The Syntax of Givenness Ivona Kucerová

is not given but its movement is necessary to facilitate G-movement of some other given
element.
As a consequence, we predict that the verb may appear on either side of the partition
between given and new. 17 If the head itself undergoes G-movement, the partition follows
the head. 18 If the head moves in order to facilitate G-movement, the partition precedes the
head. Thus we predict the pattern to be as in (34).
(34) a. O V || S ←− head undergoes G-movement
b. O || V S ←− head facilitates G-movement
The pattern is indeed correct. Example (32-c) is not only a felicitous answer to the question
And what about the lollipop? What happened to the lollipop? but it is also a felicitous
answer to the question Who found the lollipop?, as in (35).
(35) a. Who found the lollipop?
b. Lízátko našla || malá holčička.
lollipop.Acc found little girl.Nom
‘A little girl found the lollipop.’
In other words, the semantic ambiguity that we found with a basic word order repeats itself
on a smaller scale here as well. Even though we know that because of G-movement of
the object, the object is given (translated as the lollipop), we cannot conclude anything
about the status of the verb. The reason is that the head might have undergone either G-
movement, or it might have moved only in order to facilitate G-movement. The suggested
derivation is given in (36). For now I leave open the question of the exact landing site of
G-movement. In the following graphs, the landing site is marked as ?P.
(36) a. VP
V
Object
b. vP
Subject
vP
v-V
VP
V
Object
17 Notice that the verb can be either the rightmost element in the given part, or it can follow the given part
but it can never intervene between two given elements. Thus if, for example, both the subject and the object
are given the resulting order is either SOV or OSV, depending on other factors such as topicalization.
18 I put aside for now what determines the relative order of the given elements. I will address this question
in chapter 3.
24