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This paper discusses the typology of focus structure types (variation of information structuring in the clause) and how information structure can be used to explain all of the word order patterns in Chinese without reference to grammatical relations.
Indefinita und ihre verschiedenen Interpretationsmöglichkeiten sind seit längerem Gegenstand intensiver linguistischer Diskussion. Die folgenden Bemerkungen diskutieren einige in der Literatur häufig vertretene Thesen zum Zusammenhang der Positionierung einer indefiniten NP im deutschen Mittelfeld und ihrer Interpretation. Es wird argumentiert, daß diese Thesen den empirischen Gegebenheiten nicht gerecht werden. Dies gilt damit auch für einige Thesen zur Umstellung im Mittelfeld (Scrambling).
Das Papier argumentiert anhand einer Reihe von Phänomenen für die Existenz einer ausgezeichneten Topikdomäne im Mittelfeld des deutschen Satzes. Deutsch ist somit Diskurs-konfigurational hinsichtlich Topiks. Die Beobachtung erlaubt die Beantwortung einiger grundlegender Fragen wie die nach der möglichen Anzahl van Satztopiks, nach der Möglichkeit von Satztopiks in eingebetteten Sätzen oder nach dem Zusammenhang von Scrambling und Topikstatus. Die These, die 'starke' Interpretation einer indefiniten Phrase impliziere deren Topikstatus, wird zurückgewiesen. Syntaktische Eigenschaften der Topik-Voranstellung im Mittelfeld werden herausgearbeitet und ihre Implikationen für die Theoriebildung werden erörtert.
[I]n der folgenden Skizze [soll] argumentiert werden, dass eine Rückführung unterschiedlicher Lesarten auf unterschiedliche syntaktische Verhältnisse […] unangemessen ist. Vielmehr sol1 aufgezeigt werden, dass es sich um eine ausschließlich semantische Frage handelt, die syntaktische Struktur in jeder Hinsicht aber die immerselbe ist. […] Unser Gegenstandsbereich fasst somit Fälle zusammen, die unter anderen Gesichtspunkten differenziert werden. [...] Diese Gesichtspunkte, nach denen die Differenzierung erfolgt, sind semantischer Natur. Für unsere syntaktische Analyse nehmen wir in Anspruch, dass sie auf alle Adverbialstrukturen zutrifft, mit Ausnahme von Satzadverbialen und (den diesen strukturell gleichen) Adverbialsätzen. Gezeigt wird dies jedoch nur an Fallen wie oben, an Adjektiven in modaladverbialer Funktion. Diese Adjektive fassen wir im übrigen kategorial als das auf, was sie ihrer Form nach sind, nämlich unflektierte Adjektive.
We propose a compositional analysis for sentences of the kind "You only have to go to the North End to get good cheese", referred to as the Sufficiency Modal Construction in the recent literature. We argue that the SMC is ambiguous depending on the kind of ordering induced by only. So is the exceptive construction – its cross-linguistic counterpart. Only is treated as inducing either a 'comparative possibility' scale or an 'implication-based' partial order on propositions. The properties of the 'comparative possibility' scale explain the absence of the prejacent presupposition that is usually associated with only. By integrating the scalarity into the semantics of the SMC, we explain the polarity facts observed in both variants of the construction. The sufficiency meaning component is argued to be due to a pragmatic inference.
This article discusses some syntactic peculiarities of Chinese yes/no questions. Starting from the observation that Standard Mandarin shares significant typological features with prototypical SOV languages, Chinese is treated as an underlyingly verb-final language. Based on this heuristic principle, A-not-AB, AB-not-A and AB-not questions are uniformly derived by means of one simple raising rule that operates within the sentence constituent V'. This novel idea is elaborated on in great detail in the first part of the article. In contrast to the prevailing trend, it is argued that the question operator contained in A-not-A and A-not sentences CANNOT be raised to "Comp". In consequence, A-not-A and A-not questions are "typed" in the head position of a sentence-internal functional phrase that we call Force2 Phrase (F2P) in the present paper. This position is not to be confused with Drubig's (1994) Polarity 1 Phrase (PollP), in the head position of which assertive negations and an abstract affirmative element are located. The existence of a head position F2° other than Poll° is supported by the fact that F2° can be occupied by certain overt question operators, such as assertive shi-bu-shi, which are compatible with negations. In contrast to the assertive question operator shi-bu-shi which is obligatorily associated with information focus, non-assertive shi-bu-shi serves as a compound focus and question operator whose focus feature is complex insofar as it is composed of two subfeatures: a contrastivity and an exhaustivity subfeature. Non-assertive shi-bu-shi is obligatorily associated with identificational focus in the sense of Kiss (1998). In accordance with some basic ideas of Chomsky's checking theory, the two subfeatures of the complex focus feature carried by the non-assertive shi-bu-shi operator check a correlating subfeature in the head position of a corresponding functional phrase (Contrastive Phrase and Focus Phrase, respectively). The question feature contained in the non-assertive shi-bu-shi operator is attracted by the head of Force1 Phrase (F1') at the level of LF. Due to the fact that F1° is sentence-final, the question feature of non-assertive shi-bu-shi must be Chomsky-adjoined to F1'. Unlike identificational focus phrases which are inherently contrastive, topics are non-contrastive in the default case. As separate speech acts, they are located in a c-commanding position outside the sentence structure. Semantically, there is a difference between Frame-Setting Topics and Aboutness Topics. As shown in the article, both A-not-A and A-not questions on the one hand and yes/no questions ending with ma on the other can be used in neutral and non-neutral contexts. The decisive advantage of mu questions, however, is that their question operator has scope over the whole sentence.
In this paper I would like to show that the principles which have been proposed so far to account for the relationship between the informational level and the syntactic level in a Chinese utterance are unable to predict some interesting and regular facts of that language.
To my mind, the form and the position of the question operator in an interrogative utterance provide two distributional tests which univocally indicate where the new information lies. Hence, the pairing of affirmative and interrogative sentences might be a better approach to locate where the new information lies in a Chinese utterance.
This paper demonstrates that there are no empirical and theoretical motivations for regarding verbal predicate focus constructions as (diachronically) derived from cleft constructions. Instead, it is argued that predicate fronting for the purpose of focus or topic is comparable to verb (phrase) fronting structures in other languages (e.g., Germanic). The proposed analysis further indicates that related doubling strategies observed in certain languages are the consequences of parallel chains that license the fronted verb (phrase) in the left periphery, and the Agree-tense-aspect features inside the proposition.
This paper revisits the question of whether propositions in situation semantics must be persistent (Kratzer (1989)). It shows that ignoring persistence causes empirical problems to theories which use quantification over minimal situations as a solution for donkey anaphora (Elbourne (2005)), while at the same time modifying these theories to incorporate persistence makes them incompatible with the use of situations for contextual restriction (Kratzer (2004)).
In this paper I show that the different case marking possibilities on predicate adjectives in depictive secondary predicates in Russian constitute the uninterpretable counterpart of the interpretable tense and aspect features of the adjective. Case agreement entails that the predicate adjective is non-eventive, i.e., it occurs when the event time of the secondary predicate is identical to the event time of the primary predicate. The instrumental case, however, entails that the secondary predicate is eventive: some change of state or transition occurred prior to or during the event time of the primary predicate. I claim that case agreement occurs in conjoined tense phrases in Russian, while the instrumental case occurs in adjoined aspectual phrases. In English, secondary predication is sensitive both to the structural location of its antecedent and to the event structure of the primary predicate. I suggest that depictives with subject antecedents in English are true adjunction structures, while those with direct object antecedents occur in a conjoined aspectual phrase. This hypothesis finds support in the different movement and semantic constraints in conjunction versus adjunction phrases in both English and Russian.