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We present an analysis of multiple question fronting in a restricted variant of the HPSG formalism (DELPH-IN) where unification is the only natively defined operation. Analysing multiple fronting in this formalism is challenging, because it requires carefully handling list appends, something that HPSG analyses of question fronting heavily rely on. Our analysis uses the append list type to address this challenge. We focus the testing of our analysis on Russian, although we also integrate it into the Grammar Matrix customization system where it serves as a basis for cross-linguistic modeling. In this context, we discuss the relationship of our analysis to lexical threading and conclude that, while lexical threading has its advantages, modeling multiple extraction cross-linguistically is easier without the lexical threading assumption.
This papers addresses information-structural restrictions on the occurrence of what is known as "multiple fronting" in German. Multiple fronting involves the realization of (what appears to be) more than one constituent in the first position of main clause declaratives, a clause type that otherwise respects the verb-second constraint of German. Relying on a large body of naturally occurring instances of multiple fronting with the surrounding discourse context, we show that in certain contexts, multiple fronting is fully grammatical in German, in contrast to what has sometimes been claimed previously. Examination of this data reveals two different patterns, which we analyze in terms of two distinct constructions, each instantiating a specific pairing of form, meaning and contextual appropriateness.
This paper presents psycholinguistic evidence on the factors governing the resolution of German personal pronouns. To determine the relative influence of linear order versus grammatical function of potential antecedents, two interpretation-preference tasks were designed. Their specific aim was to disentangle salience factors conflated in previous research on pronoun interpretation, such as linear or-der, first mention and topicalization. Experiment 1 tested pronoun resolution to non-sentence-initial position (scrambling) and Experiment 2 tested pronoun resolution to sentence-initial position (topicalization). The results across different verb types and across different syntactic contexts in Experiments 1 and 2 show that grammatical function, yet neither linear order, first mention nor topicalization predicts pronoun resolution in German.
Based on Krifka (1992) and de Kuthy (2000), this paper develops an architecture for complex topic-comment structures in HPSG and applies it to predicate fronting in English with the goal of capturing the insights of Ward (1988) on this construction. We argue that predicate fronting is a distributed constructional form consisting of an auxiliary occurring in a predicate preposing phrase. The use of predicate preposing is a function of a combination of simultaneous constraints on its theme structure, its background-focus distribution, and its presuppositional structure. It is shown that these constraints can be made explicit within the HPSG architecture developed here.
Since Haiman (1978), a general assumption concerning the information structure of conditional sentences is that "conditionals are topics". However, in Chadic South Bauchi West languages spoken in Northern Nigeria, as well as in Banda Linda, an Adamawa language spoken in the République Centre-Africaine, conditionals share their structure with focus, not topic. This seriously questions Haiman’s claim and forces us to reconsider the facts and characterizations of conditionals, topic and focus in general.
In order to do this, we will first examine the facts of conditionals in some Chadic languages, then their information structure. We will see how both data and theory invalidate Haiman's claim. Then we will see that if they are not topics, they are different from focus as well. We will argue that if the elements which make a topic or a focus can appear in conditionals, these must be separated from what constitutes the identity of conditions. Then, we will see if these can be characterized in the same way as Lambrecht characterizes temporal clauses, viz. as "activated propositions" (Lambrecht 1994). We will finally conclude that they should rather be defined as "fictitious assertions" (Culioli 2000).
In my paper, I show that the so-called German right dislocation actually comprises two distinct constructions, which I label 'right dislocation proper' and 'afterthought'. These differ in their prosodic and syntactic properties, as well as in their discourse functions. The paper is primarily concerned with the right dislocation proper (RD). I present a semantic analysis of RD based on the 'separate performative' account of Potts (2004, 2005) and Portner (forthc.). This analysis allows a description of the semantic contribution of RD to its host sentence, as well as explaining certain semantic constraints on the kind of NP in the RD construction.
These proceedings, also online available as No. 46 in the ZAS Papers in Linguistics series under http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/index.html?publications_zaspil have resulted from the International Conference "Focus in African languages" held October 6-8, 2005 at the Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS) in Berlin. The conference was cooperatively organized by the latter, together with the Collaborative Research Center (Sonderforschungsforschungsbereich) 632, generously funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). It was the first conference bringing together colleagues working on this topic from all over the world in such scale.
Even though this volume contains only ten contributions out of the 35 papers presented at the conference, it displays the wide range of approaches, subjects and languages studied in the field of information structure in African languages. The collection thus reflects the synergetic atmosphere of the conference.
In the name of all organizers (Laura Downing, Ines Fiedler, Katharina Hartmann, Brigitte Reineke, Anne Schwarz, Sabine Zerbian, Malte Zimmermann) we would like to take this opportunity to thank the participant reviewers and student assistants for their contributions by which the conference became such a fruitful forum for inspiring and seminal studies in this field. Also special thanks for their effort in copy editing to our research assistants Lars Marstaller and Paul Starzmann.
This paper discusses critically a number of developments at the heart of current syntactic theory. These include the postulation of a rich sequence of projections at the left periphery of the sentence; the idea that movement is tied to the need to eliminate uninterpretable features; and the conception put forward by Chomsky and others that advances in the past decade have made it reasonable to raise the question about whether language might be in some sense ‘perfect’. However, I will argue that there is little motivation for a highly-articulated left-periphery, that there is no connection between movement and uninterpretable features, and that there is no support for the idea that language might be perfect.
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