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Ivona Kučerová UCL, ivona@alum.mit.edu Sinn und Bedeutung 12 Oslo September 22, 2007 BUT: not every word order is possible with a particular interpretation: (4) e.g., if the object and the verb are given and the subject is new: a. ̌O V S b. # V O S (5) The second generalization: In a given context and with a particular interpretation, there is only one felicitous order. (6) The third generalization: An utterance maybe be divided into domains. Within any domain there can be a partition between given and new. −→ domains correspond to chunks that have been argued to be propositional (7) a. Do you know anything about Petr and Marie? b. Náhodou jsem slyšel, že Petrovi accidentally Aux.1sg heard that Petr.Dat Marii | zaměstnali v ABB. Marie.Acc employed.1pl in ABB | říkala told nějaká some paní, lady že that ‘I accidentally heard that some lady told Petr that Marie got employed in the ABB.’ (8) a. Do you know what Mary did with her famous boat? b. Marie | se pokusila lod’ | prodat. Marie REFL tried boat to-sell ‘Marie tried to sell the boat (but no one wanted to buy it).’ c. Marii | nařídil soud lod’ | prodat. Marie.Dat ordered court.Nom boat.Acc to-sell ‘(You won’t believe it but) a court ordered Marie to sell the boat.’ −→ a rather complex data pattern that so far has not been properly characterized Desiderata: • to characterize the word order restriction and its relation to information structure • to explain it 2
Ivona Kučerová UCL, ivona@alum.mit.edu 2 Existing proposals Sinn und Bedeutung 12 Oslo September 22, 2007 The Prague school: an old tradition going back to the beginning of the 20th century (Mathesius’ Prague lectures, 1908; Mathesius [1929] 1983; Daneš 1954; Firbas 1964; Sgall et al. 1980, among others): • any utterance is divided between a given and a new part (topic – focus, theme – rheme) A modern way to read Mathesius: • anything can be chunked into partitions • the partition may fall at any place • accounts for ambiguity of certain strings Limitations: • cannot account for restrictions on word order within a given or new chunk (any word order should go as long as there is a partition) • cannot account for the domains (minor point: this could be accommodated) Cartographic approaches (Rizzi, 1997, 2004, among others): • there is a designated functional projection on the main sentential spine: if an item is to be interpreted as given/new it must move to the projection Limitiations: • cannot account for restrictions on word order within a given or a new part • the fact that the partition can fall at any point is unexpected • cannot account for cases where the partition is not on the main spine – and yet the partition is relevant for the main spine: (9) Yesterday Marie | and Paul came to school. Yesterday Marie and Paul came to school 3
Page 1: Ivona Kučerová UCL, ivona@alum.mi
Page 5 and 6: Ivona Kučerová UCL, ivona@alum.mi

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