ZASPiL 35 = Proceedings of the Dislocated Elements Workshop : ZAS Berlin, November 2003
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In this paper I argue that there are three distinct constructions in Modern German in which a 'topic constituent' is detached to the left: (left-)dislocated topic ('left dislocation'), (left-)attached topic ('mixed left dislocation'), and (left-)hanging topic ('hanging topic'). Presupposing the framework of Integrational Linguistics, I provide syntactic and semantic analyses for them. In particular, I propose that these constructions involve the syntactic function (syntactic) topic, which relates the topic constituent to the remaining part of the sentence. Dislocated and attached topic constituents function in addition as a strong or weak (syntactic) antecedent of some resumptive 'd-pronoun' form.
Dislocated topic, attached topic, and hanging topic are in turn contrasted with 'free topics'. Being sentential units of their own, the latter are syntactically unconnected to the following sentence. In particular, they are not topic constituents.
Starting from a consideration of the internal make-up of adverbial clauses this paper shows that the widespread assumption that fronted arguments in English and CLLD constituents in Romance occupy the same position leads to a number of problems. I will conclude that the position occupied by English topicalized arguments differs from that of the CLLD topics in Romance. In particular, English topics occupy a higher position in the left periphery. The final part of the paper compares three proposals for the lower topic position in Romance.
In this paper topic and focus effects at both left and right periphery are argued to be epiphenomena of general properties of tree growth. We incorporate Korean into this account as a prototypical verb-final language, and show how long- and short-distance scrambling form part of this general picture. Multiple long-distance scrambling effects emerge as a consequence of the feeding relationship between different forms of structural under-specification. We also show how the array of effects at the right periphery, in both verb-final and other language-types, can also be explained with the same concepts of tree growth. In particular the Right Roof Constraint, a well-known but little understood constraint, is an immediate consequence of compositionality constraints as articulated in this system.
The syntax and semantics of the resumptive dependency in hungarian focus-raising constructions
(2004)
Previous work (Gervain, forthcoming) has established that focus-raising may be derived by two strategies in Hungarian. One of them is the traditional movement derivation, the other a resumptive dependency created between the focus constituent base-generated in its matrix focus position and a phonologically null resumptive pronoun in the corresponding argument position in the embedded clause. However, the previous account (Gervain, forthcoming) does not give a detailed description of the nature of this resumptive dependency. The present work aims to address this question. More specifically, by providing a series of empirical tests, it attempts to determine whether the dependency is purely syntactic in nature, i.e. obligatory variable binding, or whether a semantic option is also available, i.e. coreference between the focus constituent and the resumptive pronoun. Thus, it provides new insights into the ongoing debate about the nature of resumptive pronouns.
The German word also, similar to English so, is traditionally considered to be a sentence adverb with a consecutive meaning, i.e. it indicates that the propositional content of the clause containing it is some kind of consequence of what has previously been said. As a sentence adverb, also has its place within the core of the German sentence, since this is the proper place for an adverb to occur in German. The sentence core offers two proper positions for adverbs: the so-called front field and the middle field. In spoken German, however, also often occurs in sentence-initial position, outside the sentence itself. In this paper, I will use excerpts of German conversations to discuss and illustrate the importance of the sentence positions and the discourse positions for the functions of also on the basis of some German conversations.
In this work we examine several sentential particles, occurring in imperatives, main exclamative and interrogative sentences, which display a uniform syntactic behaviour. We analyse them as heads of high CP projections which require their specifier to be filled either by the wh-item (in sentences where there is one) or by the whole clause, yielding the sentence final position of the particle. The hypothesis that they are C°-heads accounts for their sensitivity to sentence type and for their occurrence only in matrix contexts. We also provide a first sketch of their semantic contribution, showing that they select ‘non standard’ contexts and interact with tense and modality of the verb when the whole CP has moved to their specifier.
The claim advanced in this paper is that the presence of a left-dislocated element together with a resumptive clitic in Bulgarian is a special case of argument saturation with implications for the focus structure of the clause, while contrast involves discontinuous focus (contrastive topics/foci) with no clitics present in the derivation. Contrastive topic/focus constructions in Bulgarian can be united on the view that they involve (sets of) ordered pairs where the higher element is valuing a contrastive feature (cf. OCC in Chomsky 2001) while the element in the VP is a non-contrastive topic or focus. The contrastive feature participates in wh-structures but not in clitic-left-dislocated structures where pairing between arguments is 'accidental'.
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On the syntax and pragmatics interface : Left-peripheral, medial and right-peripheral focus in greek
(2004)
The present paper explores the extent to which narrow syntax is responsible for the computation of discourse functions such as focus/topic. More specifically, it challenges the claim that language approximates ‘perfection’ with respect to economy, conceptual necessity and optimality in design by reconsidering the roles and interactions of the different modules of the grammar, in particular of syntax and phonology and the mapping between the two, in the representation of pragmatic notions. Empirical and theoretical considerations strongly indicate that narrow syntax is ‘blind’ to properties and operations involving the interpretive components — that is, PF and LF. As a result, syntax-phonology interface rules do not ‘see’ everything in the levels they connect. In essence, the architecture of grammar proposed here from the perspective of focus marking necessitates the autonomy of the different levels of grammar, presupposing that NS is minimally structured only when liberated from any non-syntactic/discourse implementations, i.e., movement operations to satisfy both interface needs. As a result, the model articulated here totally dispenses with discourse projections, i.e. FocusP.