� b. [I’ go bina [VP mangF]]

Subj =Topic

Subject

*!

Stay *

*

Although an impersonal construction (candidate b) violates the Subject constraint in lacking a grammatical subject, it emerges as winner because it satisfies the higher-ranked interface constraint that prohibits F-marked subjects. The violation of this constraint by candidate a leads to its exclusion, as the interface constraint is the highest-ranked constraint. The same ranking can also account for the fact that, if the verb is in focus, we find the normal SVO order. The high-ranked interface constraint is vacuously fulfilled. The impersonal construction, however, crucially violates the lower ranked constraint Subject in this case. Northern Sotho optionally allows cleft structures for intransitive sentences. The use of the in situ or the cleft structure is optional with no special discourse-pragmatic implications for clefts as in the case of objects (see endnote 9). The optionality can be captured if further constraints on discourse-pragmatics (such as Subject first and Known information first) are considered which are tied. Space considerations do not permit going into detail here. Importantly, both the impersonal construction as well as the cleft structure avoid a fatal violation of the high-ranked Subject=Topic constraint. Sabel & Zeller (2006) propose that a focused subject in preverbal position can be excluded on purely syntactic grounds. Recall that in their account a question word bears a [wh]- and a [focus]-feature that needs to be checked. Furthermore, a Focus Phrase is automatically generated in all wh-questions, which is above VP. Therefore, SpecFocP intervenes between the base position of the subject (VP-internal) and the preverbal subject position SpecTP where agreement with the verb is expressed. On its way from the VP-internal position to SpecTP, a question word with the grammatical function of subject would need to move to Spec FocP first in order to check the weak [+focus]-feature, which is associated with the head of the Focus Phrase. The necessity to check weak features in such a constellation is termed ‘free rider’ (see Sabel 2000: 440 for discussion). Consequently, the subject question word moves from SpecVP to Spec FocP and further on to SpecTP. This equals movement from an A- to an A’- and then again to an A-position which is ruled out by Improper Movement as an illegitimate operation. Consequently, the subject is left in SpecVP-position and the weak [+focus]-feature is checked via ‘unselective binding’. An expletive is inserted to check the EPP-feature. The resulting construction in Nguni is the impersonal ku-construction, which is parallel to the impersonal go-construction in Northern Sotho. Applying a purely syntactic account to the data in Northern Sotho means that the occurrence of a logical subject in preverbal position under focus is excluded because

 Sabine Zerbian

of Improper Movement. It is obvious that the discourse-pragmatic property of the subject in Northern Sotho is not captured by such an analysis. Moreover, as such a functionally determined restriction only appears with subjects, but never with objects, and additionally represents cross-linguistic tendencies, it should not be stipulated. The constraint formulation mechanism of harmonic alignment which underlies the formulation of the constraint in (18) allows the formal derivation of cross-linguistic tendencies. Moreover, the restriction on subjects is no language universal as not all languages show this functional restriction. In English e.g. also focused subjects can appear in the canonical subject position. In an OT-approach, this ‘parametrization’ is accounted for by reranking of constraints. In the case of English the constraint Subject outranks Subject=Topic.

3.5

The special case of subject clefts

Impersonal constructions with transitive verbs are ungrammatical in Northern Sotho (Demuth & Mmusi 1997). Focused logical subjects of transitive verbs appear obligatorily in a cleft construction. A constraint as in (20) blocks the emergence of the impersonal construction with transitive verbs. (20) *TEC ‘In expletive constructions, either subject or object has left the VP.’ Violated once for every additional element within VP. The constraint in (20) reformulates the generalization by Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (2001: 193) that “by Spell-Out the VP can contain no more than one argument with an unchecked Case feature”. To put it differently, whenever a sentence contains both a subject and a direct object, one of the arguments must vacate the VP because of Case requirements (see also Chomsky 2001). Contrary to the inviolable generalization in Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (2001), Sabel & Zeller (2006) attribute the lack of transitive expletive constructions in Nguni to a parametric property of SpecTP. Formulating the generalization as a violable and ranked constraint as in (20) allows to capture the parametrization of this generalization. The ungrammaticality of the impersonal construction with transitive verbs shows that the constraint in (20) is ranked above Stay and Structure, because the cleft sentence, which represents a more complex syntactic structure, emerges as winner. Tableau 4 illustrates for example (21) how the constraints established so far can account for the use of cleft constructions for focusing logical subjects. (21)

Subject focus by means of cleft Ké mang a nyaka-ng ngaka? cop who sc1 look.for-rel cl9.doctor ‘Who is looking for the doctor?’



Subject/object-asymmetry in Northern Sotho 

Tableau 4.  Subject focus in Northern Sotho focused subject a. [IP mangF [I’ o nyaka [VP t ngaka]]] ���� b. [IP [I’ go nyaka [VP mang ngaka]]]]  c. [CPke mangF [IP t [I0 a nyaka-ng [VPt ngaka]]]]

Subj = Top

*TEC

Subj

Stay *

*

*!

*

*

**

*

**

***

*!

*struc

Candidate a shows the wh-word in preverbal subject position as indicated by agreement on the verb. This candidate violates the constraint Subject = Topic. As this constraint is ranked highest in Northern Sotho, the violation is fatal. Candidate b shows the subject in its VP-internal base position followed by the object. This candidate violates the Subject constraint as there is no overt subject in SpecIP. Furthermore, it also violates the high-ranked *TEC constraint that bans two arguments within the VP. Candidates c shows an output structure that entails further functional structure. The reason that candidate c is not harmonically bound by candidate a is that it does not violate the high-ranked Subject=Topic constraint. Though it displays a subject trace in SpecIP, it does not violate Subject=Topic because there is no overt subject in SpecIP that is not a topic. However, it does violate the lower ranked Subject constraint for exactly this reason: there is no overt subject in SpecIP. In the OT-analysis proposed here, the standard assumption is followed that cleft sentences are biclausal structures (Chomsky 1971, Collins 1991 for an overview). The more complex structure is selected as optimal, because the other competing structures are excluded by higher-ranked constraints. In the alternative approach proposed by Sabel & Zeller (2006) for Nguni the cleft sentence is derived syntactically by movement. To recapitulate their basic assumptions: In wh-questions, a Focus Phrase is automatically generated between VP and TP. Furthermore, wh-words in Nguni languages have a weak [+wh]-feature which is located in C0 and can be checked via unselective binding. When the wh-word has a weak [+focus]-feature, the question word remains in situ and the feature is likewise checked via unselective binding. Optionally, wh-words in Nguni can select a strong [+focus]-feature. If the strong [+focus]-feature is selected, the feature needs to be checked via a local specifier-relation. The wh-word thus has to be realized in Spec FocP in order to check the [+focus]-feature which is located in Foc0. Cleft sentences consequently result from the realization of the strong [+focus]-feature. Next to the wh-word in Spec FocP, the strong [+focus]-feature is assumed to select the copula. Whereas the wh-word moves to SpecFocP in order to check the strong [+focus]-feature, the copula undergoes V-to-T-movement like finite full verbs. According to Sabel & Zeller (2006), the prefixal copula verb moves first from V0 to Foc0, where agreement between the copula and the wh-phrase in SpecFocP is es-

 Sabine Zerbian

tablished via Spec-Head-agreement, and then further on to T0. Consequently, the copula precedes the wh-pronoun at the surface and is prefixed to the wh-phrase in phonology. The OT-approach presented here differs from the feature-checking approach in assumptions about the structure of the cleft. More important, however, is the difference concerning the status of the cleft: in the OT-approach, the cleft emerges because it is the only possible syntactic structure when all other competing structures are blocked by higherranked constraints. In the feature-checking approach, the cleft emerges because of the realization of a strong [focus]-feature. The trigger for a subject cleft thereby equals the trigger for an object cleft. This parallelism in triggers cannot be maintained for Northern Sotho, as clefts for subjects and objects differ in their semantic meaning (see endnote 9).

3.6

Summary and discussion

This section has presented an OT-analysis of the subject/object-asymmetry in Northern Sotho. By means of the three constraints Subject = Topic, Subject, and Stay the observation that logical subjects cannot be focused in their canonical preverbal position can be accounted for. The formulation of the constraint is based on phenomena that can be identified across languages, and which can be seen as universal tendencies in language, rooted in UG and/or principles of communication. If the postverbal appearance of the subject is excluded by higher-ranked syntactic principles, such as *TEC, the cleft sentence emerges as the optimal output, though being complex in syntactic structure. Apart from accounting for the special behaviour of subjects in Northern Sotho, the OT-approach can also deal with the observation that non-subjects remain in their in situ position in focus-related contexts. The constraint ranking in Northern Sotho is repeated in (22). (22) Constraint ranking in Northern Sotho Subject=Topic >> *Tec >> Subject >> Stay >> Foc-Spec >> *Struc As constraints are claims about Universal Grammar (UG) with typological consequences, an OT-approach is not complete without investigating the typological predictions made by the constraints proposed. A reranking of the constraint Subject=Topic can have the effect of rendering it inactive. If Subject=Topic is ranked below Subject it is always more optimal for a language to have the logical subject in grammatical subject position, even if the subject is focused. This is the case in English. Reranking the constraint *TEC can also have the effect of rendering it inactive. If *TEC is ranked below Stay, it is more optimal for a language to move neither subject nor object and have both within the VP. This might be the case in a number of European languages (see discusssion in Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 2001), and has been shown for the Bantu language Kirundi (Ndayiragije 1999). The OT-analysis proposed here differs from purely syntactic accounts in the following respects: first, it incorporates discourse-pragmatic aspects directly into syntax in deriving an interface constraint from cross-linguistic tendencies that connects both



Subject/object-asymmetry in Northern Sotho 

areas of grammar. Though the subject is defined syntactically as the constituent in SpecIP position, the constraint Subject=Topic relates this syntactic position to a specific discourse notion. The constraint Subject=Topic grounds the observable facts in extra-linguistic evidence from laws of communication which show that subjects in the languages of the world tend to occur as topics. Furthermore, by deriving the constraint via harmonic alignment is provides an explanation as to why it is the subject constituent that shows special syntactic behaviour as opposed to e.g. objects. Second, it accounts for language-specific variation with respect to the functional restriction on the subject position by formulating the restriction as a rankable and violable constraint. Third, it differentiates between the trigger for object clefts and subject clefts. They do not emerge because of the realization of the same (strong) feature, but subject clefts emerge because all other structures are blocked by higher ranked constraints. (Object clefts emerge because more marked meanings are associated with more marked forms, see endnote 9). The need for a differentiation in the trigger for subject and object clefts in Northern Sotho is relevant because there are semantic differences between the two. Subjects are the unmarked focus strategy for logical subjects of transitive verbs, whereas object clefts have a more marked meaning. The OT-approach proposed here derives the subject/object-asymmetry in Northern Sotho from an input that bears morphosyntactic marking of discourse status by evaluation through syntactic and syntactic-pragmatic constraints. Crucially, it considers cleft structures and in situ structures as being in direct competition. By means of the constraint Subject=Topic it arrives at a unified account as to why focused subjects cannot appear in the preverbal position in Northern Sotho, as focused subjects of both intransitive and transitive verbs crucially violate this constraint. An example of the extension of the OT-approach to further discourse notions besides [F] is outlined in section 4.

4. Extension of the account to further discourse notions The OT analysis presented here combines syntactic and discourse-pragmatic aspects (e.g. the constraint Subject=Topic) and thus acknowledges the role information structure can play in shaping syntax. The influence of pragmatics on syntax not only emerges in the focus syntax of subjects but also in word order with respect to the left periphery in Northern Sotho. The following example is meant to briefly illustrate how further discourse notions can be integrated into the system. Consider the examples in (23). (23) Contrastive topic a. Bo-šego mo-nna o raloka kgweleF. cl14-evening cl1-man sc1 play cl9.ball ‘In the evening the man plays ball.’

 Sabine Zerbian

b. Mo-nna ke a mo thuša. cl1-man 1 a cl1 help Lit. ‘The man, I am helping him.’ Sentences with preposed constituents as in (23) are used when the preposed discourseold constituent expresses some kind of emphasis (Louwrens 1981). The sentence in (23a) for example cannot be used for answering a question such as ‘When are you playing ball?’, but rather when reporting a schedule therefore stating what one does in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening. The temporal adverbial in (23a) has a contrasting function and can therefore be characterized as a contrastive topic. Note that the term topic is used differently here, compared to the phenomenon in sections 2 and 3. Topic does not refer to a grammaticalized position for subjects, but is to be understood as an aboutness-topic, often with an additional aspect of contrast. Cross-linguistically, it is not uncommon to place contrastive elements in the left sentence-periphery. That information structure influences word order is known since at least Behagel (1932). ‘New’ information is treated differently from ‘new and noteworthy’ information in German syntax e.g. (Legendre 2001 and references therein). Among the principles suggested by Givón (1988) for governing word order is the one given in (24) which captures the tendency to ‘attend first to the most urgent task’. (24) First Things First Principle (FTF) (following Gundel 1988b: 229) ‘Provide the most important information first.’ The source of contrast between preposed and in situ adverbials and objects can be attributed to the input by assuming that the input encodes further morphosyntactic features than [F] that derive from the information structural context. If a constituent is marked as noteworthy or contrastive, it is subject to the constraint in (24). The ranking of the constraint in (24) with respect to the other constraints established so far for Northern Sotho is shown for (23a) in tableau 5. Tableau 5.  Contrastive topic in Northern Sotho monna o raloka kgweleF bošegoCT

Stay

*Struc

��� b.[CP BošegoCT [F’ [IP monna [I’ o raloka [VP kgweleF t ]]]]]

*

**!

 c.[IPBošegoCT [IP monna [I’ o raloka [VP kgweleF t ]]]]]

*

*

a.[IP Monna [I’ o raloka [VP kgweleF bošegoCT]]

FTF *!

Candidate a shows the structure that is most faithful to the input in that verb, object and adverbial appear in their canonical position. This candidate violates neither Stay nor *Structure. However, it violates the higher-ranked constraint that allows the contrastive topic to appear in sentence-initial position. Candidate b and c both satisfy this constraint as the contrasted constituent appears in sentence-initial position. In



Subject/object-asymmetry in Northern Sotho 

candidate b it appears in the specifier position of a functional phrase (CP), in candidate c it is adjoined to IP. As a fully functional phrase as in candidate b represents more additional structure (two violations for every layer of structure), candidate c emerges as winner with only one violation of *Structure (for one added layer). It is assumed here that the contrastive topic is dislocated to the left sentence-periphery. This is in contrast to what has been claimed for Italian by Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl (this volume), who argue for a base-generation of the topic constituent. The syntactic structure of the left periphery in Bantu provides an extensive field of further research (see e.g. Zeller 2004 for Zulu).

5. Conclusion The paper dealt with a case of subject/object-asymmetry in Northern Sotho. Subjects show a marked behaviour in Northern Sotho when focused. The data presented in section 2 illustrated that whereas non-subjects are focused in situ, logical subjects cannot be focused in their preverbal position. Instead, an impersonal construction or cleft construction is used to place the subject in focus. The asymmetry has been accounted for by the discourse notion a subject fulfills in Northern Sotho. Cross-linguistically, it is very common for subjects to be topics. In syntactic approaches to the asymmetry phenomenon this insight has been implemented as a ‘filter’ that bans focused topics from SpecIP, the structural subject position. In section 3 this paper developed a syntactic OT-approach for this phenomenon whereby constraints requiring syntactic and pragmatic well-formedness interact. By ranking the discourse-related constraint Subject=Topic above the constraint banning movement in Northern Sotho, one can derive the fact that the subject is marked syntactically when focused. The example involving further discourse notions in the final section illustrates further applications of the approach proposed here. As is common to all OT-analyses, reranking of constraints predicts language-specific characteristics whose investigation will be an area for future research.

Notes * Versions of this paper were presented at a meeting of the Bantu Grammar International Network Project at the ZAS, Berlin, and at the Seminar Series of the African Department, Humboldt University of Berlin and the Linguistics Department, University of KwaZulu-Natal. I wish to thank the British Academy for funding the meeting at the ZAS, all audiences for helpful feedback, and Andreas Haida, Manfred Krifka, Jason Mattausch, and Malte Zimmermann for discussing aspects of this work in detail. If not indicated otherwise, the data cited here are from my work with Lister Maphuti Matloga, a native speaker of Northern Sotho, who I am greatly indebted to. The usual disclaimers apply.

 Sabine Zerbian 1. According to Guthrie’s (1970-71) classification, Northern Sotho belongs to group S30. It is mutually intelligible with the other languages in this group, namely Tswana and Southern Sotho (also referred to as Sesotho). Like other Bantu languages, Northern Sotho is a tone language that uses changes in fundamental frequency to indicate lexical and grammatical differences in meaning. Syntactically, it displays SVO basic word order. Morphologically, Bantu languages are known for their rich noun class agreement system (for grammars on Northern Sotho see e.g. Ziervogel et al. (1969), Louwrens (1991), Poulos & Louwrens (1994), Louwrens et al. (1995)). 2. The glossing of the examples follows the Leipzig Glossing Rules. The abbreviations used in the glosses are the following: 1 first person loc locative 2 second person neg negation a ‘long form’ of the present tense pst Past Tense appl applicative rel relative tense (used in rel. clause) cl noun class (1-10, 14, 17) rprn relative pronoun cop copula sc subject concord 3. The examples are given in Northern Sotho orthography which is disjunctive, i.e. morphemes that mark concordial agreement are written separately. For an overview of Southern Bantu writing systems see Louwrens (1991). 4. Preverbal subject questions are only possible in echo-questions and in multiple questions (see also Demuth 1995, Machobane 2001). 5. Languages that show evidence of an immediately postverbal focus position are a.o. Aghem (Watters 1979), Chichewa (Mchombo 2004:94), Ju|’hoan (Güldemann 2004). 6. Whether the preverbal locative in so-called locative constructions is the grammatical subject in the Sotho languages is discussed controversially (see Demuth & Mmusi 1997 for Tswana, Zerbian 2006b for Northern Sotho, Demuth 1990, Baker 1992, and Machobane 1995 for Southern Sotho). 7. (i) (ii)

An example of S-O-reversal in Kinyarwanda is given in (ii). Umuhuungu a-ra-soma igitabo. 1boy 1-pres-read 7book ‘The boy is reading the book.’ Igitabo ki-soma umuhuungu. 7book 7-pres-read 1boy Lit.: ‘The book is reading the boy.’ (‘The book is being read by the boy.’)

8. The function of the input is to determine the candidate set. In the case presented here, the intended result of the candidate evaluation is the syntactic structure of the utterance. Therefore, syntactic structure cannot be given in the input. For a discussion of issues pertaining to the structure of the input in OT syntax see Archangeli & Langendoen (1997: 200-215), Müller (2000: 14-15) and Heck et al. (2002). 9. Though object clefts, as in candidate c, are grammatical in Northern Sotho, the use of in situ vs cleft structures for focus is not optional. Clefts bear a more complex focus meaning (É. Kiss 1998b, Zerbian 2006a for Northern Sotho). For a derivation of the form-meaning correspondence of cleft and in situ structure in the case of object focus by means of bidirectional OT see Zerbian (2006a).



Subject/object-asymmetry in Northern Sotho 

10. The constraint as proposed in (18) is thus not a universal markedness constraint but serves as an abbreviation for the markedness effects that can be derived by harmonic alignment of the two relevant scales (S > Obj > Obl; topic > focus), cf. Aissen 1999, or more elegantly by statistical asymmetries and bidirectional learning (Zeevat & Jäger 2002, Jäger 2003, Mattausch 2004). Because the constraint Subject=Topic can be derived from universal markedness effects, it is preferred over a constraint like *focused subject which leads to the same results in this analysis, as a reviewer pointed out.

Wide focus interpretation with fronted focus exponents in Czech* Denisa Lenertová & Uwe Junghanns In Czech, the default placement of focus exponents in sentences with nonminimal focus interpretation is in the right-periphery of the clause. The paper deals with cases where the focus exponent is fronted to the left-periphery but the sentences retain their wide focus interpretation. The fronting thus cannot be subsumed under a focus feature checking movement. It will be shown to be subject to both syntactic and prosodic restrictions. This kind of movement results in a special emphasis, contributing to the meaning in a way analogous to modal particles.

1. Introduction In Czech neutral sentences, the most prominent element is by default (cf. section 2.2) located in the final position of the clause, as shown in (1) (capitals indicate the nuclear syllable1): (1) Q: Proč jede Karel na dovolenou zrovna tam? ‘Why does K. want to go exactly there on his vacation?’ A1: Poradil mu to jeho TErapeut. advised him.DAT it.ACC his therapist ‘His therapist advised him to do it.’ A2: Slíbil to /tu cestu své ženě. promised.SG.MS it.ACC/ this journey.ACC his.DAT wife.DAT ‘He promised it/this journey to his wife.’ A3: Chce navštívit staré znÁmé. wants visit.INF old friends.ACC ‘He wants to visit some old friends.’

According to the common question-answer test for the identification of focus (see section 2.1 for discussion), the answers in (1) are maximally focused, as they correspond

 Denisa Lenertová & Uwe Junghanns

as a whole to the wh- phrase in the question. This paper will deal with cases where, in the same context inducing maximal focus, the most prominent element occurs sentence-initially: (2) Q: Why does K. want to go there? A: Své ženě to slíbil. his.DAT wife.DAT it.ACC promised.SG.MS Due to the fronting, the answer looses its neutral character, becoming more emphatic. However, the focus-background structure remains unchanged. Obviously, it does not suffice to postulate an information-structurally driven movement in such cases, as it would not result in any unambiguous focus or topic identification driven solely for such a purpose. Therefore, data like (2) deserve closer attention in the discussion of the mapping between syntax, prosody and information structure. The paper is organized as follows: before getting to the topic of discussion, some theoretical points concerning the identification of focus as well as some basic assumptions about the general properties of information structuring in Czech will be discussed in section 2. In section 3, data characterizing the phenomenon illustrated in (2) are presented, followed by a more detailed discussion of its properties and limits in section 4. Section 5 discusses the cross-linguistic relevance of the phenomenon and its possible licensing. Section 6 summarizes the paper.

2. Basic assumptions 2.1

Identification of focus: Theoretical background

It is widely assumed in the generative literature that Information Structure (IS) is reflected in the syntactic representation of the sentence. The two binary IS-distinctions – focus-background (F/B), on the one hand, and topic-comment (T/C), on the other (cf. Jacobs 1992 and Drubig 1992b) - are reflected in the assignment of features F and T to syntactic nodes (cf. the original proposal in Jackendoff 1972). IS-features persist up to the level of Conceptual Structure (cf. Bierwisch 1986) where they receive an interpretation in terms of their respective discourse functions. At the level of PF, IS-features correlate with specific prosodic realizations of the constituents they are assigned to. The general rule is that the focus domain, which is constituted by the highest constituent that is assigned the focus feature, must contain the main prominence of the clause. The element containing the most prominent nuclear syllable will be called the focus exponent here (cf. Höhle 1982: 99). The generalization i) that focus marking is reflected in the assignment of prominence is traditionally accompanied by the assumption that ii) sentential focus is identified by a question-answer (Q/A) test. The contrast between (3a) (taken from Büring



Wide focus interpretation with fronted focus exponents in Czech 

in press) and (3b) illustrates that the focus-accent relation has to be accounted for independently from the Q/A test: (3) a. b.

Q: Who did Jones’s father vote for? A: He voted for [a friend of Jones’s]. Q: Who did your father vote for? A: He voted for [a friend of Jones’s].

In both cases, a friend of Jones’s is the constituent corresponding to the wh-phrase in the preceding question; however, a different pattern of prominence is required in the two cases, depending on the context. In (3b), default prosody assigns prominence to the rightmost element Jones’s. The question in (3a) renders Jones’s Given (see, e.g., Schwarzschild 1999 for a formalization of Givenness), which prevents the element from being the most prominent one. At the same time, it is not possible to do away with the Q/A test and account for focusing only in terms of Givenness. In (4), where every element in the answer is rendered Given by the preceding context, the main prominence is assigned to the constituent corresponding to the wh-phrase in the question, which would not be targeted by the default prosody: (4) Q: Who voted for Jones’s father? A: [Jones] voted for his father. Another relevant aspect, extensively discussed in Reich (2002b, 2003), concerns the relation between sentential and term answers. Connectivity effects, e.g., anaphoric relations – (5), indicate that term answers are derived by an elliptical process applied to sentential answers: (5) Q: Whom do Schröder and Blair trust? A: Schröder and Blair trust [Each other]. This process can be analysed as ‘background’ deletion affecting everything ‘not embedded in an F-marked node’ (cf. Reich 2002b: 82–83). However, as illustrated in (6) and (7) (taken and adapted, respectively, from Reich 2002b: 84), not only the accented word, but the whole constituent corresponding to the wh-phrase in the question resists background deletion: (6)

John drove Mary’s red conVERtible. Q: What did he drive before that? A1: *[BLUE]F. A2: [Her [BLUE]F convertible]F.

(7)

Peter bought a conVERtible for Anna. Q: And what else did he do? A1: *[SANdra]F.. A2: He [bought a convertible for [SANdra]F]F.

 Denisa Lenertová & Uwe Junghanns

Although the ungrammaticality of A1 in (6) could be attributed to an additional rule requiring that background deletion respects the minimal functional domain containing the focus (i.e., the DP), such a rule would not be sufficient to explain the contrast between A1 and A2 in (7). Thus, to be able to account for the derivation of the term answers in (5) and (6)(7) in a uniform way in terms of background deletion, it is necessary to consider the constituents corresponding to the wh-phrase as focused, i.e., F-marked in the syntax. Consequently, if we want to account simultaneously for the phenomena in (3) and (4)(7), it is inevitable to combine the notion of Givenness and Question-Answer Congruence (QAC).2 The system of nested F-markings, as indicated in (6) and (7), can give appropriate representations of ‘maximally’ focused sentences with F-marked CP/IP containing pronominalized or Given elements.

2.2

Information structuring in Czech declarative clauses

As is well known, Czech belongs to the languages in which information structuring is reflected in the constituent order. Non-contrastive focus (also called information or presentational focus, cf. É. Kiss 1998b and Drubig 2003) is canonically realized in the clause-final position, obeying the following principle (cf. Junghanns 2002a): (8) Default Principle of Focus Realization (DPFR) The focus exponent appears at the right periphery of the clause. The realization of (8) leads to overt reordering of clausal constituents if the focus exponent is not canonically the rightmost element in the clause (or, in the sense of Cinque 1993, if it is not the most deeply embedded constituent). This is illustrated in (9) with a minimally focused subject – (9a) and verb – (9b) occupying the clause-final position: (9) a. b.

[Talking about situations where somebody names objects.] Tentokrát vyjmenovávala předměty [DP jeho žena]F. (K, shortened) this.time named.SG.FM objects.ACC his wife.NOM ‘This time, his wife named the objects.’ [Talking about small objects.] Malé předměty mou ženu [V fascinují]F. (K) small things.NOM my wife.ACC fascinate.3PL ‘My wife is fascinated by small things.’

Also in case of non-minimal focus, VP- or CP-focus – as in (10a) and (10b), respectively, the focus exponent, as a rule, appears at the right periphery of the clause: (10) a.

(Co to včera Petr vyvedl? ‘What was Peter up to yesterday?’) Včera Petr [VP t rozbil OKno]F. yesterday Peter.nom broke.SG.MS window.ACC ‘Yesterday, Peter broke a window.’ [Daneš 1996: 14]



Wide focus interpretation with fronted focus exponents in Czech 

b. (Na dlouhé pročítání novin však tentokrát nebyl čas. ‘However, it was not the day for indulging in reading the newspaper.’) (C, shortened) [CP Pod oknem už od svítání pobroukávaly below window.INSTR already since dawn.GEN droned.PL [VP[DP motory zaparkovaných AUT] tV]]F. motors.NOM parked cars.GEN ‘Already since dawn the motors of the parked cars had been droning below the window.’ The DPFR yields the ‘objective order’, a term suggested by Mathesius (1939) and standardly used in the traditional literature. Similarly, Sgall, Hajičová & Buráňová (1980: 14) state that in the Czech clause the ‘intonation centre’ is placed at the end of the clause, provided that the clause is realized with ‘normal intonation’. In addition to this canonical ordering, the following IS-strategies have been noticed in the literature: (i) Contrastive Focus: Whereas the DPFR ensures that, as a rule, the exponent of non-contrastive focus appears at the right periphery of the clause, contrastive/corrective focus does not have to appear in a particular position in the Slavic languages. Mathesius (1941) and Trávníček (1937) already observed clause-initial, clause-final, as well as non-peripheral positions as options for contrastive focus (they used the term ‘emphasis’), as illustrated in (11): (11) a. Q: Slyšel jsem, žes ztratil peníze. ‘I’ve heard that you lost your money.’ A1: Ne, Klíče jsem ztratil. no keys.ACC aux.1SG lost.SG.MS ‘No, I lost my keys.’ A2: Ne, ztratil jsem klíče. no lost.SG.MS aux.1SG keys.ACC b. Na svatbu k nim sám [DP pan HRAbě]F přišel. for wedding.ACC to them.DAT himself count.NOM came.SG.MS ‘Even the count attended their wedding.’ [Mathesius 1941: 174] Contrastive focus corresponds semantically to a closed set of alternatives (cf. Junghanns & Zybatow 1997), in contrast to the following cases where narrow focus can also appear sentence-initially in Czech. (ii) Rightward Backgrounding (RB) (cf. Junghanns 2001): In the following examples, the context question induces a minimal non-contrastive focus on a constituent in the answer, which is located sentence-initially on the surface: (12) a. Q: ‘Who lets me know this?’ A: [DP TEta]F ti to vzkazuje. aunt.NOM you.DAT this.ACC lets.know.3SG ‘Your aunt lets you know this.’ [adapted from Sgall & Hronek 1992: 64]

 Denisa Lenertová & Uwe Junghanns

b. Q: ‘What did you buy him?’ A: [DP KNIhu]F jsem mu koupila. book.ACC aux.1SG him.DAT bought.SG.FM ‘I bought him a book.’ Junghanns (2001) argues that cases like (12) underlyingly involve two adjoined CPs, the source and its copy, in both of which a partial deletion is applied: (13)

Due to the deletion applied in the source CP, the focused constituent occupies the right-peripheral position in this CP and thus the DPFR is satisfied. The remaining material in the copy after the deletion belongs to the background and is pronounced with a distinguished low-flat intonation. On the surface, the constituent that is assigned the focus feature occupies the left-peripheral position of the resulting structure, as the analysis of (12) illustrates: (12’) a. [CP[CP [DP TEta]F ti to vzkazuje] [CP TEta ti to vzkazuje]] flat intonation b. [CP[CP [DP KNIhu]F jsem mu koupila] [CP KNIhu jsem mu koupila]] Junghanns (2001) actually analyses two types of RB. Examples like (12) represent the case of maximal RB, where only the focused constituent survives in the source CP. In contrast, partial RB is a combination of leftward and rightward backgrounding, allowing some background material to undergo leftward movement. Consequently, maximal RB leads to clause-initial focus exponents and partial RB to non-peripheral focus exponents. Importantly, the analysis of apparent cases of initial and non-peripheral focus exponents in terms of RB enables for the DPFR to be maintained as a simple and hence conceptually appealing principle. Consequently, a unified account of the trivial cases like (9)-(10) and the non-trivial (RB) cases is possible.3 (iii) Movement in thetic clauses: Thetic clauses (see, e.g., Sasse 1987 and Drubig 1992b), which typically contain one-argument predicates, are characterized by the obligatory prosodic prominence of the subject. They present the information as a monolithic block, being all-focus clauses lacking background material and, at the same time, (superficially) all-comment clauses not containing any overt topic constituent (i.e., the topic remains abstract, see below). (10b) in the previous subsection is an example of a thetic clause containing two adverbials that function as ‘scene setting elements’ rather



Wide focus interpretation with fronted focus exponents in Czech 

than topics. The obligatory prosodic prominence of the subject distinguishes thetic clauses from maximally focused non-thetic clauses. Although the subject can be prosodically prominent even in non-thetic clauses with maximal focus, this is possible only under specific circumstances (e.g., if pronominal internal arguments are deaccented, as in example (22) in section 4). In Slavic, thetic clauses (see Junghanns 2002b for a detailed analysis) involve verb move­ment yielding V < NOM order: (14) a. b.

Volal MANžel. called.SG.MS husband.NOM ‘The husband called.’ Umřel ŘEditel. died.SG.MS headmaster.NOM ‘The headmaster has died.’

The verb raising has been analysed as marking of an ‘abstract’ topic in the functional T(ense) head (cf. Zybatow & Junghanns 1998), which is related to the topic interpretation of the event time in thetic clauses. In contrast to unergative verbs – (14a), for unaccusative verbs V < NOM is also the underlying constituent order, hence the verb movement to mark the abstract topic in T has no visible effect, cf. (14b). Evidence for unaccusative verb raising to T comes from adverbial placement, an issue not discussed here. However, thetic clauses with both unergative and unaccusative verbs also allow the order NOM < V, cf. (15a) and (15b), respectively: (15) a. b.

MANžel volal. husband.NOM called.SG.MS ŘEditel umřel. headmaster.NOM died.SG.MS

Thus the prosodically prominent subject can generally either follow or precede the verb. Usually, V < NOM is described in the literature as unmarked order, whereas NOM < V is said to be marked. Due to the fact that the focus exponent does not appear in the default position at the right periphery of the clause, the fall of the fundamental frequency (f0) on the accented syllable has a bigger extension, which can lead to a perceived markedness. Still, thetic clauses have non-contrastive maximal focus irrespective of the order of their constituents, so cases like (15b) can be analysed in the following way: (15’) b. [CP [DP ŘEditel] … [T [V umřel] T[TOP]] … [VP tV tnom]]F The movement of the subject DP in thetic clauses has received various explanations in the literature. On the one hand, Adamec (1966) calls V < NOM an ancient (or Proto-) Slavic type of word order that frequently occurs in fairy tales and legends. Along this line, speakers choose NOM < V in order to avoid archaic or poetic connotations related to verb-initial structures.

 Denisa Lenertová & Uwe Junghanns

On the other hand, Gladrow (2003: 39), following Janko (2001), claims that NOM < V in thetic clauses implies special pragmatics: “a justification, an explanation, a reminder, a recommendation or a warning.” Mehlig (1994) classifies this type of sentences as “explicative-propositional utterances”. What is at stake here is that these sentences appear to explain the context in which they occur. However, this is true for all thetic clauses, irrespective of the constituent order at the surface. So, serving as an explanation is not specific for thetic clauses with the NOM < V order, therefore, an account of the NOM < V order must go beyond what Mehlig and Gladrow say. One aim of this paper is to point out the crucial parallel between thetic clauses with fronted subject and the maximally focused sentences discussed in the following sections: thetic clauses are a subclass of maximally focused structures and their subjects obligatorily serve as focus exponents. However, it will be shown that focus exponents actually can be fronted in maximally focused sentences in general. Therefore, subject fronting in thetic clauses can easily be subsumed under the more general phenomenon of focus exponent fronting (henceforth FE fronting). Thus we have to do with a broader class of permutations in non-minimal information structure domains. It seems that as long as the fronted element remains the original focus exponent required by the context, the maximal focus interpretation is not violated. Such movement thus obeys a principle that can be informally stated as follows (cf. Junghanns 2003 for a discussion of other phenomena following this principle): (16) Movement in non-minimal focus domains must not prevent the realization of the intended focus. In the next sections, the main properties and restrictions of FE fronting with maximal focus interpretation will be discussed.

3. Maximal focus with a fronted focus exponent: First data In section 2.2, focus exponents in non-minimal focus domains were shown to appear by default sentence-finally, with the exception of thetic clauses allowing the subjectFEs in the initial position. However, a closer look at the data reveals that even nonthetic maximal focus domains allow FEs to be placed sentence-initially. The following examples show contexts with questions like ‘What happened?’, ‘What’s new?’, or ‘Why…?’, where the answer-utterances corresponding to the wh-phrase in the question have focus exponents fronted to the initial position (the b-parts in most of the following examples illustrate the default cases with right-peripheral FEs): (17) (What’s new?) a. MARtu jsem potkala. Martha.ACC aux.1SG met.SG.FM ‘I met Martha.’ b. Potkala jsem MARtu.



Wide focus interpretation with fronted focus exponents in Czech 

(18) (Proč jste se ho tak držel? ‘Why did you stick to him so much?’) a. DOBře mi s ním bylo. well me.DAT with him.INSTR was.SG.NT ‘I felt good with him.’ b. Bylo mi s ním DOBře.

(S)

In many authentic examples, the wh-questions remain implicit. In (19), the speaker remembers something to be said, in (20) an implicit ‘why’-question (‘Why not?’) is understood: (19) [An elderly woman visiting her ill neighbour suddenly remembers:] a. Jo, KNÍžku jsem vám přinesla krásnou.4 oh book.ACC aux.1Sg you.DAT brought.SG.FM nice.ACC ‘Oh, I’ve brought you a nice book.’ b. Přinesla jsem vám (krásnou) KNÍžku (krásnou). (20) (A ty bys do tý Prahy chtěl? ‘And you want to move to Prague?’) a. HOluby ti tam nenechají! pidgeons.ACC you.DAT here not.allow.3PL.FUT ‘They won’t allow you to have pidgeons there!’ b. Nenechají ti tam HOluby!

(S)

(V)

As argued in the previous section, it is reasonable to consider the part of an answer that corresponds to the wh-phrase in the question as F-marked. Under this assumption, the utterances in (17)-(20), being congruent answers in given Q/A sequences (or at least implicit Q/A sequences, for (19) and (20)), show a ‘focus’ movement that is not reflected in the F/B-structure of the answer, as the fronted constituents do not receive a narrow/contrastive focus interpretation. This can be well illustrated by analogous examples with idioms: (21) (Proč ses s ním tak pohádal? ‘Why did you quarrel with him?’) a. BOUdu na mě ušil! hut.ACC for me. ACC stitched.SG.MS ‘He has cheated me!’ b. Ušil na mě BOUdu! In (21a), the idiomatic meaning is not lost, which would be unexpected if the fronted constituent was focused and the rest backgrounded. Having established the basic data, we can now look at the properties of FE fronting in maximal focus domains more closely.

 Denisa Lenertová & Uwe Junghanns

4. Properties and limits of FE-fronting with maximal focus interpretation 4.1

Interfering overt subjects

Although the FEs in the above examples are mostly direct objects, fronting is not limited to a particular syntactic entity: any element serving as an FE in a given utterance can be fronted in contexts like those above. (22) and (23) illustrate fronting with a subject- and PP-focus exponent, respectively: (22) (Proč’s to udělal? ‘Why did you do that?’) a. MATka mi to poručila. mother.NOM me.DAT it.ACC ordered.SG.FM ‘Mother ordered me it.’ b. Poručila mi to MATka. (23) (Proč má takovou náladu? ‘Why is he in such a bad mood?’) a. S MArií se pohádal. with Mary.INSTR refl quarrelled.SG.MS ‘He quarrelled with Mary.’ b. Pohádal se s Marií. However, a generalization that FEs can be generally placed sentence-initially in utterances with wide focus interpretation is too strong, as illustrated by the acceptability contrast in (24): (24) (Co je nového? ‘What’s new?’) a. GUláš jsem uvařila. goulash.ACC aux.1SG cooked.SG.FM ‘I cooked goulash.’ b. #GUláš matka uvařila. goulash.ACC mother.NOM cooked.SG.FM c. Matka uvařila GUláš. ‘Mother cooked goulash.’ Only (24a) with pro-drop fits the ‘What’s new’ context, whereas (24b) is odd, (24c) without FE fronting being the only option here. The judgement is subtle, as (24b) is not ungrammatical. It just does not fit the context induced by the wh-question: the overt subject seems to interfere with the FE fronting. At the same time, FE fronting seems to be felicitous with indefinite pronominal subjects like ‘somebody’: (25) (Co je nového? ‘What’s new?’) a. JAnu někdo hledal. Jana.ACC somebody.NOM looked.for.SG.MS ‘Somebody was looking for Jane.’ b. Někdo hledal JAnu.



Wide focus interpretation with fronted focus exponents in Czech 

On the other hand, the indefinite někdo ‘somebody’ syntactically behaves like other subjects: it blocks Last Resort verb/participle movement, as shown in (26) with a second position (2P) clitic: (26) (Co je nového? ‘What’s new?’) a. Někdo ~se tu snažil najít JAnu. somebody.NOM refl.CL here tried.SG.MS find.INF Jana.ACC ‘Somebody was trying to find Jane here.’ b. #Snažil ~se tu někdo najít JAnu. Last Resort V-/participle movement is assumed for Czech main clauses with a dropped subject, in which no other element is topicalized or available for fronting (cf. Lenertová 2004). The fronted V/participle then serves as a syntactic host for 2P clitics. No such fronting is necessary in embedded clauses, where the complementizer hosts the clitics, hence the Last Resort character of the V-/participle fronting. In line with Holmberg (2000), this movement can be accounted for in terms of a formal EPP feature attracting the closest element to [Spec,CP]. Consequently, elements like subjects, licensed in a higher position than the V/participle, render the movement superfluous. Since někdo blocks Last Resort V-/participle fronting, it is syntactically ‘visible’ for the EPP feature like any other subject. On the other hand, it obviously does not count as a blocking element for FE fronting, in contrast to the subject in (24b). What seems to be decisive here is the unstressed pronominal character of the indefinite subject někdo,5 which suggests that a prosodic, rather than a syntactic factor, is at play. As far as prosody is concerned, the data so far quite resemble thetic clauses: apart from the focus exponent, the typical examples contain mostly closed class items like auxiliary or pronominal elements, unaccented by default, and predicates, which are known to prosodically ‘integrate’ (cf. Jacobs 1999).6 The intonation contour (Figure 1) of the out-of-the-blue utterance in (27) shows that after the accent on the initial focus exponent, the f0-contour remains quite flat: (27) (Málem bych zapomněla: ‘I almost forgot:’) NEhodu jsem viděla! accident.ACC aux.1SG seen.SF.FM Obviously, sentences with overt subjects do not prosodically fit the simple pattern in the relevant contexts. One possible explanation of the contrast between (24b) and (25a) would be that only the pronominal indefinite is allowed to prosodically integrate like other closed class items and predicates, an analogous integration of the subject in (24b), would prevent its interpretation as being F-marked and thus make the sentence non-felicitous in that context.

 Denisa Lenertová & Uwe Junghanns

Figure 1

However, FE fronting is not limited only to such simple cases like (27), as suggested by the following example containing a potentially intervening PP: (28) (Co je? ‘What’s up?’) a. BAlíki ti někdo nechal na vrátnici ti. parcel.ACC you.DAT somebody.NOM left.SG.MS in porter’s.lodge ‘Somebody has left a parcel for you in the porter’s lodge. b. Někdo ti nechal na vrátnici BAlík! Thus, while F-marked subjects (with the exception of pronominal indefinites) seem to resist integration, PPs like in (28) seem to be allowed in an out-of-the-blue utterance. Importantly, certain constellations of F-marked and non-F-marked/Given elements within F-marked sentential constituents allow fronted focus exponents, the necessary condition being that the original focus exponent remains the most prominent element in the phrase, which is obviously connected to prosodic restrictions on the material crossed by the FE fronting. This seems to be well illustrated on the case of F-marked subjects in out-of-the-blue utterances.

4.2

Extraction, embedding, clause type

From the syntactic point of view, the restrictions on FE fronting discussed in the previous section could be accounted for in terms of locality conditions: an element carrying an accent blocks fronting of the focus exponent (cf. Fanselow 2004 for a similar view on a related phenomenon to be discussed in section 5). More evidence for the syntactic character of FE fronting comes from its behaviour in complex sentences. As illustrated by the following authentic example – (29), a fronted focus exponent may originate in an embedded clause. One might object that such cases cover several prosodic boundaries, which would contradict the generalization about prosodic integration stated at the end of the last subsection. However, note that complement clauses



Wide focus interpretation with fronted focus exponents in Czech 

of perceptual matrix verbs (as well as verbs like think) count as prosodically integrated in the matrix clause for the purpose of the F/B-structure: the rightmost element of the embedded clause serves as a focus exponent of the whole complex sentence. (29) [A member of an expedition to the north pole cannot believe that the ice floe he is sitting on is really drifting towards the north.] (Kdybysme jeli, tak by to muselo drncat. Nebo aspoň by se to pohupovalo. ‘If we were moving, it would have to jolt. Or it would at least wobble.’) a. A [ VZDUCHi bysme cejtili, že rozrážíme ti]F! (D) and air.ACC would.1PL feel.PL that cut.1PL ‘And we would feel that we cut through the air!’ b. A [cejtili bysme, že rozrážíme VZDUCH]F! At first sight, FE preposing seems to be felicitous with islands: the previous case – (29) illustrates a perceptive-factive island, the following example a wh-island: (30) (Co se tak rozčiluješ? ‘Why are you so upset?’) a. Ále, KLÍče nevím, kde jsem nechal. prt. keys.ACC not.know.1SG where aux.1SG left.SG.MS ‘I don’t know where I left the keys.’ b. Nevím, kde jsem nechal KLÍče. However, it has been shown that these island types block only wh-movement in Czech, whereas long topicalization7 – (31) can escape them (cf. Meyer 2004): (31) /K TOmui NE\vím, co bych ti řekl. to it.DAT not.know.1SG what aux.1SG said.SG.MS ‘I don’t know what I should say to it.’

[Meyer 2004: 194]

Thus it is not surprising that FE preposing is possible in such cases too. On the other hand, the typical ‘strong’ islands (cf. Cinque 1990) like adjunct clauses are not transparent for FE fronting – (32): (32) (Co je s Petrem? ‘What is with Peter?’) a. *PEnízei přijde, až mu vrátíš ti! money.ACC comes.3SG.FUT when him.DAT return.2SG.FUT ‘He’ll come when you return the money to him.’ b. Přijde, až mu vrátíš PEníze! Therefore, leaving aside the island types that seem to be generally transparent for long non-wh extraction in Czech, the sensitivity of FE fronting to ‘strong’ islands can be taken as evidence for its being syntactic A’-movement. An additional restriction on FE fronting concerns its landing site, which must be in the matrix clause, i.e., the element may not stay in the intermediate position, as illustrated by the following variant of (30):

 Denisa Lenertová & Uwe Junghanns

(33) (Co se tak rozčiluješ? ‘Why are you so upset?’) #Nevím, kde KLÍče jsem nechal. not.know.1SG where keys.ACC aux.1SG left.SG.MS At the same time, the imperative example in (34) shows that FE fronting is not limited to declarative clauses, thus it cannot be attributed to a particular clause type feature: (34) (Sundej si rukavice! ‘Take your gloves off!’) a. A KAbát si rozepni! and coat.ACC refl unbutton.2SG.IMP ‘And unbutton your coat!’ b. A rozepni si KAbát!

(D)

The following conclusions can be drawn from the above mentioned properties: Although FE fronting is restricted by prosodic factors, it shows syntactic characteristics of A’movement like sensitivity to islands. It is not bound to a particular clause-type feature, but it is restricted to root clauses, which suggests a relation to the illocutionary force of the clause. The last point is quite relevant for the contexts licensing FE fronting.

5. Licensing of FE fronting and cross-linguistic parallels It is obvious that the previously discussed fronting of focus exponents cannot be easily identified with information-structurally driven movement to identify the focus (as originally proposed in Rizzi 1997), nor can it be subsumed under the sort of a prosodydriven movement proposed for languages like Spanish or Hungarian (cf. Zubizarreta 1998, Szendrői 2001). However, parallel cases of ‘focus’ fronting with wide focus interpretation have been noticed in German for VP-focus (Krifka 1994: 145–146, Büring 1997: 46, 72) – (35) and ‘bridge’ constructions (Büring 1997: 72–73, Jacobs 1996: 8) – (36): (35)

(Was hat er dann gemacht? ‘What did he do then?’) [Die KÜche]1 hat er [t1 gestrichen]F the kitchen has he painted ‘He painted the kitchen.’ [Büring 1997: 46]

(36) [Den / Garaus] haben sie ihm NICHT\ gemacht. the G. have they him.DAT not made ‘They didn’t finish him off.’ [Büring 1997: 72] As (36) shows, bridge constructions allow fronting of parts of idioms, therefore, the fronted element cannot be interpreted as a topic in the strict sense (some accounts actually argue for analysing bridge constructions as multiple-focus constructions, cf. van Hoof 2003). In Büring’s account the whole VP in (36) is the topic, although only the ‘topic exponent’ moves to Spec, CP, ‘stranding the rest of the VP’ (cf. Büring 1997:



Wide focus interpretation with fronted focus exponents in Czech 

72). However, for (35) it is not clear why the VP should be topicalized at all, moreover, in the case of our fully focused clauses undivided for F/B structure, the whole IP/CP would have to be topicalized. Such kind of topicalization can be only understood as a purely technical device of syntactic fronting rather than checking of some IS-features. Therefore, the data discussed in this paper seem to support an account presented in Fanselow (2004), who argues that movement in cases like (35) is due to a formal rather than semantic/pragmatic property. In this account, elements are blindly attracted to a head as they carry certain formal features, in our case, the accent. The blocking effect of the subjects in Czech discussed in section 4.1 is predicted in this account, as subjects are closer to the head bearing the formal feature than the respective focus exponent (cf. Fanselow 2004: 23 for the same conclusion). However, fronting of an accented element results in a pragmatic markedness of the Czech examples under discussion. The question is whether they share a common pragmatic feature. An implicature of contrast (of the entire utterance) is not the only candidate, although it certainly plays a role in some cases. Still, a contrastive interpretation is not plausible for at least the examples (17), (19), and (28). Some of the examples with FE fronting receive an adversative/objection – (18), (20), (29) or gradation – (29), (34) reading, or are just marked as emphatic/exclamative – (19), (21). Although it is therefore impossible to stipulate a fixed contextual interpretation, it would be plausible to postulate a very general emphasis operator, in line with Bayer (2001).8 Given that his emphasis operator is bound to matrix clauses, the restriction of FE fronting to matrix targets discussed in the previous subsection is expected. This conclusion reflects an important aspect of the utterances with FE fronting, namely their restriction to spoken language and dialogues, in which a (possibly implicit) context question is available.

6. Summary and further research Although default placement of focus exponents in Czech is right-peripheral, this paper pointed out a systematic pattern of sentence initial focus exponents in Czech that is not limited to cases with minimal or contrastive/corrective focus. Departing from thetic clauses, which turn out to be the prototypical cases allowing FE fronting due to their simple structure, the discussion focused on lesser known cases of FE fronting in non-thetic maximally focused sentences. The following conclusions can be drawn from the discussion of the various aspects of FE fronting in maximal focus domains: Movement of the focus exponent is prosodically constrained: it cannot cross an accented element. This restriction seems to prevent a wrong mapping between IS realization and interpretation. Obviously, FE fronting is allowed only as long as it does not obliterate the realization of wide focus in the utterance: the moved focus exponent must not lose its focus exponent status, which could result from crossing accented elements or prosodic boundaries. Therefore, the availability of FE fronting depends on the possibility of prosodic integration of other elements in the clause. While internal arguments and

 Denisa Lenertová & Uwe Junghanns

some closed class items seem to allow prosodic integration, elements like full DP-subjects block FE fronting in maximal focus domains. In thetic clauses, the prosodic intervention effects do not arise, as subjects serve as focus exponents themselves. Therefore, FE fronting can apply more easily in thetic than in non-thetic maximal focus domains. On the other hand, FE movement also shows syntactic properties: although it is not clause-bound, it obeys island-constraints. The prosodic constraints can be syntactically stated in terms of locality effects following from crossing two accented elements. As the moved focus exponent does not fully identify the focus of the sentence, its movement cannot be due to the disambiguation of information structure, and thus its driving force remains unclear. A possible explanation, in line with Bayer (2001), may be derived from its being licensed by an emphasis operator related to sentential mood in the matrix clause; in a similar way as it is assumed for modal particles, this could lead to the observed pragmatic implicatures. At the same time, this movement affects the superficial marker of the focus domain and thus needs to respect the prosodic and accentuation restrictions in maximal focus domains. Thus the phenomenon investigated in this paper touches on several important aspects of the syntax-prosody interface with respect to information structure. Specifically, it provides further evidence for the fact that what superficially seems to be a ‘focus movement’, actually represents something else and cannot be accounted for by a postulation of IS feature checking via syntactic movement. Further research should clarify to what extent the generalizations can be extended to other languages.

Notes * The paper is based on talks given at the colloquium on information structure in Leipzig in January 2004, at the ISAG-Workshop in Tübingen, February 2004, and at the syntax colloquium of the linguistics department in Potsdam, May 2004. We would like to thank the audiences for the discussion, as well as Gisbert Fanselow, Caroline Féry, Roland Meyer, Andreas Späth, Anita Steube, and Stefan Sudhoff for helpful comments on the various stages of this paper. 1. Long vowels (diacritically marked) are independent from lexical stress, which regularly falls on the first syllable in Czech. 2. See Schwarzschild (1999) for an attempt to reduce focusing to the notion of Givenness and Büring (in press) for counterarguments with a conclusion that focusing combines “a rather involved QAC to guide the ‘focus’, and a rather low-level Givenness condition to determine actual F- and accent placement. Drubig (1998a, 2003: 41) distinguishes between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ (completive) focus structure. 3. In a similar vein, Samek-Lodovici 2004 argues for right-dislocation and marginalization structures to account for various non-final occurrences of focus exponents in Italian. 4. Due to the discontinuous constituent, (19a) superficially resembles I-topicalization (cf. Jacobs 1996), also called bridge- or rise/fall-constructions (see, e.g., van Hoof 2003):



Wide focus interpretation with fronted focus exponents in Czech 

(i) Tulipány si objednal ČErvené. tulips REFL ordered red ‘As for tulips, he ordered red ones.’ [Fried 1994:161] In contrast to (i), the example in (19) has a different intonational realization with only one peak on the fronted focus exponent (see Figure 1 below for an example of such an intonation contour). The discontinuous constituent is not obligatory here, pied-piping of the whole constituent would lead to the same acceptability. Note that in spoken Czech, even in the neutral (19b)case with the right-peripheral focus exponent, it is possible for the adjective to follow the focus exponent, as indicated by the brackets. 5. It seems that indefinite pronouns generally resist stress in Czech. As internal arguments, they do not qualify as focus exponents. Rather they are reordered, leaving the right-peripheral verb as the focus exponent – (i). On the other hand, indefinite pronouns may remain in the VP if another argument serves as a canonical focus exponent – (ii): (i) a. Petr někoho VIděl. Peter somebody.ACC saw.SG.MS ‘Peter saw somebody.’ b. #Petr viděl NĚkoho. Peter saw.SG.MS somebody.ACC (ii) Petr koupil někomu KNIhu. Peter bought.SG.MS somebody.DAT book.ACC ‘Peter bought somebody a book.’ 6. Whereas the theories of focus projection assume that predicates receive their F-marking through feature percolation from arguments carrying the pitch accent (cf. Selkirk 1984, among others), Jacobs’ theory of integration abandons the projection mechanism. Recently, Büring (2006) argued for a more neutral theory of prosodic integration, based on the rules of default prominence rather than focus assignment. One of the arguments for a default prominence pattern is the distribution of prenuclear accents, which is claimed to be independent of the focus assignment. 7. Note that long topicalization in Czech patterns like I-topicalization, cf. fn. 4 and a brief discussion in section 5. 8. Bayer (2001) argues for ‘emphatic topicalization’ in Bavarian, which is not triggered by a semantic topic/focus feature, but is rather “a property of the illocutionary force of the utterance” (p. 44), as such being syntactically a root phenomenon, related to constructions involving modal particles.

Sources: C

Cimický, J.: Klíč k pachateli. Praha: Petrklíč, 1993.

D Dobytí severního pólu Čechem Karlem Němcem. (theatre play) K Kraus, I.: Má rodina a jiná zemětřesení. Praha: Academia, 2003. S

Svěrák, Z.: Utopím si ho sám. In: To nejlepší ze Smoljaka, Svěráka a Járy Cimrmana. Knihcentrum, 1998.

V Vesničko má středisková. (film)

In place – out of place? Focus strategies in Hausa* Katharina Hartmann & Malte Zimmermann Intonation languages mark focus consistently on all syntactic constituents. The hypothesis that focus-marking is obligatory is therefore not far-fetched. Language variation with respect to focus-marking would then only concern the way in which focus is grammatically marked. We argue that this conclusion is incorrect. Rather, focus-marking appears to be obligatory in intonation lan­ guages but not necessarily so in tone languages. The paper presents an empirical investigation of the focus strategies in Hausa, where focus-marking with non-subjects is not obligatory. In addi­tion, focus-marking is not driven by the information-structural category focus directly, but relies on the pragmatic notion of emphasis, which in turn implies focus status.

1. Introduction 1.1

Focus: a discourse-semantic category

Following Jackendoff (1972) and many others, we take focus to be a discourse-semantic cate­gory. In this analysis, focus refers to that part of the information conveyed in an utterance that is assumed by the speaker not to be shared by him and the hearer. In other words, focus constitutes the ‘new’ or ‘important’ information which contributes to an updating of Stalnaker’s (1978) Common Ground. Semantically, focus can be taken to induce certain alternatives to the focus constituent. Following Rooth (1985, 1992a), focus on a constituent α (the focus is represented in bold face, the subscript indicates α’s ontological domain) introduces a set of alternatives A, the members of which are elements from the same ontological domain as the focus constituent: A = {x | x ∈ D}. Focus is often encoded grammatically, i.e. by syntactic, morphological or prosodic means. However, consistent focus-marking is not obligatory cross-linguistically. Hence, it is important to keep apart the two notions of focus, an information-structural category, and focus-marking. Focus-marking of a constituent is sensitive to the linguistic context that usually precedes the sentence containing the focus. The structure of the

 Katharina Hartmann & Malte Zimmermann

respective context may give rise to several pragmatic interpretations of the focus. It is said that the context controls the focus (Uhmann 1991). There are four typical contexts for focus control. The most prominent one involves wh-questions, which trigger a focus in the answer: new-information focus, (1a). The second in­volves contexts that are partially corrected in the focus clause: corrective focus, (1b). Third, contexts may provide a set of items, one of which is selected in the focus clause: selective focus, (1c). Finally, focus status is assigned to two or more elements of the same syntactic category and the same semantic word field that co-occur within one or across two adjacent utterances: contrastive focus, (1d). The respective focus constituents are represented in small capitals. (1)

a. b. c. d.

Who was liberated yesterday? Simona was liberated yesterday. Peter bought a Mercedes. No, he bought a Toyota. Did you have bagels or muffins for breakfast? I had bagels for breakfast. An American linguist chided an American politician.

In our view, focus in (1) is a semantically uniform phenomenon. That is, these four foci do not instantiate different semantic types of focus, but only different pragmatic uses of focus. Seman­tically, the foci are identical in that they represent sets of alternatives as outlined above.

1.2

Background information on Hausa

Hausa is by far the most widely spoken of the Chadic languages. These languages are spoken in the vicinity of Lake Chad, a lake with adjoining borders to Nigeria, Chad, Niger, and Cameroon. They belong to the Afro-Asiatic language family. Hausa is spoken by more than thirty-five mil­lion speakers. It is the first language of the ethnic Hausas in northern Nigeria as well as in the south of Niger. Hausa is also used as a lingua franca in many northern regions of Nigeria where it is establishing itself as a mother tongue in many cases (cf. Newman 2000). Hausa is a tone language with three lexical tones: a high tone, which is not marked in the examples, a low tone (`), and a falling tone (^). The basic word order is SVO and pronominal subjects can be dropped. Temporal and aspectual information as well as subject agreement are encoded in a separate morpheme, which we will refer to as the auxiliary, and which is left-adja­cent to the verb, cf. (2):1 (2) Kànde taa dafà kiifii. K. 3sg.perf cook fish ‘Kande cooked fish.’ The article is structured as follows: In section 2, we investigate two syntactic focus strategies in Hausa: The ex situ strategy marks focus syntactically, by movement, and morphologically in the verbal aspect, whereas the in situ strategy, which is restricted



In place – out of place? Focus strategies in Hausa 

to non-subjects, does not mark focus in the same way. Section 3 shows that in situ focus is unmarked not only syntactically and morphologically, but also prosodically. Hausa thus provides evidence against the claim that fo­cus must be marked universally. Sections 4 and 5 look at syntactic focus-marking in more detail. Section 4 shows that there is no strict correlation between the choice of the ex situ or in situ strategy and a particular focus interpretation. Nonetheless, there is a strong tendency to realise newinformation focus in situ. Section 5 shows that the ex situ strategy with non-subjects is not directly triggered by focus, but rather by a pragmatic notion of emphasis in the sense of dis­course unexpectedness. Section 6 discusses the theoretical implications of our findings with re­spect to the questions of (i.) what triggers the ex situ focus strategy, and (ii.) how to deal with the absence of focus-marking. In the final part of the paper, we discuss several alternative strategies that Hausa employs in order to compensate for the lack of expressiveness resulting from incon­sistent focus-marking.

2. Syntactic focus strategies in Hausa Hausa has two strategies for expressing focus. A focus constituent can either be fronted (the ex situ strategy), or it can remain in its base-position (the in situ strategy, cf. Jaggar 2001, to appear, Green & Jaggar 2003, Hartmann 2006). This section presents the syntactic and morphological differences between the two strategies.

2.1

Ex situ focus

The literature on Hausa traditionally assumes that focus constituents are fronted to a left-periph­eral position (cf. Wolff 1993: 504, Green 1997: 110, Newman 2000: 178, and Jaggar 2001: 500–501).2 The fronted constituent has to be a maximal projection, which is optionally followed by a focus-sensitive particle nee (masc./pl.) or cee (fem.).3 As the following examples show, subjects and objects (3), prepositional arguments and adjuncts (4), manner adverbs (5), as well as entire clauses (6) can be focused by being fronted. In the perfective and the continuous aspects, focus is additionally marked by a special form of the auxiliary, which is traditionally referred to as the relative form. While the absolute form is the default form (and therefore not glossed) that ap­pears in basic declarative sentences, the relative form appears in connection with focus fronting, wh-question formation, and relativisation, i.e. with all kinds of A’-movement. (3) a. b.

[DP Kànde] cèe ta-kèe dafà kiifii. K. prt 3sg-rel.cont cooking fish ‘kande is cooking fish.’ [DP Kiifii] nèe Kande ta-kèe dafàa-waa. fish prt K. 3sg-rel.cont cook-nmlz ‘Kande is cooking fish.’

 Katharina Hartmann & Malte Zimmermann

(4) a. [PP Baayan bishiyàa] ya-kèe. behind tree 2sg-rel.cont ‘He is behind the tree.’ b. [PP Dà wu aa] nèe ya sòokee shì. with knife prt 3sg.rel.perf stab him ‘He stabbed him with a knife.’

(Newman 2000:188) (Newman 2000:192)

(5) [AdvP Maza-maza] nèe su-kà gamà aikì-n. (Newman 2000:192) quick-quick prt 3pl-rel.perf finish work-det ‘Very quickly, they finished the work.’ (6) [CP Don ìn biyaa kà ku în] nee na zoo in.order.to 1sg.subj pay you money prt 1sg.rel.perf come ‘It’s in order to pay you the money that I’ve come.’ (Jaggar 2001:500) Notice that focus fronting is subject to general constraints on A’-movement, which will trigger focus pied-piping in certain cases. E.g., focused lexical heads cannot move alone, but have to focus pied-pipe their maximal projection, see section 5.1 for more discussion. Focused VPs can also occur ex situ, but only when nominalised. In (7), the fronted verb is nominally inflected by the genitive morpheme ‑n which connects it to the following object. (7) [Biyà-n -n] (nee) Tankò ya yi. (Newman 2000: 193) paying-gen taxe-def prt T. 3sg.rel.perf do ‘It was paying the taxes that Tanko did.’ Since Hausa is an SVO language, focus fronting of subjects is vacuous and does not result in a difference in word order: The only indication that A’-movement has taken place is the relative morphology of the auxiliary, at least in the perfective and the continuous aspects. In all other aspects (future, habitual and subjunctive), the verbal morphology is insensitive to A’-movement. Therefore subject foci are syntactically and morphologically unmarked in the future, habitual and subjunctive aspects, as illustrated in (8) for the future aspect. (8) Wàaneenèe zâi tàfi Jaamùs? who fut.3sg go Germany ‘Who will go to Germany?’

2.2

Audù zâi tàfi Jaamùs. A. fut.3sg go Germany ‘Audu will go to Germany.’

In situ focus

Focus constituents may be fronted, but fronting is not obligatory. As Jaggar (2001), (to appear), Green & Jaggar (2003) and Hartmann (2006) show, Hausa also allows for in situ focus with non-subjects. If a constituent is focused in its base position, it does not move, and the auxiliary does not appear in the relative form. In the absence of the



In place – out of place? Focus strategies in Hausa 

optional particle nee/cee in sentence-final position, in situ focus is syntactically and morphologically unmarked. This parallels to some ex­tent the situation found with ex situ subject foci in the future, habitual and subjunctive aspect, which are not syntactically or morphologically marked either (cf. section 2.1). 2.2.1 Non-subjects The data we elicited confirm the findings of Jaggar (to appear), who independently investigated the distribution of in situ focus in Hausa. The data in (9) illustrate object in situ focus. Notice that the form of the auxiliary is relative in the wh-question, but absolute in the answer containing the in situ focus. In situ focus is also possible with prepositional objects (10), and with the NP-com­plements of PPs (11). (9) Mèe su-kà kaamàa? what 3pl-rel.perf catch ‘What did they catch?’ (10)

Sun kaamà [NP dawaakii] (nè). 3pl.perf catch horses prt ‘They caught horses.’

(À) cikin mèe su-kà sâa ku i-n-sù? at inside-of what 3pl-rel.perf put money-gen-their ‘Where did they put their money?’ Sun sâa ku i-n-sù cikin [NP àkwàatì]. 3pl.perf put money-gen-their inside.of box ‘They put their money into a box.’

(11) Dà mèe ya sòokee shì? Yaa sòokee shì dà [NP wu aa]. with what 3sg.rel.perf stab him 3sg.perf stab him with knife ‘With what did he stab him?’ ‘He stabbed him with a knife.’ The examples in (12), (13) and (14) exhibit VP-, V- and sentential focus in situ. In contrast to ex situ focus, predicates do not have to be nominalised when focused in situ. (12)

Mèe Audù ya yi jiyà? what A. 3sg.rel.perf do yesterday ‘What did Audu do yesterday?’ Jiyà Audù yaa [VP tàfi tashàa]. yesterday A. 3sg.perf go station ‘Yesterday, Audu went to the station.’

(13)

Mèe Tankò ya yi wà -n? what T. 3sg.rel.perf do to taxes-def ‘What did Tanko do with the taxes?’ Tankò yaa [V biyaa] -n (ne). T. 3sg.perf pay taxes-def prt ‘Tanko paid the taxes.’

 Katharina Hartmann & Malte Zimmermann

(14) Mèeneenèe ya fàaru? Tankò yaa biyaa ì-n (ne). what 3sg.rel.perf happen T. 3sg.perf pay taxes-def prt ‘What happened?’ ‘Tanko paid the taxes.’ Since the in situ strategy does not involve syntactic movement, it is also not subject to con­straints on movement. Consequently, in situ focus is possible with non-maximal constituents, as illustrated in (15) where the preposition in the answer is focused in situ. (15)

Ìnaa fensìr? Ya-nàa kân koo where pencil 3sg-cont head table or underside.of table ‘Where is the pencil? Is it on top of the table or under the table?’ ya-nàa [P àr ashin] pencil 3sg-cont underside.of table ‘The pencil is under the table.’

Wh-expressions can also appear in situ and ex situ. The two strategies do not have to be identical in a question and the corresponding answer. In other words, it is common, but not obligatory that the answer to an ex situ question contains an ex situ focus. This is shown in the following exam­ple, taken from Hausar Baka (HB), a collection of everyday dialogues by Randell, Bature and Schuh (1998): (16) A: B: A: B:

Yànzu wannàn mèe ka-kèe yî? ex situ wh now this what 2sg-rel.cont doing (relative AUX) ‘Now, with this, what are you doing?’ Wannàn inàa shâa ne. in situ focus this 1sg.cont drinking prt (absolute AUX) ‘This, I am drinking.’ Kanàa mèe? in situ wh (echo) 2sg.cont what (absolute AUX) ‘You are doing what?’ Shâa na-kèe. ex situ focus drinking 1sg-rel.cont (relative AUX) ‘I am drinking.’

(HB 3.16)

2.2.2 Subjects Turning to focused subjects, it has been observed that they cannot be realised in situ (Jaggar 2001, Green & Jaggar 2003). The auxiliary obligatorily appears in the relative form, thereby in­dicating vacuous movement of the subject, cf. (17). (17) Wàa ya-kèe kirà-ntà? Daudà ya-kèe /*ya-nàa kirà-ntà. who 3sg-rel.cont call-her D. 3sg-*(rel).cont call-her ‘Who is calling her?’ Dauda is calling her.’



In place – out of place? Focus strategies in Hausa 

Summing up, Hausa in situ focus differs from ex situ focus in three respects. First, it is neither categorially nor structurally restricted: Any syntactic category and any nonmaximal projection, in particular lexical heads, can be focused in situ. Second, in situ focus is not marked syntacti­cally by word order variation nor morphologically by a morphological change in the auxiliary. Since the sentence-final focus sensitive particle nee/cee is not obligatory, it cannot serve as a general indicator of in situ focus. Third, Hausa exhibits a subject – non-subject asymmetry in that subjects must be focused ex situ. The auxiliary necessarily appears in its relative form. It follows that focused subjects must be syntactically marked for focus, whereas non-subjects do not. A comparable special syntactic status for focused subjects has been observed for many other Chadic languages, see e.g. Schuh (1982) for Bade and Ngizim, Schuh (1998) for Miya, Hart­mann & Zimmermann (2004) for Tangale, and Gimba & Schuh (2004) for Bole. Zerbian’s (this volume) discussion of focus in Northern Sotho demonstrates that a comparable special status for subjects is also found outside the Chadic family.4 Why should focused subjects in Hausa and other languages be special in that they must be syntactically marked? Intuitively, the reason seems clear. The default subject position triggers a topic interpretation (see Givón 1976). Therefore, if a subject is to be interpreted as focus, and not as topic, something special has to be done. The subject has to be dislocated, which is reflected by a change in the morphological form of the auxiliary.

2.3

Co-occurrence of in situ and ex situ focus

The existence of two focus strategies in Hausa is further demonstrated by their joint application in multiple questions and the corresponding answers. Since there is only one syntactic position for a fronted focus (see Green 1997), not all foci in such multiple focus constructions can occur ex situ (18a). Instead, only one focus is fronted, while the other(s) remain(s) in situ (18b). Of course, it is also possible to realise all foci in situ, as shown in (18c). (18) Suwàa sukà ganì à ìnaa? who.pl 3pl.rel.perf see at where ‘Whom did they see where?’ a. A1: *Musa nèe à kàasuwaa nèe na ganii, M. prt at market prt 1sg.rel.perf see Hawwà cee à cikin gidaa nèe na ganii. H. prt at inside house prt 1sg.rel.perf see b. A2: Musa nèe na ganii à kàasuwaa, Hawwà cee na ganii à cikin gidaa. c. A3: Naa ga Musa à kàasuwaa, naa ga Hàwwa à cikin gidaa. ‘I saw musa at the market, I saw hawwa inside the house.’ The existence of two focus positions in Hausa raises three interesting issues that we turn to in the following sections. First, is in situ focus, which is neither syntactically nor morphologically marked, prosodically marked instead? This question will be an-

 Katharina Hartmann & Malte Zimmermann

swered in the negative in section 3 where we present a phonetic study of Hausa focus. Second, are the two syntactic focus positions linked to different focus interpretations? Third, is in situ focus a marked exception, or is it a regular means of expressing focus? Answers to the last two questions will be given in section 4.

3. On prosodic focus-marking in Hausa or the absence thereof Cross-linguistically, there are a number of languages that employ a combination of syntactic and prosodic focus-marking. For instance, in German focus is marked prosodically by a H*+L pitch accent (see Uhmann 1991), but in addition, the focus constituent may also optionally move to the sentence-initial position (Frey 2004b, Fanselow 2004). In Hungarian, overt focus movement is accompanied by prosodic marking either on the moved constituent or elsewhere in the clause (Roberts 1998, Szendrői 2003). Looking at tone languages, Chinese also makes use of intonation in addition to syntactic means in order to mark focus (Xu 1999 and Xu 2004). More generally, prosodic prominence is often argued to be a near universal focus-marking device (see e.g. Gun­del 1988b). All this, together with the fact that prosody is known to play a role in connection with ex situ focus in Hausa (Leben, Inkelas and Cobler 1989, see below), leads one to expect that it should also play a role in in situ focus-marking in Hausa. In this section, we show that this expectation is not borne out. Instead, in situ focus in Hausa is not marked at all, at least when it comes to new-information focus in Q/A-pairs. This result is remarkable in light of the fact that grammatical focus-marking is often taken to be obligatory in the theoretical literature on focus. In section 3.1, we give a brief introduction to the intonational phonology of Hausa. In 3.2, we show – based on qualitative, quantitative and perceptual analyses – that in situ focus in Hausa is not marked at all, neither syntactically nor prosodically. In 3.3, we demonstrate that the ab­sence of prosodic focus-marking with in situ focus is not a peculiarity of Hausa, but is also at­tested in other African languages from within and outside the Chadic language family.

3.1

Hausa intonational phonology

Leben, Inkelas and Cobler (1989) and Inkelas and Leben (1990) identify a number of intona­tional processes in Hausa. Like other tone languages, Hausa exhibits the phenomenon of down­drift: In the course of an utterance, the absolute pitch of H tones and L tones decreases with the result that a late H tone may be lower than an early L tone. While downdrift is a global rule that usually affects the entire utterance, there are also more local rules that apply within a more re­stricted domain, the intonational phrase (Leben, Inkelas and Cobler 1989: 46). Longer Hausa utterances usually divide into several such intonational phrases. Quite generally, there appear to be intonational phrase



In place – out of place? Focus strategies in Hausa 

boundaries between an ex situ focus constituent and the rest of the clause, between a subject and the rest of the clause, and between the direct object and subsequent em­ bedded clauses and/or adverbials (phrase boundaries are marked by a slash): (19) a. b.

Maalàm Nuhù nee/ ya hanà Lawàn / dà Hàwwa. Mister N. prt 3sg.rel.perf prevent L. chat with H. ‘It was Mister Nuhu / who prevented Lawan / from chatting with Hawwa.’ Maalàm Nuhù /yaa hanà Lawàn/ dà Hàwwa. Mister N. 3sg.perf prevent L. chat with H. ‘Mister Nuhu / prevented Lawan / from chatting with Hawwa.’

Notice that there is no intonational phrase boundary between the verb and the object NP, which suggests a close structural relationship between the two constituents. Leben, Inkelas and Cobler (1989) isolate three further prosodic processes that can serve as diagnostics for intonational phrase boundaries (Leben, Inkelas and Cobler 1989: 47–49). First, there is an optional process of Low Raising. It assimilates an L tone between two H tones upward and cannot apply across intonational phrase boundaries. For instance, the low tone on Lawàn in (19) cannot be raised since it occurs immediately before a phrase boundary. Second, High Rais­ing, which raises the second H tone in a HHL sequence, is also blocked at intonational phrase boundaries. In contrast, High Base Value Resetting only applies at intonational boundaries. It (re)sets the pitch of the first H tone in an intonational phrase independently of the pitch of the preceding H tone. In effect, High Base Value Resetting interrupts the downward trend induced by downdrift, bringing the pitch back to a higher value from where it can downdrift again. We will see graphic illustrations for some of these processes in the next section. What is important for our purposes is that the application or blocking of these processes constitutes a suitable diag­nostic for the presence or absence of an intonational boundary. As shown by Kanerva (1990), Truckenbrodt (1995), Downing (2002), and many others, prosodic boundaries are often used in place of pitch as a prosodic focusmarking device in African tone languages. Turning to pitch, Leben, Inkelas and Cobler (1989) discuss a process of local H raising ‘where a single High tone on an individual word is raised to highlight that word’ (Leben, Inkelas and Cobler 1989: 46, our italics). An example in question is the H tone on Nuhù in the ex situ phrase Maalàm Nuhù in (19a). The existence of local H raising with ex situ foci shows that Hausa can mark a focus constituent both syntactically and (somewhat redundantly) prosodically.5 Nonetheless, we will see shortly that in situ focus in Hausa is not generally marked.

3.2

No prosodic marking of in situ focus in Hausa

In this section, we present the results of a pilot elicitation study of the prosodic properties of in situ focus in Q/A-pairs. We will show that neither a qualitative analysis, nor a

 Katharina Hartmann & Malte Zimmermann

quantitative analy­sis, nor a follow-up perception study support the assumption that in situ foci are prosodically prominent in terms of pitch or phrase boundaries.6 3.2.1 Experimental set-up In order to check for the prosodic properties of in situ focus constituents, we had a native speaker of Hausa read a total of 16 Q/A-pairs, where the answers were of the form Hàliimà taa yankà X ‘Halima 3sg.perf cut X’.7 We controlled the answers for two conditions: The first condition con­cerns the scope of the focus induced by the question (all-new: What happened?, VP: What did Halima do?, OBJ: What did Halima cut?, and V: What did Halima do with X?).8 The variation in focus served the purpose of checking whether a difference in focus structure resulted in a differ­ence in prosodic structure, either in terms of pitch or of phrasing. The second variation con­cerned the tonal pattern of the object constituent X. We chose four NPs with the tonal patterns HH (kiifii ‘fish’), HL (naamàa ‘meat’), LH (kàazaa ‘chicken’), and LL(L) (àyàbà ‘banana’), respectively. This condition was introduced in order to check for potential interactions between the lexical tone structure of the object NP and certain supra-segmental effects as discussed in the preceding section. The sentences were recorded in a sound-proof acoustic lab. Subsequently, we identified their F0-contours, using praat, cf. Boersma and Wennink (2003). 3.2.2 Qualitative and Quantitative Results Figures 1–4 in the appendix show exemplarily that there are no striking differences in the pitch contour of the recorded sentences, in particular not on or around the focus constituents. This holds no matter whether the focus comprises the entire clause, the VP, the direct object, or the verb alone.9 Since there is no evidence for pitch raising or pitch lowering directly on the focus constitu­ent nor in the surrounding environment, we tentatively conclude that pitch is not used to mark in situ focus in Hausa. Looking at figures 1–4 in more detail, we see that they provide evidence for several of the tonal processes identified by Leben, Inkelas and Cobler (1989). All four sentences exhibit the phenomenon of downdrift: The H tones towards the end of the clause are realised with a lower pitch than those at the beginning. In addition, the data provide evidence for two of the three tonal processes that were argued to provide evidence for the absence or presence of intonational phrase boundaries. Low raising is instantiated on the second syllable of the verb yan-kà, whose L tone is raised in assimilation with the surrounding H tones. Low raising results in a relatively flat struc­ture and shows that there is no intonation boundary between the verb and the object NP. Cru­cially, Low raising is attested in Figure 3, which shows the realisation of narrow focus on the direct object. This suggests that in situ focus on an object NP in Hausa is not marked by a pro­sodic boundary before the object NP.



In place – out of place? Focus strategies in Hausa 

High raising is instantiated on the first syllable of the verb yan-kà, whose H tone is raised higher than that of the preceding auxiliary taa in an HHL sequence. The application of High raising shows that there is no intonation boundary between the auxiliary and the verb. Crucially, High raising is attested in Figure 4, which shows the realisation of narrow in situ focus on the verb. This suggests that in situ focus on a verb in Hausa is not marked by a prosodic boundary before the verb either. The same applies to VP-focus in Figure 2. Since there is no evidence for an intonation boundary preceding or following the focus constituent, we tentatively conclude that prosodic boundaries are not used for marking in situ focus in Q/A-pairs in Hausa, contrary to what we find in some Bantu languages.10 In particular, sentences with narrow focus on the object (Figure 3) and narrow focus on the verb (Figure 4) cannot be prosodically distinguished. The focus constituent is not realised with a particular (raised) pitch, nor is there a prosodic boundary preceding or following the focus constituent. An additional quantitative analysis of the acoustic parameters pitch, duration, and intensity provided no evidence for prosodic marking of in situ focus in Q/A-pairs either. The focus con­stituent is not realised with a particular pitch, nor with a particular intensity, nor is it lengthened. Even though the study has no statistical significance, we feel justified in taking these findings as support for the central claim of this section, namely that in situ focus in Q/A-pairs is not marked prosodically in Hausa. In the quantitative study, we measured five acoustic parameters (mean pitch, maximum pitch, minimum pitch, duration, and intensity) for each of the four constituents Hàliimà (SUBJ), taa (AUX), yankà (V), and naamàa / àyàbà / kiifii / kàazaa (OBJ) of our sample sentence Hàliimà taa yankà X ‘Halima cut X’ in each focus condition (OBJ, VP, V, all-new). Measure­ments were taken for a pitch range from 75 Hz to 300 Hz, the standard pitch range for male speakers (see Boersma & Weenink 2003). Tables 1–5 in the appendix present the average values for mean pitch, maximum pitch, minimum pitch, intensity, and duration over the four instantiations of Hàliimà taa yankà X. By considering only average values, we hope to neutralise the potentially misleading effects of inci­dental paralinguistic differences, e.g. the effects of a raised voice (see e.g. Ladd 1996: 270). At the same time, the average values should bring out more clearly, i.e. not obscured by incidental paralinguistic effects, any categorical, focus-related differences, if they exist.11 For instance, if a particular focus constituent, say the verb, was prosodically prominent in some way, say, if it was realised with higher pitch, or with a longer duration, or with a higher intensity, this should show in the average values. Notice that the bold-faced values are the values for verb and object in the re­spective focus conditions, i.e. verb focus and object NP focus. If narrow in situ focus was high­lighted prosodically, we would expect a significant aberration in these cells. Looking at the pitch values in tables 1–3 first, we see the effects of downdrift: The values in the more rightward columns are lower than the values in the more leftward columns. On the other hand, the pitch values do no differ significantly for the various focus conditions. With the exception of the second column in table 2, there is only

 Katharina Hartmann & Malte Zimmermann

slight variation of mean, maximum and minimum pitch within each column (2–5 Hz). Nor is it the case that the mean or maximum pitch of a constituent is higher, let alone significantly higher, when this constituent is focused. While the average pitch on narrowly focused verbs is minimally higher than on verbs that are not in focus, or part of a wider focus, the same cannot be said for their maximum pitch, nor for mean or maximum pitch on narrowly focused objects. This shows that in situ focus is not marked by a significant change in pitch in Hausa Q/A-pairs. The values for intensity and dura­tion in tables 4 and 5 show that in situ focus is not indicated by stress either, where stress is to be understood as phonetic salience in terms of loudness or duration (Ladd 1996: 58). While nar­rowly focused verbs are realised with a slightly higher ( 86%) correctly as well-formed or not well-formed, indicating that the reliability of the test results is quite high. 13. The 12 target structures were part of an overall set of of 28 Q/doubleA-pairs, all formed out of previously recorded material. The rest of the pairs, both matching and non-matching Q/A-pairs, were used as fillers. The Q/A-pairs were given in random order, with two filler pairs introducing, and two filler pairs concluding the main test (in order to counter potential effects of initial confusion or fatigue). For methodological reasons, each Q/doubleA-pair was presented in the following way: Q – A1 – Q – A2, i.e. the question was repeated before the second answer was given. In order to counter possible ordering effects, i.e. the tendency observed in test persons to judge the second of two alternatives as better, we gave the original answer as A1 in half of the cases, and as A2 in the other half. 14. In Miya, a western Chadic language, a similar situation holds with respect to in situ focus: ‘Miya can express contrastive focus with a pseudo-cleft construction, but the regular focus construction used to answer questions can also express contrastive focus.’ (Schuh 1998: 332). In contrast to Hausa, ex situ foci are always contrastive: According to Schuh, the subject in (i) as well as the object in (ii) are contrastive foci (FM = focus marker): (i) mәn jíy baa dә ra-tlәn aa wàshasham I FM one. who perf exceed-them with years ‘I am the one who has spent longer than (any of) them.’ (ii) Tә jíy ba faarà zahiya-yá gwalfә ta miyà he FM one.who do.first make-into.him leadership of Miya ‘He’s the one to whom they gave the leadership.’ 15. See Jaggar (to appear) for the importance of such quantitative studies. 16. We considered both verbal and verbless clauses. In identifying in situ and ex situ occurrences of focus in verbless clauses, we adhered to Jaggar’s strategy according to which an element counts as being realised in situ when it occurs in its normal (non-initial) base position. In contrast, ex situ elements are those that have been fronted from their unmarked position to a clause-initial position. 17. This tendency is also reflected in the set-up of many grammatical question-answer drills in textbooks (Cowan and Schuh 1976, Jungraithmayr and Möhlig 1986), where ex situ questions are frequently to be answered by an in situ focus. 18. We use the formalism of the structured meaning account of focus. R stands for a variable over 2-place relations, P for a variable over 1-place predicates, see von Stechow (1991b) and Krifka (2001a) for more discussion. 19. Notice that such partial focus movement is not always possible. The following Q/A-pair was judged infelicitous: (i) Mèe Audù ya yii? #Fi~ rjìi nee ya sàyaa. what A. 3sg.rel.perf do fridge prt 3sg.rel.perf buy ‘What did Audu do?’ ‘He bought a fridge.’ 20. Partial focus movement is also possible in German, see (i) (Fanselow 2004: 2) and Hungarian, see (ii) (Roberts 1998: 137): (i) What happened last weekend? Ein Buch habe ich gelesen. a book have I.nom read ‘I read a book.’



In place – out of place? Focus strategies in Hausa 

(ii) Péter a Hamletet olvasta fel a kertben (nem pedig úszott) Peter the Hamlet read pfx the garden-ine not rather swim ‘What Peter did was read Hamlet in the garden (rather than swim).’ In (i), the object appears in the sentence initial position, although the question asks for an allnew focus. In (ii), only the object moves to the preverbal focus position, although the whole VP is interpreted as a contrastive focus. 21. Constraint-based approaches run into the same problems, since they also assume that focus must be prosodically prominent. This is reflected in constraints such as focus prominence (Büring 2001, Selkirk 2004) or foc (Schwarzschild 1999). Given that these constraints can – in principle – be also ranked low, their effect might not always show up. However, focus prominence is still considered indispensable in these theories, leading to the same problems as syntax-based focus theories à la Selkirk (1984, 1995). 22. The discussion in Heine & Reh (1983) is restricted to languages that mark focus morphologically, but the distinction seems to hold more generally for other focus marking devices, too. 23. Bearth (1999: 129) calls this indirect strategy of focus marking subtractive morphological focus marking. The same strategy seems to be the discourse-functional trigger for the syntactic process of scrambling in German. There, a constituent can be focused by moving any non-focal material intervening between the focus constituent and the verb to a scrambled (topic?) position. 24. Interestingly, the auxiliary occurs in the relative form with some of these particles in the absence of overt A’-movement.

 Katharina Hartmann & Malte Zimmermann

Appendix



In place – out of place? Focus strategies in Hausa 

 Katharina Hartmann & Malte Zimmermann

Table 1.  Average mean pitch of constituents in ‘Hàliimà taa yankà X’ (in Hz) OBJ-focus VP-focus V-focus all-new focus

SUBJ

AUX

V

OBJ

100.05 102.39 104.02 100.79

95.85 95.86 97.47 95.45

94.90 95.65 96.91 95.24

84.27 85.51 84.03 83.86

Table 2.  Average maximum pitch of constituents in ‘Hàliimà taa yankà X’ in (Hz) OBJ-focus VP-focus V-focus all-new focus *

SUBJ

AUX

V

OBJ

114,71 117,98 120,79 114,92

115,90* 107,98 113,52 108,75

105,01 100,67 104,48 103,65

91,27 96,46 92,83 101,18

We take the high values in this column to be the result of a disturbance created by the plosive /t/ in taa

Table 3  Average minimum pitch of constituents in ‘Hàliimà taa yankà X’ in (Hz) OBJ-focus VP-focus V-focus all-new focus

SUBJ

AUX

V

OBJ

83.33 85.28 86.25 85.15

92.70 93.58 94.23 91.63

80.25 82.35 82.20 83.57

77.19 76.43 76.42 75.84

Table 4.  Average intensity of constituents in ‘Hàliimà taa yankà X’ in dB OBJ-focus VP-focus V-focus all-new focus

SUBJ

AUX

V

OBJ

67.86 68.69 69.58 69.05

63.58 72.33 61.69 67.16

67.83 68.65 69.42 68.62

63.36 62.43 64.20 62.16



In place – out of place? Focus strategies in Hausa 

Table 5.  Average duration of constituents in ‘Hàliimà taa yankà X’ (in s)

OBJ-focus VP-focus V-focus all-new focus

SUBJ

AUX

V

OBJ

0.67 0.63 0.66 0.675

0.20 0.195 0.17 0.2

0.48 0.41 0.43 0.45

0.57 0.55 0.52 0.56

Table 6.  Occurrences of ex situ and in situ focus ex situ focus

in situ focus

Σ

354

140

494

#

Table 7.  Occurrences of ex situ and in situ focus in wh-questions, answers, and other instances of focus ex situ

#

in situ

Σex situ Σin situ

wh

answer

other

wh

answer

other

175

25

154

29

99

12

354

140

part ii

Information structure and pragmatics Clause structure and context

Instructions for interpretation as separate performatives* Paul Portner Many morphemes and constructions are intuitively and traditionally seen not as introducing con­tent, but rather as informing the addressee how the sentence’s content is to be used or managed. This paper explores three such constructions: vocatives, topics, and force markers. It proposes that they can be seen as having performative meaning; that is, they introduce separate performatives alongside the sentence’s main speech act. The paper also suggests that the theory of expressive meaning provides an appropriate framework for analyzing these separate performatives.

1. Overview A wide variety of linguistic forms and constructions have been seen not as contributing to semantic content, but rather as helping to determine how that content is used. In this paper, we will examine three such forms: vocatives, topics, and force markers: (1) a. Mary, what’s that you’re eating? b. Mary, please have a seat. (2) a. MARY, I like a lot, but JOHN, I hate. b. Mary, I like her a lot. (3) a. IMP [sit down]! b. Q [does Mary like John]? c. ASSERT [John likes Mary]. In informal terms, a vocative identifies to whom the sentence’s content is addressed, a topic in­forms the addressee what it’s about, and a force marker says how the speaker wishes to use it to update the conversational context. I include all of these functions under the broad label ‘instructions for interpretation’, and in this paper I will pursue

 Paul Portner

the idea that they should be studied within a single theoretical framework.The main ideas of my analysis are as follows: i. Instructional meanings are expressive, in the sense recently studied by Potts (2003a). Expres­sive meanings constitute a separate ‘dimension’ from ordinary atissue meaning. ii. The expressive meaning of the three forms in (1a), (2a), and (3a) are, roughly, as follows: (1) a. ‘I request Mary’s attention.’ (2) a. ‘My mental representation of Mary is active.’ (3) a. ‘This sentence’s at-issue meaning is added to the addressee’s To-do List.’ iii. Embedded topics (embedded vocatives and force markers as well, if they exist) can be inter­preted with respect to a context provided by embedding operator. Section 2 will outline some background considerations concerning the meaning of vocatives, and then sketch an expressive account. Section 3 will focus on topics and section 4 will examine how an expressive analysis could be applied to force markers.1 Finally, the possibility of having topics (and perhaps vocatives and force markers as well) in embedded clauses shows that expressive meanings can be absorbed into nonexpressive content in constructions with a context-shifting character, such as propositional attitudes (cf. Schlenker 2003, Anand & Nevins 2004); section 5 will discuss cases in which topics are embedded under propositional attitude verbs.

2. Vocatives 2.1

Vocatives and reference to the addressee

Before we get into the expressive meaning of vocatives, it will be helpful to note some background facts concerning their syntax and interpretation. In the first place, the examples in (4) show that a vocative may occur with any clause type, and need not correspond to an argument: (4)

a. b. c. d. e.

John, you may be interested in this. Maria, what’s that on your nose? Test takers, no one touch your pencils! Kids, Anna play the piano and Kristin turn pages for her! Susan, did John finish the illustrations?

In imperatives, the vocative must be related to the subject, since the vocative refers to the ad­dressee(s) and the subject must refer to, overlap with, or quantify over the set of addressees. (This last point about imperatives is not true in all languages, but it is in English and many others; cf. Mauck et al. 2004.)



Instructions for interpretation as separate performatives 

In order to account for the fact that vocatives must be associated with the addressee, the ad­dressee must be grammatically represented in some way. Reference to the addressee could be in­troduced phonologically, morphologically, or syntactically; for convenience, I follow Zanuttini (2004) in proposing that vocatives occur in the specifier of a particular syntactic phrase, labeled addrP, though for purposes of the present paper this choice is not crucial. The representation will be something like the following:

Of interest to us here is the semantics of the addrP; in particular, we have to make clear how the reference to the addressee is handled. The tree in (5) reflects the idea that the addr head bears sec­ond person features, which are shared with the vocative in its specifier. An XP2p with these features presupposes that XP denotes the set of addressees; otherwise it doesn’t affect the ordinary semantic meaning of the IP it combines with. This point reflects the intuition that a sentence with a vocative is truth-conditionally equivalent to the corresponding sentence without a vocative, and is formal­ized in (6):2 (6) a. VXP2pBC = [λw λx: {y: VXPBc (wc)(y)} = addr(c). VXPBc (w)(x) = 1] b. Vaddr2pBC = [λp λQ. p] As mentioned above, (6b) says that the meaning of addr always ignores the vocative, and yields a meaning for addrP equivalent to IP. It is possible that addr plays a more dramatic role in impera­tive semantics, since in imperatives we need to make sure that the denotation of the subject of the sentence is related to the addressee(s) in the appropriate way. The details of imperative semantics are not crucial for us here, but see Zanuttini & Mauck (2004).

2.2

Instructional meaning of vocatives

2.2.1 Informal description The pragmatic contribution of vocatives remains to be characterized explicitly later on, but can be described informally as indicating that the addressee is to pay special attention to the sentence’s semantic content.3 There are at least three different subtypes of vocatives (and very possibly more). We can begin by differentiating two subtypes, what Zwicky (1974, 2004) refers to as calls and ad­dresses: i. “Calls are designed to catch the addressee’s attention.” ii. Addresses “maintain or emphasize the contact between speaker and addressee”. (Zwicky 1974: 787)

 Paul Portner

Strong support for the claim that calls and addresses are really distinct comes from the fact, pointed out by Zwicky, that some items can only be used as calls: (7) a. Cabby, take me to Carnegie Hall. b. *I don’t think, cabby, that the Lincoln Tunnel is the best way to go to Brooklyn. (8) a. Hey you, give me that boat hook! b. *What I think, you, is that we ought to take the money and run. (Zwicky 1974: (32)-(35); also Schegloff 1978) To the extent that (7b) is acceptable, it is extremely condescending. Zwicky (1974) also discusses the fact that vocatives may express a wide variety of features of the discourse situation, specifically those concerning the nature of the relationship between speaker and addressee: cf. honey, dumbass, ma’am, your honor, Franz, Franz Kafka, Mr. Kafka, waiter, dude, son, comrade (all of these from Zwicky 1974). It’s possible that these sociolinguistic aspects of the use of vocatives are part of the meaning associated with the being a vocative; alternatively they might represent independent effects due to lexical choice. That is, it’s obvious that the use of honey in any grammatical position will carry a particular affective meaning having to do with the relationship between speaker and the referent. (This meaning may well be expressive, by the way.) So the fact that a vocative use of honey has that meaning may not tell us anything about the mean­ing of vocatives in and of themselves. But it’s also possible that it is part of the meaning of voca­tives (or perhaps only some sub-types of vocatives) that they indicate the relationship between speaker and addressee, in which case the fact that words like honey independently have a similar meaning would make them natural candidates for use as vocatives. Though I don’t have a firm opinion on this issue, it seems to me that the fact illustrated with (7b) suggests that the meaning of addresses does involve the relationship between speaker and ad­dressee. The oddness of cabby here is due to the fact that only address terms may easily function as addressees. Therefore, we have doctor and judge easily, teacher only out of the mouth of a child, terms like madam and sir, and names. As far as I can tell, aside from names, contemporary English only uses “upward looking” address terms.4 They refer to an individual who is seen as having higher status within the interaction, at least in as much as his or her status is determined by the named role of doctor, judge, etc. But cabby is not plausibly upward looking in this sense. There­fore, it’s hard to construe it as an address term, and a sentence like (7b) is virtually unacceptable. In order for it to be made acceptable, it can only be understood as similar to such outdated “downward looking” address terms as boy, kid, and driver. Because of this, to the extent that it’s acceptable, it is condescending. If this reasoning is correct, it supports thinking that part of the meaning of ad­dresses has to do with the relationship between speaker and addressee.



Instructions for interpretation as separate performatives 

There are probably further subtypes of vocatives. As pointed out by Robert Frank (p.c.), cabby can be used sentence-finally, while you is either odd or has a special meaning.5 This is not a plausible position for a call: (9) a. Please take the Lincoln tunnel, cabby. b. ?Please take the Lincoln tunnel, you. Given that the set of vocative NPs possible in final position differs from those possible in initial and medial position, it seems that final vocatives represent a separate subtype. I will refer to final vocatives as tags. In this paper, I will focus on calls, because my major concern here is figuring out what kind of semantic framework should be used to understand vocatives, and the meaning of calls seems to be the most clear. As Zwicky pointed out, calls function to get the addressee’s attention. Some of their characteristics make sense in light of this function: Clear cases of calls can be introduced by hey. They may be realized by certain quantifiers, for example everyone; I suggest that everyone is shifted to type e and therefore can be used to catch the attention of a whole group of addressees. Downward entailing and proportional quantifiers are unacceptable, because they cannot be so shifted. The distribution of indefinites as initial vocatives is complex: Indefinites introduced by a(n) are impossible. Some is acceptable in imperatives, but not in other clause types, when the set of addressees is explicitly mentioned, as with (10): (10) Some of you, come here! However, this type of phrase cannot be introduced by hey. Moreover, it doesn’t conform to the pre­supposition of vocatives proposed in (6), and the fact that it is only possible in imperatives suggests that the intimate relationship between vocative and subject in imperatives is crucially involved here. It might simply be a subject which allows for an unusual intonational break following it, or it may combine the functions of vocative and subject in some way. To the extent that it has a call-like function at all, it seeks the attention of all of the addressees. That is, it seeks the attention of the denotation of you, not some of you, so in a pragmatic sense only you represents the call. Some quantifies the subject argument with the set of addressees as its domain. This isn’t the place to go further into the complexities of vocatives and subjects in imperative clauses.6 Overall, if we leave aside patterns specific to imperatives, the view that calls refer to the addressee or set of addressees, and serve to catch the addressee(s)’ attention, seems correct. Though I am focusing on calls, I would like to make a few tentative comments about tags and addresses. It seems to me that tags, i.e., final vocatives, are as Zwicky describes addresses. They are used to maintain contact with the addressee. It makes sense that they may be realized by every­one, but not other quantifiers or you.7 The situation with someone is similar to what we found with calls. Final someone can only occur with imperatives, and so may be a subject, or at least involved in some special relation to the subject argument: (11) Help me someone!

 Paul Portner

Addresses, that is medial vocatives and initial vocatives which aren’t calls, are similar to tags, but they convey an additional emphasis on the sociolinguistic import of the lexical choice. As with final vocatives, they can be realized by everyone, but not other quantifiers or you. I speculate that you is impossible because there’s no special sociolinguistic import of you to be emphasized. The fact that only noun phrases which can function as address terms are possible makes sense, since these terms incorporate relevant sociolinguistic information as part of their meaning. More work will be necessary to better understand the nature of this meaning (it may well be expressive), and how it is related to the syntax of addresses. 2.2.2 The expressive meaning of vocatives I suggest that the meaning of vocatives be formulated as expressive content in the sense discussed recently by Potts (2003a,b, 2004). Potts has applied his theory of expressive content to conven­tional implicatures, epithets, appositives, and honorifics. All of these present meaning which is separate from the central at-issue content expressed by a sentence. For example, the appositive in (12) (= Potts 2004, (22a)) adds the non-atissue content ‘Lance is a cyclist’. The antihonorific in (13) (= Potts & Kawahara 2004, (11)) adds the non-at-issue content ‘It sucks that Mary overslept’. (12) Lance, a cyclist, is from Texas. (13)

John-wa [Mary-ga nesugoshi-chimat-ta] -koto-o shitteiru. John Mary oversleep-antihon-past -fact know At-issue: ‘John knows that Mary overslept.’ Expressive: “It sucks that Mary overslept.”

(Japanese)

Some of the main points of Potts’ theory are as follows: 1. Expressive content can be introduced in various ways, including intonation, particular mor­phemes, and syntactic structures. 2. Expressive meaning never has complex compositionality. For example, there is no intona­tional pattern which needs to be combined with another intonational pattern in order to express a meaning. (This would be like a predicate, which must combine with a subject to express a proposi­tion.) Of course it’s possible to combine multiple intonational patterns, but the result is simply the sum of what you’d get if you used each independently. 3. This means that we can compute the overall expressive meaning of a sentence as simply the result of gathering together all of the simple expressive meanings introduced somewhere in the structure. (14) I met that bastard Lance, a cyclist. This sentence has the expressive meaning {‘Lance is a cyclist’, ‘Lance is a bad guy’}.



Instructions for interpretation as separate performatives 

4. The final meaning of a sentence has two dimensions, and can be represented as a pair, kA, Cl, where A is the ordinary, at-issue meaning and C is the set of expressive meanings. 5. Expressive meanings are performatives (Potts & Kawahara’s 2004). This implies that they are automatically true once understood. So, the expressive meaning of (12) could perhaps be better paraphrased as ‘I hereby assert that Lance is a cyclist’ and (13) as ‘I hereby assert that it sucks that Mary overslept’ (I won’t go into details concerning the nature of performatives here.) Potts manages the parallel calculation of the ordinary meaning A and the expressive meaning C via the type theory; specifically, a given domain of meaning may have two types, τA and τC. The details of the available types explain what kinds of expressive meanings we find (e.g. the lack of complex compositionality). I do not follow Potts in these matters of mechanics because I think it is more straightforward to calculate the two meanings explicitly using separate interpretation func­tions, following the idea of Rooth’s (1985) focus semantics. In the approach I prefer, there are two inter­ pretation functions, V Bc for regular content and V BcC for expressive content.8 The following interpreta­tion principles provide a starting point; they can interpret a reasonable subset of English. 1. Ordinary Function Application For all nodes N with daughters Dl and D2, if VD2Bc is in the domain of VD1BC, then VN Bc = VD1Bc (VD2Bc) VN BcC = VD1BcC ∪ VD2BcC.

2. Expressive Function Application For all nodes N with daughters Dl and D2, if VD2Bc is in the domain of VD1Bc, then VN Bc = VD2Bc VN BcC = {VD1BcC (VD2Bc)} ∪ VD2BcC.



3.

Unary Branching For all nodes N with single daughter D, then VN Bc = VDBc VN BcC = VDBcC.

According to these rules, expressive meanings can only be introduced via two methods: They may arise via functions from ordinary meanings to expressive meanings; such a function is applied to its argument by Expressive Function Application and the result is then in the set of ‘finished’ expres­sive meanings. Alternatively (and I’m not sure if this ever happens), they may be introduced di­rectly as members of some node’s set of finished expressive meanings (e.g., they could enter the derivation as the member of a singleton VTBcC, for some terminal node T). Once an expressive meaning

 Paul Portner

is a member of the set of expressive meanings, there is no rule which allows it to take ad­ditional arguments; it will simply percolate up the tree.9 I illustrate the functioning of these principles by looking at (12) again. I assume that the ap­positive structure causes the following meaning-shift:10 (15) a. VNPapposBc = ∅ b. VNPapposBcC = VNPBc The following illustrates how the compositional rules work (cf. (12)), given simple assumptions about lexical meanings: 1. (a) VLanceBc = Lance (b) VLanceBcC = ∅ 2. (a) VisBc = [λf.f] (b) VisBcC = ∅ 3. (a) VfromBc = [λx λy λw. x is from y in w] (b) VfromBcC = ∅ 4. (a) VTexasBc = Texas (b) VTexasBcC = ∅ 5. (a) VaBc = [λf.f] (b) VaBC = ∅ 6. (a) VcyclistBc = [λx λw. x is a cyclist in w] (b) VcyclistBcC = ∅ 7. (a) Va cyclistBc = [λx λw. x is a cyclist in w] (b) Va cyclistBcC = ∅ 8. (a) Va cyclistapposBc = ∅ (b) Va cyclistapposBcC = [λx λw. x is a cyclist in w] 9. (a) VLance a cyclistapposBc = Lance (b) VLance a cyclistapposBcC = {[λw.Lance is a cyclist in w]} 10. (a) VLance a cyclistappos is from Texas B c = [λw.Lance is from Texas in w] (b) VLance a cyclistappos is from TexasBcC = {[ λw.Lance is a cyclist in w]} The idea of non-at-issue content as a separate performative is natural for calls. For example, the meaning of John as a call in (16a) is something like (16b): (16) a. John, your dinner is ready! b. “I hereby request John’s attention.” It’s difficult to figure out whether the meaning of calls is associated with their intonation or their syntactic position. I will assume that the meaning ultimately comes from intonation, and that posi­tion plays a role only indirectly. This assumption may turn out to be in error, but it is not essential to the main claims of this paper. An interpretation like the following will achieve the correct re­sults: (17) a. VCALLBcC = [λx λw. speaker(c) requests x’s attention in w] b. CALL is not in the domain of V Bc.



Instructions for interpretation as separate performatives 

VCALLBcC takes the referent of the vocative as argument, saturating x in (17a), and produces an expressive proposition. The fact that VCALLBcC is defined, while VCALLBc is not, marks the result­ing proposition, which is the meaning of the vocative, for inclusion in C rather than A. It was noted above that quantifiers cannot in general function as vocatives (except in those cases in which I proposed that they can be shifted to type e). This fact can be given a precise expla­nation in light of the expressive analysis. As noted by Potts (2003a), it is impossible to quantify ‘across dimensions’ of meaning. For example, a quantifier which contributes to at-issue meaning cannot bind a variable which contributes to expressive meaning. Suppose we tried to use a quanti­fier as a call. Since the meaning in (17) takes a type e argument, the quantifier would have to scope out (e.g., undergo quantifier raising). This would place it in a position in which it would contribute to at-issue meaning, while its trace would serve as the argument to VCALLBcC, and thereby contrib­ute to expressive meaning. The trace would therefore not be semantically bound (though the correct syntactic c-command structure might hold).11 Assuming that traces must be semantically bound, the sentence would be ungrammatical on these grounds. Similar explanations hold for the inability of quantifiers to function as other types of vocatives or sentence topics. For reasons of space, I cannot discuss the other types of vocatives in any detail, but I include some initial thoughts below:

1. Tags I suggest that the expressive meaning of John, used as a tag, is the separate performative in (18b). (18) a. What are you doing, John? b. “I hereby reiterate that John is my addressee.” While on this view, tags only reiterate a proposition which is already presupposed, they could nev­ertheless have a communicative function. For example, in a situation in which the hearers might be unsure who is the intended addressee, or in one in which the possibility that someone else might have been the addressee is in the context, the use of a tag would ensure that the speaker’s and hear­ers’ contexts continue to be aligned. In light of this view of tags, the oddness of you would be due to the redundancy of “I hereby reiterate that you are my addressee”.

2. Addresses I hypothesize that addresses are like tags, as in (19b), and furthermore express the additional sepa­rate performative in (19c): (19) a. I don’t know, my lord, if we have any potted meat in the house. b. “I hereby reiterate that my lord is my addressee.” c. “I hereby address you as my lord.”

 Paul Portner

An unusual aspect of the meaning in (19c) is that the vocative is both mentioned and used. In its favor is that it allows an explanation of the restrictions on addresses mentioned above. According to (19c), only NPs which can be used as address terms will be felicitous. We have seen in this section that the instructional meaning of vocatives can be represented as performatives. The technology of expressive meaning is an appropriate one for deriving such per­formative meanings. Moreover, it is possible to explain some of the restrictions on the kinds of NPs that can function as vocatives.

3. Topics Topics can be thought of in a similar way to vocatives. The main idea would be that Maria in (20) introduces an expressive meaning: (20) Maria, I like her very much. The strategy of modeling the contribution of topics by means of a separate performative leaves open to a significant extent what the nature of that contribution is. We can draw ideas about how to formulate this expressive meaning from various intuitive ways of characterizing topics. Many theo­ries of topics try to take account of the intuition that they refer to the thing which the sentence is about. Such a view can be labeled the information structure theory of topics (e.g., Reinhart 1981, Vallduvì 1992, Lambrecht 1996a, Portner & Yabushita 1998, Jacobs 2001). Some theories of this sort: 1. Reinhart attaches the propositional content of a sentence to the referent of its topic phrase. One can think of a sentence meaning as a pair of a thing and a proposition, and this expresses the idea that the proposition is about that thing. 2. Portner & Yabushita flesh out a Reinhart-style analysis within a dynamic semantics model. This allows for the case where the topic doesn’t refer to anything in reality. The idea is that the common ground is partitioned into cells, each of which is a proposition connected to a particu­lar discourse referent. The context is the intersection of all of the cells. This analysis models aboutness as a relation between discourse referents and information. 3. Vallduvì proposes a new level of syntactic representation information structure. IS is kind of like LF, but with notions like topic (link in his terminology) represented rather than purely se­mantic notions. These IS representations are translated into a representation of meaning based on Heim’s (1982) file card metaphor. The idea is that the way we store knowledge can be mod­eled as a set of file cards, with one card for each thing we know about. On each card, we write down what we know about that thing. These theories of sentence topics propose structures to represent aboutness in a formal model of discourse (Reinhart, Portner & Yabushita) or memory (Vallduvì), but only rarely has actual data been offered in support of these structures. And when data has



Instructions for interpretation as separate performatives 

been offered, the grammatical­ity/accep­­tability judgments are not categorical and robust in the way we’d expect if these are lin­guistic structures on a par with other familiar ones. They are even much less robust than the pre­supposition data which motivates the common ground. The following data from Portner & Yabushita (1998) were designed to provide concrete evi­dence in favor of the idea that a sentence topic structures the information conveyed by the sentence it is contained in: (21) Jon wa kafe de onna-no-hito ni aimashita. Kanojo wa pianisuto deshita. John top cafe loc woman dat met she top pianist was ‘John met a woman at a café. She was a pianist.’ (22) a. ?? Kare ga kafe de atta onna-no-hito wa totemo omoshiroi hito deshita. he nom café loc met woman top very interesting person was ‘The woman he met in the café was a very interesting person.’ b. Pianisuto no onna-no-hito wa totemo omoshiroi hito deshita. pianist of woman top very interesting person was ‘The woman who was a pianist was a very interesting person.’ The information that John met the woman at a café was introduced in (21) while John was the topic. This implies that it is recorded on John’s file card. Likewise, the second sentence of (21) adds the information that the woman is a pianist into the common ground on the woman’s file card. Topics have a familiarity presupposition which is sensitive to aboutness. The first continua­tion, (22a), has the topic phrase kare ga kafe de atta onna-no-hito wa (‘the woman he met in the café’), and the presupposition of this phrase will be satisfied if the information that John met the woman at a café is on the woman’s file card. Because the information is not there – it’s present in the com­mon ground, but on John’s card – the sentence is somewhat infelicitous. In contrast, (22b) is fine because the information which pianisuto no onna-no-hito wa (‘the woman who was a pian­ist’) pre­supposes, that the woman is a pianist, was recorded on the woman’s file card. The problem is that the judgments are quite uncertain and unstable, and if this structuring of information were really part of linguistic competence we’d expect the data to be less fuzzy. In light of the weakness of evidence for the idea that aboutness has a formal representation within information structure, we should consider other possibilities. I would like to suggest that sentence topics be thought of as introducing expressive meaning. This approach will allow us to maintain the idea that topics indicate what the sentence is about, without running into the difficul­ties which afflict existing information structure theories. The performative in (23) comes to mind as an initial possibility, because it more or less directly expresses the functionalist view of topics: (23) “I request that you activate your mental representation of Maria.”

 Paul Portner

However, considerations from embedded topics (to be discussed in section 5) suggest that the fol­lowing is better: (24) a. “(I report that) my mental representation of Maria is active.” b. VTOPBcC = [λx λw. speaker(c)’s mental representation of x is active in w] VTOPBcC in (24b) takes the referent of the topic as argument and produces an expressive propo­si­tion. It is virtually guaranteed that the addressee’s mental representation of Maria will be acti­vated just by the fact that he or she understands the topic, and so a topic can be used to activate the ad­dressee’s mental representation right at the beginning of the sentence. However, the addressee and his or her mental representation play no explicit role in (24); such an effect is only indirect (i.e. merely perlocutionary, not illocutionary). One might think we’re mistargeting the analysis by not stating the intended effect on the addressee as the meaning of topics, but one should bear in mind that the most common function of an element may be related to its meaning in an indirect way. The reason not to propose something like (23) as the meaning of topics comes from embedded topics. When a topic is embedded under an attitude verb like think, the attitude holder takes on the role of deictic center – in effect, the speaker – but there is no correlate of addressee for embedded topics.12 Assuming that topics in embedded and root clauses have the same interpretation, this suggests that the addressee should not play an essential role in the interpretation of topics. See section 5 for more detailed discussion of the meaning of embedded topics. A related point can be made with regard to another potential worry about this analysis. It seems that (24) does not add anything to what is conveyed by the sentence. If Maria were not topi­calized, and I simply said ‘I like Maria very much’, it would be clear from the fact that I referred to Maria that my mental representation of her is active. So, it seems that the topic simply states something which is apparent from the speech act itself. However, there is an important difference between stating something explicitly and letting it be inferred. By making it explicit to the ad­dressee that my mental representation of Maria is active prior to expressing the sentence’s main content, I can achieve such pragmatic effects as causing the addressee’s mental representation of her to be active as well. If I deem it useful to make my addressee’s mental representation of Maria active, starting of my utterance with a speech act like (24) will achieve that effect in a nearly mini­mal way.13 Handling aboutness by means of a separate performative as in (24) may be an improvement over existing information structure theories of topics because it does not require adding complexity to the simple model of the common ground introduced by Stalnaker (1974, 1978). That is, we don’t need to partition the Common Ground into cells, as in Portner & Yabushita (1998), and we don’t need a new level of Information Structure and a file card-like memory, as in Vallduvì (1992). In fact, the true nature of the mental representation would not be relevant to the language faculty. It could be an amorphous connectionist web of the kind favored by many cognitive scientists, rather than a file card-like structure. While the instruction to affect the hearer’s knowl-



Instructions for interpretation as separate performatives 

edge representation would be part of linguistic competence (part of grammar in the broad sense), the knowledge repre­sentation itself would not.14 This would explain why the elaborated common ground of Reinhart and Portner & Yabushita, or the file card structure of Vallduvì, fails to show itself through robust linguistic facts.

4. Force markers I am by no means convinced that force markers exist (cf. Zanuttini & Portner 2003, Portner 2004). But in this section, I want to explore the consequence of the idea that they do, and that they intro­duce expressive meaning, i.e. separate performatives. Davidson (1979) suggests that force is ex­pressed through a speech act separate from (but often simultaneous with) the speech act associated with the sentence’s overt content: The utterance of a non-indicative is thus always decomposable into the performance of two speech acts. (Davidson 1979: 18)

For example, (25a) is understood something like (25b): (25) a. Put on your hat! b. My next utterance is imperative. You will put on your hat. (Davidson 1979: 19) Notice that, according to Davidson, the first part of (25b), what he calls the moodsetter, has truth conditions: it is true if and only if the utterance of the second part is imperative in force. However, because it is a performative, its truth is guaranteed by its being understood. Davidson takes the fact that this analysis is truth-conditional to be one of the major factors in its favor: Finally, the theory [of sentence mood] should be semantically tractable. If the theory conforms to the standards of a theory of truth, then I would say all is well. And on the other hand if, as I believe Bar-Hillel held, a standard theory of truth can be shown to be incapable of explaining mood, then truth theory is inadequate as a gen­eral theory of language. (Davidson 1979: 15)

Davidson’s idea can be implemented through the same technology as vocatives and topics. The mood-setter, or force marker, would have a meaning like the following: (26) a. “(I hereby assert that) the addressee is to make this sentence’s at-issue meaning true.” b. VIMPBcC = [λp λw. addressee (c) is to make p true in w] Perhaps request would be better in place of assert. Davidson’s discussion isn’t detailed enough to let us know what he would say. In any case, we would like to express (26) in terms of a more pre­cise theory of meaning in discourse. Portner (2004) proposes

 Paul Portner

that the discourse context contains a to-do list function and a question set, parallel to the common ground (cf. also Ginzburg 1995a,b, Roberts 1996, Han 1998, Portner & Zanuttini 2002, Potts 2003b). The natures of these three com­ponents of the discourse context are as follows: 1. The common ground is a set of propositions. 2. The question set is a set of sets of propositions.15 3. The to-do list function associates each participant in the conversation with a set of proper­ties (his/her to-do list). The role of the common ground is well-known, and that of the question set is discussed in detail by Ginzburg (1995a,b) and Roberts (1996). The role of a to-do list is to rank the worlds compati­ble with the common ground, and an agent is considered rational and cooperative to the extent that his/her actions tend to make the real world be among the set of worlds ranked maximally highly by his/her to-do list (Portner 2004).16 Assuming that the discourse context is as discussed above, the following definition gives a more precise description of the meaning of declarative, interrogative, and imperative force markers, where variable p is of the type of propositions, q is of the type of sets of propositions, and P is of the type of properties: (27) a. VDECBcC = [λp λw. speaker(c) requests that p is in the common ground in w] b. VINTBcC = [λq λw. speaker(c) requests that q is in the question set in w] c. VIMPBcC = [λP λw. speaker(c) requests that P is in to-do list (addr (c)) in w] A root sentence will have the structure [force-marker S], and so the denotation of a simple sen­tence will have Vforce-markerBcC (VSBc) in the set of expressive meanings, and VSBc as the ordi­nary, at-issue meaning. For example, (25a) will have the meaning kA, Cl as follows: (28) a. A = [λx λw: x = addr(c). x puts on x’s hat in w] b. C = {[λw. speaker(c) requests that A is in to-do list(addr(c)) in w]} The ordinary meaning of the sentence is given in (28a), where the portion ‘x = addr (c)’ between the colon and the period indicates the imperative’s presupposition that the subject argument is the ad­dressee. Note that ‘A’ appears in the definition of C. The expressive meaning in C guides the use of A, and thus if the speaker’s intention is successful, the property of putting on one’s hat will be added to the addressee’s o-do list.

5. Embedded clauses Embedded topics are possible, as in (29): (29) John said that, as for Maria, she is nice.



Instructions for interpretation as separate performatives 

Embedded vocatives are not possible in English. There are claims that some verbs embed clauses containing force markers (Krifka 2001b, 2002, McClosky 2006). In this paper, I’ll focus on topics as I explore the treatment of embedded instructional meanings. A topic embedded under say, as in (29), can be interpreted with respect to either the main ut­terance or the reported act of saying. On the former reading, the speaker is saying something about Maria, and this interpretation is easy to handle. According to the semantic rules in section 2.2.2, the topic’s expressive meaning will simply percolate up the tree. But the embedded reading is harder. On this interpretation, John is saying something about Maria, and to capture it, we will have to take care of two things: 1. The speaker identified in the topic’s semantics (cf. (24b)) will have to be shifted to the agent of the reported speech act. 2. The content of the topic’s semantics will have to be related to the world of the reported speech act rather than that of the speech act of the utterance itself. Assume that a context c is a pair kspeaker, worldl (cf. Schlenker 2003).17 The contribution of the topic phrase should not be a proposition, but rather a function from contexts to propositions: (30) VTOPBcC = [λx λc λw. speaker(c)’s mental representation of x is active in w] The embedding verb say has a semantics which is sensitive to both dimensions of meaning. It com­bines with a pair kA, Cl. It uses A in the way familiar within possible worlds semantics, stating that all of the worlds compatible with what the subject’s referent s says in w are in A. In addition, it takes all of the expressive meanings m in C and relates them to the embedded context ks, wl; in the case of the topic meaning (30), this amounts to adding the assertion that s’s mental representa­tion of the entity referred to by the topic is active. Such a meaning can be expressed formally as in (31):18 (31) a. b.

VsayBc = [λkA, Cl λa λs λw. l. ∀w' [w’ is compatible with what s says to a in w → w’ ∈ A], and 2. w ∈ ∩{m(ks, wl): m ∈ C}] VsayBcC = ∅

This meaning makes say absorb all of the complement clause’s expressive meanings. If we wanted it to absorb only some of them, it would be necessary to structure C in a way that would allow say to find those particular components. The context-shifting in (31) is similar to what has been pro­posed to account for logophoric elements and shifting indexicals (cf. the recent work by Schlenker 2003 and Sharvit 2004, for example), but as I’ve formulated the rules, it affects only the expressive meanings, not the ordinary at-issue meaning. I do this only to avoid becoming entangled in the many complexities surrounding the semantics of logophors and indexicals in de se contexts; how­ever, it seems clear that the interpretation of embedded topics is closely tied in with these things, and I hope the present paper can make a contribution to this broader theoretical concern.

 Paul Portner

In the case of (29), we get the following (after ∃ closure of the unexpressed addressee argu­ment and assuming that the only expressive meaning introduced in the embedded clause comes from the topic): (32) V(29)Bc = [λw. l. ∃a ∀w' [w’ is compatible with what John says to a in w → w’ is a world in which Maria is nice], and 2. John’s mental representation of Maria is active in w.] This proposition is true if and only if John was thinking about Maria and said something to some­one which entails that she is nice. The same analysis can be applied to a topic embedded under think: (33) a. John thinks that, as for Maria, she is nice. b. V(33a)Bc = [λw. l. ∀w'[w’ is compatible with what John thinks in w → w’ is a world in which Maria is nice], and 2. John’s mental representation of Maria is active in w.] Once we allow for expressive meanings to be interpreted with respect to embedded contexts, there are a few technical loose ends that need to be cleaned up: l. The function application rules in section 2.2.2 won’t apply to creatures like (31) which take pairs of an ordinary meaning and a set of expressive meanings as argument. The following rule must be added: (34)

Expressive-Absorbing Function Application For all nodes N with daughters Dl and D2, if 〈VD2Bc, VD2BcC〉 is in the domain of VD1Bc, then a. VNBc = VD1Bc (〈VD2Bc, VD2BcC〉), and b. VNBC = ∅.

2. Prior to this section, all of the expressive meanings were either functions from individuals to propositions or the propositions which resulted from applying those functions to an argument. These propositions represented the completed expressive content that was attached to the sentence. However, because we now want to allow (some or perhaps all) expressive meanings to be inter­preted with respect to embedded contexts, we will replace these propositions with functions from contexts to propositions. For example, we replaced the meaning for topics in (24b) with (30). Given this change, we need a rule to discharge the context argument of ex­pressive meanings that make it to the root level:19 (35) Root Node If N is a root node, then the two-dimensional meaning of N with respect to context c is the pair 〈A, C〉:



Instructions for interpretation as separate performatives 

〈VNBc, {m (c): m ∈ VNBcC}〉. 3. The meaning for say in (31) relates embedded topics to the embedded context. Recall that (29) is ambiguous, however. On the other meaning, the embedded topic gets interpreted with re­spect to the real context of utterance (the root context). I assume that there is another meaning for say which only takes the at-issue meaning of the complement as its argument. (36) a. Vsay2Bw,c = [λp λa λw. ∀w’[w’ is compatible with what s says to a in w → w’ ∈ p] b. Vsay2BcC = ∅. This version of say will combine with its complement using Ordinary Function Application, not Expressive-Absorbing Function Application. The topic’s meaning will then percolate up the tree, and its context argument will be discharged by the Root Node rule in (35).

6. Conclusion The central proposals of this paper are that instructional meanings should be thought of as separate performatives, and that the theory of expressive meaning is an appropriate framework in which to formalize them. Specifically I have argued that call vocatives request the addressee’s attention, topics report that the speaker’s mental representation of a particular entity is active, and force markers request that the addressee incorporates the sentence’s at-issue content into the discourse context in a particular way. At the detailed level, these meanings for vocatives, topics, and calls are not particularly surprising (though the particular way of viewing topics is a bit different from re­lated theories). What is novel is the overall framework for analyzing instructional meaning. In terms of empirical adequacy, this approach to instructional meaning lets us account for some of the properties of vocatives and topics. The restrictions on what kinds of NPs can function as vocatives make sense in light of the meanings that are proposed here. In particular, we can ex­plain the inability of certain quantifiers to function as vocatives as being due to the fact that it is impossible to bind across dimensions of meaning. With regard to topics, something that needs to be explained is the lack of firm data supporting the common intuition that topics say what the sentence is about. In terms of the present theory, this is because the concept of an individual’s mental repre­sentation of something being active is not a linguistic one, and so should not be given a formal rep­resentation within linguistic theory. It is an aspect of cognition which may give rise to psychologi­cal effects, but not to categorical linguistic ones. While it is controversial whether illocutionary force is encoded within grammar, if such things as force markers exist, it is worth considering whether they should be treated as separate performatives as well. Such an approach contrasts with the rather differ-

 Paul Portner

ent perspective of Krifka (2001b, 2002); his analysis combines force and propositional content into a single, novel semantic object (commitment change potentials, a kind of act). In contrast, the analysis offered here – much along the lines of Davidson (1979) – treats force as separate from at-issue content, though the one refers to the other. I do not claim any advantage for the present approach at this time; I simply offer it as an interesting alternative which fits into a more general theory of instructional meaning. Topics can be embedded, and this means that any theory of them needs to have a way of let­ting them contribute to the content attributed to an attitude holder by such verbs as say, think, and hope. Other information structure theories of topics would have to attribute the complex discourse or memory structures which they postulate to the attitudinal state that say, think, or hope reports. While this may be possible, the resulting meanings would be extremely complex. An alternative is to bleach the core semantic contribution of topichood of all discourse and cognitive meaning; this is more or less what the structured meaning approach to topic-focus structure does independently of the issue of embedded topics, treating a topic as a constituent at the level of the proposition (von Stechow 1991b, Krifka 1991). The present analysis steers a middle course; it asserts that the core meaning of topics is cognitive, reporting on the speaker’s mental state, but since it does no more than report on that state, it does not require adding too much complexity to the analysis of proposi­tional attitudes. Moreover, since it is likely that other expressive meanings can be absorbed into at-issue semantics via an attitude operator (cf. Kratzer 2002), this extra complexity is probably needed anyway.

Notes * This is part of a project funded by NSF grant BCS-0234278, ‘Clause Types: Form and Force in Grammatical Theory’, to Paul Portner and Raffaella Zanuttini. Miok Pak and Simon Mauck, our collaborators on the project, have made many contributions. I would like to thank audiences at the Bad Teinach workshop on information structure (organized by IMS, Stuttgart), a UMass colloquium, the Georgetown University faculty research talks, and the Workshop on Indexicals, Speech Acts, and Logophors at Harvard for helpful input. I very much appreciate the invited comments at the Harvard workshop by Chris Potts, Florian Schwarz and Shigeto Kawahara. I have had useful discussions on this work with Bob Frank, Cecilia Poletto, Ivan Sag, and Arnold Zwicky as well. 1. As I’ll point out below, I am actually not convinced that there are such things as force markers, but in this paper I will explore the idea that they can be analyzed as introducing expressive content if there are. As we go about the task of exploring whether natural language contains any elements which should be thought of as marking force, it will be useful to have as many different ideas about what it would mean to mark force as possible. 2. In this paper, I give semantic definitions with respect to a context parameter c; VABc is the meaning of A with respect to c. I suppress the assignment function, as it is not relevant for the definitions given, and represent the role of possible worlds in giving semantic content within the object language. 3. Lambrecht (1996b) proposes that a general notion of “relevance” is the basis for the meaning of vocatives and topics. However, he doesn’t explain at all what relevance is, either in terms



Instructions for interpretation as separate performatives 

of a general theory of meaning or the specifics of different kinds of topics and vocatives. As we’ll see, it is possible to do better. 4. I can only speak with any confidence of American English here. Perhaps other varieties have a wider range of address terms. 5. In some varieties of American English, (9b) is allowed with an affectionate connotation to the use of you. This use is not possible in initial or medial position, so (8a) is not particularly affectionate in this variety, and (8b) is still bad. Thus, this use of you may be revealing of the pragmatic contribution of the sentence-final vocative subtype. 6. The status of someone is unclear to me; while in certain cases it seems possible to use it as a vocative (e.g., Someone, help me!), it can’t be preceded by hey and is unacceptable in clause types other than vocatives. Moreover, it is best when it’s not clear whether anyone is listening, and in these ways it seems like a version of some of you that can be used in a context in which it’s not clear if you has any referent. 7. In those dialects which allow final you, it is only possible in imperatives, and conveys the speaker’s affection towards the addressee. 8. In addition, there is the third interpretation function for focus semantics, V Bcf, if Rooth’s approach to focus is correct. 9 This point changes somewhat with the addition of rule (34) below. 10. Of course there are restrictions on what NPs can function as appositives. 11. That is, once we stop suppressing the variable assignment function g, VSBg,cC would not be the same for all choices of g which differ only on g(i), where i is the index of the trace. 12. Some propositional attitude verbs will have a correlate of the addressee, tell for instance, but this is not the general case. 13. An interesting idea pointed out by Chris Potts and Florian Schwarz (joint p.c.) is that topics involve the speech act of referring (Searle 1969), and so don’t have truth-conditional content at all. That would be an even more minimal way of analyzing topics, and is compatible with my overall agenda in this paper. 14. This way of thinking does not require that we push information structure outside of grammar, of course. It just allows us to do so to whatever extent is appropriate given the facts. 15. I assume, following Hamblin (1973) and Karttunen (1977) that interrogatives denote sets of propositions, but the details of interrogative semantics don’t play a role in this discussion. If they denote meanings of another type, the question set is a set of those. 16. This characterization of to-do lists differs somewhat from those given by Han (1998) and Potts (2003b). (Han calls it the “plan set”.) This characterization makes explicit the connection between the common ground and the to-do list in a way that other analyses do not, and in doing so it may help us understand why imperatives are a universal clause type. See Portner (2004) for discussion. 17. I suppress the time parameter for simplicity. 18. Here, c is the type of contexts, i.e. kspeaker, worldl pairs. 19. One could pursue various interesting ideas about how this operation of discharging the open context argument is realized in syntax, but for purposes of this paper, I’ll just represent it as a semantic rule which is triggered by any root node.

Interrogative complement clauses* Kerstin Schwabe The paper will argue that root interrogatives and independently used complement interrogatives have in common that they are questions, i.e. interrogative functions. Whereas a root interrogative is the ar­gument of the interrogative illocutionary operator int, a complement-interrogative, which is verb-final in German, is an argument of a matrix predicate. The illocutionary operator contributes to cre­ating the representation of an erotetic situation where the addressee of the utter­ance is directly in­volved. The matrix predicate, however, need not relate to such a situation. If it does, the erotetic situation al­ ready exists as a worldly entity and need not involve the addressee. This helps to ex­plain why complement interrogatives without any linguist context (solitaires) cannot be used as canonical questions. It will be ar­gued that the matrix predicate of an independently used interrogative is ellipti­cal. If the independently used interrogative is a complement answer, the syntactically silent matrix predicate is specified by a pre­ced­ing question. If there is not any linguistic context as it is the case with respect to solitaires, the syntactically silent predicate is represented as an existentially bound variable indicating the semantic underspecification of the solitaire. It will be shown that the matrix variable can only be specified by conceptual predicates which relate to situations which are accessible for the addressee. The choice of predicates, which can be triggered by linguistic means such as into­nation, expressive particles, and particular pronouns determines the illocutionary force of the solitaire in question.

1. Introduction Like many other languages, German provides different forms for independent and dependent inter­rogatives: verb-second (V2) as in (1a) and verb-final (V-final) as in (1b). Both forms can, however, be used non-canonically: V2-interrogatives can ‘depend’ on a matrix clause (2a) and V-final interrogatives can occur ‘inde­pend­ently’, either as the second part of a ques­tion/answer pair, as in (2b), or as soli­taires, i.e. without any lingu­istic context, as in (2c-e). As for the ‘independent’ use of V-final interrogatives,

 Kerstin Schwabe

the question arises whether they are the semantic equivalent of correspond­ing V2clauses. This paper focuses on interrogatives, whereas Schwabe (2006, and to appear) deals with declaratives. (1) a. b.

Wer kommt morgen? Who comes tomorrow ‘Who will come tomorrow?’ Anna fragt, wer morgen kommt. Anna asks who tomorrow comes ‘Anna asks who will come tomorrow.’

(2) a. Wann wird Hans siei wohl heiraten, fragt sich Annai? when will Hans her part marry ask refl Anna ‘When will Hans marry me, Anna wonders.’ b. Q: Was fragt Hans? ‘What is Hans asking?’ A: Wer kommt. ‘Who is coming.’ c. Was er wohl macht? What he part is doing ‘I wonder what he is doing.’ d. Was er dort macht! what he there is doing ‘What on earth he’s doing there!’ e. Ob es noch in Ordnung ist? whether it still in order is ‘Is it still in order?’ Semantic equivalence does not obtain since, as is shown in (3), ob- and wh-solitaires cannot be analysed as direct question acts inasmuch as it is not necessary for the ad­ dressee to know the answer and, as is shown in (2d), they are not question acts at all – cf. Trucken­brodt (2003). (3) attorney: *Ob Sie den Angeklagten kennen? Whether you the accused know (3’) attorney: Kennen Sie den Angeklagten? ‘Do you know the accused?’ The paper is intended to show the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic differences between interrogative solitaires and their corresponding root clauses. Section 2 presents the syntax and semantics of interrogative root and V-final clauses comparing them with declarative root and V-final clauses. It will be shown that the main difference between root clauses and V-final clauses is that the utterances of root clauses create complex assertoric or erotetical propo­si­tions which, as we will see in Section 2, do



Interrogative complement causes 

not belong to the ordinary meaning of the sen­tence but to its expressive meaning and represent specific illocutionary conditions inclu­ding the proposition or question the root clause relates to.1 The complex propositions are cre­ated as abstract objects with the help of the illocutionary functors assert or int which are functions from the set of ordinary sentence meanings to complex illocutionary propositions. As we will see in section 2, both operators are syntactically indicated. In contrast, German V‑final clau­­ ses do not indicate any expressive illocutionary meaning. They only indicate their dependency on a matrix predicate. To­ge­ther with this matrix predicate, a V-final clause de­notes or implicates the representation of an assertoric or erotetic speech act. Since, as will be shown in Section 3, independently used declarative and interrogative V-final clauses are re­lated to predi­cates which denote or implicate assertoric or erotetic speech act propositions, which already exist inde­pendently upon the utterance, independently used declarative and interrogative v-final clauses cannot be used to per­form direct asser­tions or questions.

2. Canonically used interrogative root and complement clauses 2.1

Interrogative root clauses

Before discussing the semantic form and pragmatic function of inter­rogative solitaires, we determine the objects we are going to investigate. The notion interroga­tive (clause) denotes a syntactic object, i.e. a clausal phrase of a particular form which has a particular ordinary se­mantic meaning. The meaning of an interrogative is a semantic object. Following Portner (this volume) we regard it to be a pair kA, Cl, where A is the ordinary meaning and C is the set of expressive mean­ings. Expressive meanings, to which belong, for instance, vocatives, topics, and declarative, interrogative and imperative forces, are performatives and thus al­ways true once understood. The illocutionary meaning we are interested in is indicated by syntactic features in ForceP. As shown below, we represent the ordinary meaning of an inter­rogative as a function from the set of an­swers into the set of propositions – cf. Krifka (2001a). The notion answer (a) denotes a semantic object as well, the object the question is applied to. Similarly for declarative clauses. The notion declarative (clause) denotes a syntactic ob­ject the meaning of which is seen as a propositional predicate (P) – cf. (4). If the predicate is applied to a situation, a proposition p results as shown in (5). The notion proposition thus denotes a se­mantic object, an object representing that a situation is selected in which the de­scription the pro­posi­tional predicate P provides holds – cf. Barwise (1989: 185), Kratzer (2003) and Schwabe (2006).

(4) λs. s (5) ∃s. s

σ σ

 Kerstin Schwabe

Situation variables s represent situations s which are worldly objects. Properties of situations and particular relations between them are regarded as state of af­fairs represented as the meta­variable σ in (4) and (5). According to Barwise (1989: 185), we write ‘s σ’ if a situation s fulfills σ or σ holds in s. If σ is represented by the ordinary mean­ing of a clause, it relates to a linguistically indicated situation. If σ is not ex­pressed lexically but, as shown below, de­rived from the illocutionary force of a de­clarative or inter­rogative clause, it holds in a derived situa­tion. As Schwabe (2006) shows, a further situation type is neces­sary, a propo­si­tional situation sp. According to Barwise (1989: 226), a proposi­tion is a tool to classify “a different situation, one involving the cog­nitive ac­tivity of an agent in connection with his current focus situation”. If one considers the obtain-relation be­tween s and σ as a state of affairs, i. e. as a proposition type p, one can relate the latter to a proposition token, which can be called the propositional situation sp – cf. (6). (6) s p (∃s. s σ) p

As is shown in Schwabe (to appear), propositional situa­tions are nec­essary as linguistic objects, e.g. i) to distinguish propositional situation matrix predi­cates like believe and know, for exam­ple, from simple situation predi­cates like re­gret and want and ii) to have a discourse referent for anaphoric expressions. As shown below, a propositional situation can be in­troduced into the Com­mon Ground by the assert operator, on the one hand, or by a matrix predicate, on the other. Returning to interrogatives, German distinguishes between wh-interrogatives – clauses containing an inter­rogative wh-phrase – and yes/no interrogatives – clauses which have verb first or the comple­mentizer ob. Similarly to declaratives, interrogatives have a functional category ForceP which deter­mines the clause type as well as the dependency of the clause on the sentential or non-sentential context. As for wh-interrogative root clauses like (7), their ForceP locates the feature combination , determining the expressive, erotetic illocutionary force. Whereas determines the interrogative sentence type and thus the syntactic movement of the wh-phrase to specForce, determines the independence of the clause and thus the movement of the finite verb to Force0. The erotetic illocutionary force, which is determined by the form of the clause, provides the erotetic illocutionary operator int (7). The latter maps the ordinary meaning of the interrogative onto the conceptual representation of its illocutionary force. The conceptual representation of the illocutionary force of an interrogative is a complex erotetic proposition: “there is an ero­tetic situation sutt-a such that α utters q pretending that he aims at the situation that β pro­vides the answer a” (7, ’). 2



Interrogative complement causes 

(7)

Wer kommt? ‘Who is coming?’ ForceP, �, � specForce, �

Force', �

Force0, TP � SpecT

T' � T0

vP � specv �

weri � � � � � �'

kommtj

ti

tj

ti

VP � tj

λx λs (s (come (x))) λF λx∈PERSON (λs (F (x)) (s)) λx∈PERSON λs (s (come (x))) λq (INT (q)) (come (x)))) INT (λx∈PERSON λs (s ∃sq∈SQ ∃sutt-α ∃sintend-α (π1 ∧ π2) = (sutt-α (utter (α), (sq))) π1 π2 = (∀scause-β ∈ {scause-β |scause-β ∃spass∈sPASS(cause (β),( spass)))} (sitend-α (want (α), (scause-β )) = {sq | (sq (λx∈PERSON λs (s (come (x)))))} SQ = {spass| (spass (∃sutt-β (∃sintend-β ∃sp∈SP (∃sknow-α∈ S know-α (φ1 ∧ ϕ2)} Spass φ1 = (sutt-β (utter (β), (sp))) = (sintend-β (want (β), (s know-α))) ϕ2 (know (α), (sp))} Sknow -α = {Sknow -α | sknow-α = {sp | sp (∃a ∃s∈FACT (〈s, 〈q, a〉〉))} SP

The ordinary meaning of the wh-interrogative results from the meaning of the whphrase wer  which is regarded as function from predicates to questions. As is shown in (7’), the full version of (7), the illocu­­tionary operator int (7) creates a partial mental representation of an erotetic situation (7’). It says that there is first the utter­ ance situation sutt-α such that α utters the question token sq and second the pretended inten­tional situation sintend‑α such that α wants all the situations scause‑β where β causes an answer assertion spass-a.3An answer asser­tion is represented as a complex illocutionary proposition consisting, at least, of the proposition φ1 that β utters a proposition token sp (cf. Schwabe 2006) and of the proposition φ2 that β pretends wanting the knowledge situation sknow‑α such that α knows sp which, be­cause it is an answer proposition, should

 Kerstin Schwabe

denote a fact. 4The answer proposition is a pair consisting of the question q posed by α and the answer a provided by β. Similarly to propositions rep­resenting an assertoric speech act, the proposition (7’) represents partially an erotetic speech act. The erote­ tic as well as the assertoric propositions are created by the declarative or interroga­tive illocutionary operators assert or int and do not contribute to the ordinary meaning of the declarative or interrogative. Both operators are in­terface operators in that they map the ordinary meaning onto a proposition representing illocu­­tionary competence. Unlike an erotetic situation denoted, presupposed, or implicated by the ordinary meaning of an interrogative verb, the erotetic situation introduced by int is determined by the knowledge what illocutionary function a particular clause type has. The propo­sition “α ut­ters q pretending that he aims at the situation that β provides the answer a” which represents this erotetic situation is true if α utters the question token and pretends that he wants its answer. Since the expressive illocutionary meaning is always true when the question token is uttered i.e. performed, it is performative – cf. (Portner, this volume). If a question q like (7) is ap­plied to an answer a, another semantic object, a ques­tion/answer pair, results. The latter is a structured proposi­tional predicate, as is shown in (8), the ordinary meaning of the answer clause where Hans is the answer to q. Since (8) is a declarative root clause, its expressive illocutionary meaning is represented by assert (cf. (8a-b). (8) Hans kommt. ‘Hans is coming.’  kλx∈person λs (s (come (x))), hansl a. assert (kλx∈person λs (s (come (x))), hansl) b. ∃sutt‑β (∃sintend-β (∃sp∈ sp ( φ1 ∧ ϕ2))) φ1 = (sutt‑β (utter (β), (sp))) ϕ2 = (sintend-β (want (β), (s know‑α))) sknow-α = {sknow-α | ∃s∈sp (sknow‑α (know (α), (sp)))} sp = {sp | sp (∃a ∃s∈fact (ks, kλx∈person λs (s (come (x))), all))} The assertoric proposition (8a-b) partially represents β’s answer act. It is created by the ques­tion/answer pair and the illocutionary operator assert. It is true if first β, the ad­dressee of (7), creates the utter­ance situation sutt‑β such that he utters an inde­pendent question/answer pair token and second if there is the intentional situation sintend‑β such that β pretends wanting the situation sknow‑α where α knows the factive proposition that Hans is coming. Since the question in the question/answer pair is given by the preceding context, it is background and deaccented. Since the an­swer is not given, it is focus and bears the pitch accent. As will be shown in section 3, back­ground constituents need not be phonologically realized. As for yes/no-interrogatives like (9), they exhibit a similar syntactic structure to wh-in­ter­rogatives. The only difference is that their Spec-CP hosts an phonologically empty inter­roga­tive operator instead of a wh-phrase.5



Interrogative complement causes 

(9)

Kommt Hans? ‘Is Hans coming?’ ForceP, �, �

specForce, �

Force', �

Force0,

PolP � Pol0 �

∅

kommtj

tj

TP � Hans … tj …

� �

λs (s (come (hans))) λp λf ∈{λp (p), λp (¬p)} (f (p))

�

λf ∈{λp∈P (p), λp∈P (¬p)} (f (p)) P = (∃s (s (come (hans))))} λq (INT (q)) INT (λf ∈{λp (p), λp (¬p)} (f (p)))

� �

As in (7), the ordinary meaning of the yes/no-in­­ter­­rogative is represented as an interroga­tive function . It results from the meaning of  which is applied to the type-shifted propositional function given with . According to Krifka (2001a), the variable f is a function which maps a proposi­tion either onto the proposition itself or onto its complement. If  is applied to , the ordi­nary meaning of the yes/no-interrogative (9), a question, results. The answer to this question is a function which when ap­plied to the type-shifted proposition results in a proposition. Like in (7), the , features are represented as the expressive, illocutionary functor int (9). When int is ap­plied to the interrogative function , the expressive, complex illocu­tionary proposition  results. It corresponds to the illocutio­nary conditions of an erotetic speech act. According to these, the agent of the interrogative act wants the ad­dressee to cause an assertoric situation where he utters a pro­positional situation whose repre­ sentation contains the answer and its corresponding question. To conclude: root clauses are linguistically independent. If they are used, they are asso­ci­ated with an illocutionary operator which is an interface operator mapping a lin­guistic clausal object onto a complex proposition representing illocutionary know­ ledge. Whereas the assertoric operator assert generates a proposition that represents an assertoric situa­tion, the inter­rogative operator int relates to a proposition representing an erotetic situation. The proposi­tions are true if the assertoric or erotetic situations they denote are given in the actual world. Whereas the illocutionary operator provides

 Kerstin Schwabe

a proposition which is not represented lin­guisti­cally, matrix predicates in complementclause constructions can provide a lin­guistic repre­sentation for such situations.

Complement clauses

2.2

Like declarative V2 clauses, dass-clauses have a ForceP the ordinary meaning of which is a propositional predicate. Their ForceP, however, is marked syntactically by the fea­ tures , indi­cating via the subordinator that de­pendency on a matrix predicate which is sub­categorized for a -clause. The matrix predicate deter­mines that there is a situa­tion s in which the propositional predicate given by the ordinary meaning of the dass-clause holds. The ma­trix predicate thus behaves like a determiner to­wards the complement clause. As to matrix predicates which embed dass-clauses, we distinguish between matrix predi­ca­tes that have propositional situation arguments (sp) and those that have nonpropositional situa­tion arguments (si) – cf. Schwabe (2006) and (to appear). Predi­cates of the former group – we call them sp-predicates – are for instance glauben (believe) and hoffen (hope). Predi­cates of the latter group – they are called si-predicates – are, for instance, bedauern (re­gret), wollen (want), and zei­gen (indicate). If the HoldsIn-relation is not under de­bate, as is the case with re­spect to si-predicates, it is presupposed or projected that the par­ticular state of af­fairs holds in the ac­tual situation. Such matrix predicates are, therefore, al­ways fac­tual. As we shall see below, dass-clauses always have the same semantic repre­sen­ta­tion, inde­pen­dently of whether they are embedded by si- or sp-predi­cates. Example (10) demonstrates a dass-clause which is em­bed­ded by an si-predi­cate. Its ForceP hosts the features , with deter­mining that there is no syntactic movement of a wh-phrase to specForce and determin­ ing that there is no expressive illocutionary meaning and therefore no overt movement of the finite verb to Force0.

(10) Anna bedauert, dass Hans kommt. ‘Anna regrets that Hans is coming.’ ForceP, � Force0, � TP� # dass Hans kommtj � �

λs. s ∅

(come (hans))

The matrix predicate  determines that there is a presupposed situation s in which the pro­positional predicate  holds and that this situation is related to the ma­trix subject.

V0mat:  λP λx λsemo ∃s∈s (semo s ={s∈fact | ks, Pl}

Interrogative complement causes 

regret (x), (s))

TPmat:  λsemo ∃s∈s (semo regret (anna), (s)) s ={s∈fact | ks, λs. s (come (hans))l} Since the matrix predicate determines that s is a fact, the truth of the proposition ‘∃s. s (come (hans))’ is not in dispute. There­fore the proposition need not be related to a cognitive agent. As noted above, si-predicates like regret focus on a simple situation. The syntactic and semantic rep­resen­tation of their dass-clause, however, does not differ from the representation of the dass-clause in a con­struc­tion with an sp-predicate like believe – cf. Schwabe (2006). Like V-final declarative clauses, V-final interrogative clauses do not express illocu­ tion­ary force. Their feature determines that Force hosts a wh-phrase or ob (wether) and their feature indicates their dependency on a linguistic context, i.e. that there is no expressive illo­cutionary meaning. The semantics of the matrix predicate can relate the ordinary meaning of the interrogative – the in­terrogative function – to an erotetic situation sero. This situation is denoted if there is an interrogative matrix predicate like ask, as in (11). And it can be implicated if there is an sp-predicates like know or regret – cf. (12).

 Kerstin Schwabe

As we can see in (11), the matrix predicate meaning  takes the question  as argument thus yielding ‘x utters a question token to cause someone to provide the answer proposition’. The answer proposition sp is a ques­tion/answer pair, i.e. a structured proposition, where the question is given by the interrogative clause and the answer is not given explicitly. If the predicate is mapped onto the subject Anna, a propositional function, the ordinary meaning of a declarative results. Since (11) is an independent clause, assert is applied to . The expressive meaning assert of a declarative clause with a matrix predicate like ask pro­vides an utterance situation sutt-anna and thus a complex erotetic propositional situation spero which represents first, that a question token sq represented by  is uttered by the matrix subject (cf. π1 in ) and second, that the matrix subject pretends wanting the addressee to provide answer propositions (cf. π2 in ). In π1 again, ‘(utter (anna), (sq))’ means that Anna provides a perceptible structure which can be mapped onto the question q. This structure can be the canonical question form as given in (7). Unlike an interrogative root clause, the utterance of a declarative root clause with an inter­rogative matrix predicate denotes an utterance situation where the



Interrogative complement causes 

subject utters a question token. If there is such an utterance situation, it is cre­ated by a question act that is or was per­formed independ­ently of the matrix clause. Whereas the condi­tions πi of an erotetic proposi­tional situation indicated by the illocu­tionary operator int are always re­lated to the speaker α and the hearer β, the condi­tions πi provided by an interrogative matrix predicate are not nec­essarily related to α or β. This helps, as is shown be­low, to explain the particular effects of interrogative soli­taires. We have shown in (11) that an utterance containing an interrogative matrix predicate like ask denotes a complex erotetic situation. Predicates like know, regret (12) or believe someone (13), which also allow dass-complements, only allow the implicature of such a situation. Neither the utterance situation that Anna utters a question token nor the intentional situation that Anna wants an assertoric answer situation are denoted in (12) and (13). (12) Anna bedauert, wer kommt. ‘Anna regrets who is coming.’ ForceP1: V0matrix: TPmatrix:

λx∈person λs (s (come (x))) λq λx λsemo ∃s∈s (semo regret (x), (s)) s ={s∈fact | ks, kq, all} λsemo ∃s∈s (semo regret (anna), (s)) s ={s∈fact | ∃a(ks, kλx∈person λs (s (come (x))), all)}

(13) Anna glaubt Hans, wer gekommen ist. Anna believes Hans.dat who has come. ForceP1: V0matrix: VPmatrix: Hans.dat: VPmatrix: TPmatrix:

λx∈person λs (s (come (x))) λq λx λsbellieve ∀sp∈ sp (sbelieve believe (x), (sp)))) sp = {sp | sp ∃s ∃a (ks, kq, all)} λx (λsp∈sp λsbelieve (sbelieve believe (x), (sp))) sp = {sp | sp ∃s ∃a (ks, kλx∈person λs (s (come (x))), all)} λP λx λsp∈sp λsbelieve ∃R ((R (hans), (sp)) ∧ (P (x), (sp), (sbelieve))) λx λsp∈sp λsbelieve ∃R ((R (hans), (sp)) ∧ (sbelieve believe (x), (sp))) λsp∈sp λsbelieve ∃R ((R (hans), (sp)) ∧ (sbelieve believe (anna), (sp)))

As for the relational variable R provided by the dative interpretation in (13), its specification as ‘sp is provided by Hans’ allows the derivation of an erotetic situation. It is obvious that neither believe nor regret can embed ob (whether)-clauses. The reason for this is that these verbs cannot be used objectively. To summarize: the ordinary meaning of declarative root and V-final clauses is repre­sented as a func­tion from situations into propositions and the ordinariy meaning of interroga­tive root and V-final clauses is represented as a question, i.e. a function from answers into propositions. The expressive meaning of a root declarative is represented as the operator assert which maps the ordinary meaning of the declarative onto an assertoric propositional situation spass. And the expressive meaning of an inter­

 Kerstin Schwabe

rogative root clause is represented as the operator int which maps the question onto an erotetic pro­posi­tional situation spero. The propositional situations spass and spero which are created with the help of assert and int are indicated by the sentential form, but not represented linguisti­cally. They correspond to specific illo­cution­ary conditions. German V‑final clauses, however, do not exhibit expressive illocutionary meaning. Their ordinary meaning is an argument of a matrix predicate. If the matrix predi­cate is applied to the ordinary meaning of the V-final clause, the latter can be related to an assertoric or erotetic situation which exists as a worldly object inde­pendently of uttering the V-final clause. Since, as is shown in detail below, independently used interrogative verb-fi­nal clauses indicate dependency on a matrix predicate, they cannot be arguments of the illocution­ary functors assert or int. Thus, they cannot introduce asser­ toric or erotetic propositional situa­tions into the Common Ground, i.e. they cannot be used as asser­tions or direct question acts.

3. Independently used interrogative verb-final clauses 3.1

Syntax and semantics of independently used verb-final clauses

It is obvious that independently used declarative V-final clauses which represent situations and interrogative solitaires which partially represent situations do not de­note these situations. Why do we inter­pret them to mean that such situa­tions exist and what enables us to locate these situations in a particular world? How come that interrogative solitaires can be related to erotetic or emotive situations? Can we do this because there is in fact a silent syntactic struc­ture that contributes to this interpretation? Or is there rather an algorithm at the interface be­tween gram­mar and in­terpreta­tion, as Stainton (2004) suggests for NP and PP fragments, that re­constructs propo­si­tions? Unlike Reis (1985), Oppenrieder (1989), Doherty (1979), and Truckenbrodt (2003) – but expanding on Schwabe (1994), Wilder (1994) and Merchant (2001, 2004) – one could argue that inde­pendently used verb-final clauses must be analysed as elliptical structu­res – cf. Schwabe (2006, to appear). The main arguments are as follows: i) Inde­pendently used verb-final clauses are consti­tuents like inde­pendently used DPs. A minimum of syntactic structure is needed to explain the case of the DPs in (14) or the polarity item in (15). (14) a. b.

Enan kafe parakalo! a coffee.acc please ‘A coffee please!’ Vodu požal’sta! water.acc please



Interrogative complement causes 

(15) Any problems? ii) Since adverbials (16A), particles (17), and left dislocated phrases (18) can precede inde­pendently used verb-final clauses, they need a structural posi­tion. (16) Q: A:

Was glaubt Anna? ‘What does Anna believe?’ Hoffentlich, dass Hans kommt. ‘Hopefully that Hans is coming.’

(17) a. b.

Nicht, dass er jetzt an die Ostsee fährt! Not that he now to the Baltic drives ‘Not that he drives to the Baltic now!’ Nicht, dass er schön singt! Not that he well sings ‘Not that he sings well!’

(18) i. ii.

Einen Porsche zu kaufen, dass jeder das anstrebt! a Porsche to buy that everyone this wants ‘That everybody wants to buy a Porsche!’ [einen Porsche zu kaufen]i... [VP [dass jeder dasi anstrebt] [V0 e]]

It follows that these independently used complement clauses have a syntacti­cally silent ma­trix predicate. But unlike Mer­chant, who assumes that the silent material is syn­ tactically and semanti­cally complete but without phonological struc­ture, we assume that matrix clauses have a mini­malist syntactic structure that contains empty catego­ ries. An inde­pendently used verb-final clause thus has a syntactic structure as in (21) irrespective of whether it is an an­swer complement clause (19A) or a solitaire (20). (19) Q: A:

Was fragt Anna? ‘What does Anna ask?’ int () Wer kommt. ‘Who is coming.’

(20) a. b.

Wer (wohl) kommt? ‘I wonder who is coming.’ Wer dort kommt! ‘I’m surprised who is coming there!’

 Kerstin Schwabe

As is shown in (21), we obtain the semantic form of the syntactically silent ma­trix predi­cate of a complement answer by copying the ques­tion provided by the preceding question – cf. (19Q). The seman­tic form  results from applying  to . The illocuti­onary conditions of the preceding root interrogative determine that the answer



Interrogative complement causes 

act is an assertion – cf. π2 indi­cated by int in (19Q) and (7’). It follows that the illocutionary functor assert is inferred from π2 in (19Q) and applied to . As is shown in (22a) and its full version (22b), the an­swer utterance is represented as an assertoric proposition. Recall that assert is not even lin­guistically indicated by the independently used V-final clause. It is provided by the illocu­tion­ary conditions of the preceding interrogative. (22) a. assert () b. ∃sutt‑α ∃sintend-α ∃sp∈sp ∃sknow‑β∈ sknow-β (φ1 ∧ ϕ2) φ1 = (sutt‑α (utter (α), (sp))) ϕ2 = (sintend-α (want (α), (sknow-β))) sknow-β = {sknow-β | (sknow‑β (know (β), (sp)))} sp = {sp | sp (∃s∈fact (ks, l))} Interrogative solitaires as in (20) differ from answer complement clauses in that there is no linguistic context which could provide a copy for their empty matrix predicate. Therefore, the semantic interpre­ta­tion of this empty verbal ele­ment (21’) contains an existentially bound ma­trix predicate vari­able which, as is shown below, is specified by a predi­cate derived from the situative context. With this variable, the semantic structure of the soli­taire ’ is under­speci­fied. (21) ’ λq∈question ∃M. M (q) ’ ∃M. M (λx∈person λs. s (come (x))) Whereas the matrix predicate of the interrogative complement answers is copied from a con­textu­ally given question, the matrix predicate of a solitaire is represented as an existentially bound variable and thus semantically underspecified. And where­as the illocutionary function of complement answers is determined by the illocu­tionary con­ ditions of the preceding question act, the illocutionary function of solitaires is not similarly deter­mined by the linguistic context. Their illocutionary function, however, can be triggered prosodically, by expressive expressions, and by the propositional content. If there is a rising accent L*H indicating the expressive meaning “α expects continuation of the utter­ance”, the matrix predicate variable can only be specified by a volitional epistemic predicate resulting in an erotetic speech act. And if there is some kind of an expressive accent indicat­ing the expressive meaning “α is surprised of a given situation”, the matrix predicate variable can only be specified by an emotional matrix predicate resulting in an exclamative speech act. A particle like wohl triggers the erotetic interpretation (cf. (2c)) and an indexical like dort triggers the exclamative interpretation (cf. (2d)). If the interrogative contains its own answer as in Was für eine überaus wundervolle Frau sie ist! (What an extremely wonderful woman she is!), only an emotive predicate can specify the matrix predicate variable – cf. (Abels to appear). Note that if there is any interpretational trigger, neither the erotetic nor the exclamative use are ex­pressed syntactically by the sentence type.

 Kerstin Schwabe

3.2

Interpretation of interrogative solitaires

As far as answer complement clauses were concerned, we derived the semantic content of their matrix predicate from the linguistically given question. And since the expressive il­locu­tionary meaning of the preceding erotetic act determines that the com­plement answer is an assertion, we could derive assertoric illocutionary force for them. As for interrogative soli­taires, the specification of the matrix predicate variable is de­rived from the situative context. The matrix predicate variable is specified by a non-linguistic but conceptual predicate which we write in small capitals. As shown in Schwabe (2006), the conceptual predicate for a dass-soli­taire like (23), it can be an emo­ tive predicate, so that the expression can be inter­preted as an ex­clama­tive act. A dasssolitaires like (24) can have a conceptual volitional predicate de­ter­mining a command. Note that the logical forms of (23) and (24) are represented as structured proposi­tion with the dass-clause as focus and the situationally given matrix clause as background. The background is not expressed linguistically since it is given by the situ­ational context – cf. Merchant (2001, 2004). (23)

Dass Hans kommt! that Hans comes ‘So Hans is coming!’ kλs. s (come (hans)), λP (∃semo ∃s∈s (semo s ={s∈fact | ks, Pl}

(24)

Dass Du mir jetzt an die Ostsee fährst! that you pro1.sg.dat now to the Baltic drive ‘So drive to the Baltic now!’ kλs. s (Bal­tic.­drive (β)), λP (∃swant ∃s∈s (swant want (α), (s)))l s ={s | ks, Pl}

is.amazed (anna), (s)))l

The contextually given matrix predi­cates in (23) and (24) pro­vide each a situation s so that the propositional function given by the se­mantics of the dass-solitaire can be applied to this situation. Emotive predicates are presupposi­tional while voli­tional ones are projective, i.e. their si-arguments are factual and related to propo­sitions that are or will be true in the actual world. Thus the situations they focus on are easy to access. As for the situation emotive predicates focus on, it must deviate from a given norm to a certain extent. Volitional predi­cates focus on a situation that is not realised yet, but can be. The person who is amazed or wants something is the speaker α since he is the most salient person. The situa­tions semo and swant which are represented by ‘amaze (α), (s)’ and ‘want (α), (s)’ must be given by the situ­ational context as well. Here again, the reason is that these situations must be easily acces­sible for the addressee. The last observations explain why dass-solitaires cannot be used as assertions. They cannot because one condition of an assertion is not satis­fied. It is the condi­tion that α believes that β does not know the situation which is represented. The condition is not satisfied since β can perceive the situation.



Interrogative complement causes 

Turning to the matrix predicate variable of wh-solitaires like (25a) and (25b), it can be specified by either an emotive or by a volitional predicate. Again, these predicates focus on a situation s and relate it to their agent. The situation the predicate focuses on, the agent of the predicate, as well as the situation the predicate and its arguments represent are given by the situational context and are thus easy to access for the addressee of the utterance. As has been mentioned above, the speci­fication of the matrix variable can be triggered by various linguis­tic means. In (25a), the sentential accent H*L triggers that the variable is specified by the emotive predicate be.amazed. H*L (25) a. Wer dort kommt! who there comes kλx∈person λs (s (come (x))), λq (∃semo ∃s∈s (semo s ={s∈fact | ∃a ks, kq, all}

is.amazed (α), (s)))l

In (25a), it is reconstructed that the speaker is amazed about a situation where a particular person is coming. The situation, which is in focus, is represented by a question/answer pair where only the question q is expressed. The answer a need not be expressed because the person who is coming is percep­tible for all discourse participants. As we can see in (25b), the matrix predicate variable of the under-specified semantic form (21’) is specified by the volitional epistemic predicate want to know. It has been men­tioned above that the choice of this predicate is triggered by the rising sentential accent which indicates the expressive meaning “α expects continuation of the utterance”. L*H (25) b. Wer wohl kommen wird? who part will come kλx∈person λs (s (come (x))), λq (∃s ∃sknow-α∈sknow-α (sknow-α (sknow-α)))l sknow-α = {sknow-α | ∀sp∈sp (sknow-α (know (α), (sp)))} sp = {sp | sp (∃a ∃s∈fact (ks, kq, all))}

want (α),

(25b) shows that the situation sknow-α which is represented as ‘α knows the answer propositions to the expressed question q is related to α by the want-predicate. The addressee of (25b) can infer the proposition that α wants him to cause the situation sknow-α. This optional inference is what distinguishes an interrogative solitaire from an interrogative root clause. Whereas the latter di­rectly indicates that α wants β to cause the situation sknow-α, (see π2 in (7’), an inter­rogative solitaire only allows the inference of this proposition. Presupposed this inference occurs, an expression like (25b) can be inter­preted as an indirect question act. Since, unlike with respect to root interrogatives, the addressee β of the derived π2 is not necessarily the hearer, an interrogative solitaire is rather a deliberative question act where β is rather the speaker. If β were the hearer, α would choose the canonical question form.

 Kerstin Schwabe

Note that emotive predicates are restricted to wh-complement clauses only, i.e. they do not allow ob-comple­ments – cf. (26). The reason is that the situation s they focus on is a fact and the factive proposition it contributes in constituting cannot be negated. (26)

*Ob Hans kommt! *‘I am amazed whether Hans is coming.’ kλf ∈ {λp (p), λp (¬p)} (f (p)), λq (∃semo ∃s∈s (semo p = (∃s (λs (s (come (hans))))) s = {s∈fact | ks, λs (s (come (hans)))l}

is.amazed (α), (s)))l

Ob-solitaires can, however, occur if a volitional epistemic predicate is substituted – cf. (27). (27)

Ob Hans kommt? whether Hans is coming ‘I wonder whether Hans is coming?’ kλf ∈{λp (p), λp (¬p)} (f (p)), λq (∃s ∃sknow-α∈sknow-α (sknow-α sknow-α = {sknow-α | ∃sp∈sp (sknow-α (know (α), (sp)))} sp = {sp | sp (∃a(kq, al))}

want (α), (sknow-α)))l

We have shown that the matrix predicate of complement answers is copied from a con­textu­ally given question and that the matrix predicate of solitaires is represented as an existentially bound variable. We have demonstrated that the illocutionary force of complement answers can be derived from the expressive erotetic meaning of the preceding question act. The illo­cutionary force of solitaires is determined by a conceptually reconstructed matrix predicate. The choice of the predicate can be triggered by intonation and particular lexical means. If L*H indicates continuation of the utter­ance, the matrix predicate variable can only be speci­fied by a volitional epistemic predicate resulting in an erotetic speech act. And if there is some kind of an expressive accent indicat­ing emotive expressive meaning, the matrix predi­cate variable can only be specified by an emotional matrix predicate resulting in an exclama­tive speech act. Since all mentioned interpretational triggers do not determine a particular sentence type in German, neither the erotetic nor the exclamative use of interrogative soli­taires is determined syntactically by a sentence type.

4. Conclusion All pragmatic interpretations of solitaires have in common that the specification of the matrix predi­cate variable is determined by the situative context. Therefore the agent is always the speaker. The situa­tion that is fully or partially represented by the declarative or interrogative complement clause and the situation the re­con­structed matrix clause



Interrogative complement causes 

represents are always factual. The reason for this is that these situations must be easily accessible for the addressee. Solitaires also have in common that their illocutionary force is not expressed directly syntac­tically, as is the case with the corresponding root clauses. Their illocutionary force results from the specifica­tion of the matrix predicate variable which can be triggered by intonation, the propositional content, and particular expressive lexical means. We have figured out three conceptual predicate types as possible specifications for the matrix predicate variable: i. ‘emo (α), (si)’, ii. ‘want (α), (si)’, and iii. ‘want (α), (sknow-α)’. All specifications of the matrix predicate variable have in common that they relate a situation, which is accessible for the ad­dressee, to the speaker α. Predicates like believe or hope which relate a proposition to α are not possible. The reason for this is that propositions are not accessible for the addressee. If the matrix variable is conceptually specified by ‘emo (α), (si)’, α can perform an exclamative illocutionary act which can be supported by an expressive accent. emo-predicates have either dass- or wh-complements. A dass-complement fully represents the situation the predicate focuses on. A wh-complement represents the question part of the question/answer pair which represents the situation the predicate focuses on. This is possible since the answer of the question/answer pair is given by the situational context. If the matrix variable is concep­tually specified by ‘want (α), (si)’, α can perform a directive speech act which can be sup­ported by particular particles like bloß or the dative of the first singular pronoun. Such predi­cates allow only dass-solitaires. The reason why an interrogative solitaire is not possible is that the situation the predicate focuses on is anchored in a deontic context. In this context, the answer which is necessary to form the question/answer pair is not accessible for the addressee. If the matrix variable is conceptually specified by ‘want (α), (sknow-α)’, α can perform a rogative speech act which is supported prosodically by rising intonation indicating that α wants a continuation of his utterance. Epistemic volitional predicates like ‘want (α), (sknow-α)’ only allow interrogative complements. Unlike an interrogative root clause which establishes a question situation that always in­volves the addressee, an inter­rogative solitaire does not establish such an erotetic situa­tion. This situation can, how­ever, be inferred. Since it can be related to a different addressee than the ad­dressee of the solitaire, the latter is not necessarily the addressee of the question. This ex­plains the deliberative character of interrogative solitaires. Interrogative answer complements share with solitaires the property that they are argu­ments of a ma­trix predicate variable. The specification of this variable is given by the seman­tics of the pre­ce­ding ques­tion. It is thus linguistically determined. But the illo­cution­ary force of the interrogative com­plement is not determined syntactically. That it is an assertion is predicted by the illocutionary condi­tions provided by the preceding interro­gative act. Syntactically, solitaires and answer complement clauses have in common that they have an ellipti­cal clause structure inasmuch as the matrix predi­cate, which is contextually given, is syntactically empty. But they differ in the se­mantic form of this empty predicate. Whereas the semantic form of the matrix verb of complement answers re-

 Kerstin Schwabe

sults from copying the preceding question, the semantic form of the matrix verb of solitaires is semantically indeterminate, i.e. it merely provides the exis­tential binding of the matrix predicate variable, the latter being specified on the pragmatic level.

Notes * I am most grateful to Hans-Martin Gärtner, Klaus von Heusinger, Paul Portner, and Susanne Winkler for inspiring comments and discussion. And I am so very grateful to Philip Lawrence for his help to provide the English version of this paper. 1. As for the distinction between ordinary and expressive meaning see Potts (2003a) and Portner (this volume). 2. As for the full version of the int meaning, see ’ below. As to question situations see also Wunderlich (1976). ’ λq ∃sq∈Sq ∃sutt-α ∃sintend‑α (π1 ∧ π2)



π1

= (sutt-α





π2

= (sintend‑α

(want (α), (∀scause-β ∃spass∈spass (scause-β



sq

= {sq | (sq

q)}

(utter (α), (sq)))



s = {spass| (spass





φ1

= (sutt‑β





ϕ2

= (sintend-β

pass

(∃sutt‑β (∃sintend-β ∃sp∈sp (∃sknow‑α∈ s know-α (φ1 ∧ ϕ2)}

(utter (β), (sp))) (want (β), (sknow-α)))



sknow-α = {sknow-α | ∃s∈sp (sknow‑α



sp

= {sp | sp

(cause (β), (spass))))))

(know (α), (sp)))}

(∃a ∃s∈fact (ks, kq, all))}

3. ‘(utter (α), (sq))’ means that α provides a perceptible structure which can be mapped onto the question situation. 4. A fact is regarded here as a state of affairs which exists in the actual world. As for a comprehensive definition of facts see Kratzer (2003). 5. There are languages where the interrogative feature in yes/no-interrogatives is expressed by a lexical item. Some Slavic languages, for instance, indicate interrogativity by the clitic li – cf. Schwabe (2004).

The syntax and pragmatics of embedded yes/no-questions Regine Eckardt The paper investigates the distribution of English if and whether as complementizers for polar questions in extensional contexts, and specifically the restriction of if-questions to negative con­texts. I will criticize the recent analysis by Adger and Quer (2001) and suggest that markedness of embedded if- questions in certain contexts arises through the conspiracy of several factors. I follow Bolinger (1978) in assuming that the question ‘if S’ presupposes an (ir‑)relevance asym­metry between the proposition denoted by S and its negation. I argue that this leads to competi­tion between embedded if-questions and thatclauses in the relevant constellations, which in turn excludes the if-question as the less optimal variant.

1. Embedded questions In English, like in many other languages, questions can occur as subordinate clauses under a matrix verb. The matrix verb can be one of questioning, doubting or wondering, like in example (1). The embedded clause here denotes a question and reports that the subject poses or could pose the question, mentally or explicitly, to himself or to others. (1) Susan wondered/asked/did not know who was the murderer. Susan wondered/asked/did not know whether Jones was the murderer. This kind of example, also called extensional question embedding, contrasts semantically with examples where the subject holds a certain mental attitude towards the correct answers of the embedded question, like in (2): (2) Elsie knew/told me/discovered who took the book. Elsie knew/told/disclosed whether Jones took the book. These predicates have also been called intensional question embeddings. Finer classifications of question embedding verbs have been proposed in the literature (Ginzburg

 Regine Eckardt

1996, Lahiri 2002, Ginzburg and Sag 2000), starting from seminal work by Karttunen (1977). The present paper is focused on embedded yes/no questions in intensional contexts, and more specifically on the dis­tribution of the complementizers if and whether in such embeddings. I will argue that these com­plementizers carry different presuppositions and that intensional question embeddings compete with embedded that clauses. It will be shown that the distribution of if and whether in positive and negated question embedding contexts can be derived from pragmatic factors. This counters a recent proposal by Adger and Quer (2001) who offer a feature-based analyses of the relevant data. The paper is organized as follows: In section 2, I will briefly review the relevant examples of embedded yes/no questions and the puzzling preferences for complementizing if and whether reported by native speakers. Section 3 is devoted to an exposition and critique of Adger and Quer’s (2001) analysis of these data. In section 4, I propose that the presuppositions of whether and if, as well as competition between embedded if and that-clauses, should be used as the basic ingredients for a pragmatic account of the data. This claim will be exemplified on basis of the verb admit that, in some sense, constitutes a prototypical embedding verb for the phenomena under debate. In section 5, I will show how this basic account can be generalized to other ques­tion embedding verbs. The final section is devoted to the discussion of the notoriously shaky nature of speakers’ judgments in this particular area. Side remarks to that end pervade not only the literature (see the very balanced survey in Huddleston and Pullum 2002: 973–975. ), they are likewise issued at several places within the present paper. I will argue that we witness a case of ongoing language change in this area, where presuppositions that were a stable part of the lexi­con at earlier stages are presently weakened and neglected by speakers, depending on their idio­lectal lexicon. This observation lends further support to the proposed analysis in contrast to one which is anchored in the core syntax: While Adger and Quer have little to say about idiolectal variation apart from the remark that they only intend to describe their own, concise judgments about the data, a pragmatic account can link variation to general processes in language change. As a kind of prelude, let me point out a certain pragmatic asymmetry between embedded constituent questions and yes/no questions. Consider a sentence like (3).

(3) Elsie knew / told me who took the book.

Such a sentence will be unmarked and felicitous, no matter whether the speaker knows the an­swer to the question ‘who took the book?’ or not. The example with the verb told even strongly suggests that I know the answer. A sentence like (4), in contrast, sounds somewhat irksome in a situation where the speaker already knows whether there will be a talk on Monday. The context in brackets explicates this situation.

(4) (We cannot meet on Monday because there will be a talk at 2 pm. – Should I also tell Elsie? This is unnecessary,...) Elsie knows whether there will be a talk on Monday.



The syntax and pragmatics of embedded yes/no-questions 

If we judge the well-formedness of sentence in (4) in isolation, it is clearly grammatical and matches the approved pattern in (2). It is likewise not contradictory or semantically marked in the context in (4). However, informants who are confronted with discourse like in (4) usually show a strong dispreference for the pattern even to the claim that (4) is grammatically ill-for­ med.1 After some reflection, they react by saying that an embedded that-clause would be the pre­­­ferred option in this context. Interestingly, embedded constituent questions do not seem to evoke this kind of reaction easily. The discourse in (5) does not suffer from the same markedness as (4).

(5) (We now got all responses to our invitation to the Christmas party. Tom will come, Sue and Linda, and Peter, Paul and Mary will come. – Should I also tell Elsie? No, that’s unnecessary.…) Elsie already knows who will come to the party. I already told Elsie who will come to the party. The contrast in (4) suggests that an embedded yes/no question potentially has to compete with the corresponding embedded that-clause. Speakers perceive the that-clause as a vital alternative to an embedded question in intensional contexts, and the embedded question appears to be the marked, or more complex alternative. If this more complex way of putting things is to be used, the speaker must have good reason to do so. This ties in with comparable analyses for the use of lexical pairs like kill/cause to die that have received revived interest in the development of bidi­rectional optimality theory (Blutner 2000, Jäger 2002). As we can see from example (5), no similar competition seems to arise between embedded constituent questions and their answers. This observation does not necessarily contradict the pro­posed explanation of (4) but seems to highlight a structural difference between constituent ques­tions and yes/no questions. The answer to a yes/no question consists necessarily of just the con­firmation or negation of the proposition at issue. Hence, a yes/no question has necessarily always an equally brief answer. Constituent questions, however, are structurally tied to a potential list of answers, as it is structurally possible that more than one instantiation of the wh­-phrase lead to true propositions. (Note that we are concerned with structural possibilities here. Of course, the meaning of the question can logically imply that there can be at most one positive answer.) We can therefore assume that, in the search for the optimal realization of a given embedded proposi­tion, our grammar requires us to weigh yes/no- questions against that-clauses, but not constituent questions against their answers – even if that answer be known. Cases like these can help us to come to a better understanding of the range of competing structures in OT accounts, a notori­ously debated issue in the development of this kind of approach. I will, however, restrict my attention to a limited application of these observations and as­sumptions here. It will be proposed that markedness effects like in (4) – which arise in a com­pletely context-driven and productive manner in that example – have turned into part of the grammar of certain question embedding verbs (of German and

 Regine Eckardt

English), and of a certain type of embedded question (if in contrast to whether) in English. If the proposed analysis is found to be tenable, it will open a new range of mechanisms in which semantics and pragmatics can tie in with the syntax of a language.

2. Embedded yes/no questions: whether or if In a recent article, Adger and Quer (2001) discuss a peculiar contrast between English if- and whether-questions in certain embedded contexts. In particular, they point out that embedded if-questions are marked in certain contexts and appear to behave like negative polarity items. The effect is illustrated by the examples in (6) and (7) and particularly by (6d) and (7b). In view of the fact that speaker judgments vary widely in this area, I offer their original examples in (6), and (9) to (11). (6)

a. The bartender told me that I was drunk. b. The bartender told me who was drunk. c. The bartender told me whether I was drunk. d. *The bartender told me if I was drunk.

(7) a. Anton admitted whether he was the heir of Churchill. b. *Anton admitted if he was the heir of Churchill. According to Adger and Quer, this contrast appears under intensional question embedding verbs like admit, tell, hear, or say. The authors hypothesize that the relevant class of verbs comprises all and exactly those embedding verbs that can also alternatively embed a that-clause. Matters would be easy if these data could simply be explained as a selection restriction for complementizers, shown by certain verbs. However, further data preclude this kind of explana­tion. Remarkably, the examples improve in nonveridical contexts. The authors discuss the fol­lowing examples, resting their argument on the wide notion of nonveridicality proposed by Giannakidou (1998). (8) a. *Anton admitted if he was drunk. b. Anton did not admit if he was drunk. c. Nobody admitted if they were drunk.

(9) Only Julie admitted/heard/told me if the bartender was happy.

(10) We refused to admit/tell if they had the keys. (11) Without them admitting if they have the keys, there is nothing we can do for them. Moreover, the authors sense an improvement if the constructions are used in non-episodic con­texts like under modal operators. (12) Anton would always admit if he was drunk.2



The syntax and pragmatics of embedded yes/no-questions 

The data in (6) to (12) are in fact a challenge. One cannot assume that the embedding predicates simply to not allow complement if clauses. According to the authors’ diagnosis, the class of contexts in which embedded if-clauses are licensed coincides with the class of non-veridical contexts. Given that non-veridical contexts are also those that license polarity sensitive items, it seems natural to exploit this licensing relation in an account of the data in (6) to (12). In essence, the authors propose the following analysis. 1. Unacceptable if-clauses occur always as arguments of verbs that also (really?) embed that-sentences. Hence, semantically speaking, the argument of the verb must be a proposition rather than a question. 2. Adger and Quer assume that all wh-questions in English (including whether questions) can be reinterpreted as propositions, namely as the, or one among the true answer(s) to the question. In this reinterpreted sense, questions are always in principle possible arguments for verbs that take propositions as arguments. 3. English if-questions cannot be reinterpreted as propositions. 4. They propose to use a tacit type shifting operator ∆ to make question denotations combin­able with a proposition-taking verb. Adger and Quer propose that this should be seen as a kind of generalized quantifier, and discuss possible morphological reflexes of this operator in other languages (though not in English or German). This operator performs on an if-question what standard type shifting can achieve for wh-questions, namely its coercion into a proposition.3 5. In addition, this operator ∆ happens to be polarity sensitive. 6. Hence, if ∆ occurs in a sentence – in order to semantically adjust an embedded question to the embedding predicate – and is not licensed by a nonveridical context, then the sentence is judged ungrammatical. This proposal can indeed predict the intriguing interplay between embedded question, embed­ding predicate, and non-veridical contexts. However, if we evaluate it against a broader back­ground certain questions arise. These will be presented and discussed in the next section. Before going on, a clarifying statement with respect to the data seems in place. Interest­ingly, informants report varying reactions to the crucial examples. Usually, hearers find Adger and Quer’s starred sentences “odd” or “marked” but not downright “ungrammatical”. The au­thors faithfully report such reactions but ascribe them to the fact that speakers of English might show idiolectal variation here. While it is hard to discover an informant who fully shares Adger and Quer’s idiolect, all native speakers that I consulted could agree on markedness effects. These include an estimated total of approximately 20 natives at two workshop presentations, plus two native BE informants who were willing to endure prolonged evaluations of examples. It might turn out as a plus of the pragmatic account that it operates in terms of markedness and competi­ tion rather than strict ungrammaticality in a syntactic sense.

 Regine Eckardt

3. Open issues in the syntactic account The first objection to Adger and Quer’s proposal is motivated by the general pragmatic nature of polarity sensitive items. Even though work in recent years has made it clear that different lan­guages possess different sets of polarity sensitive items (Giannakidou 1998 and subsequent, Zwarts 1986, 1998 and others), certain characteristics of NPIs remain constant. In particular, it seems clear that the lexical property of being polarity sensitive in practically all cases arises through a semantically/pragmatically motivated phase where a certain type of expression is used in order to make an emphatic contribution to discourse. The contrast between (13) and (14) can serve to illustrate the difference. Note that I deliberately refrain from using the more common Joe doesn’t own any money because the complementary English determiners some and any are a grammaticalized version of a formerly pragmatic contrast. (13) Joe has no money. (14) Joe doesn’t own a red cent. Pragmatic accounts of polarity sensitivity in the tradition of Fauconnier (Fauconnier 1975, Krifka 1995a, Lahiri 1998, see also Eckardt 2006: chap.4, 2005) rest on the primary intuition that polarity sensitive items are used to make emphatic statements. For example, ‘not owning a red cent’ is the most dramatic or extreme property that the subject ‘Joe’ can have with respect to a scale of different degrees of being poor. In this and many other cases, the emphatic value of the NPI is part of our understanding of the word or phrase. In some cases, NPIs have lost the strong rhetorical quality but retain the distributional restrictions (like English any in competition to some, or German je = ‘ever’ in contrast to einmal = ‘some time’.) However, so far no NPIs in English have been discovered where this rhetorical quality would be completely absent. The analysis of Adger and Quer implies the existence of invisible NPIs. This claim contra­dicts everything that we know about the genesis of polarity sensitive items at present. In the ini­tial stage, it is vital for the element to be able to carry stress in order to give rise to an emphatic statement. It is unclear how a phonologically null element could enter this development. Perhaps we could assume that if might have functioned as the exponent of the emphatic quality of the statement somehow. But once again, nothing in the historical development of em­bedded if questions supports the claim that an emphatic quality ever played a role in the use of this construction. This is witnessed, for instance, by the detailed discussion of question patterns in Old and Middle English that are offered in The Cambridge History of the English Language (1992; Vol 1 (Hogg) and 2 (Blake)). The respective authors on syntax, Traugott and Fischer, offer detailed accounts of the use of question words in OE and ME. Neither, however, reports a particular rhetoric quality of if questions. This coheres with the examples and uses that are listed in the Oxford English Dictionary. Whatever differences may guide the use of if contra wheth-



The syntax and pragmatics of embedded yes/no-questions 

er, there seem to be no indications whatsoever that if-clauses should be an emphatic variant of whether-clauses. Let me illustrate what that would amount to: In contrasting (15) and (16), no scholar ever described variants like (16) as synonymous to Joe did not admit in any sense whether he was the heir of Beethoven or Joe did not admit whether he was the heir of Beethoven in any sense whatsoever. (15) Joe didn’t admit whether he was the heir of Beethoven. (16) Joe didn’t admit if he was the heir of Beethoven. Of course, this objection can only affect Adger and Quer’s analysis to the extent that we believe in the pragmatic account of polarity sensitivity. It is not an objection against their synchronic implementation. However, there has been an increasing effort in recent years to achieve a con­tentful understanding of the phenomenon of polarity sensitivity, an explanation of the licensing conditions in terms of an item’s pragmatic lexical properties rather than as a curious allergy to positive contexts. Adger and Quer’s proposal certainly runs counter to this strong trend in se­mantic research. The second objection again does not affect the implementation of Adger and Quer’s pro­posal for English. However, it casts doubt on the analysis from the viewpoint of language com­parison. The analysis can not be extended to similar constellations that can be found in German, particularly with the embedding verb sich sicher sein, ob... (‘to be sure’). The data are listed in (17) and (18). (17) sich sicher sein, ob a. ?*Peter ist sich sicher, ob er den Herd ausgeschaltet hat. Peter is himself sure ‘ob’ he the stove off.switched has ‘Peter knows for sure if he switched off the stove’ b. *Alle sind sich sicher, ob Pisa in Italien liegt all are themselves sure ‘ob’ Pisa in Italy lies ‘All know for sure if Pisa lies in Italy’ c. *Ich bin mir sicher, ob Johann kommt I am myself sure ‘ob’ Johann comes ‘I know for sure if Johann will come’ (18) a. b. c.

Peter ist sich nicht sicher, ob er den Herd ausgeschaltet hat. Peter is himself not sure ‘ob’ he the stove off-switched has ‘Peter is not sure if he switched off the stove’ Ich bin mir selten sicher, ob ich den Herd ausgeschaltet habe I am myself rarely sure ‘ob’ I the stove off-switched have ‘I rarely know for sure if I switched off the stove’ Wenig Jugendliche sind sich mit 18 sicher ob sie eine Few teens are themselves with 18 sure ‘ob’ they a eigene Familie gründen wollen. own family found want ‘Few teens know for sure at the age of 18 if they want to found a family’

 Regine Eckardt

General facts about German ob preclude an analysis of the contrasts in (17) and (18) along the lines of Adger and Quer’s theory. German ob usually behaves like English whether. In particular, it can occur under intensional question embedding verbs, as shown in (19). Note that the German example patterns with the English whether sentence, and not with the English if example. Hence, embedded ob-questions should be reinterpretable as propositions without further operators.4 (19) Otto weiß jetzt, ob er Krebs hat. Otto knows now ‘ob’ he cancer has (20) Now, Otto knows whether he has cancer. (21) *Now, Otto knows if he has cancer. In view of these facts, the markedness of the examples in (17) can not be captured by recurring to a tacit generalized quantifier which performs the type shift from question to proposition, and which is in addition polarity sensitive. A final objection concerns Adger and Quer’s proposal as part of a coherent overall theory of embedded questions. In earlier accounts of question embedding verbs, it was usually assumed that the reinterpretation of a question as a proposition occurs as part of the verb’s lexical mean­ing. Propositional attitude verbs like know or determine have a basic use as propositional attitude verbs and a use as an operator on questions where the question is reinterpreted as a proposition. Propositional attitude verbs that do not allow for this reinterpretation can only embed declarative sentences (This is essentially the line followed by Lahiri 1998). Adger and Quer, in contrast, assume that wh-questions can always be reinterpreted as propositions. However, we clearly find verbs that do not accept embedded questions; believe is a prominent example. In Adger and Quer’s account, this restriction can not be semantic in nature, because all questions except if-questions allow for a type shift. Therefore, it must be regulated in syntactic terms, for instance by structurally allowing or refuting an argument with wh features. The feature selection properties of a verb normally do not change when the verb enters into complex constructions. Embeddability of questions, however, does. Some examples are listed in (22). (22) a.

*Ich vermute, wer morgen kommt. I assume who tomorrow come ‘I assume who will come tomorrow’ *Hans hat vermutet, ob Pisa in Italien liegt. Hans has assumed whether Pisa in Italy lies ‘Hans has assumed whether Pisa is in Italy’

(22) b. Ich kann nur vermuten, wer morgen kommt. I can only assume/guess who tomorrow come ‘I can only guess who will come tomorrow’



The syntax and pragmatics of embedded yes/no-questions 

(22) c. Ich kann lediglich / höchstens / allein vermuten, wer morgen kommt. I can only, at best, just guess who tomorrow comes ‘I can only guess who will come tomorrow’ The embedded questions in (22a) are ungrammatical and seem to indicate that ‘vermuten’ does not license a wh-complement. The sentences in (22b) and (22c), however, are fully acceptable. A syntactic licensing mechanism that derives the potential to license wh-features from complex predicates in a compositional manner remains as yet to be developed. In view of these objections to Adger and Quer’s proposal, it seems reasonable to consider possible alternatives. In the next sections, I would like to lay out the elements of a pragmatically based account for the data under consideration.

4. If or whether, the simple case The pragmatic account for the different uses of embedded if- and whether-questions will rest on the competition between embedded assertions and questions that was illustrated at the beginning. I propose that embedded if‑questions interact with the meaning of embedding verbs in such a way as to be equivalent to an embedded assertion. The embedded assertion is then preferred as the simpler, or less marked way to make the same statement and consequently, the embedded if-sentence is judged as marked. In the present section, I will spell out this general idea for a basic case. The first issue to resolve is the nature of the difference between an if-question and a whether-question. For expository reasons, I will assume that the meaning of a question is repre­sented by the set of possible answers, i.e. use Hamblin’s analysis (Hamblin 1973). The argument is compatible with more refined treatments of question semantics (e.g. Groenendijk and Stokhof 1984, Krifka 2001a or Ginzburg and Sag 2000). For yes/noquestions this amounts to the follow­ing representation: (23) V if/whether SB = { VSB, ¬VSB } One might wonder why the English language affords two words for a syntactic function as sim­ple as a question complementizer. In fact, there seems to be no officially acknowledged differ­ence between the two, and speakers’ strategies to chose between them seem to vary to a certain degree. Nevertheless, the following trend is supported by the data and was described as early as Bolinger (1978). (24) The Bias of if: The use of an embedded if S presupposes that the two possible an­swers are not of equal status for future actions, opinions, plans, etc. Commonly, the positive case S is the relevant case for some decision, opinion, etc., the case that really changes something. The negative case is perceived as the ‘otherwise’ case with no, or no interesting consequences.

 Regine Eckardt

(25) The Non-Bias of whether: The use of an embedded whether S does not presuppose any asymmetry between the positive case ‘S’ and the negative case ‘non S’. The speaker has a balanced interest in either one of the two possible answers. It might be important to point out here that the bias of if is not one in terms of the expected an­swer. All interlocutors can be truly ignorant about the answer of an embedded if question.They do not hold a bias about the likely answers, but the two possible answers are not equally relevant. Before illustrating this effect with some examples, let me state the presuppositions of an embed­ded if-question in these terms: (26) V if SB = { VSB, ¬ VSB } Presupposition: Relevant (VSB ). The notion of being relevant is an unspecific cover term that will have to be instantiated in each context of use. It is understood that not both p and non-p can be relevant in this sense. Some first examples are listed in (27) and (28). (27) a. The captain needs to know your name and whether you tend to get seasick. b. The captain needs to know your name and if you tend to get seasick. Question (27a) at the beginning of a cruise seems to suggest that the captain has an interest in both types of passengers, those who get seasick as well as those who do not. This might be be­cause staff collects statistical data about the percentage of passengers who need paper bags. Question (27b) appears to be more likely in a context where the staff already has prepared means to defend seasickness and wants to contact affected passengers. The question suggests that pas­sengers who are ‘good sailors’ are not the core interest of those who maintain the question. Note that both embedded questions are conjoined with a nominal argument of the matrix verb. This ensures that the if-clause is actually interpreted as a complement of the verb and not as a postposed conditional.5 Similar asymmetric expectations arise for embedded positive and negative questions. (28) a. We must find out who’s the first speaker and also if he needs a beamer. b. We must find out who’s the first speaker, and also if he doesn’t need a beamer. c. We must find out whether the first speaker needs a beamer (or not). The sentence in (28a) is more likely in a context where we only start racing for a beamer as soon as we learn that the first speaker will need one. The sentence in (28b) suggests a different situa­tion: We seem to have a beamer and need to find out whether the first speaker can spare it. The last variant reports neutral interest in the speaker’s need for a beamer without preconceptions. In fact, it is highly interesting to take a closer look into the actual use that speakers of English make of whether questions. Native speakers report that they are very frequently used with the postponed disjunct ‘or not’ like indicated in brackets in example



The syntax and pragmatics of embedded yes/no-questions 

(28c). The same tendency can also easily be confirmed in the medium which is at once the richest and least reliable current corpus-like structure for English, the internet. Although one should not rest a study on such findings alone, superficial evaluation strongly suggests that in written sources in the internet, speakers of English use whether-questions with the or not-tag much more frequently than they do with if-questions (where it can only be found rarely). Let me offer some impressionistic num­bers here: Doing web search for the terms if plus or not and picking an arbitrary choice of 50 hits, I got a ratio of 18 whether or not-constructions to 6 if or not-constructions (in addition to 24 other uses, and 2 double sites). I will come back to the issue of language use in contrast to cur­rent grammar in section six. A final example to illustrate the bias of if-questions can be found in Bolinger (Bolinger 1978). (29) a. Please tell me if you want to marry me. b. Please tell me whether you want to marry me. Bolinger notes that the variant in (29a) seems to be the more successful strategy to make a proposal while (29b), inappropriately, has a strangely disinterested ring to it. The proposal in (24) can explain this dif­ference. Under normal circumstances, the second party in (29) will expect that a positive answer is the most relevant alternative for the speaker; joy, happiness, wedding preparations and a major change in life being some of the expectable consequences. A negative answer, in contrast, may have some emotional impact but is not normally the starting point for further activities. The question as put in (29b) does not presuppose this asymmetry. The speaker seems to envisage two equally well-planned ways for future events for both the negative and the positive answer. This is a sober strategy, but disclosing it is not very encouraging for the addressee in (29b). Minimal pairs at the demarcation line between the use of if and whether are not easy to construct. Nevertheless, where differences do appear, they seem to point in the direction sug­gested in (24) and (25). The distinction is likewise in accord with the origin of if (though the reader will realize that the same source for German ob has not led to any bias in contemporary use). Hence, I will use (24) and (25) as baseline for the next steps. We can now investigate the interaction of embedding predicates with the bias of if. Let me start by discussing one of the most stable and uncontroversial among Adger and Quer’s embed­ding verbs, admit. It gives rise to several presuppositions, most prominently it is veridical: The embedded proposition is presupposed to be true. However, it is another presupposition that seems to be of particular interest for our case: Sentences like A admitted that p presuppose that the proposition p that was admitted was worth to be kept secret. This secrecy presupposition ex­cludes many contents as possible objects of ‘admitting’ and, in particular, will in most cases lead to the constellation that among a proposition p and its negation ¬p, only one can be admitted while the other needs to be told or announced.

 Regine Eckardt

(30) a. Joe admitted that he had made mistakes in the exam. b. Joe *? admitted/ announced that he hadn’t made any mistakes. Of course, this effect depends on the given context. What can be ‘secret’ for one person in one context can be ‘not secret’ for other people under different circumstances. There are also circum­stances where a writer wants to withhold any information about a given topic, as in typical front page headlines “Chancellor Schröder finally admits whether hair was dyed”. The default case, however consists in p being worth to be hidden iff its opposite ¬p is not, as illustrated in (30). Our assumptions about admit are summarized in (31). (31) Admit(a, p) Presupposition: p is true, embarrassing (p) Default assumption: embarrassing (p) → ¬Embarrassing (¬p) What happens if the bias of admit meets the bias of an embedded if-question? Remember that the bias of if contains an open parameter that needs to be specified in context. There is an asymmetry in relevance, but what counts as relevant needs to be decided in context. I assume that under these circumstances, relevance is instantiated by the expectation that some embarrassing fact is at stake. Something is relevant-qua-being embarrassing. In sum, the following lexical information is combined in the derivation: V if SB = {V SB, V ¬SB} Presupposition: Relevant (VSB) Default assumption: Relevant (p) → ¬Relevant (¬p) Vadmit, if SB 1. The lexical meaning of the embedding predicate allows for a reinterpretation of the semantics of the embedded question as a proposition. VA admit, if SB iff Admit (a, p) for the true answer p to the question if S. 2. Only embarrassing things can be admitted: The presupposition of admit requires that this p must be Embarrassing (p) 3. Instantiation of the presupposition of if S: S is relevant-qua-being embarrassing. 4. The only possible way to verify these different side requirements consists in the following instantiation: The true answer must be p = VSB because the admitted fact must be embarrassing (by ‘admit’) and relevant (by ‘if ’). 5. In summary: Va admits if SB meets all presuppositions if and only if Va admits that SB 6. Due to competition between synonymous phrases, a admits if S is regularly sup­pressed by the more optimal (less complex, and more specific) alternative a ad­mits that S. (32) (33)

The last step follows the recent trend to explain certain grammaticality judgments in terms of competition between different candidates. One prominent example in the domain of seman­tics/pragmatics is Bidirectional Optimality Theory (Blutner 2000,



The syntax and pragmatics of embedded yes/no-questions 

Jäger 2002) which was suc­cess­­fully applied to explain pairs like kill, cause to die. In the present case, we face a similar form of competition. I suggest that the lexical meaning of if, together with the lexical meaning of embedding verbs like admit, yield the net effect that an embedded if-question in veridical con­texts can only convey the same meaning as an embedded that-clause. (The negative case will be discussed presently.) Under these circumstances, the use of an embedded question is more costly than an embedded assertion, because the proposition that S needs to be derived as the positive answer to the question if S. The case mirrors the markedness effects that were diagnosed at the beginning of the paper for embedded constituent questions. How can this proposal explain the effect that admit can embed an if-sentence in a non-veridical context? Consider once again a sentence like in (34). (34) The queen did not admit if her hair was dyed. The crucial difference arises already at the very beginning of the derivation when the embedded question is reinterpreted as proposition. The combination of the question meaning with the ne­gated embedding predicate conveys something like in (35): (35) For all true answers p to the question if the queen’s hair was dyed it was not the case that Admit (queen, p). Importantly note that the negated sentence in (34) does not just negate that the queen admitted something about her hair. As we know, admit is veridical, and hence the mere negation of a positive sentence will retain the presupposition that the embedded clause is true. But the truth of the embedded clause is exactly what remains open in a sentence like (34): (34) does not make any claims about the hair color of the queen. The presuppositions that are carried by various parts of the sentence can still be unified in the manner described above, because true answers and relevant answers to a question are not the same. We may still assume that the proposition that would be worth admitting, or relevant-qua-embarrassing, is denoted by the sentence under if. Yet, (34) states that no admissions took place at all. Hence, an embarrassing proposition might have been withheld, or it might not have been admitted simply because it was not true. Sentence (31) is open in this respect and consequently not synonymous with the positive statement (36). (36) The queen did not admit that her hair was dyed. Therefore, no logical equivalence between (34) and (37) arises. But if the two sentences do not convey the same message, then they will not compete. The slight contrast between (34) and (37) predicted by this account should consist in that (37) is more neutral as to whether it is more embarrassing to dye, or not to dye one’s hair. This made-up example is very nicely backed up by uses of the collocation admit whether in actual discourse, like in the sentences in (38) and (39). (37) The queen did not admit whether (or not) her hair was dyed.

 Regine Eckardt

(38) Most of them were afraid to admit whether or not it was a successful rape or whether they had ever been victims. (39) And how would we do that? Read a porno magazine and admit whether we were turned on or not, (...) (38) and (39) were again harvested from the web. Search for the collocation ‘admit whether’ indeed mostly yields hits where whether does not introduce a subordinate clause. Approximately one out of 20 cases show in fact subordination, and these mostly report some symmetric constellation like the two above. I tried to complement these web data by search in the British National Corpus, but the collocations admit whether and admitted whether yield zero hits in this corpus. In contrast, embedded if-questions under admit do not compete with embedded that-sen­tences when it is left open (at least for some persons, some time, some possible world) whether there was anything to admit or not. Like other uses of if-questions, the speaker conveys an asymmetry in relevance between the positive and the negative answer. Embedded if‑questions rest on the notion of relevant-qua-embarrassing also in non-veridical contexts. The following sentences show the typical and most frequent type of use:6 (40) a. You are both courageous enough to admit if mistakes were made. b. I’m the first to admit if I’m wrong. c. I would admit if I’d contemplated suicide (which I have), but.… Observe that, counter to the expectations of Adger and Quer, real examples like these do not ex­hibit typical NPI contexts. If we follow the competition model proposed here, we expect that (40) are perfect uses of embedded if, because they all leave it open that no mistakes might have been made, that I might not be wrong or that I might not contemplate suicide. The affinity of em­bedded if for non-veridical contexts hence shows a superficial similarity to NPI licensing but is an essentially different phenomenon. The proposal as it stands so far works well for matrix verbs with specific presuppositions about their complement. It can not so far explain why verbs like know or tell should give rise to similar markedness effects. I will turn to these in the next section.

5. The general case In the present section, I will address the behavior of if-questions under verbs like know or tell. For the purpose of illustration, let me use tell as the standard example. I will not, in the present section, be concerned with data judgments or with the exact boundaries of the verb class to be investigated. However, I will return to these issues in the last section. As for now, I want to model data that follow the Adger and Quer scheme, i.e. examples like the following and specifi­cally the markedness of sentence (41c):

(41)

The syntax and pragmatics of embedded yes/no-questions 

a. b. c. d.

The queen told Edward that her hair was dyed. The queen told Edward whether her hair was dyed. *The queen told Edward if her hair was dyed. The queen did not tell Edward if her hair was dyed.

In the last section, we assumed that an if S question carries a bias. The positive proposition VSB is perceived as the relevant case in context, whereas the negative proposition V¬SB is of mi­nor or no interest. We moreover assumed that the notion of 'relevant' is to be seen as a cover term that needs to be specified in a given utterance. I propose that the specification of what is relevant is in part driven by the embedding verb, in sentences like (41c) and (41d). There is a conventionalized unification of the meaning of the matrix verb with the notion of relevance as a presupposition of the if-question. It is exemplified in (42), and (43) offers the general scheme. (42) A tells (if S) relevant in the given context amounts to: Be-Worth-Telling. Per default, it is expected that only one of a proposition and its negation will be Worth-Telling. (43) A (if S) relevant in the given context amounts to: Be-Worth- Note the clear parallel between this assumption and the analysis of if-questions as complements of admit in the last section. While the previous case could be motivated by the lexical meaning of admit, the move in (43) might strike the reader as circular. In the final section, this conventiona­lized instantiation of ‘relevant’ will be motivated by the origin of the construction from condi­­tionals. For the moment, however, let us recapitulate how the assumption in (42) can explain the data in (41). The steps in (44) closely follow the derivation in (33). (44) V A tell if SB 1. The embedded question is reinterpreted as a proposition: VA tell if SB is true iff tell (a, p) for the true answer p in Vif SB. 2. The presupposition of if S consists of Relevant (VSB) and by default, ¬Relevant (V¬SB ). 3. Instantiation of the presupposition of if S: Being Relevant amounts to Be-Worth-Telling. 4. It follows that Tell( a, p) for the true answer p in Vif SB only occurs if p is worth telling and hence, the true answer p in Vif SB must have been V SB. 5. In summary: V a tell if S  meets all presuppositions if and only if V a tell that SB 6. Due to competition between synonymous phrases, a tell if S is regularly sup­pressed by the more optimal (less complex, and more specific) alternative a tells that S. In analogy to the previous example, we can show that the embedded if-question does not com­pete with the that-clause exactly if there is at least one instance in the domain

 Regine Eckardt

of reference of the sentence where the if-question does not amount to the same proposition as the that-clause. This is so if no telling takes place and if, at the same time, it is open whether it does not occur due to the fact that S is not true, or because the given subject chose not to tell about the truth of S. What is the general difference between an embedded whether-question in contrast to an embedded if-question? The present analysis predicts that embedded whether-questions are more balanced and that the act of telling (guessing, deciding, revealing,... ) will take place also if the negative proposition ¬S is true. Consider the sentences in (45) and (46). (45) Anna may decide whether there will be a party. (46) Anna may decide if there will be a party. The predicted slight difference should be this. Sentence (46) should be appropriate in a situation where the normal course of events will be one without a party. So, the real decision of Anna is one in favor of a party whereas there is nothing to decide in order to have none. Sentence (45) should report that Anna has to make a volitional decision pro or contra a party. There might be some people who favor the idea that a party should take place, and hence it is not clear what the course of events will be if Anna fails to make a decision. If native speakers of English are interviewed about their use of minimal pairs like in (45) or (46) and also in (41b) or (41c), they usually report unclear intuitions. On the one hand, it can usually not be excluded that Anna, instead of remaining stubbornly tacit, will say ‘no party’ at some point even though the situation was described with the sentence in (46). On the other hand, a non-event can be epistemically as explicit as an explicit denial. As a consequence, sentences like (45) seem to sound natural even if Anna in fact just does remain silent (e.g. fails to send out in­vitations, fails to post an announcement, etc.) in the ‘no party’ case. The only testable intuition, at least for some speakers, seems to be that episodic past or present tense positive reports about acts of telling, announcing, deciding, knowing etc. need to use a whether-question as comple­ ment. Before closing the section, I will take a brief look at alternative questions. One surprising kind of pattern emerges when we look at alternative questions embedded with if or whether, re­spectively. The disjunction or not in spontaneous written language use occurs in the over­whelming majority of cases in embedded whether-questions. Typical examples are like in (47). (47) a. The focus of the Asia Pacific Hospice Conference (...) centered on whether or not physicians should inform cancer patients of their diagnosis. b. You will be expected to decide after this whether or not you wish to join the group. c. When the Prison Service is deciding whether or not to grant temporary release to a prisoner, it will (...).



The syntax and pragmatics of embedded yes/no-questions 

d. The applicant will be told if a charge will apply, so they can decide whether to pro­ceed with the request or not. We also find alternative embedded if-questions. This, at first sight, seems to pose a challenge to the analysis that I present here. If we postulate that only the positive case S of if S can ever be relevant, how could anyone possibly use an alternative if question? Curiously, speakers prefer different patterns to build alternative questions embedded with if. Typical examples are listed in (48). (48) a. You’re then told if the number you’ve keyed in is greater or smaller than the mysterious number. b. Once you have done that you will then be told if the number you picked is wrong or right. c. You will be told if the item is available or in use. In all these cases, the disjuncts are both presented with a positive description. The speaker views them as two different, but equally relevant possibilities. Only against the background of world and lexical knowledge, the negative answer to the (first) positive if S1 question is logically equivalent to the positive complementary case ( ‘... or S2’). Such circumstances, then, seem to be appropriate to overwrite the default assumption in (23) that only one among p and not-p can be relevant. Without aiming at a full analysis of sentences with the ‘or not’ coda, I submit that the pre­sent analysis offers a balanced interaction between hard constraints and soft parameters that can capture borderline phenomena like the ones quoted. Therefore, examples like in (45) support rather than falsify the present analyses. Adger and Quer mention the role of the or not-coda in a footnote and state that their account offers no explanation.

6. The wider perspective In the present article, I took up Adger and Quer’s observation about the restriction of embedded if-questions to non-veridical contexts. After criticizing their earlier proposal, I developed an ac­count which rests on the following basic ideas. i. Embedded yes/no-questions compete with embedded that-clauses. Only those embedded questions are licensed that lead to a sentence that is in some sense better than the compet­ing em­bedded assertion. ii. An embedded assertion is preferred to an embedded polar question if it is clear in con­text that the speaker already knows the correct answer to the question and could hence be more informative, and if no further communicative factors sanction withheld information (e.g. news­paper headline context). iii. If-questions presuppose the bias that the positive case S is relevant whereas the negative case ¬S is not. Relevance is viewed as an open parameter that will be instantiated in spe­cific utterance situations.

 Regine Eckardt

iv. Under verbs of questioning, the choice of what counts as relevant is left to the non-lin­guis­tic context. In intensional embedding contexts, however, there is a conventionalized inter­action with the meaning of the embedding verb. v. Specifically, the bias of if is instantiated by an expectation about what is worth to be -ed (e.g. told, remembered, admitted, revealed). The restriction turns the sentence equivalent to a sentence with an embedded that-clause in veridical episodic contexts. This com­petition leads to markedness of the embedded if-clause. vi. No similar bias arises for whether-questions which explains their wider distribution. I would like to end with some considerations with respect to language development. First note that the analysis that I proposed in section five comes very close to the meaning of an if‑sentence as a postponed conditional clause. This can be illustrated with the example in (49). (49) Sue will tell us if she is hungry. (50) a. If she is hungry, Sue will tell us (so). b. Sue will tell us if she is hungry (and what she wants to eat). The two variants in (50) disambiguate (49), and it is generally assumed that if as question com­plementizer arose by reanalysis of sentences like (49). If we follow propositional logic and inter­pret if-then as material implication, the structure in (50a) conveys a proposition that can be para­phrased as follows: (51) In case Sue is hungry is true at some time t, then she will tell us that she is hungry. In the case that Sue is hungry is false at some time t, no predictions are made. (It is strongly suggested, though, that Sue will not falsely claim that she is hungry then). In view of the fact that the conditional is the source structure for complement if-clauses, it is not surprising that the latter still carry the expectation that the positive case is the relevant case. The task of tracing this development in the data would be rewarding but is clearly beyond the scope of this paper. However, such considerations can give us a hint as to where the current use of if-questions may be located on a developmental scale, and why speakers’ judgments might be vari­ant. At the onset of this paper, I pointed out a general necessity for embedded yes/noquestions to compete with embedded that-sentences. It is interesting to see that the actual use of embedded whether is severely shaped by this necessity as well. Of course, there are uses where the au­thor/speaker wants to keep some proposition secret for good reason, like in the headline use in (52). (52) Charles finally reveals whether he will marry Camilla. (Read more on page...)



The syntax and pragmatics of embedded yes/no-questions 

Such uses, however, are rarer than one might expect, and an overwhelming majority of ‘ whether’ constructions occur in non-veridical contexts. Consider, for example, the following episodic use of whether. In fact, it amounts to quantification over cases. (53) ... He looked at the logs and the structures. He told me whether it was worth working on … The situation reported is one where an expert and a potential buyer inspects an old log house and work shed to see whether reconstructions are feasible. The diagnosis that is summarized here as whether it was worth working on (with a positive answer, by the way) must have consisted of a series of local evaluations of the building’s parts and possible improvements. Therefore, and in order to describe the evaluation situation from a viewpoint where the result was still open, the writer can use embedded whether. This seems to lead to the situation that language learners do not get enough evidence any more to form a tenable hypothesis about the current lexical content of if in contrast to whether. Moreover, if is the shorter one of two competing, highly frequent function words. One would therefore ex­pect that the differences between the two items are blurred as the shorter item is on the rise. One indication for an ongoing development are examples of if-complements with an or not- coda. Although they are rare in spontaneous data, they can be produced (see also Adger and Quer 2001, fn. 2). Hence, we find examples like the following: (54) a. You will never be told if your answers are correct or not. b. You can fill in your card details and within a minute you will be told if the pay­ment was successful or not. To give some impression of the frequency of such uses, I can offer the following figures: In a search for if + or not, roughly one hit out of three will in fact contain or not as a coda of some whether-clause. Hence, the or not-coda in spontaneous writing is still strongly tied to whether. Only approximately one hit out of fifty provides an alternative if-question. (The other hits contain if and or not in different sentences, or in a different kind of con­struction.) I interpret these findings as follows: Speakers still sense the bias requirement of if, but it appears to be demoted from a strict pragmatic requirement to a mere pattern of usage. Speakers also see that the bias requirement can be neutralized if an alternative if-question is used, origi­nally with a positive description of the complementary alternative.7 Having lost sense for the fact that the positive description of the negated case was once crucial, speakers use standard negation as the pattern in order neutralize the bias of an if question. In sum, we can speculate that the current preference for whether in veridical, nonquantifi­cational contexts is a remnant pattern from an older but vanishing, more specific difference be­tween if and whether. The data may be unclear from the point of view of synchronic linguistic theory. From a diachronic perspective, the phenomenon deserves deeper investigation. Speakers of English seem to be in the transient phase between two clearly defined kinds of use of embed­ded yes/no questions. Further stages remain to be awaited.

 Regine Eckardt

Notes 1.

This was a colleagues immediate reaction.

2. Generally, if clauses in such constructions are potentially ambiguous between an embedded sentence reading and a postposed antecedent of a conditional. Many starred examples in the text would be acceptable in the latter analysis. Note that this ambiguity can be avoided by choosing verbs like admit which obligatorily require a complement phrase. 3. Note that from a semantic perspective, this move is in fact not tenable. Type shifting is an operation on semantic objects. As far as the authors tell us in their paper, the semantic objects denoted by if-questions and whether-questions are the same. It is unclear how type shifting can “sense” whether a semantic object has come about as the denotation of one, or the other, kind of syntactic structure, and can apply, or not apply, respectively. 4. Note that the star in example (21) reflects Adger and Quer’s abstract diagnosis rather than a real speaker judgment. In view of the high degree of individual variation here, it is unclear what status other speakers’ intuitions (including, unfortunately, the reader’s) should have for Adger and Quer’s proposal. A personal evaluation by Adger and Quer would be the only methodologically sound criterion to asset the grammaticality of (21) – and they can only confirm the *, or disclaim their own theory. 5. I thank Philippe Schlenker who convinced me that this potential ambiguity can severely disturb the judgments. 6. I want to briefly specify and defend my data acquisition strategies for the present paper. The collocations “verb + if ” and “verb + whether” were searched in Google and got hits that range between ca. 800 and several hundred thousands for the constructions that are discussed here. Where too many interfering hits occurred, data were cut down by specifying pronoun subjects and objects. Hits were listed in batches of 30 per page. A pattern is called “typical” here when it occurred at least three or four times per 30 hits over at least five pages that were scanned, and if the opposing pattern – where there is one at stake – does not or occurs at best once in this range of hits. Web pages outside the UK or USA were not taken into account, nor poetry or writers with evidently nonstandard or non-native competence. This mode of data acquisition does not meet statistical requirements for real corpus search. However, the range of data comes as close to spontaneous spoken language as possible unless time and manpower can be invested in tape recordings and transcripts. The sheer quantity of data available online is notoriously tempting. The trends that I report here were so stable that I am confident they can be reproduced. What seems highly desirable, though, are qualified modes to take a sample corpus from the web in a manner that precludes manipulation or unwelcome statistical side effects. 7. A nice user’s quote in this context is this: “... like in ‘he told me whether he’d go to Paris or to Rome’, which is in a sense two yes/no questions in one.”

Toward a uniform analysis of short answers and gapping* Ingo Reich Starting from Rooth’s (1992a) theory on question/answer congruence, this paper argues, first, that Rooth’s semantic requirement on congruent sentential answers is already a sufficient condition to license ellipsis in sentential answers, and, second, that this approach to short answers can be straightforwardly generalized to gapping: whereas short answers directly relate to an explicitly mentioned whquestion, first conjuncts in gapping constructions trigger – via the information structure they carry – an implicit question under discussion, which gets, in a way, ‘answered’ by non-first conjuncts. It is argued that such an approach elegantly accounts for the central properties common to short answers and gapping, and that this analysis of gapping may shed some light on the question of how discourse is organized by questions under discussion.

1. Introduction In the literature on gapping it is common practice to introduce a gapped sentence in the context of a multiple wh-question, the main reason usually being to facilitate parsing of the relevant example. The grammaticality of the gapped sentences in (1), for example, becomes immediately obvious if they are taken to answer the corresponding questions in (2), as has been pointed out by Steedman (1990), where the examples are taken from. (1) a. Harry went to London, and Barry Detroit. b. Harry will give a bone to a dog, and Barry a flower to a policeman. c. Harry claimed that hedgehogs eat mushrooms, and Barry frogs. (2) a. Which city did each man go to? b. Which man will give what to whom? c. What did each man claim that hedgehogs eat?

 Ingo Reich

(3) a. Harry London, and Barry Detroit. b. Harry a bone to a dog, and Barry a flower to a policeman. c. Harry mushrooms, and Barry frogs. Steedman (1990: 248) puts it as follows “[…] even the most basic gapped sentence like Fred ate bread, and Harry, bananas is only really felicitous in contexts which support (or accommodate) the presupposition that the topic under discussion is Who ate what?” Starting from this intuition, Steedman develops – within the framework of categorial grammar – an analysis of gapping as constituent coordination: strings like Barry Detroit in (1a) are considered to be ‘atypical’ constituents that get coordinated with a corresponding constituent in the first (prima facie) conjunct – Harry London in (1a). To enable coordination of these atypical constituents, the information structural background went to of the first ‘conjunct’ – which corresponds, roughly speaking, to the topic under discussion Where did who go to? – gets ‘separated’ from the rest of this sentence by a rule of decomposition, and combines – again simplifying to a great extent – with the resulting structure after Harry London has been coordinated with Barry Detroit. Building on the basic intuitions of Steedman (1990), the main concern of this paper is to explicitly establish a tight connection between two kinds of ellipsis processes – short answers and gapping – and to argue for a uniform analysis of the two phenomena. Ultimately, this analysis boils down to the claim that (most probably) the only relevant difference between short answers and gapping lies in the fact that short answers directly relate to an explicitly mentioned and independently given wh-question, whereas first conjuncts in gapping constructions typically trigger – via their information structure – an implicit question under discussion (QUD) that gets in a way ‘answered’ by non-first conjuncts. I will furthermore show that a uniform approach to short answers and gapping – though not completely unproblematic – is in fact empirically well-founded in many common properties, and, what is perhaps the more interesting part of the story, that this approach is able to deduce, and thus to explain the mentioned commonalities. It should be noted here explicitly that even the mere possibility of a uniform analysis of short answers and gapping is in no way a matter of course in the literature: for example, neither the constituent coordination analysis of gapping in Steedman (1990) nor the ATB-movement analysis proposed in Johnson (1996) can be generalized to also deal with short answers. This is already clear in Steedman’s (1990) case from what has been said above: a uniform analysis would require constituent coordination of the answer fragments and the corresponding wh-phra­ses. Johnson’s analysis of gapping reduces gapping to VP-coordination; an example like (1a) would be analyzed along the following lines (I am ignoring some complications related to pied piping): 1. coordinate the VPs Harry went to London and Barry went to Detroit; 2. scramble the (future) remnants Barry (B) and Detroit (D), and their correlates Harry (H) and London (L); 3.



Toward a uniform analysis of short answers and gapping 

ATB-move the remnant-VP; 4. move the subject to [Spec,IP]. This results in a structure like (4) (for a similar analysis see also Winkler 2003):

(4) [IP H1 [PredP [VP t1 went to t2]3 [VP [VP t1’ [VP L2 t3 ]] and [VP B1 [VP D2 t3 ]]] ]]

Though this analysis of gapping cannot easily account for the gapping facts in German – if the so-called verbal complex is non-empty, as in, e.g., Harry ist nach London gegangen und Barry nach Detroit (Harry is to London gone, and Barry to Detroit), ATBmovement of the remnant-VP results in an incorrect word order (namely, Harry ist gegangen nach London, …) – both Steedman’s and Johnson’s analyses make an important prediction: gapping is only possible in coordinated structures. It remains to be seen to what extent this result can be deduced in a uniform approach. The strength of these analyses, however, is at the same time their weakness: they miss the generalization that gapping and short answers behave similarly in many respects. This paper is structured as follows: To substantiate the claim of a uniform analysis of short answers and gapping, I will first point out several well-known, but nevertheless suggestive commonalities between short answers and gapping. I will then sketch Rooth’s (1992a) theory on question/answer congruence, and show that the constraint Rooth imposes on congruent sentential answers turns out to already be an empirically adequate condition on ellipsis in short answers (a somewhat stronger requirement than Merchant’s 2001 notion of e-Givenness). In a second step, I will generalize the short answer analysis to gapping along the lines suggested by Steed­man’s quote and discuss an alternative formulation within Schwarzschild’s (1999) theory on F-marking and accent placement. The paper closes with a discussion of some remaining differences whose explanation leads to interesting implications concerning the role of QUDs in discourse.

2. Some (very) suggestive commonalities Now, what about the just mentioned commonalities? Apart from the fact that, like so many other ellipsis phenomena, both short answers and gapping allow for sloppy readings of elided pronominals (cf., e.g., Who gave what to his mother? Bill a book, John flowers, … vs. Bill gave a book to his mother, and John flowers), these common properties concern such central questions as “Does the deletion process respect constituency?”, “What needs to be deleted, if deletion applies?”, “What can be deleted optionally?”, “What exactly do the remnants look like?”, and “Is the deletion process subject to any locality constraints? – If so, what do these look like?” Non-Constituent Deletion. Let’s start with the question concerning constituencyhood. As is already obvious from examples (1) to (3) above, both short answers and gapping are prima facie cases of non-constituent deletion. Although this is well known, this common property is never­theless quite remarkable: assuming that stripping (e.g., Harry went to London, and Bill too) is a subcase of gapping, right node raising (e.g.,

 Ingo Reich

Harry sent his younger and Bill sent his older sister a letter) is probably the only other deletion process that does not respect constituency (see, e.g., Hartmann 2002 for relevant discussion). Finite First Condition. While in the case of right node raising the finite verb is never affected by the deletion process, it is always affected in the case of short answers and gapping; see (5): (5) a. Which man gave a book to which woman? b. *Harry gave a book to Sue, … c. *Harry gave a book to Sue, and Bill gave a book to Mary. Thus it seems that already with respect to these two criteria short answers and gapping constitute some kind of natural subclass within the class of ellipsis phenomena. Locality Conditions I. Moreover, short answers and gapping are subject to quite similar locality constraints. Consider German, for example. Neither in the case of short answers nor in the case of gapping is it possible to separate the ellipsis site from its antecedent by embedding the former under a predicate that only subcategorizes for verb-final sentences; see (6): (6) a. Wer hat wen eingeladen? *Ich weiß, (dass) Harry Sue e i n g e l a d e n hat, … Who has whom invited? *I know, (that) Harry Sue invited has, … ‘Who invited whom? I know that Harry invited Sue.’ b. *Harry hat Sue eingeladen, und ich weiß, (dass) Bill Mary eingeladen hat *Harry has Sue invited, and I know, (that) Bill Mary invited has ‘Harry invited Sue, and I know that Bill invited Mary.’

It is possible, however, if the relevant predicate also subcategorizes for V2-sentences: (7) a. b.

Wer hat wen eingeladen? Ich glaube, Harry hat Sue eingeladen, … Who has whom invited? I believe, Harry has Sue invited, … ‘Who invited whom? I believe Harry Sue.’ Harry hat Sue eingeladen, und ich glaube, Bill hat Mary eingeladen Harry has Sue invited, and I believe, Bill has Mary invited ‘Harry invited Sue, and I believe Bill Mary.’

Major Constituent Constraint. Furthermore, both short answers and gapping obey Hankamer’s (1979) so-called ‘Major Constituent Constraint’, which, roughly speaking, states that a remnant is only well formed if it is (a non-verbal constituent) immediately dominated by the root-clause or by some node of its verbal projection: (8) a. Did John invite the semanticist from MIT or the semanticist from Amsterdam? b. *John invited the semanticist from MIT.



Toward a uniform analysis of short answers and gapping 

(9) *John invited the semanticist from MIT, and Bill invited the semanticist from Amsterdam. Island Sensitivity. Finally – and apparently related to the previous property – short answers and gapping pattern alike with respect to island phenomena; this is illustrated in (10) and (11) for adjunct islands (see, e.g., Neijt 1979, Drubig 1994): (10)

Who will be offended if we invite which colleague? a. John will be offended if we invite Bill, … b. ?John if we invite Bill, … c. ?*John Bill, …

(11)

John will be offended if we invite Bill, and a. Jane will be offended if we invite Martha. b. ?Jane if we invite Martha. c. ?*Jane, Martha.

Of course, one mustn’t forget that there are also several differences in behavior; an exposition and discussion of these deviations in the light of the proposed analysis will be postponed to section 5.

3. A topical account within Alternative Semantics Taken together, these facts constitute, I think, sufficient and convincing empirical evidence for the assumption that a uniform approach to short answers and gapping is in fact desirable and promising. In the remainder of the paper, I will present a proposal to this effect. This will be done in two steps. First, I will illustrate on the basis of short answers that a variant of Rooth’s (1992a) condition on congruent sentential answers is in fact already an adequate condition on ellipsis in question/answer sequences (and gapping). In a second step, this condition (as well as an alternative formulation) will be generalized to gapping by linking gapping to QUDs.

3.1

Congruent sentential answers

What is a good answer to a given question? Consider (12) for illustration. Whereas (12b) is a perfect answer to the question in (12a), the not so perfect ‘answers’ in (12c) and (12d) show that there are important well-formedness constraints on answers concerning both form and meaning: (12c) is not a well-formed answer, because the grammatical role of the minimally focused consti­tuent Sue in the answer (subject) does not match the grammatical role of the corresponding wh-phrase in the question (object); (12d) is out, because what we know about the linguist Noam Chomsky is in conflict with the sortal restriction student carried by the wh-phrase in (12a).

 Ingo Reich

(12)

a. b. c. d.

Which student did John invite t? John invited [SUE]F. *[SUE]F invited John. #John invited [NOAM CHOMSKY]F.

(13) a. V(12a)B = {p; ∃x[x a student & p = that John invited x]} b. V(12b)BF = {p; ∃x[x ∈ De & p = that John invited x]} c. V(12c)BF = {p; ∃x[x ∈ De & p = that x invited John]} Given a Hamblin-style analysis for wh-interrogatives, both constraints can be dealt with within Rooth’s (1992a) theory on question/answer congruence. According to Hamblin a question like (12a) denotes the set of its possible answers, i.e., the set of propositions of the kind that John invited x, x being some arbitrary student; see (13a). According to Rooth the focus/background structure of a sentence is interpreted on a second layer of interpretation – the focus value VaBF of an expression a – whereby foci are treated more or less like pronominal in situ wh-phrases in Hamblin’s approach (which are, however, not subject to any sortal restrictions, apart from type-identity). In the case of (12b) the focus value we derive is the set of propositions of the form that John invited x – see (13b); in the case of (12c) we end up with the set of propositions of the form that x invited John – see (13c) (for details the reader is referred to Rooth 1992a). Though all three sets of propositions share exactly one proposition – namely that John invited John – there is one important difference: whereas the denotation of the question in (12a) is a subset of the focus value of (12b), this is not true in the case of (12c). As a consequence, the formal aspect of the answerhood relation can be captured by a subset relation: the focus value of a congruent (i.e., well-formed with respect to formal properties) answer A needs to be a superset of the denotation of the question Q it is meant to answer; see the F-Answer constraint in (14b) below. The content-related restriction excluding (12d) as a well-formed answer to (12a) apparently reduces to the element relation; see the C-Answer constraint in (14a). (14) a. C-Answer: VAB ∈ VQB. b. F-Answer: VQB ⊆ VABF

(and |VQB ∩ VABF| ≥ 2).

On the level of Logical Form, the F-Answer condition is formally implemented by the so-called squiggle-Operator ‘~’, which adjoins to the answer’s CP and introduces a context variable Γ, which in turn picks up the denotation of the preceding question via coindexing: (15) a. [Which professor did John invite t?]1 b. [John invited [Noam Chomsky]F] ~ Γ1. The interpretation of the context variable Γ doesn’t have any effect on the truth-conditions of the sentence in a strict sense; it does, however, introduce the presupposition that Γ’s complement is a congruent (sentential) answer to the coindexed question in the sense discussed above:



Toward a uniform analysis of short answers and gapping 

(16) (alternative) semantics of ~ Γ a. Vα ~ ΓBg = VαBg. b. α ~ Γ presupposes that VΓBg ⊆ VαBFg (and |VΓBg ∩ VαBFg| ≥ 2). That concludes our summary of Rooth’s (1992a) theory on the congruence of questions and sentential answers.

3.2

Deriving short answers

Though Rooth (1992a) doesn’t address the issue of ellipsis in the paper just mentioned (but see Rooth 1992b for an analysis of VP ellipsis), it can and will be shown (in the following subsection) that the semantic requirement on congruent answers implemented by ~ Γ is, at the same time, a sufficient condition on ellipsis in the case of short answers (and gapping). So let’s suppose for the moment that this is in fact the case. How does ellipsis in short answers (and gapping) then come about? To see this, it is quite instructive to reconsider a well-formed question/answer sequence like the one in (15), repeated here as (15’a,b): (15’) a. [Which professor did John invite t?]1 b. [John invited [Noam CHOMSKY]F] ~ Γ1. c. [Noam CHOMSKY]F. As we saw above, a congruent sentential answer carries a specific focus/background structure (or, more general, a specific information structure) that is determined by or corresponds to the structure of the preceding wh-question: those constituents that correspond to a wh-phrase in the question are marked by a minimal focus (see the Fmarker on the relevant constituent), which is phonolo­gically realized as a pitch accent (indicated by capitals) in languages like English or German; those lexical items that have already been mentioned in the wh-question get deaccen­ted. Thus, if we want to account for the fact that (15’c) is a well-formed short answer to the question (15’a), it seems straightforward to assume that the short answer (15’c) is derived on the basis of the sentential answer in (15’b) by phonologically deleting exactly those parts of the answer that are not contained in an F-marked (i.e., minimally focused) constituent. A phonolo­gical deletion rule like this can (and probably should) be stated as a two-part requirement: first, PF-deletion – working its way top down, starting from the sister node of ~ Γ – mustn’t affect F-marked constituents (and, thus, any constituents contained in an F-marked node) – see (17a); second, deletion is maximized as long as the first condition isn’t violated – see (17b). (17) PF-deletion a. F-markers are upper bounds to PF-deletion. b. Maximize PF-deletion. (short answers, gapping)

 Ingo Reich

Whereas (17a) probably represents the least common denominator of ellipsis phenomena in general, (17b) arguably is a condition that is specific to short answers and gapping. Altogether this approach to ellipsis in short answers relies on three basically independent components: first, some theory on F-marking and accent placement – like, e.g., the one in Schwarzschild (1999) – that accounts for the set of possible focus/background structures; second, (a well-formedness condition on congruent sentential answers that, in addition, constitutes) a licensing condition for ellipsis; and, third, the actual deletion process on the level of Phonological Form. Of course, this is only a rough sketch of such an analysis, which is complicated by several phenomena like contrastive topics, pied piping, and underfocusing (but see Reich 2002b, 2003 for discussion and a precise proposal); however, it should be clear from what has been said that if we find some reasonable way to also take advantage of the afore­mentioned licensing condition on ellipsis in gapping, then this analysis generalizes to gapping without further assumptions, and thus immediately accounts for the parallel behavior discussed in section 2 (tracing back most of the properties to properties of interrogative wh-phrases). In such a uniform analysis we expect gapping to exhibit a structure like the one in (18): (18) JOHN likes MARY and [ [ [MARY]F likes [JOHN]F ] ~ Γ ]. This leaves us with two tasks. First, we need to show that the F-Answer condition in (14b/16b) is in fact an adequate condition on ellipsis in question/answer sequences (and gapping); second, we need to show how to generalize the proposed mechanism to gapping.

3.3

The Subset Condition as a semantic condition on ellipsis

Let’s begin with the first task. Here, I will follow a somewhat indirect strategy: Building on work done by Schwarzschild (1999), Merchant (2001) develops a semantic notion called e-Givenness, which he argues in detail and on empirical grounds to constitute a sufficient condition to license ellipsis (in the case of sluicing and VP ellipsis, to be precise). What I want to show in this subsection is that Rooth’s subset condition (or, similarly, Rooth’s notion of symmetric contrast) is in fact the stronger notion of the two. Thus we have to conclude: if e-Givenness is in fact a sufficient condition to license ellipsis, then Rooth’s subset condition certainly is, too. To keep things as simple as possible (and types uniform), I will illustrate this result with gapping. Now, what exactly is e-Givenness? In a nutshell, e-Givenness is a two-part condition based on Schwarzschild’s (1999) notion of an expression being given: (19)

e-Givenness An expression E counts as e-given iff E has a salient antecedent A and, modulo existential type shifting, a. A is given relative to E, and b. E is given relative to A.



Toward a uniform analysis of short answers and gapping 

Given in turn is an entailment relation modulo focus marking between two expressions A and E: (20) Given An expression E counts as given iff E has a salient antecedent A and, modulo existential type shifting, A entails the F-closure of E. (Where the F-closure of E, FClo(E), is the result of replacing F-marked expressions in E with variables and existentially closing the result.) Consider (21) for illustration. If we want to know whether the structure [BILL]F likes [SUE]F is given in the relevant context, we need to replace the F-marked constituents with variables, and close them off existentially; then we have to look for an antecedent that entails the result of this operation, i.e., ∃x∃y[x likes y]. Since the first conjunct John likes Mary fulfills this requirement, we conclude that [BILL]F likes [SUE]F is given, and that this F-structure is, therefore, licit. (21) [[JOHN]F likes [MARY]F ] and [ [BILL]F likes [SUE]F ]. Whilst Givenness only tests for valid entailments in one direction, e-Givenness does so in both directions, and thus encodes a semantic equivalence relation modulo focus marking. Consider again (21) for illustration. Since John likes Mary entails the F-closure of [BILL]F likes [SUE]F, and Bill likes Sue entails the F-closure of [JOHN]F likes [MARY]F, we can conclude that [BILL]F likes [SUE]F is not just given, but actually e-given. According to Merchant (2001), this is the reason why the predicate likes in the second conjunct is not just deaccented (which presupposes Givenness), but that it is even possible to elide it (which presupposes e-Givenness). This may be more perspicuous in the following example, where the predicate insult is deaccented, but cannot be elided, the reason being that call (someone) a Republican entails insult, but not vice versa: (22) John called Mary a Republican, and then MARY insulted JOHN. Like e-Givenness, Rooth’s (1992a) notion of symmetric contrast encodes a semantic equi­valence relation modulo focus marking. Symmetric contrast is implemented using a some­what differently defined version of the squiggle-Operator ‘~’: the second conjunct in (23a) contrasts with the first conjunct if the first conjunct’s denotation is an element of the focus value of the second conjunct, and vice versa; see (23b). (23) a. [[[JOHN]F likes [MARY]F] ~ γ2]1 and [[[BILL]F likes [SUE]F] ~ γ1]2, b. where α ~ γ presupposes that VγBg ∈ VαBFg. As long as both conjuncts show parallel focus structure, Merchant’s notion of e-Givenness and Rooth’s notion of symmetric contrast are in fact equivalent, and, consequently, Rooth’s defini­tion of symmetric contrast is a suitable prerequisite for ellipsis, if Merchant’s definition of e-Given­ness is. It should be noted, though, that neither eGivenness nor symmetric contrast entail parallel focus structure. Symmetric contrast, for example, also licenses the following situation as long as β is semantically equivalent

 Ingo Reich

to α: β is not contained in an F-marked constituent in the second conjunct; the corresponding expression α in the first conjunct, however, is F-marked or is contained in an F-marked constituent. (24) illustrates this situation with α = β = likes: (24) [[[JOHN]F [likes MARY]F] ~ γ2]1 and [[[BILL]F likes [SUE]F] ~ γ1]2. If β is not semantically equivalent to α, then Rooth’s definition of symmetric contrast is violated. (25) illustrates this with α = to call (someone) a Republican and β = to insult (someone). (The definition of symmetric contrast is violated since the proposition that Mary insulted John is an element of the focus value of the first conjunct, but the proposition that John called Mary a Republican is definitely not an element of the focus value of the second conjunct.) (25) [[[JOHN]F [called Mary a RePUBlican]F] ~ γ2]1, and then [[[MARY]F insulted [JOHN]F] ~ γ1]2. The crucial point here is the following: whereas (25) is not licensed by symmetric contrast, it is licensed by e-Givenness, contrary to the fact that ellipsis of insult is impossible: the second conjunct is given relative to the first conjunct, since the proposition that John called Mary a Republican entails – mediated by pragmatic reasoning (a crucial ingredient in Schwarzschild’s notion of Givenness) – that someone insulted someone; and the first conjunct is given relative to the second conjunct, since the proposition that Mary insulted John entails the F-closure of the first conjunct, which is simply the trivial proposition p ∨ ¬p. This shows two things:

1. symmetric contrast is in fact the stronger notion of the two, and 2. e-Givenness is in general too weak to be an adequate condition on ellipsis.

If we furthermore take into consideration that asymmetrical F-structures like the ones cited in (24) and (25) above are the rule rather than the exception – expressions in the first conjunct deaccenting expressions in the second conjunct, and not necessarily vice versa – it becomes clear that we can switch again from the Roothean definition of symmetric contrast to a Roothean subset condition on focus values without losing too much information: given that expressions in the first conjunct deaccent expressions in the second conjunct, the second conjunct contains less (or equal) material that is Fmarked (or contained in an F-marked node), and thus we expect the focus value of the second conjunct to be a subset of the focus value of the first conjunct. This condition is made precise in (26b) and illustrated with (26a); the reader is kindly invited to check that this condition does in fact adequately handle all the examples discussed above. (26) a. [[JOHN]F [likes MARY]F]1 and [[[BILL]F likes [SUE]F] ~ Γ1] b. α ~ Γ presupposes: VαBFg ⊆ VΓBg (and |VαBFg ∩ VΓBg| ≥ 2), where VΓBg is the focus value of its coindexed antecedent. This is already very close to a uniform analysis. However, if the second conjunct in gapping is taken to play a role parallel to congruent answers in question/answer se-



Toward a uniform analysis of short answers and gapping 

quences, and the first conjunct to play a role parallel to the preceding wh-question, we see that the condition stated in (26b) is not quite the subset-condition proposed by Rooth for question/answer sequences, but in fact its inverse. Thus, a first step toward a uniform theory of short answers and gapping is (27): (27)

Uniform Condition on Short Answers and Gapping (first try) In sentential answers and in non-initial conjuncts adjoin ~ Γ to CP. a. α ~ Γ presupposes that VαBFg ⊆ VΓBg (and |VαBFg ∩ VΓBg| ≥ 2), where b. Γ picks up the denotation of its coindexed antecedent if it is of type ,t> (a question); otherwise it picks up the focus value of its coindexed antecedent.

If (27) is fulfilled, ellipsis in congruent answers and in non-initial conjuncts is licensed at the level of Phonological Form. This completes the first task.

3.4

Short answers, gapping and ‘questions under discussion’

Though based on the same kind of formal constraint, the condition in (27) still appears to be to some extent arbitrary – the antecedents are of quite a different nature: a common semantic value in the case of questions, and a focus value in the case of gapping – and it doesn’t capture the intuition expressed in Steedman’s quote, which we took as a starting point. But how to do justice to this intuition? The basic idea is actually quite simple: Suppose that – at least in principle – every utterance in discourse relates to an implicit or explicit wh-question (as proposed, e.g., in Roberts 1996, Büring 2003). Given this assumption, it is quite clear that, if an utterance like (28b) is not explicitly linked to a wh-question, an implicit wh-question – a ‘question under discussion’, short: QUD – needs to be reconstructed pragmatically, based on the focus/background structure carried by the first conjunct. If the first conjunct is minimally focused, this is a trivial exercise, for there is exactly one wh-question the utterance can be linked to – e.g., the question Who ate what? in the case of (28b). (28) a. [Who ate what?]i [[[JOHN]F ate [BREAD]F] ~ Γi], and … b. [JOHN]F ate [BREAD]F, and [[[HARRY]F ate [BANANAS]F] ~ Γ]. Having reconstructed the most salient QUD on the basis of the first conjunct, the second conjunct can then be taken to ‘answer’ this very question. Seen from the perspective of discourse structure, gapping thus can be reduced to the question/answer relation: gapping is nothing else than ‘answering an implicit wh-question’, i.e., the most salient QUD. But what about cases of wide focus in first conjuncts like, e.g., the ones presented in (29)? In these cases, so it seems, a complete set of possible QUDs – including, e.g., What happened?, Who gave Sue what?, Who gave what to whom? etc. – is reconstructed, from which the speaker chooses exactly one as the most salient QUD, and relative to which he utters the second and following non-initial conjuncts. This assumption

 Ingo Reich

immediately accounts for the possibility of different continuations in the case of gapping; see (29a) vs. (29b). (29) a. [John gave a book to SUE]F, and John gave [a BASEBALL]F [to BILL]F. b. [John gave a book to SUE]F, and [PETER]F gave a book [to ANN]F. If this is correct, then we can state the following condition on short answers and gapping: (30) Uniform Condition on Short Answers and Gapping (within alternative semantics) In short answers and in non-initial conjuncts adjoin ~ Γ to CP. a. α ~ Γ presupposes that VαBFg = VΓBg, b. where Γ anaphorically relates to the most salient QUD. Note that in (30) – departing somewhat from the definition in (27) – semantic identity between Γ and the focus value of α is required, for otherwise choosing the most salient QUD is not uniquely determined in the case of wide focus in first conjuncts. This slight redefinition, however, does not affect the results discussed with respect to definition (27).

4. Excursion: An alternative formulation 4.1

A potential problem: The case of underfocusation

Despite its elegance and generality, there is a non-trivial problem in this analysis that leads to an interesting reformulation of this approach within Schwarzschild’s (1999) theory of F-marking. Consider the German question/answer sequence in (31). The discourse preceding the question in (31) contextually restricts its denotation, which is the set of propositions given in (32): (31) [We know that both of you stole something. One stole a handbag, the other one stole a DVD player. Now,] Was davon hast DU getan? (‘Which (of these two) did YOU do?’) a. Ich habe [Die HANDtasche]F geklaut. I have [the handbag]F stolen ‘I stole the handbag.’ b. *Ich habe [Die HANDtasche]F geklaut. *I have [the handbag]F stolen ‘I stole the handbag.’ (32) V(31)Bc

= {that you stole a handbag, that you stole a DVD player} = VWhich did you steal?Bc



Toward a uniform analysis of short answers and gapping 

This set of propositions is, however, identical to the denotation of the question Which did you steal? uttered in the same context. Thus, it is wrongly predicted that the question in (31) can be answered with (31b). Note that the same argument applies to Merchant’s (2004) overt movement account, since (i) the semantic condition made use of in (30) is stronger than e-Givenness (see above), and (ii) there is only one potential candidate for movement, namely the direct object.

4.2

Toward a solution with unstructured propositions

In Reich (2002b, 2003) – basically following arguments put forward in Drubig (1994) and Krifka (2001a) – data like this have been taken to show that we need to assume that wh-questions denote structured propositions rather than unstructured ones. If we furthermore assume that the way we interpret minimal foci results in a set of structured propositions too, then the anaphoric relation proposed in (30) will coerce the Fmarking on the VP as required – given that (30) is ranked higher than Schwarzschild’s constraint AvoidF (“Avoid unnecessary F-marking”). It seems, however, that there is in fact an unstructured alternative to this approach within Schwarzschild’s (1999) theory of F-marking and accent placement. Let’s assume that in wh-questions all wh-phrases undergo LF-movement to SpecCP; then we can formulate a different anaphoric relation – see (33) – that makes the correct predictions, if γ is coindexed with the question’s IP (or the phase vP), and if – as has already been assumed – we allow this anaphoric relation to overrule AvoidF: the existential closure of the question’s IP on LF (i.e., the question modulo (complex) wh-phrases) needs to entail the answer’s F-closure. (33) α ~ γ presupposes that ExClo(VγBg) entails FClo(VαBg). (34) a. Was1? [du hast t1 getan]i b. [[Ich habe [[Die HANDtasche]F geklaut]F] ~ γi]. c. *[[Ich habe [Die HANDtasche]F geklaut] ~ γi]. Consider again (31), repeated here as (34), for illustration. Having moved (all) the (complex) wh-phrase(s) to SpecCP at LF, we need to check whether the existential closure of the question’s IP – i.e., ∃X[you did X] – entails the F-closure of the answer. In the case of (34b) this is to ask whether ∃X[you did X] entails ∃X[you did X], which is obviously true; in the case of (34c), however, it is to ask whether ∃X[you did X] entails ∃x[you stole x], which is definitely false. Therefore the condition in (33) coerces F-marking on the constituent corresponding to the moved wh-phrase(s), and thus excludes the possibility of underfocusing. The basic idea underlying (33) is to somehow locally restrict salient antecedents for Givenness to the most salient QUD, but – and this is crucial for the distribution of accents – without at the same time completely excluding relevant previous context. But let’s again pose the crucial question: “Is (33) also an adequate condition on ellipsis

 Ingo Reich

in question/answer sequences?” Of course it is not an adequate condition all by itself (since it implements semantic entailment, rather than semantic equivalence). But if we take into account that we need to impose an ∈-condition on well-formed sentential answers anyway – to account for sortal restrictions – the interplay of both conditions does in fact result in an adequate semantic constraint on ellipsis: (35) C-Answer: VAB ∈ VQB. Accounts for a. sortal restrictions imposed on well-formed answers by wh-phrase restrictions, b. semantic identity modulo (complex) wh-phrases. To sum up, we can state the following (additional) condition on short answers and gapping: (36) Uniform Condition on Short Answers and Gapping (within Schwarzschild 1999) In short answers and in non-initial conjuncts adjoin ~ γ to CP. a. α ~ γ presupposes that ExClo(VγB) entails FClo(VαB), b. where γ anaphorically relates (at LF) to IP (vP) of the most salient QUD. The proposal in (36) does indeed avoid recourse to structured propositions. There are at least two drawbacks though: first, this proposal presupposes covert movement of (complex) wh-phrases on the level of Logical Form (to a place above the question operator ‘?’), and, thus, an unstructured solution to the pied piping problem (see, e.g., Reich 2002a for discussion); second, it requires that in gapping the context variable γ pick up part of an implicit [!] QUD; though this may very well be possible, it is somewhat counterintuitive. At this point, it has to be left open for future research whether such LF-constituents are in fact accessible in D-trees.

5. Some implications of a uniform approach In the previous sections, I exclusively focused on those properties that short answers and gapping have in common, and proposed a uniform analysis that predicts exactly this parallel behavior by reducing both phenomena to one and the same mechanism. In this analysis, common properties like island sensitivity, the ‘Major Constituent Constraint’, and so on can be explained as epiphe­nomena of properties of (complex) wh-phrases and wh-questions (given our assumptions about F-marking in congruent sentential answers). Of course, this is not to say that the properties of short answers and gapping are completely parallel. In this final section, I want to call attention to these differences, some of which can be explained within the present proposal, and some of which still remain puzzling. In any case, it seems that the new perspective on



Toward a uniform analysis of short answers and gapping 

these properties may shed some light on the question of how discourse is organized by implicit QUDs. Gapping in Embedded Contexts. Let me start with gapping in embedded contexts. As example (37) below shows, gapping – in contrast to short answers – also occurs in dependent clauses; that this is not true of short answers in question/answer sequences is probably simply due to the fact that both questions and answers necessarily carry illocutionary force. (37) Ich glaube / weiß, dass Hans Anna eingeladen hat und Peter Maria. I believe / know, that Hans Anna invited has and Peter Maria ‘I believe/know that Hans invited Anna and Peter Maria.’ What is by far more interesting, though, is that (37) in addition shows that – given the uniform approach to short answers and gapping is correct – we need to assume that first conjuncts in coordinated structures may evoke a (set of) QUD(s) even if they occur in embedded contexts: the first conjunct triggers the QUD Who invited who?, which is then ‘answered’ by the following conjunct. This seems to be a reasonable assumption in the light of the following example, where an embedded question carrying no illocutionary force is nevertheless answered, if possible: (38) Do you know who won the lottery? Yes, Joe. Gapping within Short Answers. Essentially the same assumption will then account for the possibility of gapping within short answers; see, e.g., (39): (39) a. b.

Was hast du gesagt? [What did you say?] dass Anna ein Buch bekommt und Peter ein Fahrrad bekommt. that Anna a book gets and Peter a bicycle gets ‘I said that Anna gets a book, and Peter a bicycle.’

(39a) explicitly introduces a most salient QUD relative to which the answer in (39b) gets evaluated. However, having uttered the first conjunct of the answer in (39b), a new QUD (which needs to be consistent with the focus/background structure of this very conjunct) is introduced, overriding the previous one as the most salient one; the second conjunct of the answer then gets evaluated relative to this second QUD as usual. The Tensed S-Condition. In Neijt (1979) an example is discussed in which the predicted parallelism between wh-questions and gapping seems to break down: although there are cases of so-called ‘long wh-movement’ out of tensed clauses – see, e.g., (40a) – corresponding cases of ‘long gapping’ – see (40b) – are out. (40) a. What did you tell her t that you sent t to Mary? b. *Peter told her that he sent something to Mary, and John told her that he sent something to Sue. However, again assuming that the uniform approach developed above is correct, the relevant QUD presupposed in (40b) is of course not (40a), but (41). At least in Ger-

 Ingo Reich

man, the correspon­ding wh-question is definitely out (if wem is interpreted with interrogative force) see (42). (41) Who told her that he sent something to whom? (42) a. *Wer erzählte ihr, dass er etwas wem geschickt hat? b. *Peter erzählte ihr, dass er etwas Hans geschickt hat und Hans erzählte ihr, dass er etwas Peter geschickt hat Locality II. Short answers and gapped clauses also differ with respect to the possibility of separating them from their antecedent by another intervening potential antecedent: in gapping the result is definitely ungrammatical – see (43a); in the case of short answers we only observe that the hearer is uncertain to some extent whether the term is intended to answer the first question or whether it is intended to answer the second – see (43b). (43) a. b.

Sue gave a book to Harry, Bill gave a ring to Sue, and *Harry gave a book to Bill. Who gave a book to whom? (And) Who gave a ring to whom? ?Harry gave a book to Bill.

Somewhat surprisingly, ungrammaticality in (43a) can be accounted for quite straightforwardly: the second conjunct in (43a) introduces a new and different (set of potentially) most salient QUDs, and thus excludes linking to the first conjunct. This should predict, however, that the short answer in (43b) can only be linked to the second question. To avoid this conclusion, we apparently need to assume that in the case of explicit questions an immediately following second question does not necessarily replace the previous QUD as the most salient one. Locality III. As I already mentioned in the introduction, gapping seems to be restricted to coordinated structures, whereas short answers are never conjoined with the wh-question they are meant to answer. Is it possible to account for this important distributional difference within a uniform analysis of the two phenomena in question? I think the answer is: to some extent. What does certainly follow from the analysis proposed in this paper is the fact that each ‘sentential unit’ (to avoid the term conjunct) in a gapping structure needs to carry its own and independent information structure – simply because the information structure of answers is, per se, independent of the information structure of the wh-question. This excludes gapping from occurring across matrix and subordinate clauses. What it doesn’t immediately account for is (i) the adjacency condition imposed on the sentential units in gapping, and (ii) the fact that it isn’t possible to drop the conjunction. As far as (i) is concerned, we already saw in section 2 that it is not only gapping that is subject to such an adjacency restriction, but that short answers and gapping do indeed behave quite parallel in this respect. So it seems that whatever is responsible for gluing questions and answers together may also be responsible for the adjacency requirement in gapping constructions. (ii), on



Toward a uniform analysis of short answers and gapping 

the other hand, is still a puzzling fact from the perspective of a uniform analysis, and it remains to be seen whether it can be derived on independent grounds. P-Stranding. A final tough nut to crack concerns English data related to P-stranding. In English we observe that short answers show a strong tendency toward ‘P-stranding’ – see (44) and (45) – whereas gapping behaves more or less parallel to the German short answer pattern – see (46) and (47). (44) Mit wem hast du gesprochen? / Who did you talk to? a. Mit meinem Nachbarn. /?To my neighbor. b. ?Meinem Nachbarn. / My neighbor. (45) Über was habt ihr gesprochen? / What did you talk about? a. Über Ethik in den Wissenschaften. /??About ethics in science. b. ?Ethik in den Wissenschaften. / Ethics in science. (46) The men talked about the Red Sox, and a. the women about ethics in science. b. ?the women ethics in science. (47) Bill talked to John’s mother, and a. Mary to Janet’s mother. b. ?Mary Janet’s mother. This seems completely unexpected under the present approach. To account for this observation, we could stipulate that prepositions in English behave differently on different levels of analysis: if their complement is subject to some overt or covert movement operation, they are left behind; however, on a more pragmatic level – i.e., when an implicit wh-question needs to be reconstruc­ted within discourse grammar – they behave quite similarly to their German counterparts. At present, however, I know of no convincing independent justification for such an assumption.

6. Summary In this paper, I have argued for and developed a uniform analysis of short answers and gapping, the basic idea being that both short answers and gapped sentences should be taken as ‘answering’ the most salient ‘question under discussion’ (QUD). This QUD is either explicitly given – in the case of short answers – or it needs to be reconstructed on the basis of the focus/background structure of the first conjunct. Two variants of this analysis have been presented, one within Rooth’s alternative semantics, and one within Schwarzschild’s theory on F-marking and accent placement. The last part of the paper presented some challenges to a uniform approach and outlined some interesting implications concerning the role of implicit QUDs in discourse.

 Ingo Reich

Notes * I’d like to thank the audiences at SCEF 2003 (Tübingen), ISAG 2004 (Tübingen), LaMa 2004 (Stuttgart), and TLS 8 (Austin, Texas) for helpful discussion. Special thanks go to Kirsten Brock, Kai von Fintel, Danny Fox, Irene Heim, Klaus von Heusinger, Manfred Krifka, Jason Merchant, Kerstin Schwabe, Jürgen Pafel, Marga Reis, and Susanne Winkler. This work has been supported by grant RE 1663/1-1 of the German Science Foundation (DFG).

Alternative Semantics for definite NPs* Klaus von Heusinger The paper investigates the semantics of association with focus in complex definite NPs in Alternative Semantics. Three issues are discussed: First, alternative Semantics correctly captures the fact that the focus operator does not associate directly with the focused expression, but with a larger constituent the focused expression is part of. Second, the uniqueness condition of the definite NP that contains a focus cannot be maintained in the construction of alternatives. Third, the alternative function of the definite article cannot be derived from its ordinary semantics, but is determined by general principles of type shift operations.

1. Introduction Focus semantics, like LF-movement theories or Alternative Semantics, are exemplified with proper names. However, proper names are quite exceptional because they do not contain linguistic material that could interact with grammatical structure. The only linguistic information they contribute is that they are of type e. For instance, the focused proper name Sue in (1a) below generates alternatives that are of the same type, namely type e. In LF-movement theories, these alternatives form the domain of quantification for the operator only. Thus, (1a) is true if nobody but Sue is such that Sam talked to her or him. In Alternative Semantics, the alternatives are projected to the VP level and the operator only quantifies over VP-alternatives, yielding – in principle – the same truth conditions as in the LF-movement approach. (1) a. Sam only talked to [SueF]NP. b Nobody but Sue is such that Sam talked to him/her. This paper investigates association with focus in definite NPs in order to understand more about the interaction between the semantics of focus and the semantic contribution of complex NPs as in (2a)-(7a). In particular, we will discuss three main issues: (i) the domain of quantification for the focus-sensitive operator, (ii) the whereabouts of

 Klaus von Heusinger

the uniqueness condition in the set of alternatives and (iii) the alternative function of the definite article. The first issue can be illustrated by the informal analysis of examples (2a)-(5a). (1a) can be paraphrased as (1b) indicating that in a formal analysis the focus-sensitive operator quantifies over alternatives to the focused expression Sue. We could also use this strategy for (2a) and (3a): In (2a), we quantify over persons who have a spouse and, in (3a), we quantify over nationalities. While this strategy seems feasible for these examples, the correspondent paraphrase (4b) for (4a) predicts that John is the only child of his mother. In a situation in which Sam talked to Ann and to nobody else, and Ann is the mother of John and of Bob, the quantification over alternatives to the possessor, as in (4b), predicts contrary to fact that sentence (4a) is false. For the operator only does not quantify over alternatives to John, but over alternatives to a larger constituent, e.g. John’s mother as illustrated by the paraphrase in (4c). Similarly, the paraphrase (5b) predicts contrary to fact that sentence (5a) is false if Sam had talked to Diana and to nobody else, and Diana had introduced Bob to John and Bill to John. Again, the operator only quantifies over the set of women who introduce someone to John, rather than over alternatives to Bob. (2) a. Sam only talked to [John’s spouse]NP. b. Nobody but John is such that Sam talked to his/her spouse. (3) a. Sam only talked to [the first American astronaut in space]NP. b. There is no nationality but being American such that Sam talked to the astronaut of that nationality. (4) a. Sam only talked to [John’s mother]NP. b. Nobody but John is such that Sam talked to his/her mother. c. No mother but John’s mother is such that Sam talked to her. (5) a. Sam only talked to [the woman who introduced BobF to John]NP. b. There is nobody but Bob such that Sam talked to the woman who introduced him/her to John. c. There is no woman who introduces someone to John but the woman who introduces Bob to John such that Sam talks to her. The second issue concerns the uniqueness condition expressed by the definite NP, which claims in (6a) that John has only one sister and in (7a) that there is only one Dutch professor at the contextually given situation. However, this uniqueness condition cannot be maintained in the set of alternatives, which is illustrated by (6b) and (7b): In a situation where Sam talked to John’s sister and to one of the two sisters of Bob and to no one else, the paraphrase (6b) predicts contrary to fact that (6a) is true, since Bob’s sisters are not in the alternative sets. The expression Bob’s sister is not defined because it violates the uniqueness condition for definites. Similarly, in a situation where Sam talked to the Dutch professor and to one of three German professors the analysis in (7b) predicts that the sentences is true because it does not contain any



Alternative semantics for definite NPs 

German professors. It is obvious that the domain of quantification in (6a) is formed by sisters, rather than by unique sisters of a person, and the operator in (7a) quantifies over professors, and not over unique professors with respect to their nationality. The paraphrases in (6c) and (7c) illustrate that the alternatives to a definite NP do not carry the uniqueness condition of the ordinary meaning of the definite NP. (6) a. Sam only talked to [John’s sister]NP. b. There is no one but John such that Sam talked to his/her sister. c. There is no sister but John’s sister such that Sam talked to her. (7) a. Sam only talked to [the DutchF professor]NP. b. There is no nationality but being Dutch such that Sam talked to the professor of that nationality. c. There is no professor but the Dutch professor such that Sam talked to him. The paper is organized as follows: In section 2, I show that a simple LF-movement approach to association with focus runs short of explanations for the size of the alternative sets of certain classes of definite NPs. It predicts too many and too few alternatives in the domain of quantification. In section 3, I extend Alternative Semantics in order to analyze complex definite NPs with focused subconstituents. I first formulate the rules for deriving the alternatives for common nouns and their restrictive modifiers such as adjectives and relative clauses. Second, the alternative composition rules are given, and third, the alternative semantic function of the definite article is reconstructed and formally described. This function consists in forming a set of elements of type e by using the alternative properties to the property expressed in the descriptive material of the NP. Section 4 discusses the general problem which is caused by the particular alternative function of the definite article, which cannot be derived from its ordinary meaning. Five suggestions are presented which intend to solve this problem: First, we modify the ALT-function assuming that it generates very finegrained alternatives. Second, we substitute a general maximality condition for the uniqueness condition of the definite article. Third, the definite article is represented by choice functions. Forth, the ordinary and alternative function of the article is merged into one polymorph choice function. Fifth, the construction of alternative sets of definite NPs is analyzed as the alternative function of the type shift operation from a common noun to a NP. Section 5 summarizes the findings of this paper, hints to open problems, and indicates potentential extensions of the given analysis.

2. The domain of focus operators Focus-sensitive particles like only, also, even etc. associate with a focused expression in their scope, i.e. in their c-commanded domain. They are interpreted as quantifiers that

 Klaus von Heusinger

range over a set of alternatives. In this section, we argue against the view of LF-movement theories that the domain of the quantifier consists of alternatives to the focused expression. Such an approach yields too many and too few alternatives. Association with focus in definite NPs indicates that the domain of quantification is at least formed by alternatives to the (highest) NP that contains the focus. This leads to the syntactic notion of Focus Phrase for this NP. However, the semantics of Focus Phrases can only be given in Alternative Semantics.

2.1

LF-movement theories

LF-movement theories assume that the focus is moved to a position adjoined to the focus operator at the level of Logical Form. The focus leaves a trace in its original position which is interpreted as a variable. The LF can be translated into the categorial language of the structured meaning approach (Jacobs 1983, von Stechow 1991b, Krifka 1991). The VP in (8) receives the surface structure (9a), the logical form (9b) and the interpretation (9c):

(8) Mary only introduced SueF to John

(9) a. only [VP introduced SueF to John] b. only (Sue1, λt1 [VP introduced t1 to John]) c. vonlyb (vSueb, vλt1 [VP introduced t1 to John]b) The meaning of only combines with such a structured meaning consisting of the meaning of the focus (= F) and the meaning of the background (= B). The semantic rule (10) of this operation first asserts the application of the meaning of the background to the meaning of the focus, and second states that the background cannot be applied to another object than the meaning of the focus. (10) vonlyb (F, B) = λx [B(F)(x) & ∀y∈ALT(F) [B(y)(x) →y = F] The domain of quantification of the operator is formed by a function ALT applied to the meaning of the focus F. The function ALT takes an object d and yields the set of elements that have the same type as d. We may also say that d generates the set of alternatives ALT(d). The function type assigns a type to an object, e.g. the denotation of a proper name like Sue is of type e. Hence, the alternatives generated from the denotation of Sue are all elements of type e, i.e. the domain of individuals.1 (11) ALT(d) = Dtype(d) (12) ALT(vSueb) = Dtype(vSueb) = Dtype(s) = De = {b, j, m, s,....} These rules can now be applied to example (8), repeated as (13a). In the LF (13b) the focused expression Sue is moved to a position adjoined to only leaving the trace t1. This translation is compositionally interpreted in (13c) and (13d): Proper names and predicates denote constants, and the application of a predicate to its argument is defined as



Alternative semantics for definite NPs 

functional application. In (13e), the semantics (10) of only combines with the meaning of the focus and the meaning of the background yielding the property of introducing nobody but Sue to John. Finally in (13f), this property combines with the meaning of the subject, returning the interpretation of the sentence. It correctly expresses that Mary introduces Sue to John and that she does not introduce anyone else to John. (13) a. b. c. d. e. f.

Mary [VP only [VP introduced SueF to Johnb Mary [VP only [Sue1]Focus [λt1 [VP introduced t1 to John]]Background] vMaryb = m vSueb = s vJohnb = j vintroducedb = intro’ vλt1 [introduced t1 to John]b = λz [intro’(z)(j)] vonlyb ([vSueb, vλt1 [introduced t1 to Johnb]) = λx [intro’(s)(j)(x) & ∀y∈ALT(s) [intro’(y)(j)(x) → y = s] vMary only [Sue λt1 [introduced t1 to John]]b = intro’(s)(j)(m) & ∀y∈ALT(s) [intro’(y)(j)(m) → y = s

Focus movement is understood as one instantiation of a more general principle that also applies to quantifier movement and wh-movement (Chomsky 1976). However, focus movement does not obey island-restrictions that hold for quantifier or wh-movement (cf. Jackendoff 1972, Rooth 1985, von Stechow 1991a, Kratzer 1991b, Drubig 1994, 2003). A second problem of this approach is that the definition of the operator (10) has direct access to the meaning of the focus, which seems to be too powerful a device as Rooth (1985) convincingly argues. A third objection against the LF-movement theory concerns the assumption that the domain of quantification consists of alternatives to the meaning of the focused expression. This analysis makes incorrect predictions since it gives too many and too few alternatives as shown in the next section.

2.2

Focus and Focus Phrases

Krifka (1996, sect. 6; 2006, sect. 2) discusses the problem whether the focus-sensitive operator associates with the focused expression or the whole definite NP in the framework of LF-movement theories. According to the movement account, the focused expression Bob in (5a), repeated as (14a), must be moved to a position adjoined to the operator only, leaving a trace behind as in (14b). Krifka notes that the interpretation (14c) is not what (14a) intuitively expresses. (14c) asserts that Bob is the only y such that Sam talked to the woman who introduced y to John, as paraphrased in (14d). This interpretation predicts contrary to fact that (14a) is false in a situation in which Mary introduced Bob to John and she introduced Tim to John and there is no other woman who introduces someone to John. Sentence (14a) can be felicitously uttered in this situation since there is only one woman who introduces someone to John and Sam talked to this woman. (14) a. Sam only talked to [NP the woman who introduced BobF to John] b. Sam [only [Bob] λt1 [talked to [NP the woman who introduced t1 to John]

 Klaus von Heusinger

c. ∀y∈ALT(b) talk’(ιx[woman’(x) & intro’(y)(j)(x)])(s) → y = b d. Bob and nobody else is y such that Sam talked to the woman who introduced y to John. Besides this semantic evidence, there are also syntactic considerations against the movement out of an island. The focused expression Bob cannot be moved due to an island constraint that also holds for wh-questions and quantifiers, as illustrated in (15) and (16). The question (15) is not wellformed because the wh-word cannot be moved out of the nominal island. Correspondingly, the universal quantifier in (16) cannot be moved out of this island, which is illustrated by the unwellformedness of the wide scope reading in (17). (15) *Who1 did Sam talk to the woman who introduced t1 to John. (16) Sam talked to the woman who introduced every man to John. (17) *For every man y, Sam only talked to the woman who introduced y to John. Nevertheless, movement theories do allow movement of the whole island containing wh-questions, as in (18a). Krifka (1996 following Drubig 1994) proposes such a “pied piping” of the focused expression with the whole island, as in (18b). In order to solve this problem for LF-moving theories, Krifka (1996: sec. 7, 2006: sect. 2) and Drubig (1994: 6; 2003: 19) propose the category of “Focus Phrase”. The Focus Phrase FP (or FocP) is a syntactic constituent corresponding to a complex NP (or highest NP) including the focused constituent. A focus-sensitive operator takes a Focus Phrase as its argument, e.g. the woman who introduced BobF to John, while the Focus Phrase itself associates with the focused constituent, here BobF. The first link is realized by movement of the whole complex NP as in (18b). Yet the interpretation (18c) is not the intended meaning of (14a) as it asserts that Sam talked to nobody but the woman who introduced Bob to John. This is not correct in a situation in which Sam talked to some other people, as well. Besides this, such a semantics is not sensitive to the place of the focus inside the Focus Phrase. It cannot distinguish (18b) from (18d), where the focus is on John. (18) a. [Which woman who introduced Bob to John]1 did Sam talk to t1? b. Sam [only [FP the woman who introduced BobF to John] λt1 [talked to t1]] c. ∀y ∈ALT(ιx[woman’(x) & intro’(b)(j)(x)]) talk’(y)(s) → y = (ιx[woman’ (x) & intro’(b)(j)(x)]) d. Sam [only [FP the woman who introduced Bob to JohnF] λt1 [talked to t1]] The problem is caused by definition (10), in which the quantifier ranges over values that are alternative to the semantic value of the focus. This semantics does not allow for a more structured, i.e. restricted, domain. In (14a), the quantifier must range over a domain that is further restricted to individuals that alternate only with respect to the focused expression. In our example, the domain of quantification for only consists of women who introduce someone (i.e. alternatives to Bob) to John: {d| ∃z[woman'(d) & intro’(z)(j)(d)]}. There might be several men or women, Sam talked to. There might be



Alternative semantics for definite NPs 

several persons who are introduced to John by a woman such that Sam talked to her. But there is no woman who introduced someone to John and Sam talks to her, but the woman who introduced Bob (and possibly other persons) to John. This example shows that the focus-sensitive operator must be at least associated with the NP containing the focus, and not with the focused expression itself. Still, we have not solved the problem of computing the alternative of a such FPs. Krifka (1996, sec. 7; 2006, sec. 2) proposes a mixed approach (“Hybrid Theory”): the association with Focus Phrase is realized by moving, while the computation of the alternatives inside the definite NP will be done by alternative semantics.

3. Alternative Semantics for definite NPs In this section, I propose an extension of Alternative Semantics for analyzing association with focus in complex definite NPs. After a short review of the basic mechanism of Alternative Semantics, three particular extensions are given: first the alternative interpretation rules of common nouns and their modifiers; second, the alternative composition rule for modification of common nouns; and third, the alternative semantic value of the definite article. This extended semantics is capable of analyzing focus in complex NPs. It will be shown that the problem discussed in the last section can be solved in the framework of Alternative Semantics.

3.1

Alternative Semantics

Alternative Semantics (Rooth 1985, 1992a) does not separate the meaning of the focus from the meaning of the background by extracting the focus out of the background as in LF-movement theories. It rather leaves the focus in situ and compositionally computes the alternatives that are generated by the focused expression on a new semantic level. Alternative Semantics distinguishes between two dimensions of meaning, the ordinary meaning v bO and the alternative meaning v bA. The alternatives are formed by the function ALT applied to the ordinary meaning of the focused expression. The alternative value of an expression is a set containing elements of the same type as its ordinary meaning. The alternatives are projected parallel to the composition of the ordinary meaning until they reach a focus-sensitive operator, i.e. generally up to the level of VP. We have to define two sets of interpretation rules, one for the ordinary and one for the alternative meaning. The ordinary interpretation (19) does not see the focus feature F and, therefore, interprets a focused expression like an unfocused one. The alternative interpretation of a focused expression (20) creates the set of alternatives, and the alternative semantics of an unfocused expression (21) is the singleton containing the ordinary semantic value maintaining the same type for the alternative values of all expression – focused or unfocused (cf. Rooth 1985, 1992a):

 Klaus von Heusinger

(19) vabO = vaFbO (20) vaFbA = ALT(vabO) = Dtype(vab ) (21) vabA = {vabO}

o

The interpretation of composition rules must also be formulated at the ordinary and alternative level. For the time being, there is only one composition rule, the application of a predicate to its arguments. The ordinary semantic function of this composition is functional application, as in (22). The alternative function of functional application (23) is more complex since it must warrant that the alternatives that are generated by a focused expression can be projected. It is a set formed by all possible expressions X(Y) that are derived from the application of an element X of the first alternative set to an element Y of the second alternative set. (22) va bbO = vabO (vbbO) (23) va bbA = {X (Y)| X∈vabA, Y∈vbbA} The definition of the meaning (24) for the focus-sensitive operator only operates on both aspects of the meaning of an expression a. When applied to a VP, the ordinary meaning vVPbO expresses the presupposition, whereas the alternative meaning vVPbA determines the domain of quantification for the operator. There is no other property in the set of alternatives that holds of x than the property that is identical with the ordinary meaning. Here, the operator does not need two disjoint parts of the meaning of the expression as in the LF-moving account. It rather works with both dimensions of the meaning. Thus, the focused expression is not directly involved into the semantics of the operator. It merely generates alternatives, which are projected to the alternative meaning of the whole phrase. The question of which constituent is associated with the focus-operator does not evolve. The focus operator is always applied to the VP. (24) vonly VPbO = λx [vVPbO (x) & ∀P∈vVPbA P(x) → P = vVPbO] For illustration of this mechanism we analyze (13a), repeated as (25a). In (25b), the focused expression SueF generates a set of alternatives, whereas the alternative interpretations of Mary, John and introduce are singletons containing the ordinary meaning. The ordinary semantics of the application of the predicate introduce to its arguments Sue and John yields the property intro'(s)(j), as in (25d). The alternative value of this application is the set of properties consisting in introducing someone (i.e. an alternative value to Sue) to John. The semantics of only asserts in (25e) that there is only one such property, which consists of introducing Sue to John (and there is no other property of introducing someone else to John). This combines in (25f) with the subject yielding the correct semantic representation for the sentence, namely that Mary introduces Sue to John and for all predicates that are formed by the description introduce someone to John if they hold of Mary then they are identical with the property of introducing Sue to John.2



Alternative semantics for definite NPs 

(25) a. Mary VP[only VP[introduced SueF to John]] b. vSueFbO = s vSueFbA = ALT(s) = De c. vMarybO = m vMarybA = {m} vJohnbO = j vJohnbA = {j} vintroducebO = intro' vintroducebA = {intro’} d. vintroduced SueF to JohnbO = intro'(s)(j) vintroduced SueF to JohnbA = {intro'(x)(j)| x∈ALT(s)} e.g. {intro'(s)(j), intro’(b)(j), intro'(a)(j),...} e. vonly introduced SueF to JohnbO = λx [intro'(s)(j)(x) & ∀P∈{intro'(y)(j)| y∈ALT(s)} P(x) → P = intro'(s)(j) f. vMary only introduced SueF to JohnbO = intro'(s)(j)(m) & ∀P∈{intro'(y)(j)| y∈ALT(s)} P(m) → P = intro'(s)(j)

3.2

CN and CN-modifier

We confine the discussion to common nouns (CN), restrictive adjectives (A) and relative clauses (RC) as being noun modifiers (CN-modifiers). Semantically, common nouns and adjectives are properties and have the same type as intransitive verbs, namely <e,t>. The ordinary semantic value (26a) and (27a) is a set of individuals (i.e. a property) regardless whether the expression is focused or not. The alternative semantic value (26b) and (27b) of a focused noun or adjective is the set consisting of alternative properties to the property expressed by the ordinary meaning. In absence of any further restriction, the alternative set is equal to the set of all sets of individuals. The alternative semantic value of an unfocused noun or adjective is the singleton consisting of the ordinary semantic value, as in (26c) and (27c): (26) a. vCNbO = vCNFbO = CN’∈D<e,t> b. vCNFbA = ALT(vCNbO)=D<e,t> c. vCNbA = {vCNbO} (27) a. vAbO = vAFbO = A’∈D<e,t> b. vAFbA = ALT(vAbO)=D<e,t> c. vAbA = {vAbO} The modification of a head noun α by an adjective β is interpreted in the ordinary semantics as the intersection of the ordinary semantic value of α with the ordinary semantic value of β. The alternative value of the modification is the set consisting of sets that are formed by intersection of an element (i.e. set) of the alternative set of α with an element of the alternative set of β.3 (28) vα βbO = vαbO ∩ vβbO (29) vα βbA = {Q ∩ R | Q∈vαbA R∈vβbA}

 Klaus von Heusinger

These definitions allow representations of the following combinations of the focus feature in the modifier-head construction Dutch professor in a context with professors and students, some of them English and some of them Dutch. The ordinary semantic value is the same for all the different focus feature combinations, namely the intersection of the set of Dutch with the set of professors as in (30a). The alternative semantic value of the unfocused combination in (30b) is the singleton containing the ordinary semantic value. The alternatives generated by DutchF professor are intersections of sets that are generated by the adjective DutchF with the singleton set containing the set of professors. The composition of the modified noun Dutch professorF contains properties that are formed by combinations of the property of being a Dutch with the alternative properties to being a professor, namely the properties of being a professor, or being a student. (30) a. v [DutchF/Ø professorF/Ø]F/Ø bO = Dutch’∩professor’ b. vDutch professorbA = {Dutch’∩professor’} c. vDutchF professorbA = {Q ∩ R | Q∈vDutchFbA R∈vprofessorbA} = {Q ∩ R | Q∈{Dutch’, English’} R∈{professor’}} = {Dutch’∩professor’, English’∩professor’} d. vDutch professorFbA = {Q ∩ R | Q∈vDutchbA R∈vprofessorFbA} = {Q ∩ R | Q∈{Dutch’} R∈{professor’, student’}} = {Dutch’∩professor’, Dutch’∩student’} An CN modified by a relative clause is interpreted according to the modification schemata given in (28) and (29). The relative clause RC is of type <e,t>, expressing a property, and can be instantiated either as an adjective (A) or as a predicate missing one argument. The relative pronoun does not receive a semantic interpretation: it merely indicates which argument of the relative clause predicate is related to the head noun. (31) vCN who RCbO = vCNbO ∩ vRCbO (32) vCN who RCbA = {Q ∩ R | Q∈vCNbA R∈vRCbA} We can now analyze the complex CN woman who introduced BobF to John. The ordinary and alternative semantics of the VP introduce BobF to John are computed as in (33b) and (33c). The ordinary meaning of the whole CN is the property of being a woman and introducing Bob to John as in (33d). The alternatives generated by the whole phrase are combinations of the meaning of the head noun, woman’, with alternatives generated by the VP, intro’(x)(j)| x∈ALT(b). The alternative meaning is a set of sets of individuals such that each set comprises women who introduce one particular person to John, e.g. {intro’(b)(j), intro’(s)(j), intro’(a)(j),...}, as derived in (33e). (33) a. b. c.

woman who introduced BobF to John vintroduced BobF to JohnbO = intro’(b)(j) vintroduced BobF to JohnbA = {intro’(x)(j)| x∈ALT(b)} e.g. {intro’(b)(j), intro’(s)(j), intro’(a)(j),...}



Alternative semantics for definite NPs 

d. vwoman who introduced BobF to JohnbO = λx [woman’(x) & intro’(b)(j)(x)] e. vwoman who introduced BobF to JohnbA = {Q ∩ R | Q∈vwomanbA R∈vintroduced BobF to JohnbA} = {Q ∩ R | Q∈{woman’} R∈{intro’(z)(j)| z∈ALT(b)}} = {P| P = λx [woman’(x) & intro’(z)(j)(x)] z∈ALT(b)}} e.g. {λx [woman’(x) & intro’(b)(j)(x)], λx [woman’(x) & intro’(s)(j)(x)], λx [woman’(x) & intro’(a)(j)(x)],...}

3.3

The definite article

At the international faculty party, some students, several German, Italian and American professors, but only one Dutch professor appeared. In this context, sentence (34a) can be felicitously uttered. In order to compute the alternatives of the definite NP from the alternatives of the CN we have to account for the alternative meaning of the article. In a first approach we assume according to the general rule (21) in section 3.1 that the alternative meaning of the article is the singleton of its ordinary meaning.4 If we take the iota operator as the ordinary meaning of the definite article, we then have the singleton containing the iota operator as the alternative meaning. However, this would result in the alternatives described in (34c). Here, the alternative set consists of unique professors with respect to a nationality. Since there is more than one professor for each country but the Netherlands, all iota expressions are undefined except the one for the Dutch professor. Hence, the alternatives would include one single individual, namely the unique Dutch professor. However, the alternatives to the Dutch professor intuitively include all other professors at the party. The semantics of (34c) predicts contrary to fact that sentence (34a) is true in a situation in which Sam talked to the Dutch professor and one German professor. (34) a. Sam only introduced [the DutchF professor]NP to John. b. vthe DutchF professorbO = ιx [Dutch’(x) & prof ’(x)] c. vthe DutchF professorbA = {X(Y)| X∈{ι}, Y∈vDutchF professorbA} = {d| d = ιx Rx & prof ’(x)] for some R∈vDutchFbA} = {ιx [Dutch’(x) & prof ’(x)]} This example clearly demonstrates that the uniqueness condition of the ordinary meaning of the definite NP must not be preserved in the set of alternatives since this would exclude several proper alternatives. Intuitively, the set of alternatives rather consists of all professors at that party. In order to yield this set from the alternative set of the common noun DutchF professor (cf. 30c), we have to assume that the alternative function of the definite article is to collect all individuals from all alternatives to the property expressed in the modified noun as indicated in (35), and more general in (36). Thus the most natural way to model the alternative function of the definite ar-

 Klaus von Heusinger

ticle is the generalized union, as in (37). The consequences of this reconstruction are discussed in section 4. (35) vthe DutchF professorbA = {d| d∈R for some R∈vDutchF professorbA} = {d| d∈R for some R∈{λx [Dutch’(x) & prof ’(x)], λx [Germ’(x) & prof ’(x)], λx [Ital’(x) & prof ’(x)], λx [Amer’(x) & prof ’(x)]} (36) vthe CNbA = {d| d∈R for some R∈vCNbA} = ∪(vCNbA) (37) vthebA = ∪ With this extension, we can give the complete interpretation of (34a) in Alternative Semantics. In (38a), the ordinary and the alternative value of the VP introduced the DutchF professor to John is computed. The alternative meaning is the set of properties such that each property consists in introducing a professor of some nationality R – or simplified some professor (at the party) – to John. In (38b), only quantifies over such properties and asserts that there is only one such property and this property is equal to introducing the Dutch professor to John. Finally, this combines with the subject in (38c), yielding the intuitively correct meaning. (38) a. vintroduced the DutchF professor to JohnbO = intro’(ιx [Dutch’(x) & prof ’(x)])(j) vintroduced the DutchF professor to JohnbA = {intro’(x)(j)| x∈vthe DutchF professorbA} = {intro’(x)(j)| x∈{d| d∈R for some R∈vDutchF professorbA}} = {intro’(x)(j)| x∈∪vthe DutchF professorbA} = {intro’(x)(j)| x∈vprofessorbO} b. vonly introduced the DutchF professor to JohnbO = λx [intro’(ιx [Dutch’(x) & prof ’(x)])(j) & ∀P∈{intro’(x)(j)|x∈ vprofessorbO} P(y) →P = intro’(ιx [Dutch’(x) & prof ’(x)])(j)]] c. vSam only introduced the DutchF professor to JohnbO = intro’(ιx [Dutch’(x) & prof ’(x)])(j)(s) & ∀P∈{intro’(x)(j)| x∈vprofessorbO} P(s) →P = intro’(ιx [Dutch’(x) & prof ’(x)])(j)]] Given this alternative interpretation of definite NPs, we can now analyze the example (5a), repeated as (39a), in Alternative Semantics and without LF-moving. In (39b) the interpretations of the new constants are given. (39c) and (39d) repeat the interpretation of the complex phrase woman who introduced BobF to John from (33a) in section 3.2. This semantics combines with the article, the ordinary interpretation yielding a iota expression in (39e), and the alternative interpretation (39f) forming the set of elements that are women who introduce an alternative of Bob to John. We can simplify this set by replacing the restriction on y by an existential quantifier. (39) a. Sam only talked to [NP the woman who introduced BobF to John] b. vSambO = s vtalkbO = talk’ vtalkbA = {talk’}



Alternative semantics for definite NPs 

c. vwoman who introduced BobF to JohnbO = λx [woman’(x) & intro’(b)(j)(x)] d. vwoman who introduced BobF to JohnbA = {P| P = λx [woman’(x) & intro’(z)(j)(x)] z∈ALT(b)} e. vthe woman who introduced BobF to JohnbO = ιx [woman’(x) & intro’(b)(j)(x)] f. vthe woman who introduced BobF to JohnbA = ∪{P| P = λx [woman’(x) & intro’(z)(j)(x)] z∈ALT(b)} = {d| [woman’(d) & intro’(z)(j)(d)] z∈ALT(b)} = {d| ∃z [woman’(d) & intro’(z)(j)(d)]} Combining the NP with the verb talk we get the ordinary interpretation (39g) by functional application and the alternatives (39h) by the alternative semantics of functional application, as defined in (23). (39h) describes the set of properties of talking to a woman who introduces someone to John. The interpretation (24) of only combines the ordinary meaning of the VP with its alternative interpretation. It quantifies over the alternatives and states that no value but the ordinary one holds of the subject. This semantics is applied to our example yielding (39i), which applied to the subject results in (39j). It correctly expresses that Sam talked to the woman who introduces Bob to John and for all properties of talking to a woman who introduces someone to John that hold of Sam, they are identical with the property of talking to the woman who introduced Bob to John. (39) g. h. i.

vtalk to the woman who introduced BobF to JohnbO = talk’(ιx [woman(x) & intro’(b)(j)(x)]) vtalk to the woman who introduced BobF to JohnbA = = {talk’(y) | y∈{d| ∃z [woman’(d) & intro’(z)(j)(d)]}} vonly talked to the woman who introduced BobF to JohnbO = λu [talk’(ιx [woman(x) & intro’(b)(j)(x)])(u) & ∀P∈{talk’(y) | y∈{d| ∃z [woman’(d) & intro’(z)(j)(d)]}} P(u) → P = talk’(ιx [woman(x) & intro’(b)(j)(x))] j. vSam only talked to the woman who introduced BobF to JohnbO = [talk’(ιx [woman(x) & intro’(b)(j)(x)](s) & ∀P∈{talk’(y) | y∈{d| ∃z [woman’(d) & intro’(z)(j)(d)]}} P(s) →P = talk’(ιx [woman(x) & intro’(b)(j)(x))] It was shown that this extension of Alternative Semantics is capable of analyzing association with focus in complex definite NPs and solving the puzzle discussed in section 2.2. The question of whether the focus-operator associates with the focused expression or a larger constituent that contains the focused expression does not arise in this framework. The focus-operator associates with the VP that contains a focus. We have settled the question of the whereabouts of the uniqueness condition in the alternative set by an ad-hoc “solution”, motivated by the data. However, the proposed alternative

 Klaus von Heusinger

function for the definite article cannot be derived from its ordinary function. This calls for a discussion of the general architecture of Alternative Semantics.

4. The architecture of Alternative Semantics The alternative level of meaning in Alternative Semantics, as introduced in section 3.1, is formed by two basic rules. The first rule ties the alternative semantic value of an expression α to its ordinary value. If the ordinary semantic value is of type π, then the alternative semantic value (or “p-set”) is a set of elements of this type, i.e. of type . The two interpretation rules (40)-(41) govern this dependency of the alternatives from the ordinary semantic values: (40) by creating singleton sets

vαbA = {vαbO}

(41) by creating alternatives (p-sets)

vαFbA = ALT(vαbO)

The second essential component of Alternative Semantics is the compositional construction of complex meanings. The construction rules must also warrant that the main relation between the ordinary meaning of a complex expression αβ and its alternative meaning is preserved. Thus, the alternative interpretation of functional application and modification must project the alternatives such that they fit the type requirement given in the rules (40) and (41). The alternative function of a construction rule © is derived from its ordinary interpretation (42i) in a schematic way: The construction rule is applied to the elements of the alternative sets of the expression involved, rather than to the sets themselves. The alternative value of the whole composition (42ii) consists of elements created in the described way. The alternative meaning of functional application (43ii) is a set of elements that is formed by functional application of one element in the alternatives set of the functor to one element of the alternative set of the argument. The alternative function of modification (44ii) is the set that is formed from the intersection of one element of the alternative set of the modifier with one element out of the alternative set of the modified. (42) Construction rule © (i) ordinary function vαβbO = vαbO © vβbO (ii) alternative semantic function vαβbA = {X © Y| X∈vαbA, Y∈vβbA} (43) Functional Application (i) ordinary function vαβbO = vαbO (vβbO) (ii) alternative semantic function vαβbA = {X (Y)| X∈vαbA, Y∈vβbA} (44) Modification (i) ordinary function vαβbO = vαbO ∩ vβbO (ii) alternative semantic function vαβbA = {R ∩ Q | R∈vαbA, Q∈vβbA}



Alternative semantics for definite NPs 

These rules warrant that the alternatives generated by the focused expression are projected in the alternative meaning. In the last section we have encountered the problem of the transition from the alternative meaning of a complex common noun, like DutchF professor to the alternative meaning of the definite NP the DutchF professor. While the former is a set of sets of individuals, the latter is represented by a set of individuals. Therefore, we assumed that the union represents the alternative meaning of the definite article. This, however, violates the two just given principles of Alternative Semantics. Let us assume that the ordinary meaning (45) of the definite article is a function of type ,e>, i.e. a function that assigns one element to a set.5 According to rule (40), Alternative Semantics predicts that the alternative function is the singleton containing the ordinary meaning as in (46). This meaning correctly predicts the alternative sets for definite NPs without focus, as in (47) and for definite NPs that contain a focus and that are formed by semantically definite concepts, such as the ordinal number construction in (48) or the functional concept spouse in (49). (45) vthebO = f,e> (46) vthebA = {f,e>},t> (47) vthe old professorbA= {X(Y) | X∈{f, e>} Y∈{old’prof ’<e,t>)}} = {f, e>(old’prof ’<e,t>)}<e,t> = {the unique old prof ’e}<e,t> (48) vthe first AmericanF astronaut in spacebA = {the unique first American Astronaut in space’, the unique first Russian Astronaut in space’, the unique first French Astronaut in space’,...} (49) vJohn’s spousebA = {Bill’s spouse’, John’s spouse’, Ann’s spouse’,...} Yet, this semantics is too restrictive for the formation of the alternative set of the other classes of definite NPs discussed in section 1, such as John’sF sister in (6a) or the DutchF professor in (7a):

(6) a. Sam only talked to [John’s sister]NP.



(7) a. Sam only talked to [the DutchF professor]NP.

As shown in the last section, the uniqueness condition would exclude most of the relevant alternatives. Therefore, we assumed that the alternative function is the general union over a set of sets of individuals, i.e. it is of type ,t>, <e,t>>, as in (50). But this type cannot be derived from the ordinary type in (45).6 (50) vthe CNbA = {d| d∈R for some R∈vCNbA} = ∪(vCNbA) vthebA = f,t>,<e,t>> (45) vthebO = f,e> With this semantics of the definite article, two problems arise for the general architecture of Alternative Semantics: (i) the alternative meaning of type ,t>,<e,t>> cannot be derived by (40) from the ordinary meaning of type ,e>, and (ii) the

 Klaus von Heusinger

application of the article to the complex common noun is reconstructed by ordinary functional application (43i), rather than by its alternative function (43ii). Thus, this alternative function of the definite article does not fit into the general architecture of Alternative Semantics. In the remainder of this section we give five suggestions to treat this problem, continuously stripping off the semantic contribution of the article to the construction of the alternative set of definite NPs. The first three suggestions keep to the two mentioned principles, discussed in (40)-(44) of Alternative Semantics, while the last two deviate from them. In the first and most conservative suggestion, we modify the ALTfunction that generates the alternatives. In a second suggestion, we replace the uniqueness condition of the definite article by a maximality condition and take the number information as being not essential to the semantics. In a third approach, we defend the idea that the definite article is represented by a choice function. The fourth suggestion assumes that both the ordinary and alternative meaning of the definite article is reconstructed as a polymorph choice function. And finally, in the fifth suggestion we present the idea that the definite article does not contribute to the semantics proper. It only happens to be located at a place where we have to assume a type shift from the common noun to the NP. It is the alternative function of the type shift rule that yields the construction principles for the alternative sets of definite NPs.

4.1

Fine-grained descriptions

Assuming the classic semantics of the definite article and the main principles of Alternative Semantics, we can suggest the following treatment: Suppose that the function ALT produces so many alternatives that there is at least one alternative description for each individual in the intended domain of quantification that holds exclusively of this individual. In (51a), ALT produces so many fine-grained alternative properties of Dutch that we find for each professor at the party (at least) one unique description. In (51c), the alternative meaning of the definite NP is computed according to the interpretation of functional application. The iota operator is applied to all alternatives to being Dutch, but only those alternatives “survive” that are singleton sets. (51) a. vDutchFbA = ALT(vDutchbO) = ALT(Dutch’) = {Dutch’, German’,..., German’∩from_Berlin’, German’∩from_Tübingen’,...} b. vDutchF professorbA = {Dutch’∩prof ’, German’∩prof ’,..., German’∩from_Berlin’∩prof ’, German’∩from_Tübingen’∩prof ’,...} c. vthe DutchF professorbA = {X(Y)| X∈{ι}, Y∈vDutchF professorbA} = {ιx [Dutch’(x) & prof ’(x)], ιx [Germ’(x) & prof ’(x) & from Berlin(x)], ιx [Germ’(x) & prof ’(x) & from Tübingen],...} This solution preserves the general architecture of Alternative Semantics as described in the last section. The definite article is a functor that is applied to the common noun se-



Alternative semantics for definite NPs 

mantics, both in the ordinary as in the alternative meaning. However, the repair is highly artificial and not very convincing. In particular, it is not clear how the ALT-function “knows” the appropriate descriptions that fit single individuals given in the discourse. Moreover, it seems that it cannot produce the correct descriptions if part of the common noun restricts the choice of predicates, like the professor of DutchF nationality or the greenF-colored apple. It is not clear how we may distinguish between different German professors since there is no professor of German-from-Tübingen nationality.

4.2

No number information

It has been suggested that the definite article does not contribute the uniqueness condition directly, but rather in a derived way.7 It contributes a maximality condition which is realized in the singular as uniqueness and in the plural as the maximal set. If the number information of the common noun is not to be preserved in the alternatives, we could design the following picture: The focused adjective DutchF generates alternative sets of individuals, which combine with the meaning of professor by intersection in (52b). The application of the maximality condition to each of the subsets of the alternative meaning of the common noun yields the set (52c) consisting of maximal elements, being the unique element of a set or its maximal extension, for example as a sum individual. All subsets of the alternative set of the common noun are preserved as elements of the alternative set of the NP. The alternative set of the definite NP the DutchF professor consists of the Dutch professor, the German professors (comprised in some maximal element) etc. (52) a. vDutchFbA = ALT(vDutchbO) = ALT(Dutch’) = {Dutch’, German’,..., } b. vDutchF professorbA = {Dutch’∩prof ’, German’∩prof ’,...} c. vthe DutchF professorbA = {X(Y)| X∈{max}, Y∈vDutchF professorbA} = {max[Dutch’(x) & prof ’(x)], max[Germ’(x) & prof ’(x)],...} = {the Dutch professor’, the German professors’,...} This solution also preserves the general architecture of Alternative Semantics. Furthermore, we do not have to assume a strange ALT-functions; we do not lose alternatives in the transition from the set of subsets to the p-set of the NP, since elements of nonsingleton sets are comprised into sum individuals. This also resembles the treatment of plural semantics. Nevertheless, we get a new problem with predication of a part of a sum-individual. In a situation, where Sam talked to the Dutch professor and to one of the German professors, sentence (7a) is intuitively false. We have to assume that the predication applies to the Dutch professor and the sum individual representing the German professors. This, however, is far from being intuitive. It is not clear, whether Sam talked to the German professors when he talked to one of them. One would expect some kind of uncertainty in the judgment of such cases.8

 Klaus von Heusinger

4.3

Choice functions

Let us “impoverish” the semantic contribution of the definite article further and assume that the semantics of the definite article is purely a function that selects one element out of the set denoted by the common noun. Thus, we replace the uniqueness and maximality condition by the principle of choice and we interpret the article by a choice function f. A Choice function is a function that assigns to a non-empty set one of its elements, or: fcf(CN’)∈CN’ (cf. Egli and von Heusinger 1995, von Heusinger 1997, Winter 1997, Kratzer 1998, among others). We can now compose the alternative set (53a), which is based on the alternative set of the common noun in (52b). We paraphrase the element selected by the choice function as the chosen element. (53) a. vthe DutchF professorbA = {X(Y)| X∈{fcf }, Y∈vDutchF professorbA} = {fcf(Dutch’∩prof ’), fcf(Germ’∩ prof ’),...} = {the chosen Dutch professor’, the chosen German professor’,...} Each subset of a p-set of the common noun is represented by one element in the p-set of the definite NP. But this gives us not enough alternatives, e.g. the choice function gives us only one German professor. There are two ways of modifying this choice function approach further: (i) we argue that the choice is undetermined, or (ii) we assume that we quantify over different choice functions. Hilbert & Bernays (1939), who were the first to work with choice functions, define them in an undetermined way, i.e. the choice function selects one element out of a set, but we do not know which one. This is also used in semantics for describing E-type pronouns (e.g. Ballmer 1978, Neale 1990, Chierchia 1992). Such definite NPs can be paraphrased by whoever-phrases. Informally, this would result in the following alternative set, in which we find one representative for each of the subsets in (53a). Again, we run into the same trouble as in (52c) in section 4.2 since we do not have a good definition of predication over whoever-phrases. Another way to attack the problem is to take a family of choice functions f1, f2, f3... fn instead of one choice function. Each choice function can assign a different element to a certain set. Therefore, the expressions f1(Germ’∩ prof ’), f2(Germ’∩ prof ’),... denote different German professors such that we collect all elements of the subsets into the set of alternatives to the definite NP. (53) b. c.

vthe DutchF professorbA = {X(Y)| X∈{fcf }, Y∈vDutchF professorbA} = {fcf(Dutch’∩prof ’), fcf(Germ’∩ prof ’),...} = {whoever is a Dutch professor’, whoever is a German professor’,...} vthe DutchF professorbA = {fi(Y) | fi∈{f1, f2, f3...}, Y∈vDutchF professorbA} = {f1(Dutch’∩prof ’), f1[Germ’∩ prof ’), f2[Germ’∩ prof ’), f3[Germ’∩ prof ’),...}

The set in (53c) comprises the number of alternatives we need for the domain of quantification. Still, we have not explained how the idea of a family of choice function can be matched with the ordinary semantics of the article.9



4.4

Alternative semantics for definite NPs 

Polymorph choice function

The last three subsections tried to defend the two principles of alternative semantics (i) the alternative meaning is the set consisting of the ordinary meaning and (ii) the alternative function of functional application is the process of building a set of elements such that the elements are derived from functional application of elements of the alternative sets involved. Since none of the three suggestion could totally convince, we decide to abandon this requirement and investigate other possibilities. In particular, we abandon the correspondence between the ordinary and the alternative function of the article and propose to merge both functions of the definite article into a more abstract function: The meaning of the article is a function f that takes a set of type , and yields one of its elements of type π. In this view, the article stands for a polymorph choice function or a general “type shifter”, as in (54). In the ordinary interpretation (55), the definite article assigns to a set one of its elements. In its alternative use (56), the function assigns to the set of subsets one of its subsets. For instance, it assigns to the alternative meaning of DutchF professors in (57a) the subset of professors at the party in (57b) yielding the appropriate domain of quantification for the operator. (54) vtheb = f (55) vtheb (vmanbO)<e,t> = (f,e>(man’<e,t>))e∈man’ (56) vtheb (vmanbA),t> = f,t>,<e,t>>({man’, woman’, child’, etc. })∈D<e,t> (57) a. vDutchF professorbA = {Dutch’∩prof ’, German’∩prof ’,..., prof ’∩at_ the_party,...} b. vthe DutchF professorbA = f,t>,<e,t>>(vDutchF professorbA) = prof ’∩at_ the_party The advantage of this approach is that we can keep to one general interpretation of the definite article. Intuitively, the function of the article is to pick out one element from a set. In the alternative function it selects one subset. This choice may either be governed by some maximality condition (chose the largest set) or by pragmatic information (take the appropriate set). The latter option supplies a parameter to encode contextual information restricting the alternatives. This additional contextual information is needed in any other account, as well. In the original approach of Rooth (1985), the actual domain of quantification of the focus operator is part of the p-set. Here, we argue that the context determines which of the many subsets generated by the common noun is the appropriate for the alternative meaning of the NP. Of course, we abandon the idea that the article has an ordinary and an alternative meaning. It has just one function. One can speculate that content words easily generate alternative, while function words like the article do not. Still, we can raise the same objection as in the first proposed solution (Ariel Cohen pointed this out to me): This solution heaviliy depends on contextual information that controls the right choice of the the subset. This contextual dependeny

 Klaus von Heusinger

of the proposed analysis does not correspond the generality of the problem. We, therefore, do not think that it is the correct modification of the analysis.

4.5

Type shifting operation

In a final approach to the problem we assume that the definite article does not make a semantic contribution to both the ordinary semantics and the alternative semantics. That is not to say that the article has no meaing: it has definitely a pragmatic meaning including some uniqueness and familiarity presuppostion or implicature (see Roberts 2003, Abbott 2004 for discussion). However, this pragmatic meaning does not play a role for the compositional process of ordinary and alternative meaning values. In this view the core semantic function of the article is to indicate where a type shift operation from a common noun to an NP has taken place. The type shift rule is a construction rule, whose alternative function can be derived from its ordinary function in a schematic way described in (42ii). The construction rule is applied to the elements of the alternative sets of the expression involved, rather than to the sets themselves. (42) Construction rule © (i) ordinary function vαβbO = vαbO © vβbO (ii) alternative semantic function vαβbA = {X © Y| X∈vαbA, Y∈vβbA} Since type shifting rules involve only one expression α that is transformed from type β to a different semantic type π, we have to modify this schema slightly. We assume in (58) that the ordinary meaning vαπbO of the type shifted expression stands in a the semantic relation © to the ordinary meaning vαβbO of the expression. In other words, the value of the type shifted expression depends on the value of the original expression plus some semantic operation. For the alternative function of the type shift we assume according to the schema in (42) that an element X of the alternative set vαπbA of the type shifted expression stands in that relation © to an element Y of the alternative set vαβbA of the original expression. We can now form the construction rule (59), which transforms a common noun (CN) of type <e,t> into an NP of type e. We state the following minimal requirement: The denotation of the NP must be an element of the denotation of the CN. The alternative interpretation of this type shifting rule requires that an element X of the alternative set vαNPbA of the NP must be element of an element Y of the alternative set vαCNbA of the common noun. The definition (60) of the alternative set vαNPbA of an NP follows directly from this requirement: It consists of objects d that are elements of some Y such that Y is element of the alternative set vαCNbA of the common noun. This is the union over the alternative set vαCNbA of the common noun and what we had inferred from the data in section 3.3 in (36). However, the union is not the alternative meaning of the article since there is no such meaning. It is the alternative semantic function of the particular type shift operation from a common noun to an NP.10



Alternative semantics for definite NPs 

(58) Type shifting rules – general schema (i) ordinary function vαβbO => vαπbO with vαπbO © vαβbO (ii) alternative semantic function vαβbA => vαπbA with X©Y X∈vαπbA Y∈vαβbA (59) Type shifting rules for CN => NP (i) (vαCNbO)<e,t> => (vαNPbO)e with vαNPbO∈vαCNbO (ii) (vαCNbA),t> => (vαNPbA)<e,t> with X∈Y X∈vαNPbA Y∈vαCNbA (60) vαNPbA = {d| d∈Y for some Y∈vαCNbA} = ∪(vαCNbA) This proposal allows to derive the alternative function of the definite article from the parallel composition of ordinary and alternative meaning values and from a type shift construction rule. The solution does not assign any core semantic value to the definite article, but allows for pragmatic meaning such as uniqueness or familiarity presupposition or implicature, which however is not relevant for the alternative value. Such assumption about the meaning of the definite article coincides with the assumption on the semantics of definiteness in discourse representation theories.

5. Concluding remarks The given analysis of the alternative semantics of the definite article calls for more investigation into the alternative function of other determiners and familiar expression, as illustrated in (61)-(64). In (61), the domain of quantification generated by the indefinite NP is similar to that one generated by the definite NP in (7a). It is not clear how the domain of quantification is formed in (62), where five is a weak quantifier. In the case of strong quantifiers, like in (63), we have a clear preference to compare sets of five professors with respect to a nationality. Plural NPs as in (64) and (65) generate alternatives similar to the singular cases in (7a) and (61). (61) Sam only introduced a DutchF professor to John. (62) Sam only introduced five DutchF professors to John. (63) Sam only introduced exactly five DutchF professor to John. (64) Sam only introduced the GermanF professors to John. (65) Sam only introduced GermanF professors to John. All these data suggest that the alternative function of determiners and the role of type shift rules in the semantics of NPs are not yet fully understood. However, the present analysis of association with focus in definite NPs provides a comprehensive discussion of the alternative function of the definite article. The analysis of association with focus in definite NPs developed in this paper has shown three main points: First, the focus-sensitive operator does not associate directly with the focused expression, but with a larger constituent that contains the focused expression. In LF-movement the-

 Klaus von Heusinger

ories, this larger constituent is the Focus Phrase, or the highest NP containing the focused expression. However, the only way to account for the interpretation of the Focus Phrase was in terms of Alternative Semantics. Therefore, we developed an extension of Alternative Semantics to cover the data. In Alternative Semantics, the focus operator quantifies over the alternative meaning of the VP. The question of whether the operator associates with the focused expression or a larger constituent does not arise. Second, the construction of alternative sets of definite NPs in Alternative Semantics did not allow for any uniqueness condition at the level of alternatives. It rather seemed that the function of the article was the generalized union over the alternative set of the common noun. Third, this assumed alternative function of the article created new problems with respect to the general architecture of Alternative Semantics. After discussing several treatments of this problem, we concluded that the article does not contribute to the formation of the alternative set. It is rather the alternative function of the type shift from the common noun to the NP that creates the particular type of alternative set necessary.

Notes * This paper originated in an extensive discussion of Krifka (1996) with Bill Ladusaw. I like to thank Bill Ladusaw for long and inspiring discussions at various stages of the paper, and David Beaver, Daniel Bürig, Manfred Krifka, Kerstin Schwabe, Roger Schwarzschild and Susanne Winkler for further comments on earlier drafts. The paper was presented at the workshop on Information Structure and the Architecture of Grammar in Tübingen in February 2004 and at Stanford University in March 2005. I would like to thank the audience for valuable comments. In particular I like to thank Kerstin Schwabe und Susanne Winkler for having organized the workshop and for editing this volume, and Ariel Cohen for very constructive comments and suggestions for the final version. 1. This (ontological) type restriction on alternatives is only a necessary condition. Sortal and contextual restrictions must also be applied. In other words, the appropriate domain of quantification must be included in the set formed by the ALT-function. Note that the alternative set (or p-set in Rooth’s terminology) always includes the object from which the set is generated. 2. Alternative semantics must be defined intensionally to distinguish between extensionally equi­valent p-sets which express a different intension. For instance, in a situation where Mary intro­duces Sue to John and Ann to John, and no other introductions are undertaken, the meaning of both predicates vintroduced Sue to Johnb and vintroduced Ann to Johnb are extensionally equivalent. In such a situation, sentence (25a) would be true because the meaning intro’(a)(j) that are generated from the alternatives of Sue is identical with intro’(s)(j). However, the sentence (25a) is intuitively false in the given situation. LF-moving theories do not need intensions since they have direct access to the meaning of the focus, which on the other hand makes them too powerful (cf. Rooth 1985). In the following I give the extensional version, which could be easily transformed into an intensional one.



Alternative semantics for definite NPs 

Another problem arises in sentences with more than one focus-sensitive operator (cf. Krifka 1996 sec. 4) and with bound anaphoric pronouns. The latter problem has prompted a slightly different account of Alternative Semantics developed by Kratzer (1991b). Although I use Rooth’s formulation of Alternative Semantics in the remainder of this paper, the proposed extension can also implemented in any other form of Alternative Semantics. 3. Alternatively, the CN-modifier can be raised to the higher type ,<e,t>>, which takes a property and yields a property, i.e. the adjective denotes a function from sets into sets. This semantics results in the same ordinary and alternative value for CN-modification: (28*)  vαβbO = vαbO (vβbO) = {d| d<e,t>= f,<e,t>>(e<e,t>) f = vαbO e =vβbO} (29*)  vαβbA = {X (Y)| X∈vαbA, Y∈vβbA} 4. Here, we exclude the possibility that the definite article can be focused. It is questionable whether sentence (i) is wellformed and what it could mean. It seems that the sentence becomes much better if the demonstrative this replaces the definite article, as in (ii). Example (iii) is from a letter to the editor (SF Chronicle from October 8, 1997), which discussed the location of a museum in San Francisco. However, this use of focus is clearly contrastive, and it is not clear whether the focused article would associate with a focus-sensitive operator. (i) ?Sam only saw theF man. (ii) Sam only saw thisF man. (iii) Getting there isn’t half the problem. It is the problem. 5. In this view, the article is a term-creating operator of type ,e>. We could also keep to the more traditional view that it is a generalized quantifier of type , ,t>>. The argument can be expressed with this type, too. We assume the simpler type for the sake of conceptual simplicity. 6. It is interesting to note that Rooth (1985: 172–173) uses the union in the analysis of adverbs of quantification and focus. An adverb of quantification is a relation between two sets of time intervals (or situations). The first set consists of those time intervals at which the ordinary meaning of the sentence holds, while the second argument has to be built from the alternative meaning of the sentence or its p-set. However, the p-set is a set of sets of time intervals, which does not fit the type of the argument of the adverb. Thus, Rooth suggests to take the union of the p-set, rather than the p-set itself, as the second argument of the adverb. 7. Manfred Krifka, Daniel Büring and Roger Schwarzschild among others suggested this line of argument to me. 8. Cf. Krifka (1995b), who discusses similar cases and reports from uncertainties in the judgments of predication of sum individuals. 9. It rather seems as if we use in (53c) an alternative set of choice functions. This might be more appropriate for demonstrative expressions. On the other hand, this picture would meet a theory that explains definiteness by the indexical principle of salience. The context provides the choice function that selects a element. The alternative set to this element is formed without this indexical anchoring, and thus using all available choice functions. 10. The same argument can be given for a type shift from a common noun to a NP of type ,t>. Here, the relation between the meanings are reversed. In (59*i), the common noun meaning must be element of the NP meaning. Therefore, an element X of the alternative meaning αCNA of the common noun must be element of an element Y that is in the alternative set αNPA of the NP. Thus, the alternative set of an NP of type ,t> consists of generalized

 Klaus von Heusinger quantifiers Q that include one of the elements Y of the alternative set vαCNbA of the common noun. This set is certainly too large and must be restricted in one way or other.

(59*)

Type shifting rules for CN => NP



(i) (vαCNbO)<e,t> => (vαNPbO),t> with vαCNbO∈vαNPbO



(ii) (vαCNbA),t> => (vαNPbA),t> with X∈Y X∈vαCNbA Y∈vαNPbA



(60*)

vαNPbA = {Q| Y∈Q for some Y∈vαCNbA}

The information structure of bare plurals in English and Italian* Ariel Cohen Topics are what the sentence is about: hence, they must be specific, and every predicative sentence must have a topic. This view explains the differences in the interpretation of bare plurals in English and Italian. In both languages, bare plurals may denote properties, resulting in existential readings. But properties cannot be topics: hence, when no other topic is available, existential readings are excluded.In English, bare plurals may denote kinds (which are specific and are therefore licensed as topics) and thus receive generic readings. In Italian, in contrast, bare plurals may not denote kinds, and hence cannot be topics. What appear to be generic readings of bare plurals turn out, on close inspection, to be predication of a specific rule. It is this rule, rather than the bare plural, which is the topic of the sentence.

1. Topics In this paper I will consider the information structure of bare plurals (henceforth BPs) in two languages: English and Italian. More specifically, I will consider to what extent they can be topics. Before discussing this issue, it is necessary to define our terms, since different people mean different things by topicality. I take topics to be what the sentence is about (Reinhart 1981; Erteschik-Shir 1997; Portner and Yabushita 1998). There are two predictions that follow from this definition: 1. Obligatoriness: Every predicative sentence must have a topic, since every predicative sentence is about something. 2. Specificity: Topics must be specific: they must denote an entity, such as an individual, a group of individuals, or an event – something that a sentence can be about. As we will see, Italian BPs pose a challenge to this view. But before we turn to them, let us first discuss English BPs, which have been extensively studied.

 Ariel Cohen

2. English bare plurals It is well known that English BPs are ambiguous between existential and generic readings. While the BP in (1a) is interpreted existentially, and the sentence says that some dogs are barking outside, the BP in (1b) is interpreted generically, and the sentence says that dogs, in general, are intelligent. (1) a. Dogs are barking outside right now. b. Dogs are intelligent. What determines whether the BP is interpreted existentially or generically is a matter of fierce debate; I am going to follow Cohen and Erteschik-Shir (2002), according to whom the reading is determined by information structure. Let me present a brief exposition of this theory.

2.1

Existential readings

Existential BPs exhibit narrow scope only (Carlson 1977). For example, (2) can only mean that it is false that there exist beautiful girls whom I met. It cannot be interpreted to mean that there exist beautiful girls whom I didn’t meet.

(2) I didn’t meet beautiful girls.

The explanation for this fact is that the BP denotes a property, which is incorporated into the predicate, so that every operator that has scope over the predicate also has scope over the BP (Van Geenhoven 1996; McNally 1998c; see also Krifka 2004a, who derives this effect from the general characteristics of type-shifting). Properties are not specific, hence not licensed as topics. Yet, we assumed above that a predicative sentence must have a topic. Hence, the topic of an existential BP sentence must be another NP, if there is one; alternatively, if the main predicate is stage-level, which has a spatiotemporal argument (Kratzer 1995), this argument can be the topic. Note that if the BP is forced to be a topic, the existential reading is impossible: (3)

a. b. c. d.

Let me tell you something about beautiful girls: *I didn’t meet them. I didn’t meet any. I adore them.

Sentence (3a) sets up beautiful girls as the topic. Hence, in the context of this sentence, the existential (3b) is impossible. In order to get an existential reading, one needs an overt quantifier, as in (3c). In contrast, the generic reading is unproblematically available, as exemplified by (3d).



The information structure of bare plurals in English and Italian 

2.2

Generic readings

It is common to draw a distinction between two types of generic reading: direct kind predication and characterizing generics (Krifka et al 1995). An example of direct kind predication is the following sentence:

(4) White-colored elephants have become extinct.

This sentence predicates the property of being extinct directly of the kind white elephant. In this sentence, since the predicate is not stage-level, the only possible topic is the BP. Hence, the BP must denote an entity, which means that it must denote the kind. We can represent the logical form of (4) as follows (where, following Chierchia 1998, ∩p is the kind denoted by the common noun whose meaning is p):

(5) extinct (∩white-elephant)

Characterizing generics are exemplified by the following sentence:

(6) Big watchdogs are efficient.

An obvious fact is that (6) contains no overt quantification. What is not always appreciated is an immediate corollary: the sentence is, at least initially, a predicative sentence. It therefore must have a topic. Since the predicate is individual-level, and doesn’t have a spatiotemporal argument (Kratzer 1995), the only option is, again, the BP, which must therefore denote a kind. We therefore have the following logical form for (6):

(7) efficient (∩big-watchdog)

However, the predication in (7) doesn’t make sense: it is not the kind ∩big-watchdog that is efficient, but individual big watchdogs. Even worse, taking characterizing generics to be simple predications may miss a reading, as pointed out by Carlson (1977). He considers the following sentence:

(8) Cats like themselves.

If we take the sentence to express simple predication, this would mean that the predicate 'λx. like (x, x) is predicated of the kind ∩cat. This reduces to:

(9) like (∩cat, ∩cat)

But this means that cats like cats, and we would miss the more plausible reading where, in general, a cat likes itself. Consequently, in cases where direct kind predication will not do, Carlson proposes that a phonologically null generic operator is necessary. I accept this view, though for me, unlike Carlson, the generic operator is a quantifier (see Cohen 1996 for arguments for this move). Specifically, in cases such as (7), the generic quantifier, gen, is introduced, and the argument of predication becomes its restrictor. The final logical form of (6) is, therefore (10) (where C (x, k) indicates that x is a representative of the kind k)

 Ariel Cohen

(10) genx[C (x, ∩ big-watchdog)][efficient (x)] Crucially, the predication stage is necessary for this derivation. Hence, both types of generic reading require the BP to denote a kind. This fact can be demonstrated by coordination, anaphora, and relativization: (11) a. b. c.

Dodos lived in Mauritius and (they) became extinct in the 18th century (after Heyer 1990) Elephants are killed for their tusks and are therefore an endangered species. Giant pandas, which are endangered, feed on bamboo shoots.

3. Italian bare plurals 3.1

Existential readings

Like the case of English, Italian BPs can be interpreted existentially, and, when they are, they exhibit narrow scope only (Chierchia 1998). For example, (12) can only mean that it is false that there exist beautiful girls whom I met; it cannot mean that there exist beautiful girls whom I didn’t meet. (12) Non ho conosciuto belle ragazze ‘(I) didn’t meet beautiful girls’

3.2

Generic readings

Chierchia (1998) claims that, just like in English, Italian BPs may refer to kinds. He bases his argument on the following sentences:1 (13) a. Qui, ragazze in minigonna sono rare. ‘Here, girls in miniskirt are rare’ b. Dopo il disastro nucleare, purtroppo, cani con difetti congeniti sono molto comuni. ‘After the nuclear disaster, unfortunately, dogs with birth defects are very common’ These examples do not unequivocally support the argument, however, because they use the predicates rare (rare) and comuni (common). As Krifka et al (1995) demonstrate, these predicates are to be analyzed as quantificational predicates rather than kind predicates. For example, Krifka et al suggest that (14) means that the chance of encountering a blue-eyed rhino is high.2 (14) A rhino with blue eyes is common.



The information structure of bare plurals in English and Italian 

With predicates that are unequivocally kind predicates, BPs are, in fact, impossible (Longobardi 2001): (15) a. *Elefanti di colore bianco sono estinti. ‘White-colored elephants have become extinct.’ b. *Elefanti di colore bianco diventano sempre più grandi man mano che si va a nord. ‘White-colored elephants grow larger as one drives north.’ c. *Elefanti di colore bianco sono così chiamati per la pigmentazione della loro pelle. ‘White-colored elephants are so-called because of the pigmentation of their skin.’ There is, however, one caveat: when BPs are coordinated, kind reference appears to be possible: (16) a. Cani *(e gatti) diventano più comuni come si passa dal Sud al Nord Italia. ‘Dogs (and cats) become more common as one moves from southern to northern Italy.’ b. Tigri *(e pantere) sono in pericolo di estinzione. ‘Tigers (and panthers) are endangered. c. Elefanti e tigri di colore bianco sono estinti. ‘White-colored elephants and tigers have become extinct.’3 Does this fact contradict the claim made here, namely that Italian BPs cannot refer to kinds? The answer is no. There is some evidence that coordinated bare plurals are not really bare. Consider the case of French: this language does not allow any BPs, either existential or generic, in argument positions. However, when BPs are coordinated, they are permitted under either reading. The following examples, from Heycock and Zamparelli (2003), demonstrate this fact: (17) a. Chiens *(et chats) avaient tous l’air très sale. ‘Dogs (and cats) all looked very dirty.’ b. Le chien, le chat, et le lapin sont parmi les animaux domestiques les plus répandus; en particulier, chiens *(et chats) sont unde/des espèce(s) qui s’adapte(nt) facilement à la compagnie des êtres humains. ‘The dog, the cat, and the rabbit are among the most widespread domestic animals; in particular, dogs (and cats) are a/some species which adapt(s) easily to the company of human beings.’ The exact nature of the effect of coordination on BPs, which allows them to refer to kinds, is controversial. Heycock and Zamparelli (2003) propose that coordination makes BPs definite, whereas Roodenburg (2004) believes that kind-referring coordinated BPs are strong indefinites. Whatever coordinated BPs turn out to be, it is fairly clear that, unlike their uncoordinated counterparts, they are not simply bare nouns. Coordinated BPs,

 Ariel Cohen

then, constitute a distinct phenomenon, and their properties, in particular the fact that they allow kind reference, cannot be taken to project on BPs in general. Since Italian BPs cannot refer to kinds, we expect characterizing generics to be ruled out with individual-level predicates: in such cases, there is no topic, since the BP does not denote a kind, and the individual-level predicate cannot introduce a spatiotemporal argument. Indeed, Chierchia (1998) confirms that there are no such readings. Sentence (18), whose English counterpart is perfectly acceptable, is ruled out in Italian. (18) *Linguisti sono bravi. ‘Linguists are clever.’ If this were the whole story, we could have stopped here, and claimed that the behavior of Italian BPs is perfectly accounted for by our notion of topicality. However, we are in for a surprise. Longobardi (2001) claims that characterizing generics are, in fact, possible: (19) Cani da guardia di grosse dimensioni sono più efficienti/ aggressivi. ‘Watchdogs of large size are more efficient/aggressive.’4 What is the topic of (19)? If we say that it has no topic, this would violate the obligatoriness of topics. If, instead, we say that it is the BP, this would violate the specificity of topics, since Italian BPs cannot refer to kinds, hence do not denote an entity. It appears that we face a dilemma, and have to abandon one of our assumptions about the nature of topics. There is, however, a third possibility. To see what it is, we need to make a short detour, and investigate the properties of indefinite singulars (henceforth ISs) in English.

4. English indefinite singulars 4.1

The data

The claim that the behavior of English ISs is relevant to the understanding of Italian BPs is not new. Longobardi (2001) argues that Italian BPs, on both their generic and existential readings, are free variables, just like English ISs. There are two aspects in which English ISs are similar to Italian BPs. One is the well-known fact that English ISs cannot denote kinds: (20) a. *A white-colored elephant has become extinct. b. *A white-colored elephant grows larger as one drives north c. *A white-colored elephant is so-called because of the pigmentation of its skin Another similarity that Longobardi uses in his argument is the apparent fact that English ISs can have characterizing generic readings; thus, we can translate (19) using an IS, without an appreciable difference in meaning:



The information structure of bare plurals in English and Italian 

(21) A big watchdog is efficient/aggressive. There is, however, an important difference between the two constructions, which argues against Longobardi’s claim: English ISs, unlike Italian BPs, are scopally ambiguous – (22a) is ambiguous between (22b) and (22c). (22) a. I didn’t meet a beautiful girl. b. It is false that there exists a beautiful girl whom I met. c. There exists a beautiful girl whom I didn’t meet. Sentence (22a) contrasts with (12), the corresponding Italian BP sentence. As we have seen above, (12) allows only the narrow scope reading of the BP. I therefore conclude that existential BPs in Italian, just like their English counterparts, are not free variables, but instead denote properties, which are incorporated by the predicate. What about the generic reading? Here, a comparison with English ISs is actually instructive. In English, the distribution of generic readings of ISs is more restricted than that of BPs. Thus, while (23a) is fine, (23b) is bad under the generic reading; and while (24a) is good, (24b) is ruled out (unless it is read existentially). (23) a. Big watchdogs are hairy/black. b. *A big watchdog is hairy/black. (24) a. Leo hates cats. b. *Leo hates a cat. (existential reading OK) This fact about English ISs is well known. Lawler (1973) observes the contrast between (25a) and (25b). He notes that if the predicate is changed, e.g. from popular to polyphonic, the IS may be acceptable, as in (25c). (25) a. Madrigals are popular. b. *A madrigal is popular. c. A madrigal is polyphonic. Similar contrasts are observed by Burton-Roberts (1977): (26) a. Kings are generous. b. *A king is generous. (27) a. Rooms are square. b. *A room is square. Note that an overt modal or quantificational adverb makes a bad IS generic acceptable: (28) a. A big watchdog

hairy/black.

 Ariel Cohen

b. ?Leo

c. A madrigal

a cat.5

popular.

d. A king

generous.

e. A room

square.

4.2

Explanation

My proposed explanation of the facts concerning English IS will follow Cohen (2001). Indefinite singulars do not denote entities (unless they are specific indefinites), hence they may not be topics. Therefore, sentences like (29) do not have a topic, and cannot be predicative. (29) A big watchdog is efficient/aggressive. We have seen above that the predication stage is necessary on the derivation of the generic quantifier; we therefore must conclude that (29) does not involve quantification. One way to see this is the fact that it does not exhibit scope ambiguities. Note the difference between the BP generic (30a) and the IS generic (30b). (30) a. Big watchdogs have a special trainer. b. A big watchdog has a special trainer. The BP generic is ambiguous: under one reading, the BP has wide scope, and the sentence allows different trainers for different watchdogs. Under the second reading, the BP has narrow scope, and the sentence means that there is one special trainer common to all. In contrast, (30b) allows only the reading where the IS has wide scope, namely where different watchdogs have possibly different trainers. If an IS generic is not quantificational, and cannot predicate a property of the IS, what is it? The answer is that such a sentence is, in fact, predicational, but it predicates



The information structure of bare plurals in English and Italian 

a property of a rule or regulation, not of the IS. More specifically, it predicates of the rule that it is in effect. Being in effect means that the rule is accepted by the language community, though not necessarily adhered to. The topic of such a sentence, then, is not the IS, but the rule. Thus, the topic of (29) is a rule associating the size of watchdogs with their efficiency/aggressiveness, and the sentence predicates of this rule that it is in effect. A rule is a type of entity (Carlson 1995). Some rules are conceivable, while others are not. Conceivable rules are in the common ground and can be referred to by IS sentences, hence serve as their topics. IS sentences that describe inconceivable rules fail to refer, and are therefore bad. There are several types of conceivable rule expressed by IS generics. One common type is a linguistic rule – a definition. For example, being polyphonic is part of the definition of a madrigal, but being popular is not. This is why (25c) is good but (25b) is bad. Note that an IS generic whose form is that of a definition, even though its meaning isn’t, may be acceptable. For example: (31) a. A madrigal is a popular song. b. A king is a generous ruler. c. A room is a square enclosure. Sentence (31a) means the same as (25b), and yet it is good, because it has the traditional form of a definition. Sentences (31b) and (31c) are similarly good, despite the oddness of their respective counterparts, (26b) and (27b). Another common type of rule that is particularly relevant here is a trigger for action. Consider, for example, the following minimal pair, from Burton-Roberts (1977): (32) a. A gentleman opens doors for ladies. b. Gentlemen open doors for ladies. Burton-Roberts notes that (32a) expresses what he calls “moral necessity”, and could be used to get the hearer to open doors for ladies. In contrast, under its dominant reading, (32b) merely makes a generalization about gentlemen. Of course, (32b) might achieve the same goals, but by different means: informing the hearer about the properties of gentlemen, assuming that he is a gentleman too. Sentence (32a), unlike (32b), does not have a reading where it makes a generalization about gentlemen; it is, rather, a statement about some social norm. It is true just in case this norm is in effect, i.e. it is a member of a set of socially accepted rules and regulations. In a context in which they can be seen to trigger action, bad IS generics become good. Compare the following examples with (26b) and (27b), respectively. (33) a. Sire, please don’t send her to the axe. Remember, a king is generous! b. How dare you build me such a room? Don’t you know a room is square? Sentence (33a) calls for action on part of the hearer, namely pardoning the accused, and is therefore fine; out of context, as in (26b), the sentence is bad. Similarly, (33b) is

 Ariel Cohen

acceptable when it is used to trigger an action (presumably, rebuilding the room), but is bad out of context, as in (27b). We have seen in section 2.2 above that the generic quantifier, because it is phonologically null, needs to be inferred; this inference takes place after the sentence is interpreted as a predication. In contrast, an overt modal or quantifier is phonologically present in the sentence, hence does not need to be inferred. Consequently, a predicative stage is unnecessary, hence there is no need for a topic. This is why the sentences in (28) are fine.

4.3

Normative English BPs

We have seen that, in English, BPs can express descriptive generalizations. In fact, they can, just like ISs, express normative generalizations too—English BPs are ambiguous between these two readings. For example: (34) Police officers do not behave like that in an emergency situation. Under one reading, (34) could be a generalization made by a reporter writing a piece about the police force: it describes the way police officers do, in fact, behave. Under another reading, (34) could be said by the Chief of Police, addressing his underlings, scolding them for some inappropriate behavior. In this case, the Chief states that some rule or regulation is in effect (though it apparently was not observed). What is the source of this ambiguity of BPs? It is appealing to relate it to the wellestablished generic/existential ambiguity. Indeed, there is some evidence that the descriptive generalization is the generic reading, whereas the normative reading is a consequence of the existential interpretation. This piece of evidence comes from French. In French, as we have already seen, BPs in argument positions are almost never allowed. When a plural DP is used generically, it contains the definite determiner les; the existential reading uses the indefinite determiner des. Interestingly, normative readings are indicated by the indefinite (existential) determiner, rather than the definite (generic) determiner (Carlier 1989, as reported by de Swart 1996). Thus: (35) a. Les agents de police ne se comportent pas ainsi dans une situation d’alarme. ‘DEF-PL police officers do not behave like that in an emergency situation.’ b. Des agents de police ne se comportent pas ainsi dans une situation d’alarme. ‘INDEF-PL police officers do not behave like that in an emergency situation.’



The information structure of bare plurals in English and Italian 

5. Back to Italian BPs As we have seen above, Longobardi (2001) proposes a similar semantics for Italian BPs and English ISs. We have also seen that this proposal is problematic as an account of Italian existential BPs, since it fails to explain their scopal properties. In contrast, Italian generic BPs are actually very similar to English ISs, in at least two respects. First, just like the generics readings of English ISs, the generic readings of Italian BPs are severely restricted: (36) a. ??Cani da guardia di grosse dimensioni sono più pelosi/ neri (Longobardi 2001).6 ‘Watchdogs of large size are hairier/ blacker’ b. * Leo odia gatti (Chierchia 1998) ‘ Leo hates cats’ Compare these sentences with their respective English IS counterparts, (23b) and (24b), which are also bad. The second similarity to English ISs is that an overt modal or quantificational adverb makes a bad Italian BP generic acceptable. The following examples are due to Longobardi (2001): (37) a. *Elefanti di colore bianco hanno creato in passato grande curiosità. (existential OK) ‘White-colored elephants raised a lot of curiosity in the past’ b. Elefanti di colore bianco possono creare grande curiosità. ‘White-colored elephants may raise a lot of curiosity’ c. Elefanti di colore bianco hanno creato sempre/ spesso in passato grande curiosità. ‘White-colored elephants always/often raised a lot of curiosity in the past’ Chierchia (1998) presents the following pair: (38) a. b.

*Leo questa estate ha corteggiato belle ragazze. (existential OK) ‘Leo last summer courted nice girls’ ‘Leo corteggia sempre belle ragazze. ‘Leo always courts nice girls’

Compare these examples with the English IS sentences in (28), where, similarly, an overt modal or quantificational adverb turns an unacceptable sentence into a perfectly good one. I therefore propose that the meaning of Italian generic BPs is the same as English generic ISs: acceptable BP generics in Italian predicate of some rule that it is in effect. What sort of rule? The rule is unlikely to be a definition, since, as Chierchia (1998) notes, Italian BPs in subject position need to be “heavy”,7 and definitions do not typically involve heavy nouns. Hence, the type of rule invoked by Italian generic BPs is usually an action trigger.

 Ariel Cohen

The following are some minimal pairs (from Longobardi 2001) illustrating the difference between acceptable and unacceptable Italian BP generics: (39) a. b.

Cani da guardia di grosse dimensioni sono più efficienti/ aggressivi. ‘Watchdogs of large size are more efficient/ aggressive.’ ??Cani da guardia di grosse dimensioni sono più pelosi/ neri ‘Watchdogs of large size are hairier/ blacker’

(40) a. b.

Stati di grandi dimensioni sono pericolosi. ‘States of large size are dangerous’ ??Stati di grandi dimensioni sono prosperi. ‘States of large size are prosperous’

(41) a. b.

Uccelli di zone paludose sono ghiotti di insetti. ‘Birds from marshy areas are greedy for insects’ ??Uccelli di zone paludose sono scuri/intelligenti ‘Birds from marshy areas are dark/intelligent’

As an explanation of these contrasts, Longobardi conjectures that the predicates of good BP generics are “somewhat more eventive” than those of bad BP generics. This intuition, I believe, is correct. Put in the terms of the theory of Italian BPs proposed here, good BP generics are rules, which are interpreted as action triggers; this is what gives them their more eventive flavor. Bad Italian BP generics cannot be interpreted as triggering any action. Thus, (39a) can be seen as a trigger for some action, say avoiding Fido, the big watchdog. But it is not easy to find an action triggered by the statement that big watchdogs are hairier or blacker; one has to come up with rather elaborate contexts. Similarly, (40a) can be readily seen as a trigger for action. It could, for example, be uttered by a military leader calling on his people to attack some large country. But what sort of action is triggered by knowing that large countries are prosperous? And if we know that birds from marshy areas eat insects, this may immediately guide our actions concerning the food we will get for Tweety; but knowing that such birds are dark or intelligent does not naturally trigger any action. The consequence of this discussion is that the topic of Italian BP generics is not the BP, but a rule or regulation. Thus, there is no need for the BP to be a topic, hence it need not denote an entity, and we are not required to postulate, against available evidence, that Italian BPs denoted kinds. Like in English and French, the normative interpretation is invoked by the existential, rather than generic, reading of the BP. Hence, even in the generic (or, rather, quasi-generic) readings, the BP in Italian still denotes a property, just like it does under the existential reading.



The information structure of bare plurals in English and Italian 

6. Conclusion We can conclude that, indeed, in both English and Italian, every predicative sentence must have a topic, and topics must be specific. This requirement can be met by a BP in one of two ways: either it denotes a kind, or it forms part of a rule or regulation. In English, BPs are ambiguous between kinds and properties; hence, both options are possible. In Italian, BPs only denote properties, hence only the second option is available. But in both languages, and possibly universally, the nature of topics is the same.

Notes * I would like to thank Pino Longobardi for thorough discussion, and Mara Frascarelli for illuminating comments. 1. Chierchia has additional examples, but he admits that not all Italian speakers share his judgments of them. 2. The notion of chance in this context has received a probabilistic formalization in Cohen (1999). 3. Examples (16a) and (16b) are from Heycock and Zamparelli (2003); example (16c) is due to Mara Frascarelli (pc). 4. It should be pointed out that Longobardi’s judgments are not universally accepted by Italian informants. It would be good for the approach proposed here if, in all varieties of Italian, sentences like (19) were ungrammatical. But the fact is that some Italian speakers agree with Longobardi that (19) and similar sentences are fine; we need to account for their judgments as well. 5. I am marking the sentence with a question mark, since it is not perfect, though it is unquestionably better than (24b). See Diesing (1992) for a discussion of sentences like (28b). 6. Longobardi marks the sentence with a double question mark; other informants even go so far as to reject the sentence completely. 7.

I am aware of no satisfactory explanation of this fact.

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Name index A Abbott,  504 Abels,  441 Aboh,  34 Abraham,  3–23, 155–261, 272–274 Adamec,  353 Adger,  169, 176, 280, 447–466 Aissen,  336, 345 Alexiadou,  280, 338, 340 Alter,  389 Anagnostopoulou,  338, 340 Anand,  408 Archangeli,  344 Arnold,  121–127, 424 B Baker,  251, 280, 292, 344 Ballmer,  502 Baltin,  37, 301 Bannert,  389 Barss,  239–248 Barwise,  429, 430 Bature,  370–381 Baumann,  115 Bayer,  361–363 Bearth,  393–399 Beck,  238 Behagel,  342 Belletti,  9, 36–41, 58, 87, 275–276, 292 Benincà,  115–116 Bernays,  227, 502 Bierwisch,  167, 180, 348 Birner,  262–263 Blake,  452 Blight,  297 Blutner,  449–458 Boas,  328 Boeckx,  250, 321 Boersma,  331, 374–375 Boertien,  43 Bokamba,  327–329

Bolinger,  13, 46, 127, 216, 250, 389, 447–457 Bonvino,  115 Borkin,  216 Bošković,  176, 229–253, 295 Bowers,  278–298 Brentano,  118 Breul,  3, 9, 23–24, 255, 271–275, 296 Bródy,  208, 226 Browning,  133 Brunetti,  226 Büring,  11–17, 69–88, 169, 348, 360–363, 399, 477, 507 Burton-Roberts,  515–517 Bush,  9, 275–288 Butler,  38–65, 276, 292–300, 320 C Cann,  216 Cardinaletti,  180 Carlier,  518 Carlson,  510–517 Carston,  212 Cavar,  80, 81 Cecchetto,  87 Chafe,  88–89, 330, 389 Chang, L,  238 Chang, S.-J.,  124 Cheng,  238 Chierchia,  239–252, 502–521 Choe,  3, 118–124 Chomsky,  5–19, 38, 50–70, 100, 130–147, 167, 180, 237–249, 260, 280–295, 312, 322, 332–339, 391, 471–472, 489 Cinque,  46–52, 65–70, 97, 115, 153–199, 276–284, 296–298, 350, 359 Cobler,  372–374, 397 Cohen,  12–18, 28, 503–521 Collins,  277, 289, 339 Comorovski,  231–239, 251 Comrie,  62

Condoravdi,  52 Cormack,  43 Corver,  157, 303, 313 Costa,  292 Couper-Kuhlen,  389 Cowan,  398 Culicover,  64, 229, 233, 290, 300, 320 Cyrino,  321 Czepluch,  180 D Dahl,  5 Dalmi,  209 Daneš, 350 Davidson,  419, 424 Dayal,  233–252 de Hoop,  181 de Swart,  252, 518 Deguchi,  246 Dekkers,  323 Delin,  227 Demirdache,  65 Demuth,  324–344 Depiante,  301 Diesing,  39–40, 521 Dik,  12 Dixon,  323 Doherty,  184–201, 438 Downing,  373 Drubig,  5–21, 33–66, 99, 118, 272–273, 292–297, 314–318, 348–352, 362, 471–490 Dvořák,  66, 321 E É. Kiss,  6–9, 24, 64–66, 126, 156–235, 250–260, 272–275, 344, 350, 378 Eckardt,  12–27, 447–452 Egli,  502 Elenbaas,  79 Emonds,  383 Enç,  50, 65

 On Information Structure, Meaning and Form: Generalizations across languages Engdahl,  183–189 Ernst,  276–285, 292, 297 Erteschik-Shir,  11, 22, 321, 509–510 F Fanselow,  70–86, 165–180, 261, 358–372, 398 Farkas,  209, 235, 252 Féry,  2–21, 69–86, 362 Fischer,  452 Flagg,  57 Flegg,  153 Fox,  10–25, 243–252, 301, 321–322, 391, 484 Frascarelli,  3, 17–23, 36, 87–101, 115–116, 343, 521 Frey,  23, 70–77, 86, 110–116, 164–165, 176–187, 194–201, 372 Fried,  363 Frota,  101 Fudeman,  58 Fugier,  153 G Gabbay,  225 Gengel,  11–25, 301, 318–321 Gergel,  11–25, 64, 301, 321–322 Geurts,  216 Ghini,  81 Giannakidou,  450–452 Gibbon,  389 Gimba,  371, 396 Ginzburg,  56, 420, 447–455 Givón,  74, 88, 328–330, 342, 371, 386, 391 Gladrow,  354 Göbbel,  17–25, 37, 272–275, 288, 298 Green,  34, 367–397 Grewendorf,  23, 76, 111, 161, 183–201, 259 Grice,  115, 207, 226 Grimshaw,  331–334 Groenendijk,  455 Grohmann,  250 Gruber,  332, 334 Güldemann,  344 Gundel,  10, 74, 120, 237, 342, 386, 391 Gussenhoven,  12–13, 70, 277 Guthrie,  344 H Haegeman,  300

Haftka,  160 Hagstrom,  62, 240, 241, 248 Haider,  76, 110, 156–202 Hajičová,  130, 351 Hale,  281 Halle,  6, 70 Halliday,  1–16 Hamblin,  425, 455, 472 Han,  54, 56, 418–425 Hankamer,  470 Harley,  38 Hartmann,  4–34, 73, 179, 315–324, 365–379, 396, 470 Hawkins,  265–273 Hayes,  79 Heck,  189, 344 Hedberg,  216 Heim,  240, 416, 484 Heine,  393, 399 Heny,  296, 298 Herburger,  299 Hetland,  2–22, 117–127 Heycock,  59, 66, 121, 513–521 Heyer,  512 Higginbotham,  66, 239 Higgins,  66, 171 Hilbert,  227, 502 Himmelmann,  142, 144, 152 Hirotani,  253 Hirschberg,  95, 117 Hofmann,  44 Hogg,  452 Höhle,  12, 158–160, 277, 348 Hoji,  66 Hollander,  65 Holmberg,  157, 176, 357 Horn,  212–214 Horváth,  229–235, 252 Huang,  139–140 Huber,  218 Huddleston,  276–277, 321, 448 Huntley,  56 Hyman,  36, 327 I Inkelas,  372–374, 397 Ishihara,  86, 246 J Jackendoff,  6–13, 75, 127, 276, 348, 365, 391, 489 Jacobs,  5–14, 69, 74, 120, 348–363, 416, 488 Jaeger,  250

Jäger,  176–178, 345–459 Jaggar,  367–398 Janko,  354 Jayaseelan,  9, 36–37, 275, 276, 292, 295 Johnson,  18, 275, 293–298, 315–324, 468–469 Junghanns,  12–26, 347–354 K Kager,  79 Kálmán,  221 Kamp,  226 Karttunen,  425, 448 Kawahara,  412–424 Kayne,  10, 18, 60, 64, 100–115, 180, 260, 275 Keenan,  131–133, 152, 330 Kehler,  207 Kempson,  225 Kenesei,  215 Kennedy,  264, 301 Keyser,  281 Kiefer,  5 Kim,  212, 301, 315 Kimenyi,  329 Kitagawa,  230, 246–247 Koizumi,  237, 298 Koopman,  35, 64, 210, 226 Kratzer,  8, 45–65, 251, 298, 424–429, 446, 489, 502–511 Krifka,  8–13, 161, 231–232, 314–318, 343, 360, 384–398, 421–433, 452, 455, 479–512 Kroch,  66 Kroeger,  133–151 Kruyt,  176–181 Kuno,  3, 88, 119–124, 250, 315 Kural,  36 Kuroda,  118 Kwak,  64 L Ladd,  127, 257, 375, 376 Laenzlinger,  276, 280 Lahiri,  448–454 Lambrecht,  5, 74–88, 167–181, 255–257, 272, 389, 416–424 Lang,  25, 301, 322 Langendoen,  344 Larson,  299 Lasnik,  25, 246, 301–304, 318–322 Law,  19–23, 129

Lawler,  515 Leben,  372–374, 397 Lechner,  303, 313 Lee, C.,  119–127 Lee, H.,  336 Legate,  66 Legendre,  331–342, 386 Lenertová,  12–26, 347, 357 Lenerz,  76, 157–180 Leshilo,  329 Levin,  306–321 Lewis,  54 Li,  63, 117–118, 329 Link,  77, 252 Lipták,  250 Longobardi,  513–521 Louwrens,  324–344 M Machobane,  344 Maienborn,  278 Makwala,  330 Manninen,  298 Marantz,  298 Marotta,  115 Martin,  65, 150, 446 Martins,  48 Marty,  118 Maslow,  207 Matabane,  329 Mathesius,  130, 351 Matos,  321 Mattausch,  343–345 Mauck,  408–409, 424 McCarthy,  70 McCawley,  54–66 McClosky,  421 McConnel-Ginet,  276 McConvell,  396 McDowell,  64 McGinn,  145 Mchombo,  344 McNally,  121, 227, 510 Mehlig,  354 Meinunger,  64–66, 158, 176–178, 197 Merchant,  25, 301–306, 319–321, 438–442, 469–484 Meyer,  225, 359–362 Mithun,  10 Mittwoch,  277 Miyagawa,  246, 252 Mmusi,  338, 344 Möhlig,  398

Name index  Molnár,  10, 13, 101, 115, 120, 183 Molnárfi,  3, 17–23, 155–202, 261, 272 Moltmann,  321 Morimoto,  329 Müller,  76, 80, 249–344 Munn,  321 N Nakamura,  133 Nakanishi,  124 Ndayiragije,  275, 335, 340 Neale,  502 Neeleman,  73, 157–181 Neijt,  471, 481 Nespor,  81 Nevins,  408 Newman,  366–368, 384, 394–396 Newmeyer,  273 Ngonyani,  65 Niinuma,  321–322 Nishigauchi,  246–248 Nkemenji,  35 Nooteboom,  167, 176, 181 O Odden,  36 Oppenrieder,  438 P Pak,  424 Palmer,  65 Pampell,  51 Park,  321, 322 Partee,  218–227 Paslawska,  81 Paul, E.,  133 Paul, I.,  217 Pesetsky,  88, 181, 252, 298, 315–331 Peterson,  285–299 Pierrehumbert,  89, 95, 115–117 Pili,  114 Piñón,  209 Pittner,  197 Plag,  264–274 Poletto,  100, 424 Pollock,  100, 164 Ponelis,  166, 167 Portner,  2–27, 407–432, 446, 509 Postal,  138–139 Potts,  13–27, 408–425, 446 Poulos,  344 Primus,  267

Prince, A.,  70 Prince, E.,  59, 74, 89, 124 Pullum,  276, 321, 448 Puskas,  260 Pustejovsky,  222 Q Quirk,  321 R Radford,  258–259 Raidt,  166 Rajaona,  153 Randell,  370, 381 Récanati,  212 Reglero,  301 Reh,  393, 399 Reich,  12–27, 320, 322, 349, 467–480 Reichenbach,  39 Reinhart,  2, 84–89, 111, 157–167, 180, 233–240, 251, 416–419, 509 Reis,  438, 484 Reyle,  226 Richards,  133, 237, 253 Riemsdijk,  11, 80–81, 157 Rizzi,  6–22, 33–49, 87–102, 111–115, 160–161, 194–199, 229–233, 259, 275, 292–295, 360 Roberts,  75, 123, 214–221, 372, 384, 398, 420, 477, 504 Rochemont,  8, 229, 233, 290, 300 Rochette,  64 Roehrs,  230, 246 Roodenburg,  513 Rooth,  8–14, 28, 73, 365, 413, 425, 467–491, 503–507 Rosengren,  76, 110, 118, 156–202 Rosenthall,  221 Ross,  134 Rubin,  282–283, 298 Rupp,  57, 58 S Sabel,  76, 331–339, 397 Sadock,  209 Sag,  56, 315, 424, 448, 455 Saito,  246 Samek-Lodovici,  70–86, 331–332, 362 Sasse,  118–126, 352 Schachter,  131–132, 149–153

 On Information Structure, Meaning and Form: Generalizations across languages Schaffar,  34, 59–66, 273 Schegloff,  410 Schmerling,  57 Schuh,  370, 371, 381, 398 Schwabe,  1–28, 115, 150, 302, 315, 427–484, 506 Schwarz,  424, 425 Schwarzschild,  11–28, 72–73, 202, 349, 362, 392, 399, 469–483, 506–507 Scott,  296 Searle,  54–55, 66, 425 Segalq,  299 Selkirk,  47, 70–73, 81, 159, 174, 185, 257, 277, 363, 392, 399 Sells,  147, 153 Sgall,  351 Shaer,  276, 284–299 Sharvit,  421 Shih,  296 Shyu,  36 Siewierska,  260 Simpson,  49, 65 Smith,  43, 121 Smolensky,  70, 324–334 Solan,  8 Sperber,  18, 66, 212, 226, 272 Sproat,  296 Stainton,  438 Stalnaker,  365, 418 Starke,  180 Steedman,  75, 256–257, 467–477 Stepanov,  253 Sternefeld,  76 Steube,  362 Stjepanović,  253, 321 Stokhof,  455 Stowell,  38, 39, 40, 296 Strawson,  88 Sumangala,  62 Surányi,  3, 17–24, 229–250 Svenonius,  280

Szabolcsi,  210–215, 226 Szakos,  132, 136, 151 Szendrői,  11, 22, 70, 73, 171, 209, 226, 360, 372, 391 T Taglicht,  10 Takahashi,  190, 195, 246 Takami,  250 Tappe,  272 Terken,  167, 176, 181 Thiersch,  76 Tomioka,  230, 246–247 Tomlin,  10 Torrego,  323 Travis,  276 Trávníček,  351 Truckenbrodt,  70, 78, 303, 320, 373, 438 Trumalesh,  36 Tsai,  40 Tsoulas,  280 U Uhmann,  278, 366, 372, 397 Ura,  237 Uriagereka,  322 Uribe-Etxebarria,  65 V Vallduví,  16, 120, 273, 378, 392 van der Spuy,  332, 334 van Hoof,  80, 231, 360, 362 Vanderveken,  66 Vilkuna,  101, 378, 392 Vinokurova,  298 Visonyanggoon,  48, 65 Vogel, I., 81 von Heusinger,  15, 18, 28, 446, 484–485, 502 von Stechow,  13, 398, 424, 488–489

W Ward,  261–268, 292 Watters,  36, 344 Wedgwood,  3–26, 207–227 Weiß,  161, 173 Westmoreland,  65 Wickboldt,  285, 299 Wilder,  438 Williams,  11, 279 Wilson,  18, 66, 212, 226, 272 Winkler,  1–25, 115, 272, 275, 293–322, 446, 469, 484, 506 Winter,  240, 502 Wolff,  367 Woodbury,  11 Wu,  250 Wunderlich,  180, 446 X Xu, L.,  372, 385 Xu, Y.,  372 Yabushita,  416–419, 509 Z Zamparelli,  513, 521 Zanuttini,  409, 419–424 Zeevat,  345 Zeitoun,  132 Zerbian,  19–36, 323–344, 371, 377, 396 Ziervogel,  344 Zimmermann, M.,  371, 377 Zubizarreta,  11, 22, 360 Zwart,  167, 181 Zwarts,  452 Zwicky,  409–424 Zybatow,  351–353

Subject index A accent fall-rise accent,  22, 75, 117, 121–126 pitch accent,  7–8, 12, 21–22, 69, 70–72, 83–93, 117–127, 221, 256–257, 277, 286–287, 302–303, 316, 363, 372, 384–385, 392, 432, 473 Afrikaans,  23, 155–157, 166–174, 180–181, 187, 200 Alternative Semantics,  28, 471, 485–491, 496–507 architecture of,  498–501, 506 A-movement,  58, 109–114, 181 answer,  2, 10, 13, 18, 34, 46–54, 66, 82–83, 110, 123, 126, 143–147, 159–171, 194, 213–215, 239–243, 250, 253, 264–265, 289, 308, 318, 326, 330, 335, 348–355, 366–370, 376–382, 384–386, 390, 398, 427–483, 513–516 short answer,  19, 27–28, 467–483 assertoric,  428–442 association with focus,  8–9, 28, 485, 487, 491, 497, 505 asymmetry,  25, 27, 56–58, 323–332, 340–343, 371, 383, 448, 456–460 attitude,  297, 386, 408, 418, 424–425, 447, 454 Austronesian languages,  22, 131–132, 136 AvoidF,  72, 479 B B-accent,  117, 127 bare plurals,  18, 28, 183, 509–513 C Case,  22, 57, 63, 81, 87, 110, 114, 135, 151, 195, 234, 338

categorical,  22, 25, 59, 117–121, 126, 223, 256–375, 389, 417, 423 C-domain,  22, 87, 97–115, 156 choice function,  28, 229, 233, 238–503, 507 clausal reading,  277, 296 cleft predicate-clefting,  35 cleft construction,  24–26, 33, 59–63, 66, 171, 193, 207–217, 220–227, 323–328, 335–344, 398 clitic,  87–102, 110–115, 137–138, 147, 185, 190, 328, 357, 446 clitic resumption,  87, 97, 102 comment,  1–16, 22, 88–94, 111, 117–130, 174, 208, 221, 274, 298, 348, 352 commitment change potentials,  424 comparative constructions,  25, 301–316 competition,  27, 78, 102, 188, 251, 320, 332, 341, 448–461 complement clause,  15, 27, 44, 231, 243, 253, 358, 421–445 interrogative,  444–445, 455 complementizer,  62, 66, 113, 167, 357, 455 contrast,  3, 10–13, 22–23, 37, 50–60, 73–74, 85, 92–110, 116, 120–127, 131–149, 160–163, 173–190, 198, 202, 208, 214, 222–223, 230–273, 304–329, 342–373, 382–391, 398, 417–465, 474–481, 509–519 Czech,  26, 198, 250, 347–363 D deaccentuation,  19, 40, 155–156, 165–181, 199–200, 302–314 declarative,  27, 54–57, 66, 95, 126–127, 186, 202, 246, 325, 350, 360, 367, 390, 420,

428–438, 444, 454 root clause,  432, 436 definite NP,  28, 178, 185, 190, 218, 485–506 definites,  23, 155, 162–202, 486 dependent nodes later (DNL),  266 directive,  445 discourse function,  12, 22–23, 90, 125, 155–202, 302, 309–311, 324, 329, 348, 389 discourse prominence,  23–24, 183–190, 336 discourse-configurational languages,  124–126 domain,  6–28, 38–45, 57–85, 111, 155–188, 199–201, 235–249, 259, 276, 283, 297–306, 348–350, 362–372, 386, 411– 414, 422, 458, 461, 485–492, 500–506 downdrift,  372–375 Dutch,  110, 157, 181–187, 261, 294, 486–503 Dynamic Syntax,  216, 225 E early immediate constituents (EIC),  266 e-Givenness,  469–479 ellipsis,  11–25, 46–51, 65, 301–320, 467–480 embedded question, see interrogative complement clause emphasis,  4, 20, 26, 76, 107–108, 116, 300, 342–367, 388–395, 412 emphasis operator,  26, 361–362 English,  2–10, 18–29, 37–75, 86, 92–97, 115–156, 171, 190–193, 201–307, 317–326, 332–340, 384–425, 446–465, 473, 483, 494, 509–521 historical varieties of,  301

 On Information Structure, Meaning and Form: Generalizations across languages E erotetic,  427–445 exclamative,  27, 53–55, 361, 441–445 exhaustivity,  208–217, 378, 397 expletive,  216, 337–338 expressive meaning,  14–17, 27–29, 407–429, 436–446 Extended Mapping Hypothesis,  40 F feature,  6–24, 35, 50, 77, 85, 100–101, 109–114, 160–179, 197–200, 214–238, 245–262, 272–283, 295–321, 331–341, 357–363, 388–392, 430, 435, 446–454, 494 clause-type,  360 focus features,  7–13, 24, 161, 170, 226, 242–244, 261, 347–352, 363, 388–494 formal EPP feature,  357 formal feature,  10, 112, 241, 361, 393 focus,  1–42, 58–127, 151–413, 421–435, 442–444, 462–507 antifocus,  20, 23, 155–156, 173–179, 196, 200 argument,  256 contrastive,  42, 102, 172, 193, 198, 288–322, 350–355, 366, 379–389, 398–399 corrective,  351, 361, 366, 379, 390–391 ex situ,  26, 367–373, 386–397 identificational,  3, 15, 159–171, 215–223, 234, 257–273 in situ,  26, 230–238, 330, 334, 367–382, 392–403 information,  155–176, 226, 249, 261–273, 366–390 maximal,  348–362 narrow,  13, 82–84, 121, 155–161, 172, 179, 200, 213–220, 275–300, 325–326, 351, 374–375, 394 non-contrastive,  288, 351 overfocus,  384 predicate,  256, 443–445 projection,  12–19, 159–199, 277, 296, 363, 392 selective,  366 sentence,  256

wide,  25–26, 59, 91, 101, 115, 155–179, 199–208, 221, 277–299, 347–361, 477–478 focus construction,  21, 33–35, 59–63, 198, 360, 371, 398 focus exponent (FE),  13, 23, 26, 159, 164–175, 347–363, 388 focus hypothesis,  301, 313–315 focus marking,  2–4, 13, 26, 200, 348, 393–399, 475 prosodic,  26 focus movement,  7–13, 19–26, 36, 60, 205, 208, 233–253, 327, 362, 372, 385–398, 489 focus exponent fronting,  354 focus pied-piping,  368, 383–387 partial,  26, 383–398 syntactic,  387 focus phrase,  8–9, 25, 34, 62, 194, 242–263, 388 focus phrase effect,  34, 62 focus position,  9–36, 58–61, 86, 112, 156–170, 207–261, 275–276, 290, 313, 327, 344, 371–388, 399 French,  92, 279, 499, 513–520 G gapping,  18–28, 275, 293–294, 315–322, 467–483 generics,  511–520 German,  3–25, 57, 69–87, 102–116,126–127, 155–203, 255–277, 332–342, 360, 372, 389–399, 427–457, 469–503 Givenness,  72, 349–362, 474–479 H Hausa,  4, 18–26, 260, 324, 365–398 Hungarian,  3–66, 126–127, 155–180, 207–260, 275, 360, 372–381, 398 I identification,  87, 159–160, 169–191, 211–227, 270, 347–348, 378, 393 of focus,  347–348 idioms,  177, 355–360 illocutionary force,  14, 95, 360–363, 423–430, 442–445, 481

force,  14–21, 46–66, 193, 211, 298, 307, 362, 407–408, 419–435, 444–445, 482, 518 markers,  407–408, 419–424 incremental processing,  210, 219 indefinite singulars,  29, 514 indeterminate,  259, 446 inference,  24, 27, 52, 212–216, 221–225, 288, 299, 443, 518 information structure approach,  25, 301, 306 information structure (IS),  1–41, 58–87, 101, 117–131, 188, 208–225, 257, 272, 301–362, 393, 416–425, 467–482, 509–510 instructional meaning,  416, 421–424 integration,  12, 23, 118, 183, 187, 261, 321, 357–363 interface,  5–29, 39–45, 69, 101–112, 173–178, 199–207, 221–301, 322, 330–340, 391, 433, 438 semantics-phonology,  12–18 semantics-pragmatics,  12 syntax-prosody,  70, 362 interpretive approach,  5, 12, 20 interrogative,  21, 27, 47, 50–56, 66, 229–238, 246, 420–446, 474, 482 complement clause,  246, 444–463, 481 root clause,  430–445 intonation,  1–6, 27, 55, 66–89, 103–111, 158, 181, 214, 256–257, 288, 296, 312, 314, 351–396, 412–414, 444–445 intonational phonology,  372 island,  8–9, 28, 34–37, 62, 153, 232, 238–253, 290, 359, 362, 383–490 sensitivity,  37, 480 Italian,  3, 10, 22–36, 87–116, 194, 226–233, 343, 362, 495, 509–521 K kinds,  27–28, 70, 111, 124, 213– 232, 262, 307–308, 367, 381, 413, 416, 423–425, 465–468, 509–514, 520–521 Korean,  3, 22, 117–126, 187, 230,



Name index  252, 273

L Last Resort,  180, 357 LF-movement,  28, 479, 485–491, 505 locality,  28, 63, 358–470 M main predication,  220–227 Malagasy,  22, 23, 129–153, 217, 226, 397 manner adverb,  18, 25, 275–299, 367 markedness,  27, 158–169, 199–200, 264, 271–274, 308, 345, 353, 447–464 pragmatic,  158–166, 175, 361 matrix predicate,  16, 246–247, 427, 429, 430–446 epistemic,  441–444 propositional,  429, 434 volitional,  442–445 modality,  19, 21, 43, 50–65 alethic modality,  65 epistemic,  43–53 mother node construction (MNC),  267 multiple foci,  9, 85, 230–235, 252 multiple questions,  19–24, 83, 229–251, 344, 371 multiple wh-fronting,  229–233 N negative polarity item (NPI),  42, 450 Northern Sotho,  25–26, 323, 334–344, 371 null arguments,  129–150 nun particle,  3, 22, 117–127 O operator,  7–14, 26–28, 55–63, 77, 97, 102–113, 133–139, 151–164, 173, 208–253, 305, 335, 361, 408, 424–438, 451–454, 480–489, 490–511 Optimality Theory (OT),  21, 26, 70, 187, 323–331, 458 OT-syntax,  331 P pair list,  19, 24, 229–230, 238–251 parallelism condition,  301–320

parameter,  87, 260–262, 424–425, 458, 463, 503 parsing,  176, 191, 201–208, 220–221, 267–268, 467 performatives,  27, 407–429 periphery,  9, 26–49, 55, 63, 95–97, 107, 121, 164, 169, 233, 239, 276, 293, 295, 342–347 external,  45 internal,  41 left,  9, 18–22, 29, 34–36, 87–126, 161–169, 180–181, 240–241, 261, 275, 292, 305, 341–343, 394 right,  3, 26, 34, 97–98, 107, 311, 350–353 phase,  10, 21–65, 291–300, 452, 465, 479 vP-phase,  10, 292–296 polarity,  19, 21, 42–43, 54, 58, 309, 438, 451–454 pragmatic account,  448–455 pragmatic interpretation,  12, 29, 79, 366, 381, 444 pragmatics,  4, 5, 16–29, 66, 210–212, 337, 341, 354, 405, 447–458 predication,  2, 23, 116–121, 155–179, 199, 218–227, 501–518 PredP,  171, 209–226, 469 prefield,  69, 76–80 presupposition,  6, 167–199, 215–216, 257, 263, 286–288, 299, 386, 417, 420, 457–472, 492, 505 pro,  14–25, 63, 87, 94–115, 137–169, 188–190, 237, 239, 251, 266, 287, 356, 374, 382, 420–454, 462–480, 495–503 pro-drop,  87, 356 prominence,  6, 23–24, 73–90, 156–202, 221, 277, 336, 348–353, 363, 372, 394, 399 pronoun,  2, 7, 23, 63–83, 98–119, 129–153, 169, 180, 216–221, 252–267, 291–294, 310–311, 328–329, 340–445, 466, 494 proposition,  7–27, 41, 52, 214– 227, 239, 273, 299, 415–476 propositional content,  416–424, 441–445 prosodic,  1–5, 19–29, 69–95, 106, 115–116, 156–179, 190–202,

221–229, 233, 246, 287, 301–303, 313–322, 347–365, 372–377, 389–397 pseudogapping,  37, 275, 303–322 P-stranding,  483 Q quantity implicature,  213 question,  2–29, 41, 53–65, 75, 83, 89, 101–113, 126–144, 156–172, 183–196, 212–221, 231–399, 420–521 polar question,  27, 447 under discussion,  19–28, 467–468, 477, 483 wh-question,  19, 28, 83, 229–233, 249, 315, 326–339, 355–356, 366–369, 381–388, 403, 451–454, 467–468, 473–490 question-answer congruence,  19, 29, 386 test,  2, 347 question-answer pair,  299, 384, 432, 443, 445, 467–481 R recognition domain (CRD),  266 reference,  1, 10, 39–40, 52, 65, 142, 144, 177–178, 202, 212, 227, 235, 299, 408–409, 462, 513–514 Relevance Theory,  226 rhema,  184–193 Rightward Backgrounding (RB), 351 root clause,  25, 258–261, 299, 360, 418, 428–445 rules and regulations,  517 S scope,  14, 42–62, 98–116, 187, 192, 212, 227, 240–253, 272, 280, 299, 308–322, 374, 391, 415, 464, 487, 490, 510–516 sentential mood,  362 single pair,  229, 238, 248–249 situative context,  441–444 solitaire,  27, 427–445 speech act,  1, 16, 44, 53–56, 66, 407, 418–433, 441–445 split constituents,  69 subject,  2–26, 40, 42, 57–103, 113–140, 152, 171–203, 216–224, 252–271, 281–357, 366–421,

 On Information Structure, Meaning and Form: Generalizations across languages 434–437, 447–472, 482–497, 519 subject-prominent languages,  329 T Tagalog,  22–23, 129–153, 282, 397 thema,  184 thetic,  21–26, 59, 117–126, 186, 256–264, 297, 352–362, 382 tone,  26, 69, 82, 90–117, 302–303, 344, 365–375, 388, 391–397 topic,  1–34, 58–208, 221–237, 250, 257–272, 293, 302–371, 393–424, 458, 468, 509–521 familiar,  22, 88, 89, 93–115 marking,  12, 19, 29, 393–394 shifting,  22, 89, 95–116 topic phrase,  78, 88, 91, 260, 263, 416–421 topicalization,  17–24, 40, 49,

60, 67–115, 129–201, 237, 250, 361–363 contrastive,  69–70, 82–85 Tsou,  22–23, 129–153 type shifting,  451, 466, 474–475, 504 U underdetermined,  15, 18, 29 underfocusation,  478 V VP-ellipsis,  25, 301–305, 313 W West Frisian,  184 West Germanic,  23, 155–199 wh-in-situ,  229–253 wh-phrase,  2, 18, 26, 133–140, 151, 230–253, 291–300, 316–355, 430–435, 471–480 word order,  1–24, 69, 78–86,

113, 156–202, 214, 221–225, 251, 277–278, 297–316, 325, 341–344, 353, 366–371, 382, 469

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today A complete list of titles in this series can be found on the publishers’ website, www.benjamins.com 107 Corver, Norbert and Jairo Nunes (eds.): The Copy Theory of Movement. Expected August 2007 106 Dehé, Nicole and Yordanka Kavalova (eds.): Parentheticals. Expected August 2007 105 Haumann, Dagmar: Adverb Licensing and Clause Structure in English. ix, 435 pp. Expected March 2007 104 Jeong, Youngmi: Applicatives. Structure and interpretation from a minimalist perspective. viii, 140 pp. Expected March 2007 103 Wurff, Wim van der (ed.): Imperative Clauses in Generative Grammar. Studies in honour of Frits Beukema. viii, 339 pp. + index. Expected May 2007 102 Bayer, Josef, Tanmoy Bhattacharya and M.T. Hany Babu (eds.): Linguistic Theory and South Asian Languages. Essays in honour of K. A. Jayaseelan. x, 282 pp. + index. Expected May 2007 101 Karimi, Simin, Vida Samiian and Wendy K. Wilkins (eds.): Phrasal and Clausal Architecture. Syntactic derivation and interpretation. In honor of Joseph E. Emonds. 2007. vi, 424 pp. 100 Schwabe, Kerstin and Susanne Winkler (eds.): On Information Structure, Meaning and Form. Generalizations across languages. 2007. ix, 566 pp. 99 Martínez-Gil, Fernando and Sonia Colina (eds.): Optimality-Theoretic Studies in Spanish Phonology. vi, 548 pp. + index. Expected March 2007 98 Pires, Acrisio: The Minimalist Syntax of Defective Domains. Gerunds and infinitives. 2006. xiv, 188 pp. 97 Hartmann, Jutta M. and László Molnárfi (eds.): Comparative Studies in Germanic Syntax. From Afrikaans to Zurich German. 2006. vi, 332 pp. 96 Lyngfelt, Benjamin and Torgrim Solstad (eds.): Demoting the Agent. Passive, middle and other voice phenomena. 2006. x, 333 pp. 95 Vogeleer, Svetlana and Liliane Tasmowski (eds.): Non-definiteness and Plurality. 2006. vi, 358 pp. 94 Arche, María J.: Individuals in Time. Tense, aspect and the individual/stage distinction. 2006. xiv, 281 pp. 93 Progovac, Ljiljana, Kate Paesani, Eugenia Casielles and Ellen Barton (eds.): The Syntax of Nonsententials. Multidisciplinary perspectives. 2006. x, 372 pp. 92 Boeckx, Cedric (ed.): Agreement Systems. 2006. ix, 346 pp. 91 Boeckx, Cedric (ed.): Minimalist Essays. 2006. xvi, 399 pp. 90 Dalmi, Gréte: The Role of Agreement in Non-Finite Predication. 2005. xvi, 222 pp. 89 Velde, John R. te: Deriving Coordinate Symmetries. A phase-based approach integrating Select, Merge, Copy and Match. 2006. x, 385 pp. 88 Mohr, Sabine: Clausal Architecture and Subject Positions. Impersonal constructions in the Germanic languages. 2005. viii, 207 pp. 87 Julien, Marit: Nominal Phrases from a Scandinavian Perspective. 2005. xvi, 348 pp. 86 Costa, João and Maria Cristina Figueiredo Silva (eds.): Studies on Agreement. 2006. vi, 285 pp. 85 Mikkelsen, Line: Copular Clauses. Specification, predication and equation. 2005. viii, 210 pp. 84 Pafel, Jürgen: Quantifier Scope in German. 2006. xvi, 312 pp. 83 Schweikert, Walter: The Order of Prepositional Phrases in the Structure of the Clause. 2005. xii, 338 pp. 82 Quinn, Heidi: The Distribution of Pronoun Case Forms in English. 2005. xii, 409 pp. 81 Fuss, Eric: The Rise of Agreement. A formal approach to the syntax and grammaticalization of verbal inflection. 2005. xii, 336 pp. 80 Burkhardt, Petra: The Syntax–Discourse Interface. Representing and interpreting dependency. 2005. xii, 259 pp. 79 Schmid, Tanja: Infinitival Syntax. Infinitivus Pro Participio as a repair strategy. 2005. xiv, 251 pp. 78 Dikken, Marcel den and Christina M. Tortora (eds.): The Function of Function Words and Functional Categories. 2005. vii, 292 pp. 77 Öztürk, Balkız: Case, Referentiality and Phrase Structure. 2005. x, 268 pp. 76 Stavrou, Melita and Arhonto Terzi (eds.): Advances in Greek Generative Syntax. In honor of Dimitra Theophanopoulou-Kontou. 2005. viii, 366 pp. 75 Di Sciullo, Anna Maria (ed.): UG and External Systems. Language, brain and computation. 2005. xviii, 398 pp.

74 Heggie, Lorie and Francisco Ordóñez (eds.): Clitic and Affix Combinations. Theoretical perspectives. 2005. viii, 390 pp. 73 Carnie, Andrew, Heidi Harley and Sheila Ann Dooley (eds.): Verb First. On the syntax of verbinitial languages. 2005. xiv, 434 pp. 72 Fuss, Eric and Carola Trips (eds.): Diachronic Clues to Synchronic Grammar. 2004. viii, 228 pp. 71 Gelderen, Elly van: Grammaticalization as Economy. 2004. xvi, 320 pp. 70 Austin, Jennifer R., Stefan Engelberg and Gisa Rauh (eds.): Adverbials. The interplay between meaning, context, and syntactic structure. 2004. x, 346 pp. 69 Kiss, Katalin É. and Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.): Verb Clusters. A study of Hungarian, German and Dutch. 2004. vi, 514 pp. 68 Breul, Carsten: Focus Structure in Generative Grammar. An integrated syntactic, semantic and intonational approach. 2004. x, 432 pp. 67 Mišeska Tomić, Olga (ed.): Balkan Syntax and Semantics. 2004. xvi, 499 pp. 66 Grohmann, Kleanthes K.: Prolific Domains. On the Anti-Locality of movement dependencies. 2003. xvi, 372 pp. 65 Manninen, Satu Helena: Small Phrase Layers. A study of Finnish Manner Adverbials. 2003. xii, 275 pp. 64 Boeckx, Cedric and Kleanthes K. Grohmann (eds.): Multiple Wh-Fronting. 2003. x, 292 pp. 63 Boeckx, Cedric: Islands and Chains. Resumption as stranding. 2003. xii, 224 pp. 62 Carnie, Andrew, Heidi Harley and MaryAnn Willie (eds.): Formal Approaches to Function in Grammar. In honor of Eloise Jelinek. 2003. xii, 378 pp. 61 Schwabe, Kerstin and Susanne Winkler (eds.): The Interfaces. Deriving and interpreting omitted structures. 2003. vi, 403 pp. 60 Trips, Carola: From OV to VO in Early Middle English. 2002. xiv, 359 pp. 59 Dehé, Nicole: Particle Verbs in English. Syntax, information structure and intonation. 2002. xii, 305 pp. 58 Di Sciullo, Anna Maria (ed.): Asymmetry in Grammar. Volume 2: Morphology, phonology, acquisition. 2003. vi, 309 pp. 57 Di Sciullo, Anna Maria (ed.): Asymmetry in Grammar. Volume 1: Syntax and semantics. 2003. vi, 405 pp. 56 Coene, Martine and Yves D’hulst (eds.): From NP to DP. Volume 2: The expression of possession in noun phrases. 2003. x, 295 pp. 55 Coene, Martine and Yves D’hulst (eds.): From NP to DP. Volume 1: The syntax and semantics of noun phrases. 2003. vi, 362 pp. 54 Baptista, Marlyse: The Syntax of Cape Verdean Creole. The Sotavento varieties. 2003. xxii, 294 pp.  (incl. CD-rom). 53 Zwart, C. Jan-Wouter and Werner Abraham (eds.): Studies in Comparative Germanic Syntax. Proceedings from the 15th Workshop on Comparative Germanic Syntax (Groningen, May 26–27, 2000). 2002. xiv, 407 pp. 52 Simon, Horst J. and Heike Wiese (eds.): Pronouns – Grammar and Representation. 2002. xii, 294 pp. 51 Gerlach, Birgit: Clitics between Syntax and Lexicon. 2002. xii, 282 pp. 50 Steinbach, Markus: Middle Voice. A comparative study in the syntax-semantics interface of German. 2002. xii, 340 pp. 49 Alexiadou, Artemis (ed.): Theoretical Approaches to Universals. 2002. viii, 319 pp. 48 Alexiadou, Artemis, Elena Anagnostopoulou, Sjef Barbiers and Hans-Martin Gärtner (eds.): Dimensions of Movement. From features to remnants. 2002. vi, 345 pp. 47 Barbiers, Sjef, Frits Beukema and Wim van der Wurff (eds.): Modality and its Interaction with the Verbal System. 2002. x, 290 pp. 46 Panagiotidis, Phoevos: Pronouns, Clitics and Empty Nouns. ‘Pronominality’ and licensing in syntax. 2002. x, 214 pp. 45 Abraham, Werner and C. Jan-Wouter Zwart (eds.): Issues in Formal German(ic) Typology. 2002. xviii, 336 pp. 44 Taylan, Eser Erguvanlı (ed.): The Verb in Turkish. 2002. xviii, 267 pp. 43 Featherston, Sam: Empty Categories in Sentence Processing. 2001. xvi, 279 pp. 42 Alexiadou, Artemis: Functional Structure in Nominals. Nominalization and ergativity. 2001. x, 233 pp. 41 Zeller, Jochen: Particle Verbs and Local Domains. 2001. xii, 325 pp.

40 Hoeksema, Jack, Hotze Rullmann, Víctor Sánchez-Valencia and Ton van der Wouden (eds.): Perspectives on Negation and Polarity Items. 2001. xii, 368 pp. 39 Gelderen, Elly van: A History of English Reflexive Pronouns. Person, Self, and Interpretability. 2000. xiv, 279 pp. 38 Meinunger, André: Syntactic Aspects of Topic and Comment. 2000. xii, 247 pp. 37 Lutz, Uli, Gereon Müller and Arnim von Stechow (eds.): Wh-Scope Marking. 2000. vi, 483 pp. 36 Gerlach, Birgit and Janet Grijzenhout (eds.): Clitics in Phonology, Morphology and Syntax. 2001. xii, 441 pp. 35 Hróarsdóttir, Thorbjörg: Word Order Change in Icelandic. From OV to VO. 2001. xiv, 385 pp. 34 Reuland, Eric (ed.): Arguments and Case. Explaining Burzio’s Generalization. 2000. xii, 255 pp. 33 Puskás, Genoveva: Word Order in Hungarian. The syntax of Ā-positions. 2000. xvi, 398 pp. 32 Alexiadou, Artemis, Paul Law, André Meinunger and Chris Wilder (eds.): The Syntax of Relative Clauses. 2000. vi, 397 pp. 31 Svenonius, Peter (ed.): The Derivation of VO and OV. 2000. vi, 372 pp. 30 Beukema, Frits and Marcel den Dikken (eds.): Clitic Phenomena in European Languages. 2000. x, 324 pp. 29 Miyamoto, Tadao: The Light Verb Construction in Japanese. The role of the verbal noun. 2000. xiv, 232 pp. 28 Hermans, Ben and Marc van Oostendorp (eds.): The Derivational Residue in Phonological Optimality Theory. 2000. viii, 322 pp. 27 Růžička, Rudolf: Control in Grammar and Pragmatics. A cross-linguistic study. 1999. x, 206 pp. 26 Ackema, Peter: Issues in Morphosyntax. 1999. viii, 310 pp. 25 Felser, Claudia: Verbal Complement Clauses. A minimalist study of direct perception constructions. 1999. xiv, 278 pp. 24 Rebuschi, Georges and Laurice Tuller (eds.): The Grammar of Focus. 1999. vi, 366 pp. 23 Giannakidou, Anastasia: Polarity Sensitivity as (Non)Veridical Dependency. 1998. xvi, 282 pp. 22 Alexiadou, Artemis and Chris Wilder (eds.): Possessors, Predicates and Movement in the Determiner Phrase. 1998. vi, 388 pp. 21 Klein, Henny: Adverbs of Degree in Dutch and Related Languages. 1998. x, 232 pp. 20 Laenzlinger, Christopher: Comparative Studies in Word Order Variation. Adverbs, pronouns, and clause structure in Romance and Germanic. 1998. x, 371 pp. 19 Josefsson, Gunlög: Minimal Words in a Minimal Syntax. Word formation in Swedish. 1998. ix, 199 pp. 18 Alexiadou, Artemis: Adverb Placement. A case study in antisymmetric syntax. 1997. x, 256 pp. 17 Beermann, Dorothee A., David LeBlanc and Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.): Rightward Movement. 1997. vi, 410 pp. 16 Liu, Feng-Hsi: Scope and Specificity. 1997. viii, 187 pp. 15 Rohrbacher, Bernhard Wolfgang: Morphology-Driven Syntax. A theory of V to I raising and prodrop. 1999. viii, 296 pp. 14 Anagnostopoulou, Elena, Henk van Riemsdijk and Frans Zwarts (eds.): Materials on Left Dislocation. 1997. viii, 349 pp. 13 Alexiadou, Artemis and T. Alan Hall (eds.): Studies on Universal Grammar and Typological Variation. 1997. viii, 252 pp. 12 Abraham, Werner, Samuel David Epstein, Höskuldur Thráinsson and C. Jan-Wouter Zwart (eds.): Minimal Ideas. Syntactic studies in the minimalist framework. 1996. xii, 364 pp. 11 Lutz, Uli and Jürgen Pafel (eds.): On Extraction and Extraposition in German. 1996. xii, 315 pp. 10 Cinque, Guglielmo and Giuliana Giusti (eds.): Advances in Roumanian Linguistics. 1995. xi, 172 pp. 9 Gelderen, Elly van: The Rise of Functional Categories. 1993. x, 224 pp. 8 Fanselow, Gisbert (ed.): The Parametrization of Universal Grammar. 1993. xvii, 232 pp. 7 Åfarlí, Tor A.: The Syntax of Norwegian Passive Constructions. 1992. xii, 177 pp. 6 Bhatt, Christa, Elisabeth Löbel and Claudia Maria Schmidt (eds.): Syntactic Phrase Structure Phenomena in Noun Phrases and Sentences. 1989. ix, 187 pp. 5 Grewendorf, Günther and Wolfgang Sternefeld (eds.): Scrambling and Barriers. 1990. vi, 442 pp. 4 Abraham, Werner and Sjaak De Meij (eds.): Topic, Focus and Configurationality. Papers from the 6th Groningen Grammar Talks, Groningen, 1984. 1986. v, 349 pp.

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Abraham, Werner (ed.): On the Formal Syntax of the Westgermania. Papers from the 3rd Groningen Grammar Talks (3e Groninger Grammatikgespräche), Groningen, January 1981. 1983. vi, 242 pp. Ehlich, Konrad and Jürgen Rehbein: Augenkommunikation. Methodenreflexion und Beispielanalyse. 1982. viii, 150 pp. With many photographic ills. Klappenbach, Ruth (1911–1977): Studien zur Modernen Deutschen Lexikographie. Auswahl aus den Lexikographischen Arbeiten von Ruth Klappenbach, erweitert um drei Beiträge von Helene MaligeKlappenbach. (Written in German). 1980. xxiii, 313 pp.