Comparative and Contrastive Studies of Information Structure

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today (LA)

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today (LA) provides a platform for original monograph
studies into synchronic and diachronic linguistics. Studies in LA confront empirical
and theoretical problems as these are currently discussed in syntax, semantics,
morphology, phonology, and systematic pragmatics with the aim to establish robust
empirical generalizations within a universalistic perspective.

General Editors
Werner Abraham Elly van Gelderen
University of Vienna / Arizona State University
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

Advisory Editorial Board

Josef Bayer Christer Platzack
University of Konstanz University of Lund
Cedric Boeckx Ian Roberts
ICREA/Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Cambridge University
Guglielmo Cinque Lisa deMena Travis
University of Venice McGill University
Liliane Haegeman Sten Vikner
University of Ghent University of Aarhus
Hubert Haider C. Jan-Wouter Zwart
University of Salzburg University of Groningen
Terje Lohndal
University of Maryland

Volume 165
Comparative and Contrastive Studies of Information Structure
Edited by Carsten Breul and Edward Göbbel
Comparative and Contrastive
Studies of Information Structure

Edited by

Carsten Breul
Edward Göbbel
University of Wuppertal

John Benjamins Publishing Company

Amsterdamâ•›/â•›Philadelphia
 TM
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8

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Comparative and contrastive studies of information structure / edited by Carsten Breul,

Edward Göbbel.
p. cm. (Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, issn 0166-0829 ; v. 165)
“The present book contains a selection of articles based on papers presented at the confer-
ence on ‘Contrastive Information Structure Analysis’ organised by Carsten Breul
at the University of Wuppertal in March 2008”--Pref.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Grammar, Comparative and general--Syntax. 2. Contrastive linguistics. 3. Focus (Lin-
guistics) 4. Grammar, Comparative and general--Topic and comment. I. Breul,
Carsten. II. Göbbel, Edward.
P291.C573â•…â•… 2010
415--dc22 2010022887
isbn 978 90 272 5548 8 (Hb ; alk. paper)
isbn 978 90 272 8784 7 (Eb)

© 2010 – John Benjamins B.V.

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 Table of contents

Preface vii
List of contributors ix
List of abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
Carsten Breul & Edward Göbbel & Alexander Thiel
Contrastive topics and distributed foci as instances of sub-informativity:
A comparison of English and German 15
Volker Gast
Givenness and discourse anaphors 51
Luis López
Constraints on subject-focus mapping in French and English:
A contrastive analysis 77
Knud Lambrecht
Wh-questions in French and English:
Mapping syntax to information structure 101
Paul Boucher
A comparative perspective on intensive reflexives: English and Hebrew 139
Dana Cohen
Focus types and argument asymmetries: A cross-linguistic study
in language production 169
Stavros Skopeteas & Gisbert Fanselow
Topicality in L1-acquisition: A contrastive analysis
of null subject expressions in child French and German 199
Nicole Hauser-Grüdl
Formal and functional constraints on constituent order
and their universality 231
Peter Öhl
On the foundations of the contrastive study of information structure 277
Carsten Breul
Subject index 305
 Preface

The present book contains a selection of articles based on papers presented at the
conference on “Contrastive Information Structure Analysis” organised by Carsten
Breul at the University of Wuppertal in March 2008. Two of the articles do not
originate in conference papers. The one by Luis López has been kindly contributed
upon invitation. The one by Carsten Breul reflects ideas that motivated the organi-
sation of the conference and relates them to some of the results obtained in other
contributions to this book.
We are grateful to several colleagues and friends who supported the con-
ference and without whom this book would not have come into existence. Our
thanks also go to the contributors, our assistant editor Alex Thiel, our student assis-
tants Â�Benjamin Köhnen and Ina Schlafke, and to the reviewers of the individual
articles. Each reviewer has accomplished their difficult and incongruously time-
consuming task in a very thorough and circumspect manner. Their comments and
suggestions have led to significant improvements – and to none of the shortcomings
of the present book. We are very pleased to have benefited from the expertise of
these colleagues.

Wuppertal, February 2010 Carsten Breul and Edward Göbbel

 List of contributors

Paul Boucher Volker Gast

Lettres, Langues et Sciences Humaines
Université d’Angers
11, boulevard Lavoisier
49045 Angers Cedex 01
France
boucher.paul@wanadoo.fr
Anglistik/Amerikanistik
Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
Ernst-Abbe-Platz 8
07743 Jena
Germany
volker.gast@uni-jena.de

Carsten Breul Edward Göbbel

Anglistik/Amerikanistik Anglistik/Amerikanistik
Bergische Universität Wuppertal Bergische Universität Wuppertal
Gaußstr. 20 Gaußstr. 20
42119 Wuppertal 42119 Wuppertal
Germany Germany
breul@uni-wuppertal.de goebbel@uni-wuppertal.de

Dana Cohen
UMR Structures Formelles Nicole Hauser-Grüdl
du Langage Romanistik
Université Paris 8 Bergische Universität Wuppertal
2 rue de la Liberté Gaußstr. 20
93526 Saint Denis cedex 42119 Wuppertal
France Germany
cattc@013.net nhauser@uni-wuppertal.de

Gisbert Fanselow Knud Lambrecht

Linguistik French and Italian
Universität Potsdam University of Texas at Austin
Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 24-25 Mailcode B7600
14476 Potsdam Austin, TX 78712
Germany USA
fanselow@uni-potsdam.de lambrec@uts.cc.utexas.edu
 Comparative and Contrastive Studies of Information Structure

Luis López Stavros Skopeteas

Department of Hispanic Linguistik
and Italian Studies Universität Potsdam
University of Illinois at Chicago Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 24–25
601 South Morgan Street (MC 315) 14476 Potsdam
Chicago, Illinois 60607 Germany
USA skopetea@rz.uni-potsdam.de
luislope@uic.edu
Alexander Thiel
Peter Öhl Anglistik/Amerikanistik
Institut für Deutsche Philologie Bergische Universität Wuppertal
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Gaußstr. 20
München 42119 Wuppertal
Schellingstraße 3 Germany
80799 München thiel@uni-wuppertal.de
Germany
lmu@oehl.gesus-info.de
 List of abbreviations
1, 2, 3 1st, 2nd, 3rd person
ACC accusative
AUX auxiliary
BNC British National Corpus
CFA contrastive functional
analysis
CG common ground
CHL computational system for
human language
CI complex inversion
Cl computational system for
linear strings
CL, Cl clitic
CL contrastive linguistics
CLLD clitic left dislocation
CLRD clitic right dislocation
COMP complementiser
ContrP functional contrast phrase
COP copula
Cp computational system for
metrical trees
CP complementiser phrase
Cpl computational system
uniting Cp and Cl
Cs computational system for
phrase and sentence stress
CT contrastive topic
DAT dative
DEF definite article, definiteness
marker
DF definiteness marker
DFP definite preposition
DO direct object
DRS discourse representation
structure
EA external argument
EPP extended projection
principle
F feminine; focus feature,
focus marker
Foc focus (feature); head of
functional focus phrase
FOC focus feature, focus
marker
FocP functional focus phrase
FORCEP force phrase
FP functional phrase
GB government and
binding (theory)
GNR given non-prominence
rule
GROUNDP ground phrase
HT hanging topic
INDEF indefinite article
INF, inf infinitive
IO indirect object
IR intensive reflexive
IS information structure
L link
LCA linear correspondence
axiom
LCS lexical conceptual
structure
Lex lexicon
LF logical form
LNSR linear nuclear stress rule
 Comparative and Contrastive Studies of Information Structure

LOC locative marker PV preradical vowel

M masculine Q-PTC interrogative particle
NEG negation RC relative clause
NID Northern Italian dialects RD right dislocation
NOM nominative REL relative pronoun,
NSR nuclear stress rule relativisation marker
O object RFQ “Récits du français
OBJ object québécois d’autrefois”
OH Ottawa-Hull Corpus corpus
OM object marker RST restrictor
Op operator S, SBJ subject (person affix)
PART particle SCI subject clitic inversion
PASS passive SG, sg singular
PAUXself post-auxiliary intensive SNSR syntactic nuclear
reflexive stress rule
PCC preferred clause SPEC, Spec specifier
construction SQ sub-question
PERF perfect ST sub-topic
PF perfect; phonetic form SUB subordination marker
PGR primary grammatical SUBJ subject
relation SUP superessive
PL computation of T tail; tense; topic
prosodic trees and t trace
linearisation TC tertium comparationis
PL, Pl plural THM thematic suffix
PNself post-nominal intensive TOP, Top topic, topic feature,
reflexive topic marker
POSS possessive TOPP, TopP functional topic phrase
PRF, PRFV perfective TP tense phrase
PRG progressive V2 verb second
pro pronoun; null pronoun Vé past participle (French)
PRON pronoun Vfin finite verb
PTC particle Vinf infinitival verb
PTCL particle VPself post-verbal intensive
PTCP participle reflexive
 Introduction

Carsten Breul & Edward Göbbel & Alexander Thiel

Bergische Universität Wuppertal

The articles collected in this volume present original comparative and contrastive
research on various aspects of information structure (e.g. topic, focus, contrastivity,
givenness, anaphoricity) as well as on forms and structures whose realisation
depends on information structural factors (e.g. clefts, dislocations, reflexives, null
subjects, prosodic features, interrogatives) in a number of different languages (e.g.
Catalan, English, French, Georgian, German, Hebrew, Hungarian). Each of the
articles emphasises differences or commonalities between the languages under
investigation with respect to the realisation of information structural categories
or with respect to the information structural implications of a given form or
structure. This constitutes the specific comparative-contrastive perspective taken
in this volume, a perspective discussed from a methodological point of view in
the concluding article. The book is motivated by its editors’ and contributors’
conviction that comparative and contrastive research on information structure is
beneficial in two respects: First, it advances our knowledge of and insights into both
language specific and universal aspects of information structure; second, it raises
significant questions as to the formal representation and the functional properties
of information structural categories as well as its location in the architecture of
grammar, i.e. its relation to other components (perhaps modules) of grammar (in
the wide sense of the term). The articles collected here aim to make a substantial
contribution in these respects.
“Contrastive topics and distributed foci as instances of sub-informativity:
A comparison of English and German” is the title of Volker Gast’s contribution.
It presents a detailed elaboration of the notion ‘sub-informativity’ followed by
English/German contrastive analyses that have sub-informativity as their tertium
comparationis. The paper demonstrates clearly that the generation of insights by
contrastive analyses presupposes a well-chosen tertium comparationis. Moreover,
it is the introduction of sub-informativity as an information structural concept
capable of serving this heuristic function that constitutes one of the important
results of the paper.
Sub-informativity is an information structural notion in that it refers to
properties of declarative sentences that depend on properties of the discourse in
 Carsten Breul & Edward Göbbel & Alexander Thiel

which they occur. It is defined by Gast (this volume: Section 3.2) in the following
way: “A declarative sentence S is sub-informative relative to a strategy Q
Â�(containing S) iff S does not answer all questions in Q.” The notion ‘strategy’ here
is borrowed from Büring’s (2003) model of a discourse as a tree whose nodes,
called ‘moves’, consist of explicit or implicit questions or sub-questions and their
answers. A strategy in this model is “[a]ny sub-tree […] rooted in an interrogative
move” (ib.: 518).
Sub-informativity comprises two major types, a focus-related one and a top-
ic-related one; the latter manifests itself in two sub-types, a context-preserving
one and a context-changing one. The examples in (1) (from Gast this volume:
Section 4), where each of the conjoined sentences in B’s answers is sub-informative,
give a sufficiently clear idea of what these distinctions amount to.
(1) a. A: Who read what?
B: John read the bible and Mary read the newspaper.
(focus-related sub-informativity)
b. A: What do your daughters study?
B: My older daughter studies law and my younger daughter studies
history. (topic-related sub-informativity, context-preserving)
c. A: What does your daughter study?
B: My older daughter studies law and my younger daughter studies
history. (topic-related sub-informativity, context-changing)
Gast’s English/German contrastive analyses based on these types of sub-informativity
concern selected lexical indicators (English as for vs. German was … anbetrifft),
selected syntactic indicators (English fronting vs. German movement to the
forefield) and, in greater detail, prosodic indicators. While Gast does not find any
major contrasts for these lexical and syntactic indicators of sub-informativity,1
he identifies a significant contrast regarding prosody. In English, there is an into-
national feature, the fall-rise accent, that can be used to signal incompleteness.
For Gast, incompleteness is a pragmatic notion which subsumes sub-informativity
alongside other categories. That is, in English there is no intonational contour
which is specialised for the expression of sub-informativity or any of its (sub-)
types. German, by contrast, has an intonational feature, the root contour, which is
specialised for the context-changing sub-type of topic-related sub-informativity.
Interestingly, according to Gast (this volume: Section 7.3), it is only in cases
of this latter type that the use of the fall-rise is “virtually obligatory” in English,
the other types of sub-informativity not being restricted to the fall-rise as their

.â•… As far as constituent movement to the left sentence periphery in English compared to
German is concerned, see also Breul (2007).
 Introduction 

�
intonational exponent. Observations like these point to interesting pathways
for further contrastive studies of the mapping between the meaning/function side
of information structural categories and their intonational exponents on the form
side (cf. Breul this volume).
The contribution by Luis López “Givenness and discourse anaphors” basically
reconsiders the traditional information structural category ‘background’. López
sets out from the acclaimed work by Vallduví (1992) and Vallduví & Engdahl
(1996), which reduces the two widely-accepted information structural divisions
topic-comment and focus-(back)ground to one single tripartite division into
link-focus-tail. López argues that Vallduví & Engdahl’s equivalence of destressing
in English and right-dislocation in Catalan, as two different grammatical repre-
sentations of tails, cannot be maintained and he shows that the grammars of the
two languages are sensitive to either givenness or discourse anaphoricity.
From a theoretical point of view, this article is a welcome contribution to the
analysis of information structure, due to its inclusion of anaphoric devices. The
study of anaphora is generally the study of pro-forms (pronouns, reflexives, sense
anaphors) and different types of ellipsis for which an antecedent is mandatory in
the same (complex) sentence or the discourse context. While the relation between
anaphora and information structural categories is generally acknowledged and
sometimes addressed (cf. Bolinger 1979; Tancredi 1992; Williams 1997; Winkler
2005), anaphora has rarely been the target of information structural studies but
has remained the realm of syntactic and semantic studies (presumably due to the
success of Binding Theory; cf. Chomsky 1981; Reinhart 1983). López however
shows that the relation between focus structure and its formal syntactic realisa-
tion (i.e. information packaging) cannot be accounted for without reference to
discourse anaphors.
The main claim is that the grammar of a language may encode either one or
the other category, while some languages may encode both. English is shown to be
sensitive to givenness (cf. Schwarzschild 1999) which is the target of deaccenting
rules. Catalan is shown to be sensitive to discourse anaphors, which are obligatorily
right-dislocated. While a focus may contain given material, discourse anaphors
are outside the focus. The distinction between the two categories and the sensitivity
of a language to one or the other category is achieved by a systematic comparison
of the realisation of the ground (Vallduví’s tail) in English and Catalan. While
English deaccents given material regardless of whether it is part of the focus or
not (hence is oblivious to focus structure), Catalan sentential stress is oblivious to
givenness. Catalan however clitic right-dislocates elements which are not part of
the focus (i.e. discourse anaphors). López also suggests that some languages, such
as German, may be sensitive to both givenness, given material being deaccented,
and discourse anaphors, which are scrambled.
 Carsten Breul & Edward Göbbel & Alexander Thiel

The explanation for the different behaviour of English vs. Catalan is attributed
in part to the way sentential stress assignment works in the two languages and in part
to the timing of stress assignment, linearisation of syntactic structure and prosodic
phrasing in the mapping from syntax to PF. He argues that English stress is sensitive
to syntactic structure, while stress assignment is sensitive to linear order in Catalan.
Ordering stress assignment before linearisation and prosodic structure formation in
English accounts for this language’s sensitivity to givenness. In Catalan stress assign-
ment applies to a linearised string that has also been assigned its prosodic structure
and will therefore accent final given material that has not been right-dislocated.
This article is a fine demonstration of the role a contrastive analysis can play
in grammatical description. It demonstrates that a systematic contrastive analysis
of two languages can bring to light differences that a broad comparative approach
is likely to miss. Vallduví & Engdahl’s approach is a comparative one which tries to
identify different means of expressing the same information structural categories
cross-linguistically. López’ contrastive approach shows that a more fine-grained
analysis of the similarities and differences between two languages can lead to a
completely different conclusion.
In his contribution “Constraints on subject-focus mapping in French and
English: A contrastive analysis”, Knud Lambrecht continues his project of
showing how languages differ in the way they mark information structure by
lexico-grammatical means. In this paper he concentrates on how spoken French
differs from English in grammatically encoding focal subjects in argument-focus
and sentence-focus articulations. Lambrecht’s observations are based on the analysis
of a wide range of attested examples, many of which he presents and discusses in
the present paper.
Speakers of French show a strong tendency (more than 95% of all sentences
examined by Lambrecht) towards using a syntactic pattern that he calls “preferred
clause construction” (PCC). This has the formal make-up clitic pronoun + V +
XP+FOC and serves to avoid focal subjects in preverbal position, an effect of a
language-specific constraint in spoken French (but see also the contribution by
Skopeteas & Fanselow in this volume). One type of construction that targets the
PCC pattern is secondary predication: The logical subject of a proposition (which
would be expressed as the syntactic subject in a canonical SV(O) construction)
appears as the syntactic object of the PCC (XP+FOC in the PCC pattern) and at the
same time functions as the logical subject of the predication expressed by the rest of
the sentence (often a relative clause, a prepositional phrase or an adjective phrase).
Lambrecht’s main concern is to contrast several instances of such secondary
predication constructions of spoken French with their English translational equi�
valents under certain information structurally relevant conditions, notably those
giving rise to argument-focus on the one hand and sentence-focus on the other
 Introduction 

hand. The general picture emerging from these analyses is this: Spoken French
makes use of several non-canonical constructions that all conform to the PCC
pattern but are nevertheless different, while their English counterparts exhibit
canonical SV(O) constituent order throughout, making prosodic adjustments
according to the information structurally relevant conditions. Or, more specifically:
While canonical French SV(O) constructions are inappropriate in those cases
where the subject would be focused, their English canonical SV(O) counterparts
are the ‘normal’ choice, non-canonical English versions being marginal, significantly
less frequent or having a decidedly sub-standard flavour.
To give an example instantiating the argument-focus articulation: The English
version of (2) (Lambrecht’s (19)) was uttered in a restaurant when it came to
choosing an item from the wine list (square brackets indicate focal items; small
caps indicate accented items):
(2) a. I really don’t care. [You] decide.
b. Ça m’est vraiment égal. C’est [vous] qui dcidez.

The French version with canonical SV order, Vous décidez, would only be appro-
priate in a context where the addressee is already a topic under discussion. As far
as English is concerned, the clefted version of (2a), it’s you that decides, would be
marginal in the given context. Although c’est-clefts like the one above are the most
common means of expressing argument-focus articulations in spoken French,
Lambrecht also cites examples which show the avoir-cleft construction (Only [he]
understands me/Y a que [lui] qui me comprend). There are similar constructions in
English as well, but they are judged more or less sub-standard and are used far less
frequently than their French counterparts. Lambrecht mentions rather colloquial
got-constructions like I got proofs dancing in my head, syntactic amalgams like
I have a friend of mine in the history department teaches two courses per semester, or
subject-demoting constructions like We don’t last long with tablecloths in this house
(tablecloths being the logical subject). The function of all of these constructions is
to avoid an unidentifiable or inaccessible referent to be coded as a (sentence-initial)
grammatical subject.
The following example (Lambrecht’s (40)) instantiates the sentence-focus
articulation.
(3) a. A: Dis donc, Bernard!
B: Quoi?
A: [Une drôle de chose] qui m’arrive!
a′. A: #[Une drôle de chose] m’arrive!
b. A: Hey, Bernard!
B: What?
A: [A funny thing]’s happening to me!
 Carsten Breul & Edward Göbbel & Alexander Thiel

The syntax of Une drôle de chose qui m’arrive! (which looks like a truncated cleft of
the type Y a une drôle de chose qui m’arrive!, but may be a construction in its own
right) conforms to the PCC pattern just like (2b) does, but is clearly different from
it. A corresponding canonical SV construction would be inappropriate in French,
but is the normal one to use in English.
Such cross-linguistic differences in grammatically encoding information
structure are viewed by Lambrecht as instantiations of a typological difference
between languages that allow for the co-mapping of subject and focus (e.g. English
and German) and languages that do not (e.g. spoken French and Sesotho).
Diachronically, modern French seems to be on its way towards grammaticalising
this co-mapping constraint.
In “Wh-questions in French and English: Mapping syntax to information
structure”, Paul Boucher addresses the question of why it is that French has so
many syntactically different types of interrogative sentences compared to the
rather sparse inventory of English. Actually, according to Boucher, the rich array
of French interrogatives can be reduced to four basic types: type 1: wh-phrase in
situ, verb in situ; type 2: wh-phrase raised, verb in situ; type 3: wh-phrase raised,
verb raised; type 4: wh-phrase raised + est-ce que, verb in situ. He then goes on to
focus on the apparent optionality of either raising French wh-phrases to the left
sentence periphery or leaving them in situ, that is, more specifically, on the differ-
ence between types 1 and 2. The important point here is that, in contrast to �English,
French wh-phrase in situ interrogatives may be employed as echo questions but
are not restricted to this function: “Type 1 questions may be used, as in English,
as ‘echo questions’ […] or as ‘phatic introductory questions’ […]. Contrary to
English, they may also be used as requests for information.” (Boucher this
volume: Section 1.2).
Making use of insights from the diachrony of French interrogatives on the
one hand and of analyses of the syntax of Romance interrogatives by Poletto &
Pollock (2004, 2009) and Munaro & Pollock (2005) on the other hand, Boucher
proposes that the two types manifest two different syntactic structures that encode
different information structural constraints. Basically, the corresponding two
syntactic structures are argued to differ in the following way: Of three operators
involved in the syntax of interrogatives – the highest ‘disjunction operator’, the
medial ‘existential operator’, the lowest ‘restrictor operator’ – either the highest or
the lowest may have a phonologically overt reflex in French interrogatives (que or
quoi respectively), with the other two having phonological null reflexes. Boucher’s
point is that the syntactic configurations corresponding to these two cases corre-
late with just those information structural constraints that he identifies for type 1
(wh-phrase in situ; verb in situ) and type 2 (wh-phrase raised; verb in situ) in
the descriptive part of the paper: “in both cases, there is a strong dependence
 Introduction 

on contextual grounding, in the first case in order to confirm or complete the

information contained in the presupposition, in the second case in order to call
into question or show surprise relative to the information in the presuppoÂ�sition”
(Boucher this volume: Section 5). By contrast, the syntactic nature of English
wh-phrases precludes a syntactic differentiation such as in French. Consequently,
a sensitivity to information structural factors corresponding to that in French
interrogatives, is not given in English.
Constructions involving intensive reflexives (IRs) such as himself in sentences
like The judge himself could be guilty are the topic of Dana Cohen’s “A comparative
perspective on intensive reflexives: English and Hebrew”. The relevance of IRs for
information structure theory and analysis is due to the fact that they have been
shown to share syntactic and semantic-pragmatic properties with markers of
contrastive focus such as even, only, too, etc. (see Gast 2006; König 1991; Siemund
2000). As concerns the semantic-pragmatic properties, both IRs and contrastive
focus markers trigger interpretation processes which involve the construction of
alternative sets in the sense of, inter alia, Rooth (1992).
Cohen argues that all uses of IRs in both English and Hebrew can be reduced
to a core meaning to the effect that the referent of the antecedent of the IR (and
thus, loosely speaking, the referent of the IR) is compared to the other members of
the alternative set invoked. More specific aspects of this comparison (exclusion,
inclusion, scalarity and any combination of these) are semantically underspecified
and have to be pragmatically inferred – if they are intended to be communicated
at all. The generation of the alternative set is constrained by the type of IR in
terms of morpho-syntactic properties – basically, post-nominal, post-verbal and
post-auxiliary in both English and Hebrew, with the latter language showing
slightly freer ordering options for IRs than English and certain constraints on the
use of the bare or the b- form of IRs specific to Hebrew. The morpho-�syntactic
type of the IR restricts the potential for its referent to scopally interact with other
items. According to Cohen (this volume: Section 4.1), “[t]he interaction of IRs
with scope-related phenomena suggests that scope plays a significant role in
accounting for differences between IRs. Specifically, it is argued that IR scope
affects the determination of the relevant context for set construction and for
comparison.” Consequently, the generation of the specific alternative set is also
due in part to pragmatic inferencing. This line of argumentation – IRs show a
uniform, ‘monosemous’, ‘underspecified’ core meaning (‘comparison’) potentially
specified via implicature – in combination with convincing interpretations and
analyses of examples from both English and Hebrew enables Cohen to integrate
insights and observations from previous studies which, looked at collectively,
show a rather heterogeneous picture in terms of analytical concepts employed
and also a partly contradictory one.
 Carsten Breul & Edward Göbbel & Alexander Thiel

According to Cohen, the specific function of an IR for the information

structure of an utterance is tied to the information structural role of the comparison
set (= alternative set): “Specifically, it is argued that IR scope, through its role
in set construction, signals linking to the prior context via the comparison set,
indicating which information in the utterance serves as a contextual reference
point and how the new information should be incorporated” (Cohen this volume:
Section 4.2). The concrete, contextualised examples which she analyses in this
respect are illuminating and render her implicit generalisations highly interest-
ing for information structure theory – and perhaps even more so the other way
round: It is intriguing to see concepts from information structure theory effec-
tively employed in the explanation of the ‘behaviour’ of IRs.
The import from the comparative perspective taken by Cohen is that English
and Hebrew constructions involving IRs show the same semantic-pragmatic
properties despite contrasts on other levels (lack of analogies in the etymology
and diachrony of IRs; differences in morpho-syntactic requirements, i.e. the lack
in English of the Hebrew opposition between bare and b- IRs). Therefore, Cohen’s
extrapolations in the conclusion of her article are warranted and welcome, since
they are of just the type which allows for falsification by further contrastive (infor-
mation structure) analyses: “The comparison outlined here indicates that the
various components of the analysis differ in their dependence on language-specific
parameters. Extrapolating on this basis, the core function of the IR – triggering
alternatives and comparison – is likely to be exhibited by similar phenomena in
other languages. The status of underspecification, on the other hand, may vary
cross-linguistically, as it is on a cline with lexically-coded meaning. […]” (Cohen
this volume: Section 5).
The contribution by Stavros Skopeteas and Gisbert Fanselow “Focus types
and argument asymmetries: A cross-linguistic study in language production”
examines two asymmetries in the mapping between focus structure and syn-
tactic structure in four languages, namely Georgian, Hungarian, American
English and Québec French. The first asymmetry is the well-known distinction
between identificational focus vs. non-identificational (information) focus,
which has often been claimed to correlate with structural differences across
languages (cf. Kiss 1998; Drubig 2003). Identificational focus is often realised
with non-canonical constituent order (movement to a structural focus posi-
tion) or cleft sentences. Non-identificational focus is generally considered not
to resort to such marked options. The second asymmetry they examine is one
between focused subjects and objects. It has been observed for a number of
languages that focused subjects induce non-canonical structures and/or clefts,
while focused objects are found with canonical constituent order (e.g. in French,
Spanish, West Chadic languages).
 Introduction 

Skopeteas & Fanselow challenge the first claim and provide independent
evidence for the second. By presenting statistical evaluations of semi-spontaneously
produced data, they show that speakers of the four languages select different struc-
tures under identical discourse conditions in spite of the fact that theses languages
allow in principle both marked and unmarked options of syntactic focus realisation.
The method employed, an elicitation task that establishes particular context types
by means of visual stimuli and minimal verbal contributions (e.g. questions),
guarantees that the discourse conditions are the same in the languages analysed.
The tests are restricted to narrow focus.
The results in a nutshell: Georgian allows in situ focus, preverbal focus and
clefting. The statistical evaluation of the production tests reveals that clefting,
though possible, does not occur and that there is an asymmetry both in focus type
and argument type: Identificational focus is more often realised in the preverbal
focus position and focused subjects occur more often in this position than objects.
In Hungarian, focus is always expressed ex situ regardless of focus and argument
type. In American English, identificational focus on subjects induces a low pro-
portion of cleft constructions, while objects are not clefted. In Québec French,
narrow focus on the subject induces a high proportion of cleft constructions.
The merit of the article lies in an integrated explanation of the crosslinguistic
facts. It takes into account both the possible syntactic configurations that can
express the focus structural distinctions and the role prosodic factors play in the
respective languages. The fact that the speakers of a language employ fewer options
than the language in principle allows is attributed to a minimality condition on
language production, which is analogous to Chomsky’s economy condition
on syntactic derivations (Chomsky 1992) and related ‘least effort’ principles in
language processing. The minimality condition states that, if two syntactic con-
structions can be used for the same information structural configuration, a speaker
will choose the syntactically less complex construction. For example, biclausal
constructions like clefts are not used in Georgian and Hungarian because a
syntactically less complex option (reordering) is available. The fact that Hungarian
speakers move both identificational and non-identificational foci to the structural
focus position, while Georgian speakers do so only optionally, is due to the fact
that Hungarian sentential stress is fixed, while in Georgian focus can also be
signalled in situ intonationally.
While Skopeteas & Fanselow reject a biuniqueness relation between focus
type and structural realisation, their statistical data clearly show that identifica-
tional focus and non-identificational focus at least tend to be realised differently.
For example, identificationally focused constituents are realised more frequently
in the preverbal position in Georgian and only identificationally focused subjects
invoke cleft sentences in English. Since in both languages identificational focus
 Carsten Breul & Edward Göbbel & Alexander Thiel

can be expressed in situ, the selection of a marked construction for identificational

focus is attributed to the fact that the focus-presupposition structure differs with
the two focus types. Identificational focus involves the rejection of a part of the
presuppositions of the speaker, while the focus structure is fully predictable in
the case of non-identificational focus. The authors conclude that this is the reason
for the selection of a structure that more fully articulates the focus domain when
focus is identificational.
The contribution by Nicole Hauser-Grüdl with the title “Topicality in L1-ac-
quisition: A contrastive analysis of null subject expressions in child French and
German” explores topic drop, which mainly affects subjects in child language. The
paper pursues two goals: Firstly, it explores the ways in which topic drop dif-
fers from that of adult speech and, secondly, it seeks an explanation for the dif-
ferences manifested by child and adult speakers. To this end, the paper reports
several studies of performance data produced by monolingual and bilingual children
acquiring French and/or German. The results of the studies support a view in
which children between the age of 2;0 and 3;5 years have a different representation
or understanding of topicality from that of their adult counterparts. This differs
from the results of previous work, which either holds that children are not yet
familiar with the pragmatic conditions which lead to topic drop in adult speech,
or hold the opposite view that children are able to differentiate old/topical from
new/focal information at a very early age.
Adult French for example does not have topic drop at all, only omission
of expletives with certain verbs, while in German omission of anaphoric 1st
and 3rd person subject arguments is quite frequent. Child French and German
manifest statistically significant omissions of 1st and sometimes also 2nd person
subjects, while the omission of truly anaphoric 3rd person subjects is much
more restricted.
The statistical analysis of the performance data shows quantitative differences
concerning subject omissions in child German and French for both bilingual and
monolingual children, with a higher rate of omissions in German over the whole
age period examined. Hauser-Grüdl explains that this difference is due to the fact
that in German children use root infinitives much more frequently than in French
at the age of 2;0–2;5 and that in root infinitives the vast majority of subjects are
omitted. The higher rate of subject omissions in German than in French at a later
age (3;0–3;5), however, seems to reflect the fact that the French adult system, with
lexically licensed subject omissions, is easier to acquire than the German one,
which requires both specific syntactic and pragmatic knowledge.
Hauser-Grüdl offers two possible explanations for the fact that children
prefer omission of 1st and sometimes also of 2nd person subjects. One possible
explanation is that in the early stages of language acquisition children interpret
 Introduction 

such pronouns as topics that are permanently present in the discourse context
and therefore represent permanently available referents. This explanation reflects
the view that children have a different understanding of topic from that of adults.
The second possible explanation she offers is that children misinterpret 1st and
2nd person deictic pronouns as anaphoric expressions. This interpretation of the
facts is based on the observation that the use of deictic subject pronouns is more
difficult to learn than that of 3rd person ones. Evidence for the second explanation
comes from the fact that children sometimes use a 2nd person pronoun incor-
rectly to refer to themselves, from certain mismatches in subject-verb agreement
and from omission of 1st person subjects that are not licensed in adult speech
(i.e. in adult German a 1st person omitted subject must be anaphoric).
The contribution by Peter Öhl “Formal and functional constraints on constiÂ�
tuent order and their universality” reconsiders the traditional distinction between
subject-prominent and topic-prominent languages (Li & Thompson 1976) against
the background of recent generative research on the representation of discourse
semantic properties as well as the representation of grammatical relations in
generative grammar. The paper has a comparative-typological orientation, discuss-
ing central cases of the two types of language (e.g. English vs. Japanese, Korean,
Hungarian) with interesting consequences for SOV languages like German, which
cannot readily be classified in terms of subject/topic-prominence.
Li & Thompson’s classical distinction is now generally captured in terms of
whether a language is discourse-configurational, expressing either topic or focus
structurally (Kiss 2001), or whether the syntactic representation of grammatical
relations predominates. Since functional categories play an important role in the
expression of both types of properties, this paper critically evaluates their univer-
sality as well as their necessity for particular languages. In agreement with Kiss
(2001), Öhl argues that languages are neither purely discourse-configurational,
nor purely ‘relational-configurational’. This is due to the fact that the expression
of information structural properties and the syntactic representation of argument
structure are constrained by different principles: functional vs. purely formal ones
(e.g. the existence of a structural subject position and the EPP property typically
associated with it).
Furthermore, there is no complementarity nor any parametric option underlying
the distinction subject- vs. topic-prominence, which is part of his explanation for
the existence of a large number of languages of mixed type. Öhl argues that such
language systems can be captured if many of the functional categories proposed
in the generative literature are not universal: The more parameterised functional
projections are specified in a language, the stricter the word order in that language.
Languages which resort to adjunction have more variable word order possibilities.
Öhl argues and discusses evidence that German has no structural subject position,
 Carsten Breul & Edward Göbbel & Alexander Thiel

a position also defended in work by Haider (1993, 2010) and Sternefeld (2006). He
also presents several arguments that German has no structural topic position. This
language, like many other SOV languages, has productive leftward scrambling.
Allowing free and iterative adjunction, German can encode discourse-functional
constituents without recourse to functional projections. To this end, Öhl critically
evaluates the putative universality of functional projections (cf. Cinque 1998) and
argues that there is a universal inventory of functional categories from which a
particular language selects a subset in the course of language acquisition.
The paper also contains a careful overview of the literature on and discussion
of the information structural category topic, a category notoriously difficult to
define formally. Öhl argues that properties typically associated with topics, like
givenness, specificity, definiteness, have to be considered prototypical rather than
necessary and sufficient conditions for a constituent to be chosen as a sentential
topic. He further suggests that topic and comment should not be considered prim-
itives of information structural categorisation, but should be derived from more
general cognitive principles of perspectivation, which allow speakers to present
constituents in a sequential order based on criteria like point of view, saliency,
scope, subject of predication, and also other factors which have often been claimed
to be hallmarks of topichood (e.g. given/familiar before focal/new).
As a conclusion to the volume, Carsten Breul’s “On the foundations of the
contrastive study of information structure” reflects on the underlying ideas and
the methodological motivation of a decidedly contrastive approach to information
structure and recapitulates some of the results of some of the preceding articles
in the light of his reflections. Putting emphasis on the central notion of tertium
comparationis (TC) and its being or not being consciously incorporated in the
design of a study, he first draws a tentative subdividing line between – more
generally – comparative and – more specifically – contrastive work. As an incentive
for future research in this latter direction, Breul then points out the potential
benefits of heeding rather strictly the demand for a clearly explicated TC (either
on the meaning/function side or on the form side of language) in contrastive stud-
ies in general and in contrastive information structure analysis in particular. Thus
designed, contrastive analysis not only allows for methodologically sound state-
ments about how languages A and B (similarly or differently) express the same
‘facts’ (e.g. information structural configurations), it may also lead the researcher to
critically reconsider underlying concepts she has taken for granted so far. When, for
example, a contrastive analyst chooses to establish the TC on the meaning/function
side, she is supposed to carry out the cross-linguistic comparison on the form side,
after which she may find herself in doubt as to whether a certain concept, such as
‘word’, ‘tense’, or ‘voice’ (which often serve as the starting point for comparison in
typological studies), is actually equally applicable to both languages compared.
 Introduction 

For Breul, the value of contrastive analysis in general lies in its potential to
supply other (theoretical and applied) linguistic disciplines (notably typology,
comparative linguistics in the vein of generative grammar, language teaching and
translation studies) with reliable, ‘pre-processed’ data clear of conceptual entangle-
ments. This also applies on a more specific level to contrastive approaches to issues
in information structure. However, the choice of the theoretical framework for
the analysis may make a difference for the aim of a non-circular establishment of
the TC. According to Breul, Halliday’s (1985/1994: 37) characterisation of ‘theme’,
for instance, conflates formal and functional aspects, while Lambrecht’s (1994)
categories such as ‘identifiability’ or ‘activation’ – being defined in terms of cognitive
states – are independent of the categories used for linguistic description. Thus they
may serve as a TC on the meaning/function side in a contrastive analysis of how
individual languages vary in formally reflecting a given (cognitive) configuration.
Breul also provides an example of how to solve the operability problem arising
from the purely cognitive nature of such categories, viz. how to detect comparable
information structural configurations.
Turning to a TC established on the form side, he states that only those forms
and structures may be so used that are equivalently present in both languages. This
could be warranted by assuming universal syntactic features and principles, which
become manifest as syntactic operations or constructions (e.g. cleft constructions)
that can be observed in both languages compared. This would yield a formal TC
against which cross-linguistic differences or commonalities in meaning/function
can be assessed, as it is exemplified with recourse to English and French cleft
constructions from Lambrecht’s contribution to the volume.
In a final, relativising step, Breul concedes that it is probably not possible for
all research questions in the domain of information structure to perfectly meet
the requirements he postulates, especially when different aspects of meaning have
to be kept apart. Yet, this is not considered to pose a threat to his central claim
that the necessity to contemplate on a suitable TC when planning and conducting
contrastive analyses will advance our understanding of the concepts involved.

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 Contrastive topics and distributed foci
as instances of sub-informativity
A comparison of English and German

Volker Gast
Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

This programmatic study offers a comparison of the lexical, syntactic and

prosodic devices used in English and German to encode the information
structural category of ‘sub-informativity’, which subsumes occurrences of
contrastive topics and of distributed (multiple) foci. Sentences are called
‘sub-informative’ if they answer the current ‘question under discussion’ only
partially. Two major types of sub-informativity are distinguished, (i) focus-related
sub-informativity (distributed foci) and (ii) topic-related sub-informativity.
Topic-related sub-informativity is further sub-categorized according to the
parameter ‘context-changing’ vs. ‘context-preserving’. While no major differences
between English and German can be identified in the lexical or syntactic marking
of sub-informativity, there seems to be a relatively clear contrast in the domain of
prosodic marking: While German has a contour specialized for ‘context-changing
(topic-related) sub-informativity’ (the ‘root contour’), English has no such
specialized tune and uses the functionally very general fall-rise contour in most
of the contexts under discussion. In addition to providing a comparative survey
of the domain under investigation, the chapter is intended as a case study dealing
with central challenges of contrastive information structure analysis, e.g. the
question of how comparability can be established and what type of generalization
should be aimed at.

1.â•… Introduction

Information structure has not so far been among the topics that have been
�prominently discussed in contrastive studies of English and German.1 Broadly

.â•… This paper is a result of a project entitled ‘Umfassende Bestandsaufnahme, Beschreibung

und Erklärung wesentlicher Kontraste zwischen den Strukturen des Englischen und des
Deutschen’, funded by the German Science Foundation (DFG) and granted to E. König and
the author of this paper. The financial support from this institution is gratefully acknowledged.
 Volker Gast

speaking, three types of expressive devices for the encoding of information struc-
tural categories can be distinguished: (i) lexical devices, (ii) syntactic devices and
(iii) prosodic devices. Among these, it is probably the class of ‘lexical devices’ that
has received most attention in the relevant literature. For instance, König’s (1982)
contrastive investigation of focus particles in English and German deals with an
entire lexico-grammatical sub-system relating to, and interacting with, informa-
tion structure. Breul (2008) provides a comparison of the way the information
structural category of ‘identifiability’ is lexicalized in English and German, deal-
ing with explicit topic exponents of the type as for and definite articles. As far as
the syntactic devices are concerned, some highly pertinent work has been done in
the past few years (e.g. Doherty 2005; Frey 2005, Molnár & Winkler forthcoming
on matters of topic-worthiness/topicalization and leftward movement). The third
type of expressive device – prosodic means of encoding information structure –
has, to the best of my knowledge, not so far been studied in an English-German
contrastive perspective.2 Note that the disregard for information structure in
contrastive linguistics is also mirrored in the fact that none of the relevant survey
monographs contains a section on information structure (e.g. Burgschmidt &
Götz 1974; Hawkins 1986, König & Gast 2009).3
There are several reasons for this neglect of ‘contrastive information structure
analysis’. First, the study of information structure was still in its infancy in the
1960s and 1970s, when English-German comparison flourished, at that time carried
by the wish to improve foreign language teaching. A second problem probably
concerns the conceptual basis of comparison (cf. also Breul 2008: 266–7). As any
other type of comparative investigation, contrastive studies need to be based on a
more or less clearly delimited tertium comparationis. Ideally, such a ‘third of com-
parison’ should be defined on a purely notional basis. It constitutes the invariant
in the process of language comparison, while variation is expected in the formal
means used to encode the relevant categories. In the case of information struc-
tural categories, such a tertium comparationis is very hard to define, even for basic

I would like to thank the editors of this volume, Florian Haas, Martin Schäfer, an anonymous
referee and all participants of the conference on ‘Contrastive Information Structure Analysis’,
held at the University of Wuppertal on March 18–19, 2008, for critical comments and helpful
suggestions.
.â•… For general comparisons of English and German prosody, see Sculfill (1982) and Markus
(1992, 2006).
.â•… The comparative analysis of information structure in English and German is one of the
primary objectives pursued by the project mentioned in Note 1.
 Contrastive topics and distributed foci as instances of sub-informativity 

notions such as ‘topic’, ‘focus’, and ‘contrast’. The difficulties in defining the notion of
‘topic’ have been commented on, among others, by Reinhart (1981) and Polinsky
(1999) (cf. also Jacobs 2001: 643):
Although the linguistic role of the relation topic of is widely acknowledged, there
is no accepted definition for it, and not even full agreement on the intuitions of
what counts as topic (Reinhart 1981: 56).
Linguists have essentially given up on a rigorous definition of topics – almost
everyone […] mentions the aboutness condition and then moves on to more
mundane matters of topichood or topicalization (Polinsky 1999: 572).

Related to the problem of adequately defining a tertium comparationis is a third

one, which concerns the form-to-function mapping in the domain of informa-
tion structure: This mapping is typically many-to-many. Therefore, the definition
of notional categories with the help of formal ones is virtually impossible. This is
illustrated in Table 1.

Table 1.╇ Many-to-many relationships in information structure

notional categories formal categories

uniqueness definiteness (e.g. def. article)

givenness deaccentuation
contrast fronting (Engl.)
new information accentuation
… …

The notion of ‘uniqueness’ in the top left cell of the table is associated with the
linguistic category of definiteness on the right (cf. also Breul 2008 and references
cited there).4 However, definiteness is not associated with ‘uniqueness’ alone but
also indicates ‘givenness’. Givenness, in turn, is usually marked by deaccentuation,
but is also associated with specific syntactic operations such as fronting in English
(cf. Birner & Ward 1998 and Section 6 below). But then, fronting also requires
contrast, which in turn is indicated by accentuation, and so on indefinitely. This
situation makes it very hard to base any notional category of information struc-
ture on formal distinctions found in natural languages, as is commonly done in

.â•… Breul (2008) solves the problem of finding a tertium comparationis by basing it on a
notional category (‘identifiability’), but using a formal one (as for-expressions) as a diagnostic
for identifying instances of identifiability.
 Volker Gast

linguistic typology (cf. Lazard 1999, 2001 for a description of such a procedure
based on ‘arbitrary conceptual frames’; see also Haspelmath 2008, Gast forthcoming
for discussion).
This study intends to make a contribution to contrastive information structure
analysis by focusing on a specific aspect of information structure in English and
German, i.e. the encoding of sub-informativity, which subsumes occurrences of
contrastive topics5 and of distributed (multiple) foci (cf. Section 4 on the term
‘distributed foci’). Contrastive topics can be illustrated with the question-answer
pair in (1). Each of the sentences in B’s answer contains a topic (my older daughter,
my younger daughter), and the two topics stand in a (paradigmatic) relationship of
contrast to each other:
(1) A: What do your daughters do?
B: [My older daughter]CT studies law, and
[my younger daughter]CT studies history.

One of the most prominent features of examples like (1) is that the answer
given by B is made up of more than one sentence, and that A’s question is only
answered by the conjunction of these sentences. We will say that elements of
such ‘conjoined answers’ or ‘answer sets’ – ‘partial answers’, as they may be called –
are sub-informative relative to the ‘question under discussion’ (What do your
daughters do?). Sub-informativity can also be observed in question-answer pairs
like the one in (2), which provides an example of a ‘distributed focus’:
(2) A: Who danced with whom?
B: Fred danced with Mary, and Bill danced with Jane.

The present study will investigate the way sub-informativity is expressed in �English
and German at different levels of the lexico-grammatical system. The discussion
starts in Section 2 with a few terminological remarks. Section 3 introduces the
concept of ‘sub-informativity’, which functions as the tertium comparationis of
this study. Section 4 distinguishes several types of sub-informativity. There are
two major types (‘focus-related’ and ‘topic-related sub-informativity’) and two
sub-types of ‘topic-related sub-informativity’ (‘context-preserving’ and ‘con-
text changing’). Sections 5 and 6 provide a comparison of the most central lexi-
cal (Section 5) and syntactic markers (Section 6) of sub-informativity in English

.â•… The notion ‘contrastive topic’ is widely used in research on information structure (see e.g.
Lambrecht 1994: 291–5; Erteschik-Shir 2007: 48ff.). The various conceptions of this notion
differ considerably, however. The concept underlying the present study will be explicated in
Section 3.1. It is mainly based on the work done by Jacobs (1982, 1996, 1997), Krifka (1994,
1998, 2007) and Büring (1994, 1997, 2003).
 Contrastive topics and distributed foci as instances of sub-informativity 

and German. Only minor contrasts can be identified in these domains. In Section 7,
the most important prosodic devices for marking sub-informativity are discussed,
i.e. the fall-rise contour in English and the ‘root contour’ in German. It is shown
that they are not equivalent in terms of their information structural appropri-
ateness conditions, and that the German root contour is used only in specific
instances of sub-informativity, i.e. in ‘context-changing’ ones. Section 8 concludes
with a brief summary and some general remarks on methodological problems of
contrastive information structure analysis.

2.â•… Terminological remarks on information structural categories

The notorious difficulties of defining information structural notions such as

‘contrast’, ‘focus’ and ‘topic’ have been mentioned already. With respect to the
notion of ‘topic’, Jacobs (2001) has shown that at least part of the problem origi-
nates from the fact that this notion is not a monolithic concept but comprises
a number of information structural properties associated with the relevant con-
stituents. Accordingly, he claims that topicality is in fact a prototypical notion that
varies along four major dimensions: (i) ‘informational separation’,6 (ii) ‘(semantic)
predication’,7 (iii)  ‘addressation’8 and (iv) ‘frame-setting’.9 More recently, Krifka
(2008) has argued that topicality can be captured in terms of only two dimensions,
which he calls ‘addressation’ (following Jacobs) and ‘delimitation’. Delimitation is
similar to Jacobs’ parameter of ‘frame-setting’, but is defined more broadly (cf. also
Krifka & Féry 2008). It concerns the fact “that the current contribution to the CG
[common ground] is not the full contribution that may be expected at the current
point in conversation” (Krifka 2008: 3). Accordingly, topicality is associated with
two functions: (i) the identification of an ‘address’, i.e. a point of orientation at

.â•… “In (X Y), X is informationally separated from Y iff the semantic processing of utterances
of (X Y) involves two steps, one for X and one for Y” (Jacobs 2001: 645).
.â•… “In (X Y), X is the semantic subject and Y the semantic predicate iff (a) X specifies a vari-
able in the semantic valency of an element in Y, and (b) there is no Z such that (i) Z specifies
a variable in the semantic valency of an element in Y and (ii) Z is hierarchically higher in
semantic form than X” (Jacobs 2001: 647).
.â•… “In (X Y), X is the address for Y iff X marks the point in the speaker–hearer knowledge
where the information carried by Y has to be stored at the moment of the utterance of (X Y)”
(Jacobs 2001: 650).
.â•… “In (X Y), X is the frame for Y iff X specifies a domain of (possible) reality to which the
proposition expressed by Y is restricted” (Jacobs 2001: 656).
 Volker Gast

which information is retrieved or stored, and (ii) the delimitation of an assertion

to a given conceptual or predicational domain.
Given that these functions are clearly different (though closely related, cf.
Krifka 2008), they need to be kept apart. In what follows, I will reserve the term
‘topic’ for referential expressions that function as an ‘address’ in the ‘common ground
management’. In other words, ‘topic’ will be used more or less synonymously
with what is often called an ‘aboutness topic’ (e.g. Krifka 2007). Unless specified
otherwise, topics will be assumed to be restricted to a single sentence, i.e. they
are ‘sentence topics’ (rather than discourse topics). Expressions that serve the
function of delimitation, in the sense of Krifka (2008), can be called ‘restrictors’.
The examples in (3)–(5) illustrate that the function of a topic and that of a restrictor
are, in principle, independent of each other. Constituents may be topics without
being restrictors (cf. (3)), they may be restrictors without being topics (cf. (4)),
and they may be both topics and restrictors (cf. (5)):10
(3) Constituent is a topic (t) but not a restrictor
A: What about Bill? What did he want to do?
B: [Bill]T wanted to go to a pub and have a beer.
(4) Constituent is a restrictor (rst) but not a topic
A: How is Bill doing?
B: [Financially]RST heT is doing fine….
(5) Constituent is both a topic and a restrictor
A: How are your parents doing?
B: [My father]T/RST is doing fine, but
[my mother]T/RST had an operation yesterday.

What restrictors and contrastive topics have in common is that they are, in a way
to be made more explicit below, ‘sub-informative’. Given that ‘sub-informativity’
will function as the tertium comparationis of this study, much of what is said will
be applicable to contrastive topics and restrictors alike, but the discussion will be
restricted to the former type of expression.
The terms ‘contrast’ and ‘focus’ are no less difficult to capture. ‘Focus’ is some-
times used for “that portion of a proposition that cannot be taken for granted at the
time of speech” (Lambrecht 1994: 207), i.e. it is regarded as a relational antonym
of ‘topic’, thus corresponding to what is called ‘comment’ in other traditions (e.g.
Hockett 1958). Other authors (most notably those in the tradition of Rooth 1985)
regard ‘being in focus’ as indicating “the presence of alternatives that are relevant

.â•… Topics that are also restrictors are regarded as contrastive topics by Krifka (2008).
 Contrastive topics and distributed foci as instances of sub-informativity 

for the interpretation of linguistic expressions” (Krifka 2007: 18). In the present

study, the term ‘focus’ will be used in the sense of Lambrecht (1994). Given that in
this tradition, foci specify a value for some variable in an open proposition, they are
inherently (though to varying degrees) contrastive, as they are always opposed to
possible alternatives from the discourse environment. However, ‘being in focus’
and ‘contrasting with a (set of) alternative value(s)’ are not synonymous, as expres-
sions that are not in focus may also contrast with sets of alternatives, as is the case
with contrastive topics. Moreover, the term ‘focus’ is here regarded as a function
of the proposition (‘x is the focus of π’), whereas ‘contrast’ operates in a domain
higher than (and perhaps independent of) the proposition. As Molnár & Winkler
(forthcoming) point out, ‘contrast’ is an (at least) two-dimensional concept having
to do with both ‘highlighting’ and the establishment of ‘coherence’ in discourse.
To sum up, we will use ‘topic’ and ‘focus’ (basically) in the sense of Lambrecht
(1994), i.e. as functions of the proposition, while ‘contrast’ is a relation holding
between elements of a given ‘universe of discourse’. Topics are contingently con-
trastive, foci necessarily so. Even though I will not distinguish different degrees of
contrast (see e.g. Molnár 2006), it is obvious that the relation of contrast holding
between discourse entities can be more or less explicit, and more or less salient.

3.â•… Contrastive topics, distributed foci and sub-informativity

3.1â•… Three theories of contrastive topicicality

We will start our discussion with a brief review of three of the most influential
conceptions of ↜‘contrastive topicality’, i.e. the ones of Krifka (1994, 1998, 2007),
Jacobs (1982, 1996, 1997) and Büring (1994, 1997, 2003). While being largely
compatible with each other, these theories exhibit some non-trivial differences,
e.g. with respect to the question of whether or not they subsume distributed foci
under this term. In order to avoid terminological confusion, a new term will be
introduced in Section 3.2 (‘sub-informativity’), which applies to both contrastive
topics in a narrow sense and distributed foci.
Krifka (1994, 1998, 2007) regards ‘contrastive topics’ as constituents with a
(prosodically realized) focus feature – where ‘focus’ is interpreted in the tradi-
tion of Rooth (1985), i.e. as indicating the presence of alternatives – that have
been topicalized as a result of movement to the specifier position of CP (‘Spec-CP
movement’; cf. also Frey 1993 for this operation). He calls this type of movement
‘contrastive topicalization’. Contrastive topics are thus regarded as topics that stand
in a paradigmatic relation of contrast to some alternative value from the discourse
environment (cf. also Erteschik-Shir 2007 for this view of ‘contrastive topicality’).
 Volker Gast

On this analysis, contrastive topicality is regarded as a property of constituents –

in (6), [sister] and [brother] (prosodic information is disregarded here):11
(6) A: What do your siblings do?
B: [My [sister]Focus]Topic [studies Medicine]Focus,and
[my [brother]Focus]Topic is [working on a freight ship]Focus.
 (Krifka 2007: 44)

A different approach is taken by Jacobs (1982, 1996, 1997), who uses the term
‘i-topicalization’12 for (the German counterparts of) configurations like those
in  (6). ‘I-topicalization’ is regarded as “a kind of contrastive topicalization in
German” (Jacobs 1997:  91). However, ‘i-topicalization’ differs from ‘contrastive
topicality’ as conceived of by Krifka in some respects. First, it does not only apply
to topics, but also to non-referential expressions like modal operators, as in (7)
(‘√’ and ‘ \’ indicate pitch movement; cf. Section 7):
(7) Man √muss das Buch \nicht mögen, aber man \kann.
one ╇ must the book ╇↜渀屮not like but one ╇↜can
‘You don’t have to like the book, but you can.’ (Jacobs 1997: 122)

A second important difference between Jacobs (1997) and Krifka (1998) is

that Jacobs regards i-topicalization as a sentence- or utterance-level property:
“i-topicalization reflects the presence of an illocutionary operator inducing predica-
tion and certain restrictions on information structure” (Jacobs 1997: 91). In other
words, the semantic effect of i-topicalization cannot be determined by looking at
the relevant constituents alone but is ‘computed’ at a higher level of interpretation.
The question of how exactly i-topicalization is interpreted takes us to the most
elaborate semantic theory of ‘contrastive topicality’ to date, i.e. the one proposed
by Büring (1994, 1997, 2003).
According to Büring (2003), contrastive topics indicate the presence of
open questions (with specific properties) in the discourse environment. Büring’s
ana�lysis of contrastive topics is based on a hierarchical model of discourse which
is inspired by a conception of discourse developed by Roberts (1996), and which
makes use of the notational device of a ‘d(iscourse)-tree’ (cf. Diagram 1, from
Büring 2003: 516). The highest level entity in a d-tree is a ‘discourse’. A discourse

.╅ In terms of Krifka (2008), contrastive topics can be regarded as constituents whose
denotations serve the function of both ‘addressation’ and ‘delimitation’: They break down a
given (referential) topic (an address) into ‘sub-topics’, so that different comments can be made
about each of these sub-topics; cf. Note 10.
.â•… ‘I’ stands for ‘intonation’, and ‘i-topicalization’ contrasts with ‘s-topicalization’ (‘s’ for
Germ. Stellung ‘position(ing)’).
 Contrastive topics and distributed foci as instances of sub-informativity 

is made up of questions (which may be implicit) and answers to those questions

(cf. also the quaestio-model of Klein & Stutterheim 1987). D-trees abide by certain
well-formedness conditions such as ‘Informativity’ (“Don’t say known things,
don’t ask for known things!”) and ‘Relevance’ (“Stick to a question until it is
sufficiently resolved!”).

discourse

question question

…
subq subq subq subq

answer answer subsubq subsubq answer

answer answer

Diagram 1.╇ Büring’s (2003) D(iscourse)-trees

Each node in a d-tree is called a ‘move’, and “[a]ny sub-tree of a d-tree which is
rooted in an interrogative move is a strategy” (Büring 2003: 518). An example of a
‘strategy’ is given in Diagram 2 (from Büring 2003: 520).13

Who ate what?

What did Fred eat? What did Mary eat? What did...

FCT ate the F. MCT ate the F. …

Diagram 2.╇ An example of a ‘strategy’

The assertion Fred ate the beans at the left terminal node serves as an answer to the
question immediately dominating it, i.e. What did Fred eat (the ‘question under
discussion’, or QUD). In the example given in Diagram 2, this sentence answers
only one of the questions in the ‘strategy’, which is rooted in the question Who
ate what?. This question dominates other ‘sub-questions’ in addition to What did
Fred eat?, e.g. What did Mary eat?. According to Büring (2003), contrastive topic

.â•… Note that ‘fred’ and ‘mary’ are regarded as contrastive topics by Büring (2003), hence the
subscript ‘ct’. In the present study they do not qualify as topics, but are regarded as ‘distributed
foci; cf. the following discussion.
 Volker Gast

marking on Fred (in Fred ate the beans) indicates that this sentence does not pro-
vide a complete answer to the root question (Who ate what), i.e. there are other
sub-questions that need to be addressed. The constituent carrying a contrastive
topic accent (Fred) is the one distinguishing the relevant sub-questions from each
other (Fred, Mary). Accordingly, the sentence [Fred]CT ate the [beans]F indicates
that there is a question of the form ‘xCT ate the yF’ in the strategy to which it does not
provide an answer. In this framework, contrastive topic marking is thus regarded
as a relation between an assertion (Fred ate the beans) and the strategy containing
that assertion (i.e. the strategy rooted in the question Who ate what?).
According to the definitions adopted in this study, the examples discussed by
Büring (1997, 2003) do not contain topics but should be regarded as answers to
distributed (multiple) wh-questions (cf. Note 13 and Section 4). The question arises
whether these types of constituents should be included in a discussion of ‘con-
trastive topicality’ at all. While there are clear differences between the two types
of phenomena (cf. Jacobs 1997: Section 2.3.2 for discussion), they are nonetheless
clearly related, not least in terms of their prosodic properties, and will therefore
be taken into consideration. The introduction of the more general concept of
‘sub-informativity’ in the next section will allow us to determine both the common
denominator of distributed foci and contrastive topics, and the differences between
them: Both types of constituents are ‘sub-informative’, but they occur in different
types of discourse environments.

3.2â•… Sub-informativity
As the brief review of different conceptions of ‘contrastive topicality’ has shown,
this term can be interpreted as a property of constituents (‘constituent x is a
contrastive topic’, cf. Krifka 1998), as a property of sentences or utterances (‘this
sentence/utterance contains an illocutionary operator indicating i-topicalization/
contrastive topicalization’, cf. Jacobs 1997), or as a relation between an utterance
and the strategy containing that utterance (cf. Büring 2003). The following discus-
sion will largely be based on Büring’s (2003) analysis, even though his notion of
‘contrastive topic’ will be reinterpreted. Büring’s theory has the advantage of making
reference to higher-level entities (namely, discourse-related ones) and thus pro-
vides a reasonable basis for a comparative study, since discourse situations with
specific properties (‘d-trees’) are easily reproducible across languages. Moreover,
it allows us to abstract away from the type and locus of encoding (lexical material,
constituents, syntactic operations, prosody, etc.), and thus to determine the range
of variation found in the formal encoding of the relevant concepts in the languages
under comparison.
As has been shown by Büring (1997, 2003), the most important property of
sentences with contrastive topics (or distributed foci) is that they are, in some way,
 Contrastive topics and distributed foci as instances of sub-informativity 

‘sub-informative’ relative to the strategy they are contained in, insofar as they leave
open questions. The notion of ‘sub-informativity’ will be used as the basis of our
comparison. It is defined as follows:

(8) A declarative sentence S is sub-informative relative to a strategy Q (containing S)

iff S does not answer all questions in Q.

The notion of ‘sub-informativity’ is maximally inclusive insofar as it covers both

sentences with distributed foci and ones with ‘contrastive topics’ in a more narrow
sense. This difference will be used as a first parameter in the typology of sub-
informativity presented in the next section.

4.â•… Types of sub-informativity

Two major types of sub-informativity can be distinguished. The first type is found
in sentences with ‘distributed foci’. Such sentences are answers to questions con-
taining more than one wh-pronoun (‘matching questions’ in terms of Krifka 2001).
I use the term ‘distributed foci’ rather than ‘multiple foci’ because such sentences
can be analyzed as containing a single focus which is distributed over several
constituents, rather than containing several foci. Consider (9):

(9) A: Who read what?

B: John read the bible and Mary read the newspaper.

One way of looking at this question-answer pair is to regard it as containing two

foci, each of them corresponding to one of the wh-pronouns (who, what). How-
ever, from the perspective of the model of discourse adopted in the present study it
is preferable to regard such sentences as having only a single focus (cf. also Krifka
2001: 309–312), and “to assume that the background is a function over pairs (or
triples, quadruples, …), with the domain defined as the Cartesian products of the
domains of the question constituents” (Krifka 2001: 310). In cases such as (9) the
focus thus corresponds to pairs of elements like 〈John, bible〉 and 〈Mary, news-
paper〉, but it is still a single focus in each case. The domain is the set {〈a,b〉 | a ∈
[[person]], b ∈ [[text]]}. Questions like the one in (9) and the corresponding
answers can be rephrased using a single wh-pronoun (which [pairs]) as illustrated
in (10):

(10) Question:
Which pairs 〈x,y〉 are contained in the extension of the predicate read?
Answer:
The extension of the predicate read contains the pairs 〈John, bible〉
and 〈Mary, newspaper〉
 Volker Gast

‘Binary foci’ such as 〈John, bible〉 are generally ‘distributed’ over (at least) two con-
stituents, hence the term ‘distributed foci’. The type of sub-informativity associated
with distributed foci as in (9) will be called ‘focus-related sub-informativity’. It is
not primarily a result of ‘imperfect common ground management’ (as in cases of
topic-related sub-informativity, cf. below), but of the fact that natural language
does not normally provide for ‘relational’ (i.e. more than unary) wh-pronouns and
corresponding foci.14 Distributed foci give rise to sub-informativity insofar as each
one of the answers given in examples like (9) above is sub-informative relative to
the superordinate question Who read what?.
In a second type of sub-informativity, more than one topic-comment rela-
tion is established. This type will be called ‘topic-related sub-informativity’.
Topic-related sub-informativity arises under one of two conditions. First, there may
be a mismatch between the background assumptions made by the interlocutors
involved; and second, the interlocutors may have the same propositional back-
ground, but the question under discussion may be phrased in such a way that it
cannot be answered in a single sentence. Instances of the first type will be called
‘context-changing’ and instances of the second type ‘context-preserving’ cases of
sub-informativity.
Let us start with the second case, where both speakers share (more or less) the
same propositional background, but one of the interlocutors phrases a question
in such a way that a single answer is not possible, i.e. s/he establishes a discourse
topic about which no single piece of information can be given. A relevant example
is given in (11) (= (1)):
(11) A: What do your daughters study?
B: My older daughter studies law and my younger daughter studies history.

Speaker A is (or at least may be) aware that B’s daughters do not study the same
subject. However, the two questions are ‘compressed’ into one. They could be
asked separately, but more ‘communicative effort’ would have to be spent. The
‘sub-informativity’ of each of the answers given by B is thus anticipated and in fact
provoked by A.
This is different in ‘context-changing’ instances of sub-informativity, where the
propositional backgrounds of the interlocutors differ, and the common ground is
actively modified by one of the speakers. This type of context is illustrated in (12):
(12) A: What does your daughter study?
B: My older daughter studies law, and my younger daughter studies history.

.â•… Note that the adverb respectively can be used in order to express distributed foci in a
single sentence (with conjoined NPs), e.g.: The cups and saucers cost £5 and £3 respectively
(Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, s.v. respectively).
 Contrastive topics and distributed foci as instances of sub-informativity 

Speaker A is not aware that speaker B has two daughters. Accordingly, the infor-
mation structure of B’s utterance is not merely a reflex of the discourse structure
imposed by A; rather, B actively modifies the propositional background by intro-
ducing a new ‘sub-topic’ (my older daughter). The entire utterance establishes a new
‘super-topic’ (my [two] daughters). The difference between ‘context-preserving’ and
‘context-changing’ instances of sub-informativity can thus be described as follows:
In context-preserving cases a given set of topics is under discussion, but is sum-
marized under a single term (e.g. ‘your daughters’ = {‘your older daughter’, ‘your
younger daughter’}, cf. (11)), while in context-changing cases a new set of topics is
introduced by actively modifying the common ground (e.g. ‘my daughters’ = {‘my
older daughter’, ‘my younger daughter’} instead of ‘my daughter’, cf. (12)).
As will be seen below, the distinction between context-changing and context-
preserving topics is relevant to a comparison of English and German, as the two
languages differ in the way they encode these functions prosodically (cf. Section 7).
The three types of ‘sub-informativity’ introduced in this section are summarized
in Diagram 3:

sub-informativity

focus-related topic-related

context-preserving context-changing

Diagram 3.╇ Types of sub-informativity

We will now turn to the main topic of this study, i.e. a comparison of the lexical,
syntactic and prosodic means of indicating sub-informativity in English and
German (Sections 5–7).

5.â•… Lexical indicators of sub-informativity

English has a number of lexical devices that are commonly regarded as explicit
topic exponents, e.g. as for, speaking of and regarding. Some relevant examples are
given in (13)–(15):
(13) As for external funding, Smith has a grant application pending.
 (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 1371)
(14) Any noise it made was lost in the wind. Speaking of the wind, it was getting
stronger and I was getting colder. [BNC A6T]
(15) Regarding training, the document said that food business operators must ensure
that food handlers are fully trained or supervised … [BNC A0C]
 Volker Gast

The question arises to what extent these lexical devices can be regarded as indica-
tors of sub-informativity. We will consider the most prominent relevant marker of
English, i.e. as for (cf. also Breul 2008). The main condition that must be met for a
constituent to be accompanied by as for is that it has to be ‘contextually accessible’
(cf. Lambrecht 1994: 152):
… the phrase as for NP (as well as similar phrases in other languages) can
be appropriately used only if the NP referent is already a potential topic in the
discourse at the time the phrase is used, i.e. the referent is contextually accessible.

In the major reference grammars of English, as for is described as a ‘resumptive’

topic marker: It is said to have “the meaning of ‘returning to the question of ’”
(Quirk et al. 1985: 706/7), and to “[indicate] a change of topic, typically to some-
thing that has been mentioned earlier” (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 1371).
According to the descriptions provided above, as for is not an indicator of
sub-informativity, but one of ‘topic resumption’ (and, hence, topic shift). However,
there is a close relationship between this function and the one of contrastive topi-
cality: as for is typically used in contexts in which a given sub-topic is highlighted,
e.g. in the second (or third etc.) member of a set of sub-informative sentences. For
instance, (13) above would typically be used in a context in which the ‘scientific
activities’ of Smith are under discussion, i.e. there is a strategy rooted in a question
like (16), with sub-questions like those in (17):
(16) What news are there concerning Smith?

(17) SQ1: What news are there concerning the book he was writing?
SQ2: What news are there concerning external funding?

Smith functions as a ‘discourse topic’, i.e. as an ‘address’ in a set of sentences covering

a certain stretch of discourse. Each of the sub-topics relating to Smith (his book,
his projects, etc.) is therefore implicitly given (‘accessible’) at the time it is taken
up explicitly. In other words, each of the sub-topics is resumptive. An attested
example illustrating the resumptiveness of sub-topics is given in (18):
(18) United nearly drew first blood, but they fell apart in the second half. Pompey
cruised home with [3 goals]T. [The first Ø]ST1 was a real horror story for Oxford
full-back, Les Robinson, who scored one of the own goals of the season. There
was nothing United could do about [the second Ø] ST2; a great piece of football
skill from Alan McLoughlin. [As for [the third Ø] ST3], well that possibly should
have been stopped. [BNC, spoken]

The main topic of this passage is the ‘three goals’. This topic is broken down into
three sub-topics, i.e. each individual goal. The ‘root question’ of this strategy can
be phrased as ‘What were the three goals like?’, and it is answered in terms of three
 Contrastive topics and distributed foci as instances of sub-informativity 

assertions, each of which is sub-informative relative to the root question. In the

description of the three goals there is an (inherent) element of ‘contrast’. The third
goal – which is introduced by as for – moreover contrasts with the other sub-topics
in being the only one that “possibly should have been stopped”.
Even though as for is basically a ‘resumptive topic marker’, it thus stands in
a particularly close relationship to sub-informativity, as topic resumption is typi-
cally (though not necessarily) found in contexts of sub-informativity. A number of
similar (though not fully equivalent) operators can be found in German (cf. Breul
2008). The most prominent one is probably was … anbetrifft. Like as for, it is basi-
cally a ‘resumptive topic marker’, but it is most often used in combination with
late-coming members of sets of contrastive topics. The following example from the
IDS-corpus illustrates this. The main (discourse) topic of this passage can be called
‘current trends in drapery’. This topic is split up into two sub-topics, i.e. ‘material’
and ‘design’. The first part of the paragraph in (19) (D1) deals with ‘material’ and
the second (D2) with ‘design’:15

(19) [Im Kommen sind körnige [Stoffe]CT mit leichten Strukturen, Mischgewebe
und teilweise sogar Glanzstoffe. Sie sind durchwegs leicht und weich,
angenehm anzufassen und zu tragen. Neben reiner Baumwolle kommen
Mischungen aus Cotton und Polyester, Cotton und Polyamid und vor allem
auch Leinen-Baumwoll-Mischungen. Nach wie vor überwiegen absolut
bügelfreie Hemden.]D1 [[Was [die Designs]CT anbetrifft], überwiegen bei der
Business-Line Unis, Faux-Unis und kleine Musterungen. Eine kleine
Stickerei auf der Brusttasche, der elegante Schnitt und vorwiegend klassische
Kragenformen. Kent-Kragen sind wieder im Kommen, «Button Down» ist
nach wie vor stark vertreten und vereinzelt wird das Bild abgerundet durch
den Haifischkragen.]D2

Just like the ‘third goal’ in the English example in (18) above, the topic ‘design’ is
both resumptive and contrastive. It is resumptive insofar as ‘design’ is one aspect
of the super-topic ‘trends in drapery’, and it is contrastive because it stands in a
paradigmatic relation to the other sub-topic (‘material’). Was … anbetrifft is not,

.â•… Here is an attempt at a translation: “[Grainy [fabric]CT is coming in, with light struc-
tures, blended cloth, and sometimes even artificial silk. It is light and soft throughout, pleasant
to touch and wear. Aside from pure cotton, blends of cotton and polyester, of cotton and
polyamide and, in particular, blends of linen and cotton are coming. Non-iron shirts are still
prevailing]D1. [As for [design]CT, unis, faux-unis and small patternings prevail in the busi-
ness line. A small embroidery on the breast pocket, an elegant cut and predominantly classic
collars. Kent collars are coming back, button down is still prominent and in singular cases a
shark collar rounds off the picture.]D2”
 Volker Gast

however, primarily an expression of sub-informativity: Like as for, it is also used in

combination with topics that are resumptive but not ‘partial’ (i.e. sub-topics).
To conclude this section, sub-informativity is not lexicalized in either English
or German; only topic resumption is (as for …, was … anbetrifft). Given that topic
resumption typically occurs in contexts where a ‘super-topic’ is split up into ‘partial
topics’, and given that partial topics are associated with sub-informativity, there is a
strong correlation between the occurrence of markers of topic resumption on the
one hand, and sub-informativity on the other, but the two notions should not be
equated with each other. The relevant expressions of English and German seem to
behave similarly, so we cannot identify any major contrasts in this domain.

6.â•… Syntactic indicators of sub-informativity

A comparison of left peripheral constructions in English and German has been

provided by Frey (2005). Frey considers three constructions of German (‘prepoÂ�
sing’, ‘left-dislocation’ and ‘hanging topics’) and two constructions of English
(‘topicalization’ and ‘left dislocation’). He arrives at the conclusion that the five
constructions differ considerably in terms of their information structural proper-
ties, and that no clear correspondences between English and German structures
can be established. The following discussion will focus on only two constructions,
namely those which qualify as candidates for being specialized for the expression
of sub-informativity: fronting in English (Frey’s ‘topicalization’, cf. Section 6.1) and
movement to the Forefield in German (Frey’s ‘preposing’, cf. Section 6.2). Given
that neither language under comparison seems to have any specific structural rules
associated with distributed foci, the discussion will be restricted to the question of
whether, and if so, how, contrastive topics are marked as such syntactically.

6.1â•… Fronting in English

The syntactic operation of ‘fronting’ (or ‘preposing’) – i.e. of moving a non-subject
constituent to a position preceding the subject – is sometimes regarded as a spe-
cialized syntactic indicator of contrastive topicality. For instance, Givón (2001: 263)
provides the following examples of ‘contrastive topicalization’ (see also Gundel
1974: 133ff., who calls this operation ‘topic topicalization’):
(20) I saw John there. Maryi I never saw ti.
(21) I gave it all to Mary. [To Joan]i I gave nothing ti. (Givón 2001: 263)

A wealth of examples of this type has been assembled by Birner & Ward (1998).
Two of them are given in (22) and (23):
 Contrastive topics and distributed foci as instances of sub-informativity 

(22) Humble they may be. But daft they ain’t. (Birner & Ward 1998: 46)
(23) I’ll have to introduce two principles. One I’m going to introduce now and one
I’m going to introduce later. (Birner & Ward 1998: 78)

All of the examples given above fit our definition of ‘sub-informativity’ in (8). For
instance, the sentence Mary I never saw is sub-informative insofar as it functions as
an answer to the question Did you see John and/or Mary? It thus seems that fronting
is indeed very closely associated with sub-informativity or, more specifically, con-
trastive topicalization. However, just like the lexical marker as for, fronting cannot
be regarded as a specialized expressive device for that function, as it is also used in
sentences that are not sub-informative. Pertinent examples are given in (24) and
(25), which do not require an open question in the discourse environment:
(24) I had two really good friends. Damon and Jimmy their names were.
 (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 1381)
(25) Did you want tea? Coffee I ordered. (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 1381)

As has been shown by Birner & Ward (1998), the main conditions that must be
met for a constituent to be fronted is that this constituent has to function as a
‘link’16 between the sentence and the preceding discourse – in other words, it must
be given or at least accessible – and that there has to be a contrasting element in the
discourse environment. Note that ‘contrast’ is to be interpreted rather broadly in
this context. For instance, anything you don’t eat in (26) does not prima facie seem
to imply any type of contrast:
(26) Anything you don’t eat put back in the fridge.
 (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 1372)

However, an element of contrast is also recoverable in cases like (26). The sentence
implies that some of the food will be eaten, so anything you don’t eat contrasts
with everything you do eat. (26) thus answers the (superordinate) question What
am I supposed to do with the food only partially (note that the answer to one of the
sub-questions – the one about the food that has been eaten – is of course trivial:
Digest it!).
As the preceding discussion has shown, fronting in English cannot be regarded
as a grammatical device specialized for contrastive topicalization. However, given
the two conditions of use identified by Birner & Ward (1998) – (i) that the fronted
constituent must function as a link, and (ii) that there must be an element of
contrast – it comes as no surprise that fronting is typically found in instances of

.â•… Birner & Ward’s (1998) notion of ‘link’ is not to be equated with the (more specific) term
as used by Vallduví & Engdahl (1996).
 Volker Gast

sub-informativity, as links are often (sentence) topics, and contrastive topics con-
stitute a major type of sub-informativity. In fact, cases like those in (24) and (25)
(where a focus has been fronted) seem to be rather rare, and only a handful of such
examples can be found in Birner & Ward (1998).

6.2â•… Movement to the Forefield in German

German obviously does not have a syntactic operation analogous to fronting. The
verb-second structure of German main clauses precludes movement of an element
to a position preceding the Forefield, and the Forefield itself does not seem to be
associated with any particular discourse function, even though it manifests spe-
cific information structural restrictions (e.g. non-contrastive/information foci in
the Forefield are dispreferred in certain contexts; cf. Frey 2006: 246–248). It may
host dummy subjects (cf. (27)), expletives (cf. (28)), referential topics (cf. (29)) as
well as foci (cf. (30)):
(27) Es regnet.
it rains

(28) Es hat mich gefreut, dass du gekommen bist.

it has me pleased that you come aux.perf.2sg
‘It made me happy that you came.’

(29) A: Was ist mit Thomas? (‘What news are there concerning Thomas?’)
B: [Er]TOP hat jetzt eine neue Freundin.
he has now a new girl.friend
‘He has a new girlfriend now.’

(30) a. Hast du gestern den Kanzler getroffen?

have you yesterday the chancellor met
‘Did you meet the chancellor yesterday?’
b. Nein, [den Präsidenten]FOC habe ich getroffen.
no the president have I met
‘No, I met the president.’

The traditional picture in the literature on German syntax is that the Forefield
accommodates ‘given’ material, constituents that function as a ‘link’ or otherwise
‘prominent’ matter (cf. Lötscher 1984: 118). However, as is illustrated in (27) and
(28), the Forefield can also host constituents that do not carry any specific infor-
mation structural function, for instance expletives and specific types of adverbials.
Moreover, in information structurally neutral sentences it is typically the subject
that occupies the Forefield, without there being any particular pragmatic implica-
tions. Frey (2004, 2006) has therefore argued that a distinction needs to be made
 Contrastive topics and distributed foci as instances of sub-informativity 

between those cases where a constituent occupies the Forefield basically because
the grammar of German requires that this position must not be empty, and those
cases where moving a given constituent to the Forefield triggers specific informa-
tion structural effects (cf. also Fanselow 2002, 2004 and references cited there for
related discussion). He calls the former type of movement ‘Formal Movement’ and
the latter (true) ‘A′-movement’. In the case of Formal Movement, it is simply the
highest element in the Middle Field that is moved to the Forefield. In most cases,
this will be a subject, which is why sentences with subjects in the Forefield tend to
be information structurally neutral. However, when some more deeply embedded
constituent is moved to the Forefield, this is normally information structurally
meaningful.17 Such constituents are necessarily prosodically prominent (cf. also
Abraham 1997; Féry 2008 on the relationship between prosody/stress and syntax
in the German sentence). Mostly, this means that they contrast with another ele-
ment (cf. Frey 2006), or that they are associated with some type of scalar implica-
ture (cf. Frey 2008). This effect can be seen most clearly when an element from a
lower clause is moved to the Forefield (‘long movement’). (31) requires a sentence
in the immediate discourse environment in which Karl is replaced with some other
referential value, i.e. den Karl is necessarily contrastive:
(31) [Den Karl]i behauptete er ti gesehen zu haben.

If there is in fact a categorical difference between two types of movement to the

Forefield – ‘Formal Movement’ and (true) ‘A′-movement’ – we can assume that
German – like English – has a syntactic operation that is specialized for the notion
of ‘contrast’. Quite obviously, however, this operation is, once again, not special-
ized for sub-informativity, as it may apply to topics as well as (single) foci, which
answer the ‘question under discussion’ (more or less) exhaustively. Still, the same
prototypicality effect that we observed in the case of fronting in English can also
be recovered in German. Given that the Forefield is typically occupied by given or
at least accessible constituents, and given that such constituents tend to be topical
and, in the case of ‘A′-movement’, contrastive, this operation can be regarded as
applying typically to contrastive topics, which combine the properties of givenness
and contrast.
It should be borne in mind, however, that syntactic movement operations
like those described in this section are usually accompanied by specific prosodic

.â•… The idea of a syntactic movement operation in German that is specialized for ‘contrast’
can also be found in Krifka (1998), who assumes that ‘Spec-CP movement’ of a focused phrase
results in ‘contrastive topicalization’ (recall from Section 3.1 that contrastive topics are regarded
as topics that carry a focus feature and are thus associated with a set of alternative values). This
point of view is certainly compatible with Frey’s (2004, 2006) proposal.
 Volker Gast

contours, and that it is, in most cases, primarily these contours that are respon-
sible for notions such as ‘contrast’, ‘topicality’, ‘focality’, etc. and, therefore, for the
encoding of ‘sub-informativity’. This takes us to the third and, in the present
context, most important set of expressive devices, i.e. the prosodic ones.

7.â•… Prosodic indicators of sub-informativity

Prosody takes up a particularly central position in the present context not only
because the relevant expressive devices are ubiquitous and usually accompany
other (lexical, syntactic) means, but also because there is a relatively clear-cut con-
trast between English and German, which can be summarized as follows:
There are differences in the level of generality at which sub-informativity is
prosodically marked as such: English treats it on a par with other instances of
the more general phenomenon of ‘incompleteness’, whereas German has an
intonational contour which is specialized for one type of sub-informativity, i.e.
context-changing sub-informativity.

In what follows we will deal with the ‘fall-rise contour’ of English and the ‘root
contour’ of German, both of which have been extensively discussed in the relevant
literature. We will start with the former contour in Section 7.1 and turn to the lat-
ter in Section 7.2. The contrasts between English and German will be summarized
in Section 7.3.

7.1â•… English: The fall-rise contour18

7.1.1â•… Definition and representation
Since at least Jackendoff (1972), it has been widely assumed that English has a
specialized contour for the expression of contrastive topics, i.e. one that Jackendoff
calls ‘B-accent’. He refers to Bolinger (1958) for this term, where the term ‘B-accent’
is not however used for accents of the type discussed by Jackendoff. Jackendoff ’s
‘B-accent’ is exemplified in (32) below. ‘|’ separates the ‘intonation phrases’ of
the British school, which (more or less) correspond to the ‘intermediate phrases’
of Beckman & Pierrehumbert (1986); underscore indicates nuclear stress, and
‘ \’ and ‘/ ’ indicate pitch movement. The pitch movement corresponding to the
‘B-accent’ – represented as ‘ ’ in (32) – is illustrated in an idealized form in (33),

.â•… A contrastive study of the fall-rise accent in English can also be found in Hetland (2008),
who compares this accent with the Korean particle nun.
 Contrastive topics and distributed foci as instances of sub-informativity 

using the type of representation found in Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg (1990: 281;

cf. also Liberman & Pierrehumbert 1984: 168 for this example).
(32) A: Who came with whom?
B: Anna | came with \Manny.

(33)

An na came with Man ny

Bolinger (1986), in turn, introduces a ‘profile’ that he calls ‘AC’ (as it is a combina-
tion of the ‘A-profile’ [a fall to the base line] and the ‘C-profile’ [a rise towards the
base line]) and notes that “AC becomes a pretty good theme-marker regardless of
position” (Bolinger 1986: 321). He provides the examples in (34), where Cýnthia is a
theme in both initial (cf. (34a)) and final position (cf. (34b); see also Gussenhoven
1984: 30–1 for similar examples).
(34) a. Cynthia | they a \dored
b. They a \dored | Cynthia.

Similarly, Steedman (1991) regards “the tune L+H*LH%” – which (approximately)

corresponds to Jackendoff ’s ‘B-accent’ and Bolinger’s (1986) ‘AC-profile’ – as a
topic marker. He furthermore points out that this tune requires an element of
‘emphasis’ or ‘contrast’ (cf. also Steedman 2000):
It seems as if at least one function of the tune L+H*LH% is to mark a constituent
whose translation corresponds to the open proposition in the question. It may
thus be thought of as marking what the sentence is about. […] However, the
tune does something more. The presence of a pitch accent also marks some or all
of the open proposition as emphasized or contrasted with something mentioned
or regarded by the speaker as implicated by the previous discourse and/or context.
 (Steedman 1991: 275)

Steedman refers to the classic Jackendoff example and represents it as shown

in (35), where the beans, though occupying a sentence final position, functions
as a theme:
(35) Q: Well, what about the beans? Who ate them?
A: (fred) (ate the╇ be.ans)
H*L L + H*LH% (Steedman 1991: 274)

Tunes such as Jackendoff ’s (1972) ‘B-accent’, Bolinger’s (1986) ‘AC-profile’ and

Steedman’s (1991, 2000) ‘tune L+H*LH%’ are summarized under the label ‘fall-rise’
in the British school of intonation (e.g. Cruttenden 1986; Wells 2006; see Ward &
Hirschberg 1985: 749 for further notational variants of this and similar contours).
 Volker Gast

However, a note of caution is appropriate when postulating correspondences

between the ‘accents’, ‘tunes’, ‘profiles’, ‘contours’, etc. assumed by the various pro-
sodic theories. Given the differences in the modelling of the association between
suprasegmental elements and segmental ones, a one-to-one correspondence
between any one pair of prosodic patterns from different theories is hardly con-
ceivable. Moreover, there are some obvious terminological divergences that are
independent of theoretical background assumptions. For instance, the ‘fall-rise’
of the British school corresponds to Bolinger’s (1986) ‘AC-profile’ (see e.g. Wells
2006: 23). By contrast, Ward & Hirschberg (1985) use the term ‘fall-rise’ for con-
tours of the form shown in (36), i.e. a tune that is better described as a ‘rise-fall-rise’
(cf. Constant 2007):
(36) Ward & Hirschberg’s (1985) ‘fall-rise’

Ward & Hirschberg notice that Bolinger’s ‘AC-profile’ does not correspond to the
profile shown in (36) (and, hence, not to their ‘fall-rise contour’), but rather to the
one in (37), i.e. to a contour that Bolinger (1958) calls ‘A-rise contour’:19
(37) Ward & Hirschberg’s (1985) ‘A-rise contour’

Even though Ward & Hirschberg (1985: 752) claim that there is not only a phonetic
but also a functional difference between their ‘fall-rise contour’ and the ‘A-rise
contour’, it is pointed out by Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg (1990:  285) that the
tunes share certain phonological characteristics, in particular “a L phrase accent
and a H boundary tone”, and that they, accordingly, “share also a sense that the
current utterance will be completed by a subsequent utterance”.
The following discussion will be based on the ‘fall-rise’ of the British school,
i.e. the type of pitch movement shown in (33) above. Using the ToBI annotation
conventions, it can be represented as either H*L− H% or L+H*L− H% (cf. Steedman
1991 and ex. (35) above; see also Ladd 1996: 82). I will assume that it does not
make a difference whether the contour starts off with a peak accent (H*) or a rising
peak accent (L+H*).

.â•… D. Bolinger, in turn, disagrees on this point: “Bolinger (p.c.) identifies an ‘AC contour’ he
believes is the same as our FR [fall-rise]” (Ward & Hirschberg 1985: 750).
 Contrastive topics and distributed foci as instances of sub-informativity 

7.1.2â•… The function of the fall-rise

Having delimited the term ‘fall-rise contour’ in the previous section we can now
return to a characterization of this pattern in terms of ‘common ground man-
agement’. All of the examples given in (32)–(35) match the semantic/pragmatic
analysis of Büring (1994, 1997, 2003) and can thus be regarded as instantiating
our notion of ‘sub-informativity’. However, as becomes apparent from the vast
literature on the fall-rise (cf. Ward & Hirschberg 1985:  751 for a survey), sub-
informativity is not the only function of this tune (cf. also the quantitative study by
Hedberg & Sosa 2007). For instance, the fall-rise may be used on sentence-initial
adverbials, with a relatively neutral function (though it is perhaps more emphatic
than a plain rising tone). The following examples have been taken from Tench’s
(1996) descriptive study of English prosody:
(38) Un fortunately, | he can’t \come.
(39) Un/ fortunately, | he can’t \come.
(40) He can’t \come, | \unfortunately.
(41) a. In the / kitchen | you’ll find a sur \prise.
b. In the kitchen | you’ll find a sur \prise. (Tench 1996: 83)

The examples in (38)–(41) differ in terms of the ‘weight’ or ‘importance’ that is

attributed to the adverbial unfortunately. With respect to the two examples in (41),
Tench remarks:
[(41a)] and [(41b)] represent a typical case of marked theme …, but whereas the
rise in [(41a)] merely leads on to the major information, the fall-rise in [(41b)]
highlights the theme itself. (Tench 1996: 83)

The fall-rise can also be used as a sole sentence accent. In that case it expresses
some kind of ‘reservation’, as in (42)–(44) (cf. also Wells 2006: 27–32):
(42) It’s cheap. (reservation: ‘but that’s not the only thing that’s true about it’)
(43) It looks expensive. (reservation: ‘but is it really?’)
(44) Well … (speaker signals that information is missing)

Tench (1996: 84) comments on these examples as follows:

It is generally agreed that such uses of the fall-rise indicate some kind of
implication. Halliday once glossed the meaning as ‘there is a but about it’ …
[emphasis original]

The feeling of an ‘implication’ as stated by Tench (cf. also Wells 2006) has also been
called ‘incompleteness’, ‘up-in-the-airness’ (Bolinger) and ‘uncertainty as to the releÂ�
vance of a speaker’s contribution’ (cf. Ward & Hirschberg 1985). In the following,
I will use the term ‘incompleteness’ to characterize the type of implicature triggered
 Volker Gast

by the fall-rise contour. Note that the notion of ‘uncertainty as to the relevance
of a speaker’s contribution’ (Ward & Hirschberg 1985) can also be regarded as
an instance of ‘incompleteness’, as it implies that the speaker is aware that his/
her contribution (potentially) does not qualify as ‘complete’ with respect to its
contextual implications.
The assumption that the fall-rise is used to indicate ‘incompleteness’ can explain
why it tends to be used in combination with contrastive topics. In the present study,
‘contrastive topicality’ has been defined in terms of ‘sub-informativity’: the speaker
signals that s/he is aware that there are open questions in the discourse context. In
fact, the fall-rise can be used with each one of the three types of sub-informativity
distinguished above. It is used with distributed foci (cf.  (45)), with context-
preserving topics (cf. (46)) and with context-changing topics (cf. (47); ‘||’ indicates
‘major breaks’, i.e. IP boundaries in terms of Beckman & Pierrehumbert 1986):20
(45) Distributed focus sentences
A: Who ate what?
B: Fred | ate the \beans …
(46) Context-preserving topics
A: What do your parents do?
B: My father | works on a \freight ship || my mother | is a \doctor.
(47) Context-changing topics
A: What is your daughter doing?
B: My younger daughter | studies \medicine ||
my older daughter | studies \law.
It is important to note that ‘sub-informativity’ as defined in (8) above is just one
instance of the more general notion of ‘incompleteness’, with other instantiations
of this notion being the triggering of (unspoken) implications or implicatures
(cf.  (42)–(44) above; see also Wells 2006:  27–29 for a number of illuminating
examples). Note furthermore that the fall-rise can also be used on foci, as in the
following example from Hedberg & Sosa (2007: 118):
(48) … and I, frankly, think this guy is pretty attractive.
I don’t find him unat tractive.
As the preceding discussion has shown, the information structural category of sub-
informativity does not have a direct prosodic correlate in English. The fall-rise con-
tour has a more general function and is often used in contexts of sub-informativity,

.â•… Note that there is an important difference between the three instances of sub-informativity:
Only in context-changing topics (as in (47)) is the fall-rise obligatory. In (45) and (46) a
different type of intonation is also possible. In particular, the nuclear accent of the first
intonation phrase could simply be a rising accent.
 Contrastive topics and distributed foci as instances of sub-informativity 

but it is not restricted to these contexts. As will be argued in the next section, this
is different in German, where a rather specific tune (the root contour) is used for
a rather specific information structural function (context-changing topic-related
sub-informativity).

7.2â•… The German root contour

7.2.1â•… Definition and representation
In the literature on information structure in German, it is widely assumed that
there is a contour specialized for the expression of contrastive topicality, which
is often called ‘hat contour’ (Hutkontur; cf. Jacobs 1982, 1996, 1997; Féry 1993;
Büring 1994, 1997, 2003; Steube 2003, among many others). It consists of a scooped
accent and a falling focus accent, each of which is contained in an intermediate
phrase. The entire tune is called ‘hat contour’ because the pitch remains at a high
level between the two accents.
Given that the term ‘hat contour’ is also used for other, related patterns (cf.
below), I will use the more specific term ‘root contour’. Krifka (1998), referring to
Jacobs (1997), describes it as follows:
Jacobs (1997) […] points out that the intonational contour involved should […]
be described as a slight fall followed by a rise on the first accent, and a fall on the
second. He symbolizes these two accents by √ and \, and calls it "root contour".
This seems to be indeed the intonational target, although the first accent can be
realized by /, especially in allegro speech. (Krifka 1998, fn. 8)

The root contour is illustrated in (49):

(49) the ‘root contour’

╇
Meine jüngere Tochter studiert Medizin …
my younger daughter studies medicine

It should be mentioned that the term ‘root contour’ is also often used for the first
type of pitch movement illustrated in (49) only, which can be described either
as a low accent (L*) or a scooped accent (L*+H) followed by a H phrase accent
(H–). I  will assume that the first component of the root contour has the form
L*+H H–,21 and I will call it ‘low rise’, adopting the term of the British school of
intonation (cf. Ladd 1996: 82). In examples the low rise is represented as ‘√’. The
notation used in this study is summarized in (50):

.â•… Cf. Uhmann (1991), who regards L*+H as a contrastive topic accent.
 Volker Gast

(50) √ low rise

√ … \ root contour

Another note of caution concerns the identification of the root contour as described
above in connected speech. The pattern tends to be simplified, thus resembling a
similar, but functionally different tone pattern (cf. the quotation from Krifka 1998
above; see also Jacobs 1997: 93 and Féry 1993: 149–50). In particular, the low rise
is often realized as a simple peak accent. In this case the root contour is phonetically
similar to the sequence of two H* accents, with the pitch remaining at a high level
in between, as in (51) (from Féry 1993: 149):

(51) sequence of two peak accents (linked)

Bald ist sie da

The terminology chosen in this study allows us to distinguish the ‘root contour’
shown in (49) from a ‘hat contour’ as shown in (51). Note that Féry (1993) calls
both contours ‘hat contour’, the one in (51) ‘hat contour 1’ and the one in (49)
‘hat contour 2’.

7.2.2â•… The distribution of the root contour

There is agreement in the relevant literature that the root contour is restricted
to a relatively well defined set of contexts, i.e. to cases of ‘contrastive topicality’
(‘i-topicalization’ in Jacobs’ terms) or, in terms of the present study, to instances of
‘sub-informativity’. As will be argued in this section, it is in fact restricted to one
specific type of sub-informativity, i.e. context-changing sub-informativity. We will
consider its distribution by comparing the low rise (within the root contour) to
the English fall-rise. Unlike the Engl. fall-rise, the Germ. low rise cannot simply
be used on sentence-initial adverbials (cf. (52)), nor is it normally used as a sole
sentence accent (cf. (53)).22
(52) #Unglücklicher√weise | kann er nun \doch nicht kommen.
unfortunately can he now ╇╛ptcl not come
‘Unfortunately, he can’t come, after all.’

.â•… Note that (53) is probably better than (52), but a boundary signal such as Engl. well
would usually be rendered with a long falling tone in German. There is probably significant
idiolectal variation, however.
 Contrastive topics and distributed foci as instances of sub-informativity 

(53) #√Na \ja …

╇ ‘Well …’

Accordingly, the low rise – or the entire root contour – cannot be regarded as
a general indicator of ‘incompleteness’ or ‘uncertainty’. Even among instances of
sub-informativity, its distribution is severely restricted. Note first that the root
contour is inappropriate in combination with distributed foci, a point also made
by Jacobs (1997). Consider (54):

(54) Wer hat wie auf das Buch reagiert?

‘How did who react to the book?’
a. / Löffler | hat es em/ pfohlen | / Karasek | hat es ver \rissen.
b. #√Löffler | hat es em \pfohlen, | √Karasek | hat es ver \rissen.
╇ Löffler has it recommended ╇↜Karasek has it pulled.to.pieces
╇ ‘Löffler recommended it, Karasek trashed it.’ (Jacobs 1997: 99)

Jacobs (1997: 99) points out that “the b-version is at least unusual; it is associ-
ated with additional pragmatic components of meaning” [my translation]. More
commonly, the question in (54) would be answered as shown above or also as
in (55):

(55) a. / Löffler hat es em \pfohlen | / Karasek hat es ver \rissen.

b. \Löffler hat es em/ pfohlen | / Karasek hat es ver \rissen.

We may add that the original Jackendoff example (which is an instance of ‘focus-
related sub-informativity’ as well) also sounds awkward (or ‘hyper-informative’)
when translated into German and pronounced with a root contour (cf. (56)).
Possible intonations are given in (57).

(56) A: Nun, was ist mit Fritz? Was hat er gegessen?

‘What about Fred? What did he eat?’
B: #√Fritz | hat die \Bohnen gegessen.
╛Fred has the ╇╛↜beans eaten
â•›‘Fred ate the beans.’

(57) B′: â•›Fritz hat die \Bohnen gegessen.

B″: / Fritz hat die \Bohnen gegessen.

Furthermore, the root contour is also inappropriate in instances of what we have

called ‘context-preserving sub-informativity’. Therefore, it would not normally be
used in an answer to the question in (58), as is witnessed by the infelicity of (59b)
(cf. Krifka 1998):
 Volker Gast

(58) Was ist mit Hans und Maria? Was haben sie gelesen?
‘What about Maria and Hans. What did they read?’
a. Ma/ ria | hat den Schatz im \Silbersee gelesen,
Maria has det treasure in.the ╇↜渀屮silver.lake read
und / Hans | den \Winnetou.
and ╇↜渀屮Hans det ╇↜渀屮Winnetou.
b. #Ma√ria | hat den Schatz im \Silbersee gelesen,
Maria has det treasure in.the ╇↜渀屮silver.lake read
und √Hans | den \Winnetou.
and ╇╛╛Hans det ╇↜Winnetou.
‘Mary read The Treasure of the Silver Lake, and John Winnetou.’

Krifka (1998: 85) remarks: “This sentence [(59b)] is bad, presumably because it

does not satisfy Büring’s criterion – that there must be alternatives for the contras-
tive topic for which the truth value of the sentence is still disputable”.23
The only type of sub-informativity where the root contour sounds impec�
cable is the one of ‘context-changing sub-informativity’. A relevant example is given
in (59):
(59) A: Was macht deine Tochter?
B: Meine √jüngere Tochter | studiert Medi \zin,
my ╇ younger daughter studies medicine
die Êltere | Ge \schichte.
the ╇ older history
‘My younger daughter studies medicine, the older one history.’

In (59), speaker B ‘inserts’ a ‘move’ into the strategy (the question What does your
younger daughter study?), thus modifying the context, and the higher-level question
(What does your daughter study?) is accordingly split up into two sub-questions,
introducing two sub-topics in the process (my older daughter, my younger daugh-
ter). This is not the only type of ‘context-changing sub-informativity’ where the
root contour can be used. It is also appropriate when a speaker refuses to provide
information about one of the sub-topics introduced by the other interlocutor, thus
‘deleting’ a move from the strategy. Consider (60):
(60) Was für Romane von Karl May haben Hans und Maria gelesen?
‘What novels by Karl May did Hans and Maria read?’

.â•… Krifka’s explanation for the infelicity of (58b) differs slightly from mine. According to
Krifka, the main reason is that the criterion of ‘disputability’ is not met, whereas in my
explanation it is the aspect of ‘context modification’ that is relevant; cf. below.
 Contrastive topics and distributed foci as instances of sub-informativity 

Ma√ria | hat den Schatz im \Silbersee gelesen.

Maria has the treasure in.the ╇╛Silver Lake read
‘Maria has read The Treasure of the Silver Lake.’

With a falling accent at the end of the sentence, the speaker indicates that s/he is
not in a position, or not willing, to provide any information about Hans. Thus, one
of the two sub-questions raised by A – What did Hans read? – is simply deleted
from the strategy. Note that the root contour is not just appropriate in this type of
context, but virtually obligatory.
So far we have considered two instances of ‘context-changing sub-informa-
tivity’: One case in which a move is inserted into a strategy (‘move insertion’), and
one case in which a move is removed (‘move deletion’). In a third type of context,
‘move insertion’ as in (59) and ‘move deletion’ as in (60) are combined, and the
sole topic of the original strategy is shifted to a new one, which is a function of
the first. This is illustrated in (61). While the question ‘Have you seen Karl?’ is
removed from the strategy, the question ‘Have you seen Karl’s wife’ is inserted by
speaker B:

(61) (at a party)

A: Hast du Karl schon gesehen?
‘Have you seen Karl?’
B: Seine √Frau | habe ich schon ge \sehen.
his ╇ ╛wife have I already seen
‘I’ve seen his wife.’

Finally, we may note that the root contour can also be used in combination with
two types of topics pointed out by Büring (1997), i.e. contrastive topics that are
not sub-topics but that are simply taken from the discourse environment (e.g. the
speaker, cf. (62)), and ‘purely implicational topics’, which trigger conversational
(or perhaps conventional) implicatures (cf. (63)).

(62) A: Glaubst du, Fritz würde diesen Anzug kaufen?

‘Do you think Fritz would buy this suit?’
B: Also √ich | würde ihn sicher \nicht kaufen.
well ╇ I would it certainly not buy
‘Well, I would certainly \not buy it.’

(63) A: Hat deine Frau andere Männer geküsst?

‘Has your wife kissed other men?’
B: √Meine Frau | küsst \keine anderen Männer.
╇ my wife kisses ╇╛no other men
‘ My wife does \not kiss other men.’
 Volker Gast

Both of these conversations are characterized by the type of common ground

modification that we have subsumed under the notion of ‘context-changing (topic-
related) sub-informativity’.

7.3â•… Contrasts between English and German

As has been seen, both English and German have contours that are used in con-
texts of ‘sub-informativity’, but they are used at different levels of generality: The
English fall-rise is a general marker of ‘incompleteness’, and therefore covers ‘sub-
informativity’ as defined in this study as one of its functions, whereas the German
root contour is a rather specific marker of ‘context-changing sub-informativity’.
This is illustrated in Diagram 4:

incompleteness

… sub-informativity

focus-related topic-related

context-preserving context-changing

Engl. fall-rise Germ. root contour

Diagram 4.╇ Types of sub-informativity and prosodic marking in English and German

Diagram 4 also captures another generalization that has emerged in the course of
the discussion. As has been seen, ‘context-changing sub-informativity’ is the only
context in which the German root contour is appropriate. This type of context also
plays an important role in English, as it seems to be the only context where the
fall-rise is virtually obligatory. All other instances of sub-informativity, as well as
the more general notion of ‘incompleteness’, can also be indicated by other intona-
tional patterns (e.g. a simple rising accent followed by a falling focus accent). The
obligatoriness of using a fall-rise in English was illustrated in (12) above, which is
here repeated in (64). Omitting the fall-rise accent on my older daughter would be
rather unusual here, though it seems to be less compelling on my younger daughter,
where a simple rising accent could also be used.
 Contrastive topics and distributed foci as instances of sub-informativity 

(64) A: What does your daughter do?

B: [My older daughter]CT | studies \law,
[my younger daughter]CT | studies \history.

Another important contrast between English and German concerns the phono-
logical properties of the two contours. While the fall-rise in English is not fixed
with regard to its position relative to the (falling) focus accent, the components of
the root contour cannot change places. The ‘versatility’ of the English pattern was
pointed out, among others, by Bolinger (1986) with respect to the example in (65)
(cf. (34) above). In both examples, Cynthia functions as a topic, regardless of its
position in the sentence:
(65) a. Cynthia | they a \dored.
b. They a \dored | Cynthia.

The German example in (66) does not allow such a change of position:
(66) Was macht eigentlich deine Tochter?
‘What is your younger daughter doing?’
a. Meine √jüngere Tochter | studiert Medi \zin …
my ╇ ↜younger daughter studies medicine …
b. #Medi \zin | studiert meine √jüngere Tochter …
medicine studies my ╇ ↜younger daughter

What this illustrates is that the root contour is a ‘holistic’ pattern whereas the cor-
responding English sentences are made up of two independent pitch movements,
i.e. a fall-rise and a falling focus accent, each of them associated with specific
information structural functions.

8.â•… Conclusions

We have considered three types of expressive devices relating to sub-informativity

as defined in (8) above: lexical devices, syntactic devices and prosodic devices.
Among the lexical devices, we have identified markers of ‘topic resumption’ as the
most relevant expressions in the present context. These markers tend to be used
in contexts of sub-informativity, as resumptive topics are typically ‘partial topics’
as well. Given that English as for and German was … anbetrifft (as well as related
expressions from both languages) seem to behave basically alike, no major con-
trasts have been identified in this domain. As far as the syntactic devices are con-
cerned, English has an operation of ‘fronting’ whose distribution is governed by
two conditions, i.e. ‘givenness’ and ‘contrast’ (cf. Birner & Ward 1998). Since given
constituents are typically topical, fronted constituents are often contrastive topics.
As far as German is concerned, we have followed Frey (2004, 2006) in assuming
 Volker Gast

that a specific type of movement to the Forefield is associated with ‘contrast’ or

at least ‘prosodic prominence’ as well (A′-movement). Again, the situation is
similar to the one found in English: Constituents (other than subjects) that are
moved to the Forefield tend to be given and topical, and as contrast is a promi-
nent (though perhaps not necessary) condition licensing this syntactic operation,
A′-movement is, again, typically (though not necessarily) associated with con-
trastive topics. The only differences between English and German in this domain
concern the fact that the operation of fronting is more easily identifiable than the
one of A′-movement, which requires a certain amount of theoretical background
assumptions, and that the discourse pragmatic restrictions are probably more
rigid in English than in German.
Clearer contrast between English and German have been identified in the
prosodic domain: While German has a contour specialized for one type of sub-
informativity – ‘context-changing sub-informativity’, which is indicated by the
root contour – English uses a much more general contour – the fall-rise – which
is best characterized in terms of the notions of ‘incompleteness’ and ‘uncertainty’,
and which is found in many other contexts as well. Moreover, the two contours
relevant to the expression of sub-informativity differ insofar as the English fall-
rise contour is an independent component within a larger configuration of pitch
movements, whereas the German root contour is a holistic pattern.
I would like to conclude with a methodological note. The discussion of the
expressive devices investigated in the present study has largely been based on
claims made in relevant publications. Most if not all of these publications rely on
intuition and introspection, and the question arises how phenomena like those
investigated in this study could be studied in a more objective way, and how they
could be put on a more solid empirical basis. Ideally, we would need phonologi-
cally annotated parallel corpora for such an undertaking. Such corpora are not
available at present, but they are certainly an indispensable condition for more
thorough investigations of matters of information structure and prosody. This is
only one of the methodological challenges that need to be tackled in the future
if contrastive information structure analysis is to become a well-established and
fertile branch of comparative linguistics.

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 Givenness and discourse anaphors

Luis López
University of Illinois at Chicago

This chapter argues that Catalan Clitic Right Dislocation and English
deaccenting package different types of information (contra Vallduví 1992,
Vallduví & Engdahl 1996), only the former being a true discourse anaphor. This
chapter further hypothesizes the following generalization: A language in which
stress is displaced to express givenness is a language in which stress assignment
is sensitive to syntax, while in a language in which stress assignment is a purely
linear phenomenon stress cannot shift. A model of the syntax-phonology
interface is sketched in which this generalization follows from the location of
stress in the grammatical architecture.

1.â•… Introduction1

Studies on the information structure of English have identified a category called

Givenness (Chafe 1976; Schwarzschild 1999; Krifka 2007; Selkirk 2007). Givenness
is defined as a discourse-anaphoric process in which the given segment is linked
to an antecedent. The following has become the standard formula:
(1) Definition of Given (informal version in Schwarzschild 1999: 151).
An utterance U counts as Given iff it has a salient antecedent A and
a. If U is of type e, then A and U corefer;
b. Otherwise: modulo ∃-type shifting, A entails the Existential F- closure of U.

This definition requires explaining what ∃-type shifting and existential F-closure
mean. ∃-type shifting allows us to turn a DP into an expression of type 〈t〉 by having

.â•… I would like to thank Edward Göbbel, Carsten Breul, Michael Rochemont and an anony-
mous reviewer for detailed comments on an earlier draft that led to substantial improvements.
If only I had been able to incorporate more of their suggestions, this chapter would have been
much better. I would also like to thank the participants of the Tübingen workshop “Focus
and Freezing” (summer 2009), as well as Susanne Winkler for her kind invitation. Finally, it is
with pleasure that I acknowledge the long-standing support of the Alexander von Humboldt
Foundation, without which this work would not have come to fruition. All the mistakes and
shortcomings to be found in this chapter are my sole responsibility.
 Luis López

unfilled arguments be bound by the existential quantifier. For instance, the phrase
green apple becomes: ∃x(green-apple(x)) (Schwarzschild 1999: 147).
The “F” in “existential F-closure” refers to Selkirk’s F feature. It is assigned
according to the following rules:
(2) F-Assignment Rules (Selkirk 1995: 555)
An accented word is F-marked
F-marking of the head of a phrase licenses F-marking of the phrase.
F-marking of an internal argument of a head licenses the F marking of the head.

Eventually, an F-marked constituent that is not dominated by another F-marked

constituent is the “Focus” of a sentence. Finally, we can define “Existential
F-closure”:
(3) Existential F-Closure of U (Schwarzschild 1999: 150)
The result of replacing F-marked phrases of U with variables and existentially
closing the result, modulo existential type shifting.

For instance, a regular DP like a red apple must find a co-referent DP in the previous
discourse in order to count as given. But take the NP red apple in a context in
which red is F-marked (i.e. contrasted with, say, green apple). In this case, all
that is required for a term to count as an antecedent of red apple is that it entails
∃y(apple(y)).
Although this concept may be sufficient to account for English phenomena –
most notably, sentence stress distribution – a contrastive perspective shows that
the grammars of some languages require from us to make a distinction between
what I call accidental givenness and a mandatory antecedent-anaphor relationship.
The difference can be shown in the following pair of examples:
(4) [Context: I’m wearing a red coat. What are you wearing?]
A1 I’m wearing a blue coat.
A2 I’m wearing a blue shirt.
(5) [Context: What kind of coat are you wearing?]
A1 I’m wearing a blue coat.
A2 #I’m wearing a blue shirt.

In these and all the examples in this chapter an underlined word includes the
most prominent syllable in the sentence while italics indicate reduced prominence
or deaccenting.
In both (4A1) and (5A1) the Givenness calculus provided by Schwarzschild
gives the same result: coat is given. This has a phonetic correlate: coat is deaccented
in both examples. However, the focus structure is different: In (4), the whole direct
object is focus, since it is the answer to the wh-question. In (5), only blue qualifies as
focus because only blue answers the wh-question. The difference in focus structure
 Givenness and discourse anaphors 

leads to another difference. In (4), where the given coat is also part of the focus,
the fact that coat is given is accidental. As shown in (4A2), the answer could have
been about a shirt rather than a coat. In (5), where coat is not part of the focus, the
answer has to be about a coat, which makes (5A2) infelicitous.
Thus, in English, it seems that deaccenting disregards focus and reflects only
which constituents are given. Catalan works in the opposite direction: it is sensitive
to what constituents are focus or not, unfocused constituents are obligatorily
dislocated. This is exemplified in (6) and (7):
(6) [Context: I’m wearing a red coat. What are you wearing?]
A1 Porto un abric blau.
wear.1st a coat blue
‘I’m wearing a blue coat.’
A2 Porto una camisa blava.
wear.1st a shirt blue
‘I’m wearing a blue shirt.’
A3 #‘En porto un de blau, d’abric.
cl wear.1st a of blue of ’coat
‘I’m wearing a blue coat.’
(7) [Context: What kind of coat are you wearing?]
A1 En porto un de blau, d’abric.
cl wear.1st a of blue of ’coat
‘I’m wearing a blue coat.’
A2 #Porto una camisa blava.
wear.1st a shirt blue
‘I’m wearing a blue shirt.’

In Example (7), the focus is blue, as in (5). Since abric is not part of the focus, it
must be dislocated.2 The usual term for this phenomenon is Clitic Right Dislocation
(CLRD), a syntactic construction in which a constituent is moved to a right-peripheral
position and resumed by a clitic (unless the dislocated constituent is nominative, for
which there is no clitic available). In (7A1), the dislocated constituent is l’abric and it
is resumed by the clitic en, a partitive clitic.
In Example (6), abric must stay in situ because it is part of the focus. The fact
that it is given does not lead to dislocation or to any noticeable change in sentence
stress. Hence the infelicity of (6A3).

.â•… The verb and its functional projections are also outside of the focus but they cannot be
dislocated for independent reasons. In López (2009a) it is argued that the verb is outside the
scope of the rules that assign information structure features such as “anaphor” or “contrast”.
 Luis López

The constituents outside the focus are discourse anaphors. I define a discourse-
anaphor as follows:
(8) Definition of Discourse-Anaphor
A discourse-anaphor obligatorily seeks an antecedent.

Givenness can be expressed by means of deaccenting in English but not in Catalan.

I propose that this difference correlates to whether sentence stress assignment
is sensitive to syntactic structure or only to linear order. I further hypo�thesize
that these two types of sentence stress reveal an architectural parameter that
involves the mapping from syntactic structure to information structure to
phonological structure.
The rest of this chapter is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the data-base
and the framework of analysis of Vallduví and Engdahl (1996) – arguably the sem-
inal article on contrastive information structure – which I take as a springboard
for a deeper scrutiny. Section 3 presents the English-Catalan contrasts that were
popularized by Vallduví’s work and that led to the conclusion that English deac-
centing and Catalan Clitic Right Dislocation (CLRD) are parallel from an informa-
tion packaging perspective. Section 4 shows that English deaccenting and Catalan
CRLD convey different information structures. Sections 5, 6 and 7 develop a solu-
tion to the problem. Section 5 discusses stress assignment in both languages and
its connection to givenness in English. Sections 6 and 7 present a model of the
syntax-discourse-PF interface that provides an account for the empirical quandary
presented here and in Section 4. Section 8 presents the conclusions.

2.â•… Catalan dislocation and English deaccenting

The first section of Vallduví and Engdahl (1996) discusses alternative theories that
aim to divide the sentence into two complementary informational segments. They
are the usual suspects: topic-comment, theme-rheme, focus-presupposition, etc.
After showing their different inadequacies, the discussion leads up to Vallduví↜’s
famous double partition: a proposition can be split into a focus and a ground. The
ground can itself be split into a link and a tail. These concepts are defined in relation
to their potential to update the information stored in the mind of the hearer. The
focus provides an update to the information stored in the hearer while the content
of the ground is already “subsumed by the input information state” (Vallduví &
Engdahl 1996:  469). Since the ground provides no new information, its role is
that of “ushering” the focus so that it is stored in the proper place in the hearer’s
memory. The file-card metaphor provides a simple method of representing these
relations (file-cards come from Heim 1982 and were adapted to the study of
information structure by Vallduví 1992 and Erteschik-Shir 1997). The ground
 Givenness and discourse anaphors 

directs us to the proper card, the focus adds information to the card. Let me show
it with an Example. (9a) is in English, (9b) is in Catalan:
(9) [Context: What did John do?]
a. John ate an apple.
b. El Joan es va menjar una poma.
the Joan cl past eat.inf an apple
As is common practice, I set up a context with a wh-question, which allows us to
delimit the focus/ground structure of the answer. In the sentence John ate an apple,
ate an apple is the focus, the supplier of new information. John is the ground. Using
the file card metaphor, the speaker utters the word John so that the hearer can find the
card ‘John’ in her/his memory, retrieve it and add the predicate ‘ate an apple’ to it:
(10) Card1 = John: λx. John did (x)
Update1:
Card1 = John: λx. John did (x)(eat an apple) = John ate an apple
According to Vallduví (1992), a link simply directs the focus to update the
information in the card. John/el Joan in (9) would exemplify a link. A comple-
ment can also be a link. In Catalan, a complement link involves displacement
to the left and clitic resumption; this is what is usually referred to as Clitic Left
Dislocation (CLLD). In English, a link may involve topicalization or it may stay
in situ (more on this below):
(11) [Context: Does John eat fruit?]
a. Apples he does eat.
b. Pomes, sí en menja.
apples Emph cl eats
A tail involves a more complex operation: An update introduced by a tail is meant
to dislodge an erroneous proposition in the card. The following is an example:3
(12) [Context: So, John drank the apple?]
a. No, John ate the apple.
b. No, el Joan se la va menjar, la poma.
No the Joan cl cl.acc past eat.inf the apple
Consider first (12a). In (12a), the tail is the deaccented constituent the apple. The
deaccenting of the apple tells us that the focus, ate, is displacing some other piece of
information – in this case, drank. In (12b), the tail is the CLRDed constituent la poma.

.â•… Right dislocated constituents are all deaccented, although I do not indicate it in the examples
(see Zubizarreta 1998; Frascarelli 2000; Feldhausen 2006).
 Luis López

The effect of having a tail in the sentence is that the focus becomes contrastive
(although this is not how Vallduví worded it).
The Example (12) is useful to introduce an additional point of interest. On the
basis of parallel examples like this one, Vallduví and Engdahl conclude that English
deaccenting and Catalan right dislocation are informationally equivalent – they
package the same information by different means. Empirical evidence presented in
this chapter leads to a different conclusion, that English deaccenting and Catalan
dislocation are not equivalent.
Vallduví↜’s conception of link and tail has been substantially revised by later
research on information structure based on Catalan (see Villalba 2000; López
2003, 2009a). As a result of this scrutiny, Catalan dislocations are analyzed as con-
stituents that become discourse anaphors by virtue of their syntactic derivation
and they are distinguished only by the types of relationships that they have with
their antecedent. CLLDs are related to their antecedents by means of a variety of
relations (co-reference, set/subset, set/member etc.) while CLRDs can only relate
by co-reference. The following example shows that a CLRD does not necessarily
turn the focus into a constrastive focus:
(13) [Context: So, I understand you like whiskey]
a. I certainly do, like whiskey.
b. Ja ho crec, que m’agrada, el whiskey.
Already cl.neut believe.1st that cl.dat like the whiskey
‘I certainly like whiskey.’
The constituent like whiskey is a tail in Vallduví’s framework, but notice that it does
not involve contrastive focus but rather the opposite, a confirmation of the hearer’s
assumptions. Notice that the VP like whiskey is a discourse anaphor, in the way
defined in Section 1. Answers like (14a), (14b) and (14c) are infelicitous:
(14) [Context: Do you like whiskey?]
a. #I certainly do, hate whiskey.
b. #I certainly do, like brandy.
c. #No, I don’t, hate whiskey/hate brandy.
To sum up: According to Vallduví (1992), the Catalan sentence can be divided into
a focus and a ground, the latter a discourse anaphor. The two types of grounds,
links and tails, are distinguished by the type of relationship to their antecedents.4

.â•… I believe that a deeper criticism of Vallduví’s system is long overdue, but beyond the limits
of this article. For instance, recall that the function of links and tails is to usher the focus to
the right file card. However, in a typical example like (9) Juan has just been mentioned and
therefore it is uppermost in the hearer’s awareness. If so, why should the focus need to be
ushered to the most prominent card in the file? It seems to me that all functional approaches
 Givenness and discourse anaphors 

Back to Vallduví and Engdahl (1996). Section 4 of their article is devoted to

showing how these information primitives are grammaticalized in different lan-
guages: sometimes by means of intonation, sometimes syntax, sometimes mor-
phology. Although not mentioned in the article, this view fits well with a Y-shaped
grammar architecture in which syntactic structures are assigned information
structure features:
(15) LF PF

CHL  assignment of IS features

Lex

In other words, focus, tail and link are meant to be universal categories, derived
from the way the human mind stores and updates information. Language variation
is restricted to how information structure is linguistically realized – hence the title of
Vallduví and Engdahl’s article. In the following section I show that, whether or not
notions such as focus and ground are universal categories, language variation in
this realm is more complicated than what Vallduví and Engdahl envisioned. In par-
ticular, I show empirical evidence that English deaccenting and Catalan dislocation
do not index the same information categories.

3.â•… Catalan and English contrasts

In Vallduví↜’s (1992) famous account, Catalan is a language that expresses infor-

mation structure exclusively by means of syntax. The core clause (the TP or IP)
is the domain of focus, delimited by sentence stress. Links and tails have to be
“detached”: links are CLLDed while tails are CLRDed. Consider Example (16):
(16) [Context: Where can I find the cutlery?]
a. [L Les forquilles] són a l’armari però
the forks are in the’cupboard but
[L els ganivets] els vaig ficar al calaix.
the knives cl past.1st put in.the cupboard
‘The forks are in the cupboard but the knives I put them in the cupboard.’
b. #[L Les forquilles] són a l’armari però vaig ficar [L els ganivets] al calaix.

to information structure are victims of the same circularity. It is for this reason that I take a
more descriptive-formalist approach, as will become clear in the next few pages: Constituents
in certain positions are discourse anaphoric, others are not.
 Luis López

The phrases els ganivets and les forquilles are links, and as such they must be
removed to the left periphery with a resumptive clitic pronoun. The infelicity of
(16b) shows that a link cannot stay in situ in Catalan.
The following sentence exemplifies a Catalan tail:
(17) [Context: Will John drink beer?]
Clar que sí. Al Joan li agrada, la cervesa.
Of course dat.the Joan cl.dat likes the beer
‘Of course. John likes beer’ or, maybe, ‘John likes beer.’
In (14), la cervesa is a tail. As a tail, it is obligatorily dislocated to the right (although,
being a nominative argument, there is no clitic). Thus, the packaging of information
in Catalan follows a rather strict scheme:
(18) CLLD [TP …] CLRD

link focus tail

Recent accounts of the relationship between sentence stress and focus claim that
movement of what we are here calling tails is as a matter of fact prosodically
motivated. The claim is, in essence, that instances of displacement that we con-
nect with information structure actually take place to ensure that focus and
sentence stress converge on the same constituent (see Zubizarreta 1998 and, for
a critique, López 2009a).
Catalan dislocation is not amenable to this account. Consider (19), a ditransitive
sentence. It is an all-focus sentence, with neutral word order and stress on the last
constituent (as is the rule in Catalan, more on this below):
(19) La Joana va entregar un paquet al Pere.
the Joana past deliver a package to.the Pere
‘Joana delivered a package to Pere.’

In (20), we place the sentence in a context that forces un paquet to be a tail. Notice
that main sentence stress still falls on Pere, so prosodically there is no reason for el
paquet to be dislocated. But it is nonetheless:
(20) [Context: What happened to the package?]
La Joana el va entregar al Pere, el paquet.
the Joana cl.acc past deliver to.the Pere the package

Thus, either dislocation is triggered by a formal feature or it simply takes place

freely, bad outcomes being filtered out (see Kučerová 2007). I will not try and
resolve the issue here (but see my brief remarks in Footnote 17).
Let us now turn to English. In Vallduví and Engdahl (1996), an understanding
of information structure in English requires careful consideration of the workings
 Givenness and discourse anaphors 

of sentence stress – probably an uncontroversial assumption. Consider Example (21)

(a simpler example than the one they choose). Canonical sentence stress falls on
books and it is possible to understand the sentence as being focused exclusively
on books – as the answer to the question what did John buy? However, the focus
derived from stressing books may encompass the whole sentence or a smaller
segment, as long as this segment includes the stressed constituent – this is the
phenomenon usually referred to as “focus projection”, Exemplified by (21a–c) (on
focus projection see (2) above and Selkirk 1984, 1995). A displacement of stress
gives rise to a range of narrow foci, foci whose projection is limited, as shown in
(21d–f). In these and the following examples I express the scope of focus by means
of bracketing (and I exclude contrastive contexts):5
(21) Context questions:
a. John bought [F the books]. What did John buy?
b. John [F bought the books]. What did John do?
c. [F John bought the books]. What happened?
d. [F John] bought the books. Who bought the books?
e. John [F bought] the books. What did John do with the books?
f. [F John bought] the books. What happened to the books?
According to Vallduví and Engdahl (1996), links in English are expressed by means
of Jackendoff ’s (1972) B-accent (L+H*L–H%). Links may also be fronted, but only
optionally – and redundantly. This entails that the grammar includes operations
without any interface purpose:
(22) [Context: Where can I find the cutlery?]
a. [L The forks] are in the cupboard but [L the knives] I put in the drawer.
b. [L The forks] are in the cupboard but I put [L the knives] in the drawer.
Is there a way to get rid of a completely superfluous operation? Let us assume a
copy theory of movement. The structures of (23a) and (23b) would be identical
syntactically, but maybe not so intonationally:
(23) a. …but [L the knives] I put [L the knives] in the drawer.
L+H*L–H%
b. …but [L the knives] I put [L the knives] in the drawer.
L+H*L–H%

.â•… In a discussion of (21f), an anonymous reviewer doubts that John bought can be regarded
as a focus, pointing out that it is not even a constituent. He suggests that the whole sentence
could be a focus and the books would only be given. However, I think there are good reasons
to assume the books is not part of the focus. First, with the context that I have provided, no
other constituent could make the sentence felicitous (see the discussion surrounding (4) and
(5)). Second, the Catalan equivalent would have the books dislocated.
 Luis López

As shown in (23), the B accent may be associated to the lower or the higher copy.
The one that does not get the B accent gets deleted. This might seem a flight of
fancy, but let us recall that one uncontroversial property of English is its flexibility
with the place of accent and intonation contours, as shown above. Thus, this solution
simply extends this property to a new realm.6
Still following Vallduví and Engdahl’s exposition, tails in English are indexed
by means of deaccenting:
(24) [Context: Does John like beer?]
John [F loves] [T beer].

To sum up: According to Vallduví and Engdahl, the concepts focus, ground, link
and tail underlie the information structure of English and Catalan. These two lan-
guages are only different in the way these pragmatic functions are expressed: Links
and tails involve special intonations in English and dislocations in Catalan. Focus
is expressed by sentence accent in both languages.
In the rest of this article, I focus on tails.

4.â•… But English deaccenting ≠ Catalan Clitic Right Dislocation

As it turns out, the set of things that can be deaccented in English does not match
the set of things that can be CLRDed in Catalan. The crucial observation that
can be gleaned from some of the examples provided by the English literature is
that constituents contained within the focus can be deaccented – rather, they must
be deaccented if the context requires it. Therefore, English deaccenting cannot
(always) be a tail in the Vallduvian sense.
I start with a simple example:7
(25) [Context: Mary drove her blue convertible. What did John drive?]
He drove [F her blue sedan]. // He drove [F a red sedan].

.â•… However, the assumption that there is a direct correlation between an information function
like topic or focus and a prosodic contour has recently been challenged by Hedberg and Sosa
(2007), an empirical study of naturally occurring speech. My English language consultants
agree that the L+H*L–H% accent is not obligatory for links. What seems to be true is that
contrasts, topics etc. need to stand out prosodically, but it does not seem to be true that they
are linked to a particular intonation. My proposal holds the same as long as links require some
sort of melody to provide intonational relief against the rest of the utterance.
.â•… Some of the data discussed in this section are lifted from López (2009a). However, in this
work no analysis is provided.
 Givenness and discourse anaphors 

The focus structure of the answer, indicated with the brackets and the subindex F
is the update in the hearer’s information store. The context tells us that the hearer
has the following cards in her archive:
(26) Card1 = Mary: Mary drove her blue convertible
Card2 = John: John λx.drove (x)

With the utterance in (25), the variable in Card2 is resolved:

(27) Update2:
Card2 = John: John λx.drove (x) (her blue sedan) = John drove her blue sedan

The sentence stress in this example falls on the word sedan, as is expected according
to any theory of sentence stress in English that I am aware of.
Consider now the following example (from Schwarzschild 1999):
(28) [Context: Mary drove her blue convertible. What did John drive?]
He drove [F her red convertible].

As indicated, the phrase her red convertible is the focus of the sentence, as required
by the wh-question in the preceding question. The expression her red convertible is
the update to the hearer’s file archive:
(29) Card1 = Mary: Mary drove her blue convertible
Card2 = John: John λx.drove (x)
Update2:
Card2 = John: John λx.drove (x) (her red convertible) = John drove her
red convertible

However, this focused constituent includes a deaccented constituent convertible.

The word convertible is not a discourse-anaphor, since we could have any other type
of car (sedan, station wagon) in its stead. It is part of the update, but deaccented.
Thus, it is not necessary for a constituent to be a tail to be deaccented.
What forces deaccenting of convertible in (28) is the fact that the word is given:
Its existential F-closure (∃x[convertible(x)]) is entailed by a term in the previous dis-
course (blue convertible). If the word is not given, sentential stress falls on the noun:
(30) [Context: What did John drive?
He drove [F her red convertible].
Thus, deaccenting is not dependent on the information structure of the clause as
articulated by Vallduví and others but on whether a constituent is given or not,
which is independent of its status as focus/ground.8

.â•… English Right Dislocation does appear to be a genuine tail with the information structure
property of being a discourse-anaphor (Birner & Ward 1998). However, English RD is,
 Luis López

Consider Example (31). In this example I have set things up so that convertible
is necessarily a discourse-anaphor. Interestingly, the intonation structure is identical
to that of (28), despite the fact that the focus structure is substantially different.
A file-card style representation of the focus structure of (31) is in (32):
(31) [Context: Mary drove her blue convertible. What kind of convertible did
John drive?]
He drove a [F red] convertible.
(32) Card1 = Mary: Mary drove her blue convertible
Card2 = John: John drove λx.convertible (x)
Update2:
Card2 = John: John drove λx.convertible (x) (red) = John drove her
red convertible

Let us now turn to Catalan. As mentioned, we find that in this language the syntax
described by Vallduví does reflect information structure: A CLRDed constituent
is invariably a tail. If a constituent is part of the focus it remains in situ and is not
deaccented, even if it happens to be given.
Consider first (33). This is a direct translation of (28) above. The word descapotable
is given but it remains in situ.
(33) [Context: Mary drove her blue convertible. What did John drive?]
Va conduir [F el seu descapotable vermell].
past drive.inf the her/his convertible red
‘He drove his red convertible.’

The following, with identical focus/ground structure, also have identical syntactic
structure:
(34) [Context: Mary drove her blue convertible. What did John drive?]
a. Va conduir [F el seu sedan blau].
past drive.inf the her/his sedan blue
‘He drove his blue sedan.’
b. Va conduir [F un sedan blau].
past drive.inf a sedan blue

I believe, beyond the limits of this article. English RD, unlike Catalan CLRD, is not derived
syntactically, i.e. it does not establish a syntactic dependency with a position within the core
clause. It should be regarded as a Hanging Topic (HT), a constituent that links up to the
discourse without being a constituent of any clause in particular – an orphan, following the
terminology in Shaer and Frey (2004). For extensive discussion of HTs – albeit with a data
base drawn from French – see DeCat (2007).
 Givenness and discourse anaphors 

(35) [Context: What did John drive?]

Va conduir [F el seu descapotable vermell].
past drive the her/his convertible red
‘He drove his red convertible.’
The following example is of particular interest to us. It is a direct translation of
(31). In (36) convertible, which is a genuine discourse anaphor, is obligatorily
dislocated.9
(36) [Context: Mary drove her blue convertible. What kind of convertible
did John drive?]
Va conduir [F un de vermell], de descapotable.
past drive.inf a of red of convertible
‘He drove a red convertible.’
So, the word descapotable is dislocated only in the fourth sentence.
Thus, English prosody is sensitive to givenness, dumping together (28) and
(31), with different focus/ground structures but same given constituents and pro-
viding different stress patterns for (28) and (30) although they have the same focus
structure. Catalan grammar meticulously assigns different syntactic structures to
sentences that have different focus/ground structures.
Thus, a contrastive analysis of English and Catalan shows that the distinction
between givenness and discourse-anaphor is empirically justified.
I would like to linger on this issue a little longer. When looking at the Catalan
examples one might wonder if what is apparent here is that Catalan is more like
English than we thought, in the sense that what is important is the placement of
stress (see Zubizarreta’s 1998 treatment of Spanish, identical to Catalan in this
respect). In examples like (33), the word descapotable is not dislocated because
sentence stress falls on the adjective, the last lexical word of the sentence. Since
the adjective is the focus anyway, this is a good result – under the assumption that
Catalan, like English, seeks a correlation between stress and focus.
The contrast between (33) and (36) serves to counter this counter-analysis. This
approach would predict that descapotable stays in situ in the latter sentence because
sentence stress falls on the adjective anyway – but descapotable needs to move.

.â•… Since CLRD is generally the output of a movement rule in Catalan, I assume that (36) is
also derived by movement. I take it that de is a case marker. The fact that it is repeated should
not surprise us. Case markers are also repeated in other instances of movement that strands
DP constituents, as shown in the following stranded quantifier example:
(i) Als nens, els hi vaig donar a tots un encàrrec.
dat.the children cl cl past.1st give.inf dat all an errand
‘I gave the children all an errand.’
 Luis López

We saw the same phenomenon in (20) above, where the direct object is dislocated
even if the stress falls on the indirect object in any case.
Still, to further reassure the reader that there is no connection between stress
and focus in Catalan I design an example in which the adjective precedes the noun.
This is obligatory with so-called intensional adjectives like pretès ‘alleged’:
(37) [Context: John is the real murderer. And Peter? What is Peter?]
a. El Pere es [F el pretès assassí].
the Pere is the alleged murderer
b. Peter is the alleged murderer.

Thus, assassí receives the nuclear stress even though it is given. The contrast with
the English sentence (37b) is stark.
Conclusion: Catalan CLRDs are a phenomenon of information structure,
since CLRDs are directly linked to how information is stored and updated in the
discourse model. English deaccenting is a broader phenomenon, it is not sensitive
to the role that a constituent plays in the construction of a discourse but simply
to whether a constituent is given or not. Thus, English deaccenting can affect a
segment of the focus whereas a Catalan dislocation cannot affect a segment of the
focus felicitously. The concepts of “givenness” and “discourse anaphor” need to
be separated.
Finally, I would like to present one more example that will lay out the empirical
problem in sharper lines and bring in one more piece of data to the data-pool. The
following examples combine a given constituent that is part of the focus followed
by a bona-fide tail as Vallduví would define it:
(38) [Context: Mary gave a red diamond to a politician. And Peter? What
did he give?]
a. Peter gave [F a blue diamond] to a politician.
b. El Pere li va donar [F un diamant blau], a un polític.

In both (38a) and (38b), a blue diamond/un diamant blau is the focus, while to a
politician/a un polític is the tail. In English, the sentence stress falls on blue and the
rest is deaccented, without teasing apart the given focus part from the tail. This
is of course not surprising. A given constituent is simply a repeated constituent
(modulo existential F-closure, etc). A tail is an anaphor. The set of anaphors is
properly contained within the set of given constituents. Thus, English is simply
not sensitive at the level of sentence grammar to the notion of discourse-anaphors,
rather it is sensitive to the more encompassing notion of givenness. Catalan, instead,
is sensitive to the narrower notion.
In case the data were not intricate enough, I give it another turn of the screw.
On the basis of the above examples and discussion, one could conclude that the
 Givenness and discourse anaphors 

notion of tail should simply be subsumed under the broader notion of givenness,
language variation would be limited to the extent that givenness is allowed to play
out. But although anaphors are, of course, given, givenness and anaphoricity should
be kept distinct. It is possible for a language to express, within sentence grammar,
both discourse anaphor and givenness. Consider the following German example, a
translation of the previous example except for the addendum of an adverb:
(39) [Context: Mary gave a red diamond to a politician. And Peter?
What did he give?]
Peter hat einem Politiker unerwartet einen blauen
Peter has a politician unexpectedly a blue
Diamanten gegeben.
diamond given

In this example, we can see that the discourse-anaphor einem Politiker is scrambled,
as shown by the position of the adverb unerwartet between the two complements.
Scrambling is customary in German for discourse anaphors – if the sentence were
pronounced without the preceding context, the indirect object would be found to
the right of the adverb. Interestingly, the given constituent, Diamanten, is deac-
cented. German and English must have a property in common that Catalan does
not have that allows them to express givenness by means of deaccenting. This
property does not conflict with the ability to express discourse anaphoricity.

5.â•… Stress, focus and givenness

So far, we have identified this difference between Catalan and English: While
Catalan grammar marks the focus/ground (discourse-anaphor) sharply, English
only expresses if something is given or not. In this section I discuss another
difference between Catalan and English: Catalan stress is linearly defined while
English stress is syntactically defined – which, I argue, reveals a minimal but
wide-ranging difference in grammatical architectures.
Taking the pioneering work of Selkirk (1984) as a basis, the following generaliz�
ations of stress in English can be assumed – and I leave aside here some irregular
cases. The following discussion assumes an out-of-the-blue context:

1. Head-complement structure: The complement is more prominent. The

complement is more prominent even if it raises to subject, as in unaccusative
predicates:
(40) John bought the book.
(41) John arrived.
 Luis López

2. Head-adjunct structure: The head is more prominent:10

(42) John worked yesterday.

Generalizations 1 and 2 can also be seen in the DP. The following examples
were first noted by Bresnan (1972):
(43) a. Mary liked the proposal that John leave.
b. Mary liked the proposal that John left.

In (43a), the subordinate CP is a complement of the head, so it tends to attract

sentential prominence. In (43b) the CP is an adjunct and prominence falls on
the head.
3. Head-specifier structure: Stress is on the head:
(44) a. John ran.
b. John’s hat.

4. Head-complement-adjunct structure: The complement remains most

prominent:
(45) John bought the book yesterday.

5. Head-complement-specifier structure: The complement is most prominent:

(46) Napoleon’s destruction of the city.

These data naturally lead to the conclusion that stress in English is assigned to
constituents according to syntactic configuration – see Selkirk (1984), (1995),
Cinque (1993), Zubizarreta (1998), Arregi (2002) for alternative analyses.11
Cinque’s (1993) seminal article unifies (40)–(46) into one compelling generalization.
Under an analysis of heads, specifiers, adjuncts and complements based on
classical X′-theory, Cinque’s main insight is that stress falls on the most deeply
embedded constituent:

.â•… I base this assertion on my consultations of native speakers as well as Selkirk (1984,
1995). Göbbel (p.c.) points out that the lesser prominence of adjuncts is not always crystal
clear for all classes of adverbs. Indeed, some examples in the literature place sentential promi-
nence on an adjunct – unfortunately, without discussion. Pending a systematic analysis of all
relevant cases, I assume the essential correctness of Selkirk’s conclusions.
.â•… But see also Féry and Samek-Lodovici (2006), who analyze English sentential stress as
falling on the rightmost lexical item of the intonational phrase, unfortunately without engaging
the data presented in earlier work and summarized in this Chapter in (40) to (46).
 Givenness and discourse anaphors 

(47) XP

YP X′

X′ ZP

X WP

If we are to decide whether sentence stress must fall on X or on W, the solution

must be W, since it is more deeply embedded than X. An exception must be made
for specifiers (and adjuncts): No matter how deeply one embeds within a specifier/
adjunct, stress falls on the head. Cinque argues that “depth of embedding” must be
calculated along the “path of embedding”, i.e. the branching direction of comple-
ments. Although this leaves out right-branching adjuncts, it does approximate an
elegant analysis of English and German.
A more economical solution to this problem is presented in Arregi (2002: 29):
(48) S(yntactic) NSR
“In a structure of the form [γ α β] (order irrelevant) where α is the head of γ, α is
more prominent than β iff α is branching.”

Arregi’s NSR ensures that heads are less prominent than complements and more
prominent than anything else – assuming that, whenever there is a specifier or
adjunct, there is always an overt or covert complement (Chomsky 1995). An
additional assumption is that sentence stress in unaccusative predicates must
take the copy of the overt constituent into consideration. One advantage of
Arregi’s proposal is that it makes no use of X’-conventions, and therefore it
is easily transferable to different theories. Although Arregi’s formula does not
explain the difference between complements and specifiers, it does provide us
with a testable generalization.12

.â•… An anonymous reviewer points out that complex heads such as (i) seem to create a
problem for the SNSR:
(i) [v v+V]

In this sort of case, we have a structure γ in which both components are branching. I assume
that the rules of stress assignment are not able to look into the structure of a word (we are, as
usual, abstracting away from contrastive focus).
 Luis López

Let us now go back to the connection between givenness and sentence stress. As
hinted at above, a given constituent rejects stress, even if it should get it according
to SNSR:
(49) [Context: What happened to the book?]
John burnt the book.

In order to account for these data, I propose the following simple constraint (see
Féry and Samek-Lodovici 2006):
(50) Given Non-prominence Rule (GNR)
In a structure of the form [γ α β] (order irrelevant) α is less prominent
than β if α is given.

Finally, all we have left to do is set up the system so that the SNSR acts as a default
rule that applies in contexts where the more specific GNR is trivially satisfied.13
Following current preferences, I do this by constraint ranking. Indeed, ranking
GNR “above” SNSR ensures that prominence is distributed in a descriptively ade-
quate manner. This is shown in the simple tableaux in (51) and (52). I indicate
givenness by means of a superindexed [g]:14
(51) GNR SNSR
John bought the book. √ √
John bought the book. √ *
(52) GNR SNSR
John bought [the book][g] * √
John bought [the book][g] √ *

.â•… And, I would add, contexts where rules of contrastive focus are also trivially satisfied.
Contrastive focus is not discussed in this chapter.
.â•… Notice that the candidates with a [g] feature and those without cannot be in the same
tableau or we would never have a winning candidate with a [g] feature. This is a property
of all competition-based models of focus and stress assignment (such as Szendröi 2002,
Samek-Lodovici 2005) although, as far as I know, this has never been explicitly discussed. The
question of what constitutes the input for competition is a thorny issue. For instance, Samek-
Lodovici (2005) claims that the input consists of argument structures (following Grimshaw
1997). But his analyses include inputs with the feature [focus], which is not part of argument
structure. A broader view of input is proposed in Broekhuis and Klooster (2001): Competing
candidates should have the same meaning (in a truth conditional sense). But the feature [g]
is not related to meaning. As the discussion in this chapter shows, [g] is not even related to
information structure in a clear way, but it must be present for stress assignment. At this point,
I limit myself to pointing out the problem, leaving its resolution for future research.
 Givenness and discourse anaphors 

Let us now turn to Catalan. In this language, the nuclear stress always falls on
the last constituent of the intonational unit, with complete disregard for syntactic
structure:

(53) a. La Maria va comprar un llibre ahir.

the Maria past buy.inf a book yesterday
‘Maria bought a book yesterday.’
b. A la Maria li va agradar la idea que el
dat the Maria cl.dat past like.inf the idea that the
Pere va proposar.
Peter past propose.inf
‘Maria liked the idea that Pere proposed.’

I propose the following NSR for a language like Catalan:,15

(54) L(inear) NSR

The last constituent in the linear order of a prosodic unit is the most prominent
one within that unit.

As we saw above, givenness does not affect the placement of accent in Catalan:

(55) [Context: John is the real murderer. And Peter? What is Peter?]
a. El Pere es [F el pretès assassí].
the Pere is the alleged murderer
b. Peter is the alleged murderer.

Nothing I have said so far prevents this. That is, nothing prevents a constraint like
the GNR to be operative in Catalan and alter the place of accent in (53) or (55a). As
a matter of fact, this is a question that has never, as far as I know, been asked: Why
is it that a language with syntactic stress can shift stress to avoid making a given
constituent prominent while a language with linear stress cannot? The model that I
present in the following sections provides an answer to this question, in effect, my

.â•… Zubizarreta (1998) claims that in Spanish – which is like Catalan in this respect – sentence
stress is also assigned configurationally, by means of the Structural-NSR. This assumption comes
as a consequence of a radical adoption of Kayne (1994), which forces the left to right order to
entail a c-command relation. Zubizarreta makes generous use of remnant movement in order
to maintain the tenets of Kayne’s theory.
 Luis López

model will predict that if sentence stress is assigned by the LNSR givenness cannot
shift the position of the stress.

6.â•… Phonetic form

In the mapping of syntactic structures to the Articulatory/Perceptual (A/P) module,

at least three operations must take place: Prosodic tree formation, stress assignment
and linearization. The three together constitute a sub-set of the operations that we
call PF. The following is a short description of what they involve (see López 2009b):
1. Prosodic tree formation: There has to be a computational system, call it Cp that
builds metrical trees out of syntactic structures: minimally, phonological phrases
and intonational phrases. Cp includes constraints such as Align and Wrap that
make predictions as to where the prosodic boundaries will be located (see
Selkirk 1995; Truckenbrodt 1999, among many others). Align and Wrap are
formulated in terms of syntactic boundaries, which leads to the conclusion
that CHL provides the input for Cp.
2. Linearization: There has to be a computational system, call it Cl that takes syn-
tactic structures based on dominance and c-command and transforms them
into linear strings. An important component of Cl is Kayne’s (1994) Linear
Correspondence Axiom (LCA), which tells us that if α c-commands β, then α
precedes β (this is very roughly expressed and there are other principles that
may trump the LCA; see López 2009b). Since structure is one of the factors in
the determination of order, it follows that the input to Cl must also be CHL. We
can conceive of Cl and Cp as two simultaneous operations, since they are fed
by the same input – or even as one computation, Cpl.
3. Stress assignment: Finally, there has to be a computational system, call it Cs
that assigns phrase and sentence stress to constituents following some algo-
rithm (like the SNSR or LNSR presented above). In a language like English, in
which stress is dependent on syntactic structure, the input to Cs must be CHL
again. But in Catalan, a language in which stress depends exclusively on linear
order, the input for Cs must be Cl.
The resulting schema is as follows:16

.â•… As Michael Rochemont (p.c.) points out, the model in (56) makes the construction of
prosody independent of stress placement. I take it that this is indeed the case and prosodic
boundaries are dependent exclusively on syntactic structure (as in Truckenbrodt’s (1999)
Wrap and Align constraints). Exploring the consequences of this claim go beyond the limits
of this chapter.
 Givenness and discourse anaphors 

(56) CHL  Cpl 

Cs in English Cs in Catalan

I claim that this difference between English and Catalan explains why the former
language is able to use stress to convey givenness while the latter is not. When Cs
applies in English, we have a full-fledged syntactic structure augmented with
features related to its connectedness to discourse. When Cs applies in Catalan, all it
has to play with is a linearized prosodic structure, from which syntactic configura-
tions and their features are gone. In the following section I present a model of the
syntax-discourse-phonology interface that expresses this difference.

7.â•… Syntax – discourse – Phonetic Form

In this section I would like to develop the model sketched in the previous section,
adding a discourse component to it to integrate the focus/ground structure and
givenness. I should hasten to add that this is probably not the only way that (56)
could be implemented – but it seems to me, at this stage of my research, to be a
plausible one.
I take a discourse model to be made up of Discourse Representation Structures
(DRS) (à la Kamp & Reyle 1993), which are themselves nothing but syntactic
structures annotated to express the relation of these structures to the previous
discourse.
The mapping operations follow the following steps, listed as a–e:

a. Construct a syntactic structure ∑ (sentence, phase…) by internal and external

Merge.
b. Assign a [+a(naphoric)] feature to constituents in a certain configuration,
expressing that a constituent in that position is a discourse-anaphor. As
argued in detail in López (2009a) there is abundant cross-linguistic evidence
that constituents that are discourse-anaphoric, in the sense in which I use this
word, are found in Spec,v, regardless of their final linear ordering (German
and Dutch scrambling, Icelandic object shift, Spanish p-movement, Catalan
CLRD). I assume that items moved into this position receive a [+a] feature
assigned by an interpretive module. As for the complement of v, I take it to be
simply not anaphoric, [–a], but I will use the more common subscript Foc for
focus (EA=External Argument).
 Luis López

(57) vP

XP[+a] v′

EA v′

v VP[Foc]

V t(XP)

Call ∑[p] the syntactic structure augmented with information structure features.
c. Integrate ∑[p] into a DRS. XP[+a] links up with an antecedent.
(58) DRS
∑1 : I’m wearing a red coat. What kind of coat are you wearing?
∑2[eng] : I’m wearing a blue coat
∑2[cat] : Porto un de blau, [[+a] d’abric ]

Since English does not seem to be sensitive to the feature [+a], I assume it is
not present in the English DRS.
d. As a result of integration, some constituents will be marked as [given], simply
indicating that they are in this type of relationship with another constituent
within the same DRS:
(59) DRS
∑1 : I’m wearing a red coat. What kind of coat are you wearing?
∑2[eng] : I[g]’m[g] wearing[g] a blue coat[g]
∑2[cat] : Porto[g] un de blau, [[+a] d’abric]

Thus, what is fed to the PF component is a ∑[p][g], a syntactic structure subindexed

with information structure features and superindexed with the feature [given].17
e. ∑[p][g] is fed to the PF component. The mapping to PF is, as we saw, composed
of (at least) three different operations: stress assignment, construction of pro-
sodic trees, linearization. As I argued, Catalan stress assignment takes place
after computation of prosodic trees and linearization (PL), while English does
stress assignment first.

.â•… Thus, being a discourse anaphor is the result of a syntactic rule while being given is not.
I think this reflects in an intuitive manner the fact that the former is mandatory while the
latter is accidental.
 Givenness and discourse anaphors 

Catalan: e. PL-computation
f. Stress assignment
English: e. Stress assignment
f.PL-computation
Thus, when English assigns stress, the feature [g] is present. Therefore a con-
straint like the GNR is possible and stress is shifted to avoid hitting on a given
constituent. In Catalan, stress assignment applies to a linearized intonation
unit – there is no ∑[p][g] anymore and therefore a stress constraint that refers to
any part of it cannot be formulated.
Thus, the above model predicts that a language with a stress system based on linear
order will not express focus/background or givenness by means of stress.
Moreover, notice that this analysis does not leave German out of the loop.
Recall the example above:
(60) [Context: Mary gave a red diamond to a politician. And Peter?
What did he give?]
Peter hat einem Politiker unerwartet einen blauen Diamanten gegeben.
Peter has a politician unexpectedly a blue diamond given

In German, a scrambled constituent is assigned the [+a] feature, as is the case

with einem Politiker. Later, when the sentence is integrated into the discourse,
Diamanten can be marked as [g]. German is a language in which stress assign-
ment is sensitive to configuration (Cinque 1993, among many others), which in
my model entails that Cs takes place before linearization. Thus, Cs can see the [g]
feature and mark it as deaccented.18
A linguist, particularly one trained during the last 15 years, might think that a
solution in terms of constraint ranking should be preferable to the timing solution
proposed here. One could certainly provide an adequate description of Catalan
by having the ranking LNSR>>GNR in this language. With such a ranking, the

.â•… Why doesn’t English scramble? That is, why is the following not grammatical?:
(i) [Context: What did you do with the blue coat?]
*I have the blue coat sold.
I do not have an answer to this question, but I may suggest an idea as to what kind of solution
is more plausible. If movement takes place freely and bad results are filtered out at the inter-
faces, as in Kučerová’s (2007) proposals, then it is not possible to explain why English cannot
scramble like German. However, a feature-based approach to movement could simply suggest
that the crucial trigger is missing in English. Arguably, positing invisible features to trigger
movement is, for the time being, unenlightening. However, the alternative is unable to begin
to address the question of language variation and thus it is in a disadvantage.
 Luis López

Catalan sentential prominence always falls on the last constituent regardless of

givenness. This suffices to describe the facts, since it would make stress assignment
insensitive to givenness. However, I would like to propose a stronger hypothesis:
If a language assigns stress linearly it will simply be impossible for this language to
have givenness-sensitive stress. This follows directly from the timing model but not
from the constraint model – nothing prevents the opposite ranking GNR>>LNSR
in Twin-World-Catalan, a language that would be like Catalan except that given
constituents would still be deaccented. The stronger hypothesis that Twin-World
Catalan cannot exist is the one that I would like to submit for inspection.

8.â•… Conclusion

I have shown that English deaccenting does not bear the same information import
as Catalan CLRD. CLRDed constituents are discourse-anaphoric. Deaccenting is
only a reflex that a constituent has been mentioned in the previous discourse or its
contents are entailed by its F-existential closure. In German, deaccenting indexes
givenness while a scrambled constituent is discourse-anaphoric.
Catalan sentence stress is insensitive to givenness or information structure
generally. I have related this difference between English and Catalan to the fact
that stress in English is sensitive to syntax while in Catalan it is sensitive exclusively
to linear order. Finally, I have concluded that the stress difference reveals a timing
difference in the operations that take place at the syntax-PF interface.

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 Constraints on subject-focus mapping
in French and English
A contrastive analysis

Knud Lambrecht
University of Texas at Austin

Grammars reflect universal constraints on the mappings between the information

structure of propositions and the formal structure of sentences. These constraints
restrict the possible linkings between pragmatic relations (topic vs. focus),
pragmatic properties (given vs. new), semantic roles (agent vs. patient),
grammatical relations (subject vs. object), and syntactic positions (preverbal vs.
postverbal, etc). While these mapping constraints are universal, their grammatical
manifestation is subject to typological variation. For example, although spoken
English has been shown to strongly prefer pronominal over lexical subjects, hence
to avoid focal subjects, it nevertheless freely permits subject-focus mapping in
certain sentence-focus and argument-focus constructions. In spoken French,
in contrast, subject-focus mapping is unacceptable if not ungrammatical in
most environments. Spoken French shows a near one-to-one mapping between
focus structure and phrase structure: Topic expressions occur overwhelmingly
in preverbal position and in pronominal form, while focus expressions occur
postverbally. To avoid violating this near one-to-one mapping constraint, spoken
French makes abundant use of grammatical realignment constructions, especially
clefts. Some of these constructions do not exist in English, or have a much more
restricted distribution in that language.

1.â•… Focus structure across languages: Some examples

It is well-known that the lexico-grammatical structure of sentences reflects

different types of focus-background articulation, or focus structure, depending on
the scope of the focus in a proposition. At least three focus structure categories are
formally reflected across languages (Lambrecht 1994: 221ff.).
The first is the predicate focus articulation, also referred to as the ‘subject-
predicate’, ‘topic-comment’, or ‘categorical’ articulation. This focus category is
characterized by the fact that the pragmatic assertion made by an utterance
provides a comment about a given topic. Alternatively, one could say that the
 Knud Lambrecht

assertion consists in adding a predicate to a given argument. Example (1) illustrates

the predicate-focus type in five familiar European languages, provided with a
minimal discourse context (small caps indicate points of prosodic prominence):

(1) Context: “What happened to your car?”

a. English My car broke down./It broke down. (SV)
b. German Mein auto ist kaputt./Das ist kaputt. (SV)
c. Spanish Mi coche se descompuso./Se descompuso. (SV/V)
d. Italian La mia macchina si è rotta./Si è rotta. (SV/V)
e. French Ma voiture (elle) est en panne./Elle est en panne. (S(pro)V/proV)

There is remarkable syntactic and prosodic similarity in the way the different
languages express this focus type, at least in the given discourse context. In all
cases the initial subject expresses the topic of the sentence, about which the follow-
ing predicate expresses a comment. In the given context, the subject can be either
lexical or pronominal, or it can be null-instantiated, as in Spanish and Italian. In
spoken French, there is a clear preference for the topic NP to be left-dislocated
(hence not to be the subject). Prosodically, the common feature is the presence of
a nuclear accent at the end of the sentence and of a secondary accent on the subject
or topic NP, when it is lexical.
The second type of focus structure is the argument focus articulation, also
called ‘focus-presupposition’, ‘specificational’, ‘identificational’, or ‘contrastive’
articulation.1 Here the pragmatic assertion consists in providing the missing
argument in a pragmatically presupposed open proposition. In other words, the
assertion adds an argument to a given (incomplete) predication:

(2) Context: “I heard your motorcycle broke down?”

a. English No, my car broke down. (SV)
b. German Nein, mein auto ist kaputt. (SV)
c. Spanish No, se me descompuso el coche. (VS)
d. Italian No, si è rotta la mia macchina. (VS)
e. French Non, c’est ma voiture qui est en panne. (proVO+proV)

It is easy to see that in the case of the argument-focus articulation there is much
greater syntactic and prosodic diversity among the different languages than in the
predicate-focus type in (1). In English and German, the syntax of the sentence
is the same as in (1), but the nuclear accent is now on the subject instead of the

.â•… The label ‘argument focus’ is somewhat misleading as the term ‘argument’ is now almost
exclusively used to denote a complement that is required by some predicator. In the present,
somewhat old-fashioned, use ‘argument’ includes ‘adjunct’.
 Constraints on subject-focus mapping in French and English 

predicate, the latter being necessarily deaccented. In Spanish and Italian it is the
sequential order of the subject and the predicate that is reversed, resulting in a
case of syntactic inversion. This reversal of the two main constituents reflects
the fact that it is now the subject that represents the new or focal portion of the
proposition, while the predicate is now pragmatically presupposed. In both lan-
guages, the verb could receive a secondary sentence accent. Such an accent is
not categorial and is therefore ignored here. Finally in French the argument-focus
articulation is expressed via a type of cleft construction (the c’est-cleft, which
formally corresponds to the English it-cleft). Notice that cleft formation results in
postverbal position of the focal argument while keeping the logical subject-predicate
sequence unchanged.
The third type of focus structure is the sentence focus articulation, also referred
to as the ‘all-new’, ‘presentational’, or ‘thetic’ type. In this type, the proposition lacks
a bipartition into either topic and comment or presupposition and focus, the basic
pragmatic function being to introduce a new entity or a new situation (involving a
new entity) into the discourse. In other words, the pragmatic assertion consists in
adding both an argument and a predicate to the discourse:

(3) Context: “You look upset. What happened?”

a. English My car broke down. (SV)
b. German Mein auto ist kaputt. (SV)
c. Spanish Se me descompuso el coche. (proVS)
d. Italian Mi si è rotta la macchina. (proVS)
e. French J‘ai ma voiture qui est en panne. (proVO+proV)

Interestingly, in all five languages the sentence-focus articulation in (3) is formally

identical, or near-identical, to the corresponding argument-focus articulation in (2).
In English and German, the two main constituents are now prosodically integrated
via focus projection (Jacobs 1993), the accented subject argument projecting its
focus value onto the unaccented predicate. In Spanish and Italian, subject-predicate
inversion is used, with the main accent falling on the sentence-final subject. A
secondary accent falls on the verb, indicating the focal character of its denotatum.
In French, another cleft construction is used, this time involving the copular verb
avoir ‘to have’ instead of être ‘to be’.

2.â•… C
 onstraints on the mapping from information structure
to grammatical form

Grammars reflect universal cognitive constraints on the mapping between the

informational structuring of utterances, the semantic structuring of propositions,
 Knud Lambrecht

and the formal structuring of sentences. These constraints restrict the possible
alignments among the following pragmatic, semantic, and syntactic parameters:

(4) a. pragmatic relations (topic and focus)

b. pragmatic statuses of discourse referents (hearer-new vs. hearer-old,
discourse-new vs. discourse-old (Prince 1992))
c. semantic roles (agent and patient)
d. grammatical relations (subject and object)
e. syntactic positions (e.g. preverbal vs. postverbal position in
SVO languages)
f. morphosyntactic and prosodic forms

One cross-linguistically well-attested example of a mapping constraint is the

constraint that determines the possible alignments between subject, focus, hear-
er-new discourse status, and sentence-initial subject position. A manifestation
of this constraint is shown in the there-construction in (5), where a focal subject
NP with a hearer-new referent and a stative predicate cannot occur in prever-
bal subject position and must occur instead in the postverbal position normally
occupied by objects:

(5) a. #A guy was very rich.

>There was a guy who was very rich.
b. #Un type était très riche.
>Il y a avait un type qui était très riche.

The mapping constraint illustrated in (5) is the manifestation of a general cognitive

principle according to which one cannot assess the information value (the “truth
value”) of a proposition unless one has first identified the subject relative to which
the speaker intends the predicate to be assessed (cf. the ‘principle of the separation
of reference and relation’ in Lambrecht 1994).
A related mapping constraint has been observed for certain partitive subjects
in French (Van de Velde 1995). As Van de Velde observes, sentences like (6a) are
judged ungrammatical or unacceptable by native speakers of French, even though
they are syntactically unobjectionable:

(6) a. *De la neige a effacé leur traces.

b. Snow erased their traces.

It is interesting to observe that the corresponding English sentence in (6b) does

not give the same impression of unacceptability. As we will see in much detail
below, there is a marked typological difference between English and French with
respect to the tolerance for subjects with pragmatically inaccessible referents.
 Constraints on subject-focus mapping in French and English 

English has a number of (more or less sub-standard) grammatical constructions

which allow speakers to prevent subject NPs with pragmatically inaccessible
referents from occurring in sentence-initial position. Some examples are shown in
(7), (8), and (9), each followed by the corresponding canonical version which was
felt to be pragmatically inappropriate by the speaker in the given discourse context:

(7) Student after a logic exam:

a. I got proofs dancing in my head.
b. Proofs are dancing in my head.

(8) UT professor in a discussion with colleagues about teaching loads

(Lambrecht 1988b):
a. I have a friend of mine in the history department teaches two courses
per semester.
b. A friend of mine in the history department teaches two courses
per semester.

(9) Hostess to guest after spilling jam on a new tablecloth:

a. We don’t last long with tablecloths in this house.
b. Tablecloths don’t last long in this house.

In (7a), the speaker avoids the lexical subject NP proofs whose referent is hearer-
new by resorting to a cleft-like structure headed by the verb get. In this structure
the logical predicate (are dancing in my head) is demoted to secondary predicate
status (dancing in my head), allowing the logical subject (proofs) to appear in
object position and the main subject position to be filled by the highly accessible
deictic pronoun I. Example (8a) is an instance of the ‘presentational amalgam
construction’ (Lambrecht 1988b), in which a NP with a pragmatically inaccessible
referent (here a friend of mine in the history department) functions simultaneously
as the object of the presentational verb have and as the subject of the following
main predicate, in such a way that the initial subject position can be filled by
the deictic pronoun I. (9a) is an instance of a somewhat less conventionalized
construction, in which the logical subject argument (tablecloths) is demoted to
postverbal oblique status (with tablecloths), thereby allowing the initial subject
position to be occupied by the deictic we.
While the cognitive constraints operating in (5) through (9) are universal,
their grammatical manifestation in individual languages is subject to typological
variation (Comrie 1981; Lambrecht 1994; Van Valin & LaPolla 1997; Van Valin
1999). Thus, even though English strongly favors pronominal over lexical subjects
in spontaneous discourse (Prince 1981, Francis, Gregory & Michaelis 1999), it
 Knud Lambrecht

nevertheless freely permits focal lexical subjects in sentence-initial position, as

shown in (2a) and (3a) above.
In contrast to English, many languages avoid or prohibit sentence structures
with focal subject referents and use special realignment constructions (clefts,
inversions, diatheses) instead. One such language is the Bantu language Sesotho,
as described by Demuth (1989) (see also Zerbian (2006) on Northern Sotho and
Creissels (2008) on Tswana). Consider the following contrasts:

(10) a. Monna o-fihl-il-e

man subj-arrive-prfv-mood
‘The man arrived’ (not ‘A man arrived’)
b. Ho-fihl-il-e monna
loc-arrive-prfv-mood man
‘There arrived a man/A man arrived’

As shown in (10a), in Sesotho an initial subject NP cannot have a hearer-new

referent, witness the fact that in the English translation the subject cannot be an
indefinite NP. To express the sentence corresponding to the English A man arrived
(a sentence-focus structure), the subject NP with the hearer-new referent must
appear post-verbally, the preverbal position now being occupied by a locative
expression (comparable to the English there-construction There arrived a man).
Of special interest with respect to the French facts described below are the data
in (11) and (12), which concern the syntactic behavior of interrogative subjects:

(11) a. *Mang o-pheh-ile lijo?

who sub-cook-perf food
‘Who cooked the food?’
b. Lijo li-pheh-li-o-e ke mang?
food subj-cook-perf-pass-mood cop who
‘The food was cooked by who?/Who cooked the food?’

In (11a) the interrogative subject mang ‘who’, being an argument-focus expression,

is disallowed in initial position. Instead it appears in postverbal position, via
passivization, as shown in (11b). An analogous situation obtains in (12):

(12) a. Ea o-f-ile-ng ntja ke mang?

rel obj-give-perf-rel dog cop who
‘The one that gave you the dog is who?/Who gave you the dog?’
b. Ke mang ea o-f-ile-ng ntja
cop who rel obj-give-perf-rel dog
‘It’s who that gave you the dog?/Who gave you the dog?’
 Constraints on subject-focus mapping in French and English 

In (12), the interrogative subject mang ‘who’ is prevented from appearing in initial
position through the use of cleft constructions. (12a) corresponds to the English
WH-cleft and (12b) to the English it-cleft. As we will see later on, a very similar
situation obtains in spoken French WH-question formation.

3.â•… M
 apping constraints and preferred clause structure
in spoken French

With respect to the constraints on the mapping from information structure

to grammatical form, spoken French is typologically closer to a language like
Sesotho than to English or German. In particular, spoken French is subject to
the constraints in (13):

(13) a. Focal elements do not occur in preverbal position.

b. Topical elements rarely occur in postverbal position.
c. Preverbal elements must be pragmatically highly accessible.

By ‘preverbal position’ I mean the position normally occupied either by lexical

subjects or by clitic pronouns. By ‘postverbal position’ I mean the position normally
occupied by lexical objects. The constraints do not apply to the pre-clausal COMP
position (as in focus-preposing constructions) nor to the left- or right-dislocated
topic positions. As a corollary of (13b) and (13c), topical constituents occur over-
whelmingly in the form of clitic pronouns or else in dislocated (i.e. non-argument)
position. It is important to acknowledge that these mapping constraints are not the
automatic result of general processing constraints on spoken language production,
i.e. they are not simple ‘discourse preferences’. Rather I will show that they are
properties of the grammatical system of the language, with strong correlates in
syntactic form.
Analyses of corpora of spoken French reveal an overwhelming preference for
speakers to use a certain sentence type which I call the ‘preferred clause construc-
tion’ (PCC). In this preferred construction, the preverbal position is occupied by
a clitic pronoun and the postverbal position by an XP (typically a single one) with
focus value. The PCC is instantiated in 95 to 97% of all clauses in the corpora
I have analyzed. The canonical SVO clause construction, in which the clause-initial
subject position is occupied by a full lexical NP, is distributionally highly marked
in spoken French (Lambrecht 1987).
The basic syntactic structure and information structure of the PCC is represented
in the box diagram in (14).
 Knud Lambrecht

(14) The preferred clause construction of spoken French

preferred clause construction (PCC)

pro+V XP

Foc [+]
pro V
Top [–]
Top [ ]
Foc [–]

(pro = clitic pronoun, XP = lexical or independent pronominal

argument or adjunct)

Pragmatically, the PCC is of the predicate-focus type (cf. Example (1)), i.e. the PCC
normally expresses a proposition in which the initial pro element is interpreted
as having the pragmatic role of topic, about which the focal predicate expresses
a comment. In accordance with the constraints in (13), the clause-initial pro
element is non-focal and its referent is highly discourse-accessible (hence coded
pronominally). In case pro is the so-called ‘impersonal’ il ‘it’ or the generic on ‘one’,
it is neither focal nor topical, hence the empty brackets after the ‘Top’ attribute. The
postverbal XP element is focal. The verb is unmarked for the topic-focus opposition,
due to the optional nature of focus projection (Schmerling 1976; Fuchs 1976;
Höhle 1982; Selkirk 1984; Jacobs 1993).
In order to preserve the PCC as invariably as possible in discourse, spoken
French uses a number of ready-made grammatical constructions which “target”
the PCC, i.e. whose sole purpose seems to be to permit speakers to rearrange con-
stituents according to the communicative needs of the discourse without violating
the constraints in (13) on the position and morphological type of topic and focus
elements. These ‘PCC-targeted constructions’ fall into three major syntactic types:
(15) a. dislocation constructions
b. secondary predication constructions
c. inversion constructions (rare in spoken French)

The speaker’s selection among the construction types in (15) is determined by the
focus articulation of the proposition to be communicated. Generally speaking, dis-
location is used for predicate-focus, while secondary predication (and inversion)
is used for argument-focus and sentence-focus. The PCC-targeted constructions
can to some extent be combined with one another via constructional inheritance.
In this paper, I will be concerned only with the secondary predication type (15b).
 Constraints on subject-focus mapping in French and English 

The box diagram in (16) shows the PCC embedded in a larger sentence
structure, the secondary predication construction (labelled S2). This construc-
tion permits the generation of clefts and other PCC-targeted constructions
(Vé = past participle; RC = relative clause).
(16) Syntax and information structure of the secondary predication construction
S2 secondary predication construction

S1 preferred clause construction Foc[]

AP
pro+V XP Vé
de-Vé
pro V Foc[+] NP
Top[–] PP
Top[ ] AdvP
Foc[–] RC

In the secondary predication construction, the postverbal XP of the PCC in (14)

plays two grammatical roles simultaneously: it is both the grammatical object of
a primary predication (the one expressed by the PCC) and the logical subject of a
secondary predication, expressed by the rightmost box in (16) (Lambrecht 1997,
2000; Koenig & Lambrecht 1998). When the secondary predicate is a relative
clause (RC), these constructions are often clefts, depending on the nature of the
PCC predicate (Katz 1997; Lambrecht, 1988a, 2001). The use of some of the other
categories in the rightmost box will be illustrated in Section 4.
In the remainder of this paper I will discuss various secondary predication
constructions with attested examples from spontaneous conversational speech.
The majority of the examples will illustrate cleft constructions. In each case, the
French construction will be contrasted with the corresponding construction in
English, or vice-versa.

4.â•… Secondary predication constructions

4.1â•… Argument-focus constructions

As stated at the beginning, the basic discourse function of an argument-focus
construction is to provide the missing element (argument or adjunct) in a prag-
matically presupposed open proposition. Argument-focus constructions are often,
 Knud Lambrecht

but by no means exclusively, used in replies to WH-questions. In the examples to

be discussed, the focus argument is in square brackets and the sign # indicates
discourse inappropriateness.
Consider the short exchange in (17) (Isabelle is speaker B’s daughter):
(17) A: J’aime bien ta chemise, tu te souviens où tu l’as achetée?
‘I like your shirt, do you remember where you bought it?’
B: a. C’est [isabelle] qui me l’a donnee, il y a cinq ans.
a′. #[Isabelle] me l’a donnée, il y a cinq ans.
b. [isabelle] gave it to me, five years ago.
b′. #It’s [Isabelle] that gave it to me, five years ago.

Speaker B’s reply is a striking example of the pervasive use of the c’est-cleft con-
struction in the spoken language. The canonical SVO structure in (17Ba′) would
be inappropriate in the given context. This is so because speaker A’s question ‘Do
you remember where you bought it?’ has evoked the open proposition ‘You bought
it somewhere’, as well as the desire to know the identity of the place in question.
The place of provenance of the shirt will therefore be the argument-focus element
of the answer. However since the shirt was in fact not a purchase by speaker B
but a gift from his daughter, the gift-giver, not a store, will occupy the argument-
focus position in the answer. Now since unpredictably the predicate associated
with the focus element is donner ‘give’, not acheter ‘buy’, this unpredictability must
be expressed by prosodic prominence on the verb in the RC (Lambrecht 1994).
Notice that the predicate ‘buy’, when associated with a goal argument, belongs to
the same semantic ‘giving’ frame as the verb give. Therefore the open proposition
‘x gave it to me’ is cognitively sufficiently accessible to warrant the use of the
c’est-cleft construction (see Prince 1978).
In strong contrast to French, an it-cleft construction would be clearly inappro-
priate in English in (17). Instead, English uses the canonical SVO syntax. Notice,
however, that the sentence is prosodically marked as not having the unmarked
predicate-focus or topic-comment articulation. Indeed, the sentence accent on the
subject NP Isabelle is an instance of the so-called ‘A-accent’ (Bolinger 1989) or
primary accent (Ladd 1996: 223ff.) involving a falling intonation contour (marked
‘H*L’ in the system of Pierrehumbert 1980). The referent of the subject NP is thus
formally marked as having not a topic but a focus relation to the proposition.2
Example (17) allows us to draw two tentative conclusions. The first is that the
appropriateness conditions for the use of the cleft construction in question are not

.â•… In calling the accent on Isabelle ‘primary’ or ‘A-accent’ I am leaving open the question of
the nature of the second sentence accent, on gave. I assume this is also a primary accent, even
though pragmatically it does not necessarily mark a focus element.
 Constraints on subject-focus mapping in French and English 

identical in French and in English, even though there may be usage overlap in other
discourse situations. The second is that it is possible in English to simply reverse
the unmarked topic-comment or theme-rheme word order without concomitant
syntactic adjustments, while this is not possible in French. Notice, however, that
the sequential order of the logical subject (here Isabelle) and the logical predicate
(here me l’a donnée/gave it to me) remains the same in the two languages: in both
languages the focal argument precedes the presupposed predicate.
Item (18) contains an attested English exchange. Speaker B has visited speaker
A and is now planning his return home. Speaker A has offered to drive B to the
airport, but B says he wants to take a cab instead:

(18) A: The taxi is very expensive.

B: a. Doesn’t matter. [company] pays.
a′. ?It’s [the company] that pays.
b. Ça fait rien. C’est [la boite] qui paye.
b′. #[La boîte] paye.

As B’s reply shows, it is possible, and in fact quite idiomatic, in English to use the
unmarked syntactic sequence SV, even though in the given discourse situation the
predicate pays is clearly less focal than the subject company. Indeed, the semantic
‘paying’ frame has been evoked in speaker A’s utterance, while the company in
question is entirely new to the discourse, hence acts as the focus of the proposi-
tion. As a result, the subject NP company receives the focus-marking A-accent,
as in the previous example. By contrast, such a simple reversal of the topic-focus
order is unacceptable in French and a c’est-cleft construction would have to be
used, as shown in (18Bb). Nevertheless the sequential order of the logical subject
and the logical predicate is again the same in the two languages. What counts is
that in French this subject is prevented from appearing in initial subject position.
A similar situation obtains in (19). The utterance in (19a) was made in a
restaurant, in reply to another speaker’s question as to which item to choose from
the wine list:
(19) a. I really don’t care. [YOU] decide.
a′. I really don’t care. ?It’s [YOU] that decides.
b. Ça m’est vraiment égal. C’est [vous] qui decidez.
b′. Ça m’est vraiment égal. #[Vous] décidez.

As in the previous examples, the theme-rheme order is simply reversed in English,

without further syntactic adjustments. In the given speech situation, the fact that
a decision has to be made about which wine to choose is pragmatically presup-
posed. The identity of the chooser is the new, focal element. Nevertheless, the
focus appears in initial subject position and the presupposed portion is expressed
 Knud Lambrecht

in the following predicate. In French, the use of the canonical subject-predicate

order would be unacceptable, as shown in (18), and a c’est-cleft construction would
have to be used instead.
Item (20a) is another attested French example. The context is a guided tour
of a French factory. The foreman explains the special situation of a certain group
of workers by saying that they are temporary employees being trained by the
factory at the expense of the government:
(20) a. Autrement dit, ils travaillent pour nous, mais c’est [le gouvernement]
qui paie.
a′. #Autrement dit, ils travaillent pour nous, mais [le gouvernement] paie.
b. In other words, they work for us, but [the government] pays.
b′. In other words, they work for us, but it’s [the government] that pays.

The semantic structure of the utterance in (20a) contains a contrast between two
parallel predications, ‘working for us’ and ‘being paid by the government’. Indeed
in a language like Italian, the syntactic sequence would directly express the
semantic theme-rheme parallelism between the two predications, via subject-verb
inversion in the second pair. The analogous Italian sentence is shown in (20c)
(20) c. Lavorano per noi, ma paga [il governo].

which literally translates as ‘(They) work for us but pays the government’. Neither
French nor English can express the theme-rheme sequence in the same exact
parallel as in Italian (unless they were to resort to a passive construction in the
second pair, such as ‘They work for us, but they are paid by the government’). Instead
both languages resort to the chiastic structure A – B, B – A, where the theme-rheme
sequence is reversed in the second pair. However, the chiasmus is expressed with
different syntactic structures in the two languages. While English uses the cano�
nical subject-predicate sequence twice, French resorts to a c’est-cleft construction
in the second pair.
The next example shows an interesting subtle mistake made by an American
student writing in French. In (21a), the actually produced sentence, the student
describes how as a little girl she once got lost walking along a beach and how a life
guard helped her find her way back to her parents:
(21) a. #Finalement, j’ai trouvé un gardien (ou plutôt, [le gardien] m’a trouvée).
a′. Finalement, j’ai trouvé un gardien (ou plutôt, c’est [le gardien]
qui m’a trouvée).
b. Eventually I found a guard (or rather, [the guard] found me).
b′. Eventually I found a guard (or rather it’s the guard that found me).

As the comparison of the inappropriate (21a) with (21b) reveals, the student
spontaneously uses in French the canonical syntax she would have used in her
 Constraints on subject-focus mapping in French and English 

native English, producing something resembling the chiastic structure ABC –

CBA (‘I find guard – guard find me’). This simple and elegant chiastic structure is
utterly unacceptable in the French version, where the focal item le gardien has to
appear as a clefted NP (c’est le gardien).
Interestingly, the appropriate French version in (21a′) fails to express a
contrast that is obligatorily expressed in English, via the second accent on me.
What is overtly expressed in English is to be inferred in French. This difference
between overt vs. covert expression of a secondary contrast is nicely illustrated
in the following text from a newspaper article about the difference in politeness
between English and French people (the italics are in the English original):
(22) a. The American travel writer Paul Theroux once defined an Englishman as
someone who apologizes if you tread on his foot. To extend the analogy, a
Frenchman could be defined as someone who expects you to apologize if
he treads on your foot.
b. L’écrivain voyageur américain Paul Theroux a défini un Anglais comme
quelqu’un qui s’excuse si vous lui marchez sur le pied. Pour poursuivre
l’analogie, un Français pourrait se définir comme quelqu’un qui s’attend à
ce que vous vous excusiez si c’est lui qui vous marche sur le pied.

The stylistic effect of the English text is built on the parallel between two pairs
of contrasting items: “you tread on his foot” and “he treads on your foot”. At
the time the first pair is uttered, the fact that someone treads on someone’s
foot is new to the discourse, while in the second pair this open proposition is
now discourse-presupposed. This difference in presupposition remains formally
unexpressed in English. What is elegantly expressed is the double contrast
between agent and patient in the two pairs. In French, on the other hand, the
discourse-presupposedness of the open proposition ‘x treads on y’s foot’ is formally
expressed in the second pair via the relative clause of the c’est-cleft construction.
What remains unexpressed in French is the contrast between agent and patient.
In both pairs, the patient argument is simply expressed by an unaccented pronoun
(lui and vous).
Item (23) illustrates a little-known construction where the secondary predi-
cate represented in (16) is not a relative clause (RC) but a noun phrase (NP).
Sentence (23a), from a comic book by the French cartoonist Reiser, is uttered by
a rat sitting comfortably next to a garbage can in a Paris street. Tasting different
pieces of newspaper from the garbage can, the rat says:
(23) a. C’est [Le monde] le meilleur.
a′. #[Le Monde] est le meilleur.
b. [Le monde] is the best.
b′. *It’s [le Monde] the best.
 Knud Lambrecht

The use of the structure in (23a) has the effect of avoiding the canonical structure in
(23a′), which would be appropriate in a context where the newspaper Le Monde is
already a topic under discussion, about which the predicate est le meilleur would
express a comment. However in (23a), the newspaper in question is the focus
of the proposition. What is pragmatically presupposed, given the context of the
picture, is the fact that what one eats can taste more or less good. In English, as
before, the focus element appears in the canonical subject position, followed by
the presupposed predicate, reversing the normal theme-rheme order without
concomitant syntactic changes. The structure in (23b′), which is analogous to the
French structure in (23a), is ungrammatical in English.
(24) is another instance of the secondary predication construction in (23). The
speaker is the driver of a car waiting at a red light behind three other cars. Deciding
to pass the other cars as soon as the light turns green, the speaker utters (24a):
(24) a. I’sont trois, c’est [moi] le quatrieme.
a′. #I’sont trois, [je] suis le quatrième.
b. They are three, [I]’m the fourth.
b′. *They are three, it is [me] the fourth.

As in the previous example, the pragmatically presupposed open proposition

(‘x is the fourth’) is expressed in predicate position, while the focal subject (the
value of the variable x) precedes. From the mention of the three other drivers in
the first part of the sentence one can infer that some other driver will be number
four. What is relatively new, or presented as such, is the fact that the fourth one is
the speaker. The speaker will therefore be the focus of the proposition. This focus
appears in subject position in English. In French it appears as the complement of
the verb est, the presupposed predicate (le quatrième) being expressed in secondary
predicate position.
From the constraint in (13a) (‘Focal elements do not occur in preverbal
position’) it follows naturally that French does not have the category of the reverse
WH-cleft, in which an argument focus appears in sentence-initial subject posi-
tion. An example of the English reverse WH-cleft is shown in (25a).
(25) a. [champagne] is what I like.
b. C’est [le champagne] que j’aime.
b′. #[Le champagne] est ce que j’aime.

As (25b′) shows, the literal translation of the English cleft is unacceptable (if
not ungrammatical) in French and a c’est-cleft has to be used instead, as in (25b).3

.â•… Note that Example (25b′), especially with left-dislocation (Le champagne, c’est ce que j’aime),
would be acceptable in the non-cleft reading, where le champagne is a topic expression.
 Constraints on subject-focus mapping in French and English 

An attested English example of a reverse WH-cleft is shown in (26a) (from a

conversation about Nancy Reagan’s influence on her husband):
(26) a. [she] was the one who wanted to keep Reagan from appearing anywhere
in public.
b. C’était [elle] qui voulait empêcher Reagan d’apparaître en public.
b′. #[Elle] était celle qui voulait empêcher Reagan d’apparaître en public.

As in (25), the only possible cleft construction in this context in French is the
c’est-cleft in (26b). Sentence (26b′) is well-formed only in the reading where elle
is a topic expression, as e.g. in response to the question ‘Who was Nancy Reagan’.
Another attested Example is (27a), from a TV interview with Nelson Mandela,
in which the statesman was asked to explain how he met his second wife. After
describing the circumstances that led to the marriage, Mandela ended with
these words:
(27) a. [That]’s how I met her.4
b. C’est [comme ça] que j’ai fait sa connaissance.
c. *[Comme ça] est que j’ai fait sa connaissance.

Even though the speaker has been talking about how he met his wife, the focus
in (27a) is that element of the utterance which corresponds to the question word
‘how?’ in the original question, while the fact that the speaker met his wife at
some point is treated as presupposed. In French the focus element comme ça
‘that way’ cannot appear in preverbal position, as (27c) shows, and a c’est-cleft
must be used instead.
A revealing test case for the general claim made in this paper is the behavior of
focus-sensitive adverbs like ‘only’. French has two expressions for ‘only’: seulement
and (ne)…que. As predicted, neither expression can occur in preverbal subject
position in French:
(28) a. Only [he] understands me.
b. Y a que [lui] qui me comprend.
b′. *[lui] seulement me comprend./*Que [lui] me comprend.5

.â•… In an interesting analysis, Calude (2008) argues that the construction illustrated in (27a)
does not belong to the category Reverse WH-cleft but to a special category she refers to as
‘Demonstrative cleft’. For the purpose of the present paper, the exact categorization of the
construction is irrelevant, as long as the initial cleft constituent is a focus element.
.â•… The ungrammaticality of this sentence, as well as that of the corresponding sentence
in (29b′), is independently motivated by the fact that the que in (ne)…que can only appear
postverbally, hence is banned from initial position.
 Knud Lambrecht

While in English the focus element he is the subject, in French the focus pronoun
lui must appear in the post-copular position of the avoir-cleft construction in
(28b), of which a first example was given in (3e) above. Another Example is
shown in (29):
(29) a. Only [my parents] call me that.
b. Y a que [mes parents] qui m’appellent comme ça.
b′. *[Mes parents] seulement m’appellent comme ça.
/*Que [mes parents] m’appellent comme ça.

As in (28), the focus constituent appears in initial subject position in English, while
in French it must occur in the postverbal focus position of an avoir-cleft.
Another revealing test case for the constraint in (13a) is the behavior of
interrogative subjects in WH-questions in spoken French (see Myers 2007). As
Myers and other researchers have shown, spoken French has a baffling variety
of interrogative WH-constructions, whose existence seems to be at least in part
motivated by the constraint in (13a). Consider the data in (30), some of which are
strongly reminiscent of the Sesotho data in (11) and (12) above:
(30) a. [Who] gave you the dog?
b. [Qui] t’a donné le chien?
c. [Qui] est-ce qui t’a donné le chien?
d. [Qui] c’est qui t’a donné le chien?
e. C’est [qui] qui t’a donné le chien?
f. [Qui] qui t’a donné le chien?

(Notice that the second qui in (30c–f) is a relative pronoun, whose non-focal status
exempts it from the constraint in (13a).) The possible occurrence of (30b), with its
preverbal subject qui (‘who’), is an apparent exception to the constraint in question.
However, as Myers (2007) shows, interrogative qui is exceedingly rare as subject in
the corpora. Nevertheless, unlike Sesotho, sentences with qui in preverbal subject
position are grammatical in French. Example (30c) illustrates the use of the frozen
sequence est-ce que in question formation. This structure is acceptable because
the initial question word qui functions here predicatively rather than as a subject,
the subject being the inverted clitic ce. Although acceptable, this type of question
formation is rare in the corpora, as Myers (2007) has shown. By far the most
common WH-interrogative constructions in spoken French are those in (d) and
(e). Both are c’est-cleft constructions, with the interrogative qui either in COMP
position, as in (30d), or in situ, as in (30e). As in (30c), the interrogative word func-
tions predicatively, as the complement of the copula est. As a result, the constraint
against preverbal focus expressions is not violated. Finally (30f) can be analyzed
as a truncated form of the cleft in (30e), the sequence c’est being understood. What
counts in (f) is that interrogative qui is not in preverbal subject position.
 Constraints on subject-focus mapping in French and English 

4.2â•… Sentence-focus constructions

As stated earlier, the basic discourse function of a sentence-focus construction is
to introduce a new entity (presentational function) or a new situation (eventive
function) into a discourse. In spoken French, sentence-focus constructions
typically are headed by the copula avoir ‘to have’.
Perhaps the most common sentence-focus construction involving avoir is the
one involving a relative clause as secondary predicate, a construction I referred
to earlier as the avoir-cleft construction. What is particularly striking about this
construction is that it is not subject to any definiteness effect, unlike its English
counterpart, the there-construction (see Lambrecht 1988a). A hackneyed Example
is the one in (31):
(31) a. Y a [le téléphone] qui sonne!
a′. #[Le téléphone] sonne!
b. [The phone]’s ringing!

Even though (31a′) is a perfectly well-formed sentence, it is the cleft version in

(31a) that will be used most naturally to make an interlocutor aware of a ringing
telephone or, more likely, to get the interlocutor to go and pick it up. In English,
however, the canonical SV structure will be used, with the characteristic intonation
contour caused by prosodic integration of the subject and the predicate under a
single sentence accent. Another Example is (32):
(32) a. J’ai [la tête] qui tourne.
a′. #[Ma tête] tourne.
b. [My head]’s spinning./I’m dizzy.

Here the cleft sentence in (32a) with its inalienable possession syntax is semantically
specialized, to the point that the canonical counterpart in (32a′) would not express
the same state of affairs (i.e. dizziness of the speaker). In English, however, the literal
equivalent of (32a′) would be acceptable in the specialized meaning, even though
the alternative structure involving the adjective dizzy may be more idiomatic.
While the above-described avoir-construction involving a relative clause is no
doubt the most frequently used sentence-focus construction, it is not uncommon to
find other syntactic categories in secondary predicate position (see the diagram in
(16) above). Thus in Example (33a), the secondary predicate is an adjective phrase:
(33) a. T’as [les mains] toutes sales.
a′. #[Tes mains] sont toutes sales.
b. [Your hands] are all dirty.

In the case of (33), the corresponding canonical construction in (a′) would be

acceptable, but it would not likely be used in a sentence-focus context, i.e. in a
 Knud Lambrecht

context where the hands in question are not yet a topic under discussion in the
discourse. In English, however, the canonical version would be perfectly natural
in a sentence-focus context, as (33b) shows.
(34a) illustrates a peculiar French construction, in which the secondary
predicate is a past participle preceded by the word de:

(34) a. Y a eu [des conneries] de faites.

a′. #[Des conneries] ont été faites.
b. [Some dumb things] have been done.
b′. There have been [some dumb things] done.

Given the indefiniteness of the complement of avoir, the canonical counterpart

in (34a′) would be borderline unacceptable (see Example (6) and discussion). In
English, the canonical version in (34b) is acceptable, even though some speakers
may prefer the version in (34b′), whose syntax is rather similar to that of the
preferred French version in (34a).
The secondary predicate of an avoir-construction can also be a prepositional
or adverbial phrase, as in (35a) and (36a):

(35) a. J’ai [ma mère] à l’hôpital.

a′. #[Ma mère] est à l’hôpital.
b. [My mom]’s at the hospital.

(36) a. Il m’a dit qu’y avait eu une grève, qu’y avait [cent cinquante filles] dehors.
a′. #Il m’a dit qu’y avait eu une grève, que [cent cinquante filles] étaient dehors.
b. He told me that there had been a strike, that [a hundred and fifty girls]
were fired.

As in earlier examples, the point of the French secondary predication constructions

in (35a) and (36a) is to avoid the canonical versions in (35a′) and (36a′), while in
English such canonical structures would be perfectly natural.
In Section 4.1. we saw that in argument-focus contexts the cleft involving the
copula être is the typical choice in natural discourse. There are, however, certain
eventive sentence-focus contexts, difficult to pin down, in which the c’est-cleft is
used instead of the avoir-cleft. One naturally-occurring Example is shown in (37),
from an e-mail from a friend in France during a time when hurricanes devastated
parts of the country:

(37) Je ne sais pas si tu as entendu parler de la tempête qui a traversé la France mais
c’était assez terrible et du coup les fêtes ont été un peu plus réservées. Chez ma
mère, il y a eu des inondations, et chez mon père …
a. c’est [le toît] qui s’est envolé!
 Constraints on subject-focus mapping in French and English 

a′. #[le toît] s’est envolé!

‘I don’t know if you’ve heard about the storm that went through France but
it was pretty terrible and so the holidays were a little more subdued. At my
mom’s there was flooding, and at my dad’s place …’
b. [the roof] got blown away!

Again, the French cleft in (37a) has the effect of avoiding the canonical version in
(37a′). In English the canonical sentence is the natural choice.
The sentence-focus cleft involving être is also the construction conventionally
used to introduce the characters of jokes. An attested Example is (38):

(38) a. C’est [une cliente] qui s’approche d’un étalage de poisson et puis qui.. sur le
vieux port.. puis elle prend un rouget par la main et puis.. elle le renifle.
b. [A customer] approaches a fish stand and then.. in the old port.. then she
takes a red mullet with her hand and then.. she sniffs it.

As expected, the English version of the joke introduces the joke character in the initial
subject position of a regular canonical sentence. (39) is another attested example:

(39) a. Alors c’est [un Suisse et un Belge] qui discutent.. on mélange les deux.. c’est
[un Suisse et un Belge] qui discutent (rires) et il y a [le Suisse] qui dit euh…
b. So [a Swiss guy and a Belgian guy] are talking.. people mix up the two..
[a Swiss guy and a Belgian guy] are talking (laughs) and [the Swiss guy]
says uh…

(39a) is especially revealing because the speaker first uses the c’est-cleft to
introduce the two characters and then switches to the avoir-cleft to continue
the joke (il y a le Suisse qui dit).
The next construction I would like to discuss has a syntactic structure that
does not exactly fit the secondary predication schema in (16). Indeed it lacks the
pro and the V elements of the preferred clause construction. According to Sasse
(1987), this eventive construction is common in other languages, e.g. in Welsh and
in Egyptian Arabic. I will call this the ‘eventive (et) NP qui VP construction’. An
Example is (40a):

(40) a. A: Dis donc, Bernard!

B: Quoi?
A: [Une drôle de chose] qui m’arrive!
a′. A: #[Une drôle de chose] m’arrive!
b. A: Hey, Bernard!
B: What?
A: [A funny thing]’s happening to me!
 Knud Lambrecht

Whether we treat the construction illustrated by Une drôle de chose qui m’arrive
as a truncated form of the avoir-cleft Y a une drôle de chose qui m’arrive or as
a grammatical construction in its own right (as I think it is), it is clear that the
presence of the relative pronoun qui has the effect of preventing the construal
of the sentence as a canonical SV(O) sequence, thereby marking the expressed
proposition as eventive. (41) is another example, from a cartoon by Reiser.
The cartoon shows a couple of bourgeois intellectuals strolling around an
overcrowded Mediterranean beach. The man complains about working class
people wasting their hard-earned wages with stupid seaside activities, then
he says:
(41) a. A: La liberté, mais pas pour tout le monde. La liberté, ça se mérite.
B: [Ton côté fasciste] qui ressort.
B′: #[Ton côté fasciste] ressort.
b. A: Freedom, but not for everyone. Freedom has to be deserved.
B: [Your fascist side] is coming out.

As in the previous example, the presence of relative qui prevents the utterance
from taking on the canonical sentence structure while at the same time marking
the proposition as expressing an unexpected event.
When the (et) NP qui VP construction is preceded by the conjunction et it
often expresses a judgment of non-canonicity vis à vis some unusual or incon-
gruous state of affairs. An Example is (42a), from another cartoon by Reiser. The
cartoon shows a man sitting on a park bench with a dog at the end of a leash.
When a young woman passes near the bench the dog gets between her legs.
Insulted, the woman turns back to the man and says:

(42) a. Et [ce gros porc] qui ne fait rien!

a′. #Et [ce gros porc] ne fait rien!
b. And [that fat pig] doesn’t do anything!

Here again, the special construction is used with the effect of preventing an
occurrence of the canonical SV(O) sequence as it is naturally used in English.
The last construction I would like to present here also goes beyond the
syntactic secondary predication schema in (16). It involves an interesting case
of grammaticalization via reanalysis of the subject-verb sequence je vois ‘I see’
into a kind of focus marker for an NP whose referent is not sufficiently acces-
sible in the discourse to appear directly in subject or topic position. The syntactic
structure of the construction can be represented as [je vois NP pro VP]. (43a)
is an attested example. The utterance was made in a Parisian bakery, in a dis-
cussion about a new law against fishing in the Seine. At one point, the baker’s
wife says:
 Constraints on subject-focus mapping in French and English 

(43) a. Les trois quarts des pêcheurs ils relâchent leurs poissons.. et même.. je vois
[mon mari].. il relâche tous ses poissons.
a′. #(…) et même.. [mon mari] relâche tous ses poissons.’
b. Three quarters of the fishermen let their fish go.. and even .. [my husband]
lets all his fish go.

For a proper understanding of the pragmatic force of the construction it is

crucial to understand that the husband in question (mon mari) was not part of the
conversation. Thus the sequence Je vois mon mari ‘I see my husband’ cannot be
interpreted in its literal meaning. Rather je vois, somewhat like j’ai in Examples like
(3e) or (32a), has become a frozen marker used to introduce a not yet accessible
referent as a future topic into a discourse. What distinguishes the construction in
(43a) syntactically from the corresponding avoir-cleft construction (J’ai mon mari
qui relâche tous ses poissons) is that what follows the main clause is not a relative
but an independent clause of the preferred type.
Another Example is shown in (44a):
(44) a. Ça dépend des régions, parce que moi, je vois [mes soeurs], elles sont plus
vieilles que moi.
a′. #(…) [mes soeurs] sont plus vieilles que moi.
b. That depends on the region, because me, [my sisters] are older than I.

The context of utterance of (44a) is too complex to be summarized here. Suffice it

to say that the speaker’s sisters (mes soeurs) were in no way present in the previÂ�
ous discourse nor visible in the speech situation. The literal interpretation of
Je vois mes soeurs as ‘I see my sisters’ is therefore not available. The exact constituent
structure of the construction [je vois NP pro VP] remains to be established. Given
that the sequence [pro VP] is not a phrasal category but a complete sentence
(of the preferred-clause type), it would perhaps be preferable to analyze the
entire structure as a left-dislocation construction [NPi [proi VP]] in which the
left-dislocated NP is introduced by a frozen discourse marker (je vois). I must
leave this matter for future research.

5.â•… Concluding remarks

In this paper I have shown that two genetically and historically closely related
languages, English and French, differ nevertheless fundamentally with respect to
the way in which pragmatic categories of information structure are paired with
syntactic categories of sentence formation. While in English the canonical sen-
tence type [NP VP] is extensively used in discourse, in spoken French this type
is subject to severe appropriateness conditions, to the point that it hardly ever
 Knud Lambrecht

occurs in natural speech. In spite of its relatively rigid word order, spoken French
is a language in which focus structure contrasts are strongly realized in syntactic
structure. Through the systematic use of realignment constructions, especially
secondary predication constructions like clefts, French permits the strict syntactic
coding of focus structure distinctions of a type not seen in a language like
English. In particular, spoken French has a powerful constraint against comap-
ping of the grammatical relation subject and the pragmatic relation focus. There
is a striking similarity between spoken French and certain genetically unrelated
languages, such as the Bantu language Sesotho, which suggests a typological
division between languages in which focus constituents can be subjects and lan-
guages where they can’t. It would seem that modern French is on its way to
becoming a language like Sesotho, in which the constraint against subject-focus
mapping is grammaticalized.

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Calude, A.S. 2008. Demonstrative clefts and double-cleft constructions in spontaneous spoken
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Comrie, B. 1981/1989. Language Universals and Linguistic Typology. Chicago IL: Chicago
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Creissels, D. 2008. Remarks on split intransitivity and fluid intransitivity. In Empirical Issues in
Syntax and Semantics 7, O. Bonami & P. Cabredo Hofherr (eds), 139–168. Paris: Colloque
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Demuth, K. 1989. Maturation and the acquisition of the Sesotho passive. Language 65: 56–84.
Francis, H.S., Gregory, M.L. & Michaelis, L.A. 1999. Are lexical subjects deviant? In
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Fuchs, A. 1976. ‘Normaler’ und ‘kontrastiver’ Akzent. Lingua 38: 293–312.
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Katz, S.L. 1997. The Syntactic and Pragmatic Properties of the c’est-cleft Construction. dissertation,
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Lambrecht, K. 1988a. Presentational cleft constructions in spoken French. In Clause Combining

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Representations of Discourse Referents. Cambridge: CUP.
Lambrecht, K. 1997. French relative clauses as secondary predicates. Texas Linguistics Forum
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comme construction présentative. Langue Française 127: 49–66.
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323–346. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
 Wh-questions in French and English
Mapping syntax to information structure

Paul Boucher
Université d’Angers

As opposed to English, French wh-questions can take a wide variety of forms.

I identify four basic patterns: (a) wh- in situ: Vous êtes allés où?; (b) wh- raised,
verb in situ: Où vous êtes allés?; (c) est-ce que insertion: Où est-ce que vous êtes
allés?; (d) subject-clitic inversion: Où êtes-vous allés?, and argue that these are
in fact ‘allo-questions’. Based on a review of historical factors, as well as on
recent corpus studies, I show that each of the four question types corresponds
to a distinct pragmatic function and compare French and English usage. Finally,
wh- in situ constructions are formally analysed as a covert form of multiple
wh-question, using an unselective binding mechanism.

1.â•… Introduction

The syntax of English wh-questions shows little or no variation. Aside from standard
requests for information, where both the wh-phrase and the inflected auxiliary must
raise to the left periphery of the root clause, only so-called echo or “reprise” ques-
tions (Bolinger 1978) (1) or what Quillard (2000) calls “phatic introductory ques-
tions” (2) allow the wh-phrase to remain in situ.
(1) A: Mary is going to visit [inaudible]
B: Mary is going to visit WHO? (rising intonation)

(2) Mary stayed WHAT, twenty minutes?

French wh-questions, on the other hand, show an exceptional syntactic variety.

Thus, Gadet (1989: 138) gives 18 theoretically possible combinations for the ques-
tion “When did he come?”
(3) Quand est-il venu?
(4) Quand il est venu?
(5) Quand qu’il est venu?
(6) Quand est-ce qu’il est venu?
 Paul Boucher

(7) Quand c’est qu’il est venu?

(8) Quand est-ce que c’est qu’il est venu?
(9) Quand c’est que c’est qu’il est venu?
(10) Quand que c’est que c’est qu’il est venu?
(11) C’est quand qu’il est venu?
(12) C’est quand est-ce qu’il est venu?
(13) C’est quand que c’est qu’il est venu?
(14) Il est venu quand?
(15) Il est venu quand est-ce?
(16) Il est venu quand ça?
(17) Quand ça/il est venu?
(18) Quand ça qu’il est venu?
(19) Quand ça est-ce qu’il est venu?
(20) Quand ça c’est qu’il est venu?

Elsig (2009), based on a corpus of 19th and 20th century Quebec French and Early
Modern French, lists seven types of wh-questions:

a. Pronominal or so-called subject-clitic inversion:

Voyons, il dit, jeune officier d’Arodate qu’as-tu fait de mes trente-neuf princes?
‘Let’s see, he says, young officer from Arodate, What have you done with my
39 princes?’ (Récits du français québécois d’autrefois)
b. Simple inversion:
Comment seroit la folie antique abolie?
‘How would the ancient folly be abolished?’ (Rabelais.266)
c. Stylistic or free inversion:
Que me vient donc conter ce coquin assuré
‘What has this assured rogue just told me?’ (Molière.89.1027)
d. Complex inversion:
Depuis quand ton Eraste en tient-il pour Mélite?
‘Since when has your Eraste asked for Melite’s hand?’ (Corneille.31.547)
e. Wh-fronting:
De quoi la ville a changé? La ville a changé du tout au tout.
‘In which way has the city changed? The city hasn’t changed at all.’
 (Ottawa-Hull corpus)
f. Wh in situ
Que c’est que j’allais dire, tu pourrais repasser quand?
‘What was I about to say, when could you come by again?’ (OH.115.302)
g. Est-ce que
Quand est-ce que c’est que vous allez vous marier? Dans trois jours.
‘When are you going to marry? In three days.’ (RFQ.044.1204)
 Wh-questions in French and English 

In my own corpus of approximately 1000 questions in contemporary European

French, I found four basic patterns for a question like ‘Where are you going?’
in English.1
Type 1: Wh-word or expression in situ and verb in situ:
Tu vas où?
You go where?
Type 2: Wh-word raised, verb in situ:
Où tu vas?
Where you go?
Type 3: Wh-word raised, verb raised (i.e. subject-clitic inversion):
Où vas-tu?
Where go you?
Variant form: Complex inversion: Jean, où va-t-il? (Jean, where goes he?)
Type 4: Wh-word raised + est-ce que, verb in situ:
Où est-ce que tu vas?
Where is it that you go?
Variant forms: Où que tu vas?
Where that you go?
Où c’est que tu vas?
Where it is that you go?
Où est-ce que c’est que tu vas?
Where is it that it is that you go?
etc.

The reduction from 18 forms to 4 can be explained as follows. If one concentrates

solely on the position of the wh-phrase and the order of the sentence constitu-
ents, eliminating diachronic and diatopic variation, and if one decides that clefting,
double clefting, clitic doubling of NPs (as in complex inversion), and so on, are
not fundamental to the formation of the question itself but rather concern other
aspects of information structure such as reference, topicalisation and focalisation,
then one is left with four basic patterns.
Four ways to ask the same question is still quite exceptional across languages.
We find no such syntactic variation in Germanic languages. Elsig (2009:  7–8)
argues that even among Romance languages, French alone shows such a variety of
forms. While Catalan and European Portuguese have question markers similar to

.╅ Myers (2007) also considers that there are four basic structural types of wh-questions
in French.
 Paul Boucher

French est-ce que, respectively que and é que, and Brazilian Portuguese uses the in
situ construction and both Catalan and Brazilian Portuguese avoid inversion con-
structions, no other Romance language shows anywhere near the variation noted
by Gadet for European French or Elsig for Quebec French.
In the Generative Syntax framework the apparent optionality of the syntactic
form of questions in French has attracted a certain amount of attention, especially
as concerns wh in situ questions, and a number of formal solutions have been
proposed (see for example Chang (1997); Bošković (1998); Boeckx et al. (1999);
Cheng & Rooryck (2000); Adli (2004a and b); Mathieu (2004); Poletto & Pollock
(2004, 2009), among many others.). Most of these analyses have been framed in the
context of Cheng (1997) and Chomsky (1995), according to whom, respectively,
questions are typed either by movement or by the presence of special particles,
and languages which may satisfy checking requirements without overt syntactic
movement must do so. In this light, French appears to fall somewhere between
‘true movement languages’ like English (21) and ‘true particle languages’ like
�Chinese (22).

(21) a. Did John come?

b. What did John do?
(22) a. Zhangsan kan-le na-ben shu ma?
Zhangsan read that book part?
‘Did Zhangsan read that book?’
b. Ni xihuan shenma ne?
You like what part
‘What do you like?’

In non-generative studies, various sociological and linguistic parameters have been

suggested to account for this variety. For instance: differences in register, with my
types 3 and 4 (Gadet’s (3) and (8) or Elsig’s (a, c, d, g)) being reserved for written
and/or formal French and types 1 and 2 (all the others in Gadet’s list or Elsig’s (e)
and (f)) being found in oral and/or familiar French (see O’Connor 2001). Other
studies have concentrated on criteria such as the sex and age of the speakers of
the length of the wh-expressions or the type of verb or intonation (Moran 1992;
Dewaele 1999; Coveney 1996).
In this paper I will take the position, following Lambrecht (1994), that the
syntactic variation in French interrogatives is pragmatically motivated. From
this perspective the four question types can be analysed as “alloquestions”, in
the sense that they could all be used in alternation by the same speaker, in the
same conversational turn, under the same intra- and extra-linguistic conditions.
This is exactly what I observed in my five corpora. As we will see below, there
 Wh-questions in French and English 

is no such syntactic variation in English. I am therefore led to ask the following

questions:
–â•fi What are the pragmatic functions of each question form in French?
–â•fi To what extent are these universal functions, which therefore can be found
also in English?
–â•fi What mechanism is used in English to express them?
In Section 2, I will examine data from a number of corpora of contemporary oral
French, my own as well as those discussed in Quillard (2000), Myers (2007) and
Elsig (2009). The goal here will be to try to pin down the pragmatic function or
functions of each of the four structural types in order to identify just what the
syntax is “mapping to”.
In Section 3, I will discuss data on English wh-questions, first Freed’s (1994)
study of informal oral English and second the English translation of Zazie dans le
Métro, a book which I used in my own corpus. The comparison of the two languages
will allow us to at least partially answer the three questions above.
In Section 4, I will try to show how the situation observed for Modern French
came about and why the same thing did not happen in English. I will argue that
the syntactic variety in French can be accounted for through the interaction of a
number of syntactic, pragmatic and prosodic constraints over time. The loss of
lexical stress and the subsequent evolution towards an oxytonic system, coupled
with the shift from V2 to SVO sentence structure and the co-existence of two com-
plementary paradigms of interrogative pronouns, which allowed them to either
be fronted or remain in situ, is argued to have led to a situation where a variety
of interrogative forms became available in French over time. Pragmatic speciali�
zation then ensured that interrogatives involving fronting of the wh-phrase, which,
given Chomsky’s Economy Principle, should have disappeared, continued to exist
alongside the in situ forms. No such evolution took place in English for several
reasons, crucially the nature of the prosodic system and the relative “strength” of
English interrogative pronouns.
Finally, in Section 5, I will draw the broad lines of a formal analysis which can
account for the “optionality” we find in French and which explains why no such
variety is found in English wh-questions.

2.â•… Form and function of French wh-questions

2.1â•… Statistics
The following table gives statistics from my own study of 5 corpora for the four
question types mentioned in the introduction.
 Paul Boucher

Table 1.╇ Wh-questions

Corpora* Total Total Type 1 Type 2 Type 3 Type 4

Questions WHQ Wh+V Wh + SCI Est-ce
in situ SVO que

Julliot 411 134 63 23 5 43

32.6% 47% 17% 3.73% 32%
Zazie 190 153 19 43 11 80
80.5% 12.4% 28% 7.18% 52.28%
Tardi 321 135 30 20 33 52
42.05% 22.22% 14.8% 24.44% 38.5%
Rue 37 8 4 2 2 Ø
21.62% 50% 25% 25%
Chroniques 39 11 1 1 7 Ø
26.47% 11.11% 11.11% 77.77%
Total 942 388 97 58 58 175
41.18% 25% 14.9% 14.9% 45.1%
*Aurélie Julliot, Etablissement et analyse d’un corpus de questions de type conversationnel, Mémoire de
Master, Université d’Angers, 2008; Zazie dans le métro, R. Queneau, Paris: Gallimard, 1959; Jeux pour
mourir, Tardi, Casterman, 1989; Rue des Entrepreneurs, France Inter; 1/12/07; Chroniques judiciaires, Le
Monde, 15/10/07–4/12/07.

We will now look at several corpus studies to try to pinpoint the pragmatic
functions of each question type in French before comparing these to equivalent
English questions in the following section.

2.2â•… Type 1: Wh in situ questions

As we saw in Table 1, Type 1 wh in situ questions account for one quarter of all
wh-questions across my five corpora. These statistics are quite similar to those of
other researchers working on contemporary French. Coveney (1996: 146) summa-
rizes findings of seven different studies crossing criteria of age, social class, and
geographical origin.
As Tables 1 and 2 show, despite the overall similarity in total percentages,
the share of Type 1 questions varies considerably from one corpus to another. In
Table 1, this may be due to the more or less formal speech register used: Â�Julliot:
informal conversations among friends; Zazie and Tardi: low register ‘street’ French,
Rue: semi-formal debate; Chroniques: formal courtroom interrogation. The vari-
ation in Table 2 seems to correspond to sociological factors like age, sex, social
�origin and geography.
If register is the deciding factor, then we are not surprised to find a high per-
centage of in situ forms in Julliot and a low percentage in Chroniques. According to
 Wh-questions in French and English 

Table 2.╇ Summary in Coveney (1996)

Variety (researcher) % SVQ N=

Paris middle-class (Ashby) 38.8 85

Middle-class colloquial (Behnstedt) 33 446
Middle-class formal (Behnstedt) 25 4,367
Quebec adolescents (Fox) 24.5 805
Somme middle-and working-classes (Coveney) 15.6 122
Belgian TV journalists (Lafontaine and Lardinois) 14.9 230
Montreal children/adolescents (Lefebvre) 13 433
Nine-year-olds (Söll) 12.9 364
Working-class (Behnstedt) 12 587
Middle-class (Pohl) 10.3 155
Working-class (Pohl) 8.7 69
Elderly Belgian couple (Pohl) 2 184

Adli (2004a), in situ questions are typical of informal speech, which is characterized
by a low degree of cognitive anticipation and syntactic complexity as well as by a
strong link to the context. The statistics from the other corpora in Table 1 are not
so clear on this point however.
On the other hand, based on her study of the Barnes-Blythe corpus, Myers
(2007: 147) rejects the idea of a low sociological-stylistic register for Type 1 and
2 questions: “since the Q pro V and pro V Q structures [Myers’ terms for Types 1
and 2] were both used with great frequency in similar stylistic contexts, it must be
assumed that they share register evaluation”.
A more important factor seems to be the degree of ‘topical coherence’ of the
question relative to the preceding discourse. By this term I mean the way the ques-
tion fits into the network of presuppositions established by the preceding dis-
course, which we could call ‘contextual grounding’. In Rue, for instance, we see the
interviewers alternating between complex inversion (CI), subject clitic inversion
(SCI), est-ce que questions and in situ questions depending on how their question
fits into the on-going flow of discourse. This is precisely the sense of “alloques-
tions” I referred to in the introduction. Just what makes the speaker choose the
in situ form?
Type 1 questions may be used, as in English, as “echo questions” (23) or as
“phatic introductory questions” (24).

(23) A: Mon fils, il lit [inaudible]

My son he reads [inaudible]
B: Il lit quoi?
He reads what (Engdahl 2006: 104)
 Paul Boucher

(24) Elle me l’a remboursé en deux fois et la deuxième fois elle est venue me
rapporter l’argent et j’ai senti que je ne la reverrais plus jamais ~ elle est restée
quoi? Cinq minutes?
‘She paid me back in two payments and the second time she came to bring me
the money and I got the feeling that I would never see her again – she stayed
what? Five minutes?’ (Quillard 2000: #717)

Contrary to English, they may also be used as requests for information.

(25) A: Ton fils il lit quoi?
Your son he reads what
‘What does your son read?’
B: Des bandes dessinées.
Comics (Engdahl 2006: 104)

Myers (2007: 153) found that “The pragmatic tendencies of the pro V Q structure
are strong; the structure is often used in contexts that are highly answerable, active
and highly expected”. This corresponds to my own findings. Wh-in situ questions
in my corpora tend to occur in certain types of speech situations, such as ordering
in a restaurant, shopping, police-style interrogations and so on, where the respec-
tive roles of the interlocutors, the range of possible answers and the expectations
of the question askers are highly constrained.
(26) Ça coûte combien? (Zazie)
That costs how much
‘How much is that?’2
(27) Ce sera quoi? (Zazie)
It will be what
‘What’ll you have?’
(28) Tu es resté absent combien de temps? (Tardi)
You have stayed absent how much of time
‘How long were you gone?’

It also corroborates the notion, first introduced by Chang (1997) and subsequently
exploited by the majority of generative syntax studies that the wh-in situ question
is appropriate in a strongly presupposed context, where the speaker is asking for
details on the established topic. Chang was the first to point out that the answer to
an in situ question cannot be “nothing”.3

.â•… The translations of the examples from Zazie are taken from Barbara Wright’s English
translation, Zazie in the Metro, Penguin Classics, 2000. Those for the other corpora are my own.
.â•… As pointed out by an anonymous reviewer, this is not always true. Wh in situ questions in
French can be “out of the blue” in some cases and can have “nothing” as an answer.
 Wh-questions in French and English 

(29) A. Marie a acheté quoi?

Marie bought what?
B. *Rien.
Nothing.

According to Myers (2007: 154), “[t]he pragmatic associations with the post-verbal

interrogative are so strong that it can create a feeling of presupposition even with-
out obvious contextual presupposition clues.” In Myers’ Example 5.8 Martine uses
the pro V Q structure to ask about Sunday plans at the beginning of the corpus.

Example 5.8
C. Peut-être il faut…un divan oui
Maybe we need…a sofa, yeah
M. Vous allez faire quoi ce dimanche
What are you doing on Sunday?
/inaudible/
M. J’en avais un à dîner l’autre fois euh
I had one for dinner the other time euh (ibid.)

“The proV Q structure indicates that ‘you are going to do x this Sunday’ is to be
construed as highly active, even though it is not in this context.” (ib.).
Interestingly, Myers found only one example of Type 1 questions used as echo
questions in her corpus. I got the same results. However, I did find a high percent-
age of Type 1 questions used as “requests for clarification”, or what could be called
“follow-up questions”, used “to check or secure understanding of the prior turn”
(Selting 1992: 320).

(30) Faut pas egzagérer, dit le type. – Egzagérer quoi?

‘Don’t exaggerate, says the guy. – Exaggerate what?
demande Charles. (Zazie)
asks Charles.’

In Rue, wh-in situ questions are always requests for clarification.

(31) – Franchement, c’est un investissement qui est parmi les plus rentables.
â•… ‘Frankly, it’s one of the best investments you can make.’
– Oui, mais, investissement, de la part de qui?
â•… ‘Best investment for who?’

(32) C’est-à-dire que si on veut réussir, si on veut se construire un parcours à la carte

il faut être capable de dire, ce parcours à la carte, il va me permettre de faire
quoi? (Rue)
‘The thing is, if you want to succeed, if you want to write your own career plan,
you have to be able to say ‘What is this career plan going to get me’?’
 Paul Boucher

In Chroniques, despite the high social status of the judge and his dominant posi-
tion in the discourse, there are several examples of wh-in situ questions. As in the
previous examples, they are all ‘follow-up’ questions, requesting more details con-
cerning the current topic.
(33) – Nous sommes arrivées au niveau d’un restaurant. J’ai vu quelqu’un tirer par
terre. J’ai dit à ma mère: “tiens, c’est bizarre”. Parce que, en Corse, la coutume,
c’est qu’on tire en l’air, quoi.
â•…‘We got to the restaurant. I saw someone shoot towards the ground. I said to
my mother: “Hey, that’s strange.” Because in Corsica, the tradition is that you
shoot in the air first.’
– En tout, vous voyez combien de personnes? demande le président
Dominique Coujard.
‘“All in all, how many people did you see?” asked Judge Dominique Coujard.’

Quillard (2000) also found that more than half of all requests for clarification in
her corpus were in situ interrogatives. She attributes this to the fact that the inter-
rogative expression represents the element to be clarified; placing it at the end of
the utterance allows it to be accentuated thereby targeting the request. Moreover,
Coveney (1989) notes that Type 1 questions cannot be rhetorical. The presence of
the question word in the focal position is apparently incompatible with a question
that is not looking for an answer.

2.3â•… Type 2: Wh fronted + SVO

For Myers (2007:  147), this type of question may well be the unmarked struc-
ture for wh-questions in contemporary spoken French, thus contradicting many
grammarians of French, for whom this is a strongly colloquial construction to be
avoided in correct speech. One of the reasons for Myers’ claim is that she includes
‘Qu’est-ce que’ questions in this category, since she treats [kεsk] as an unanalysed
lexical unit.4 Since in my own corpus “Qu’est-ce que” questions make up more
than 90% of all “What-questions”, I would tend to agree with this analysis.
Contrary to Type 1 questions, where pourquoi (why) is never found and com-
ment (how) only rarely, a majority of Type 2 questions use these interrogative words,
especially the variant form with the complementizer que (37–38). Quillard (2000)
links this fact to the frequent use of Type 2 questions as “requests for explanation”.
(34) Comment ça, non? (Zazie)
How’s that, no?
(35) De quoi je me mêle? (Zazie)
What’s it to you?

.â•… Elsig (2009) also treats [kεsk] as an unanalysed chunk.

 Wh-questions in French and English 

(36) Et pourquoi ça? (Zazie)

And why is that?
(37) Pourquoi que vous en avez pas? (Zazie)
So why don’t you have any?
(38) Alors pourquoi que tu veux l’être, institutrice? (Zazie)
So why do you want to be a schoolteacher then?

These questions often have a challenging tone to them. Rather than requests for
information, they seem to call into question the validity of the information pro-
vided in the previous speech turn. In some cases these questions can be analysed
as a colloquial version of so-called “What the devil” questions.
(39) Pourquoi diable voulez-vous l’appeler? (Formal Register)
‘Why the devil do you want to call him?’

(40) Pourquoi que tu veux l’appeler? (Informal Register)

‘What the hell you wanna call him for?’

We note that in German or English such ‘surprise’ questions are characterized, not
by syntactic restructuring, but by prosody. They correspond, for instance, to Selting’s
(1992: 335) ‘astonished’ questions, “signaling a problem of expectation”.
(41) WAS. has du gemacht?
‘What did you do?’

Or to ‘Wieso/Warum questions’, in which “the question word wieso, with falling

pitch, is used in a separate unit, and in the following unit the problematical item
is cited”.
(42) WieSO. gibts da ne offizielle UR laubsregelung?
‘Why? Is there an official holiday regulation?’

(43) is an example from Schegloff (1977: 437) of a surprise question in English with

a markedly strong accent on the question word.
(43) A: It’s just about three o’clock, so she’s probably free, I’ll call her now.
B: WHAT. time is it?
A: Three, isn’t it?
B: I thought it was earlier.

Selting (1992: 335) argues that in general in these languages “prosodically marked

‘astonished’ questions are used to signal problems of expectation”. No prosodic
marking of this sort is found in the French corpus. It rather seems that Type 2
questions exploit just the sort of prosodic phrasing discussed by Féry (2001), in
which stress falls either on the initial or the final item in the prosodic phrase. By
moving the wh-word to the left edge of the clause, I hypothesize that the speaker
 Paul Boucher

calls into question the presuppositions attached to the clause itself. This is opposed
to what was observed in Type 1 questions, in which the presuppositions repre-
sented by the contextual ground are maintained and an information gap is indi-
cated by the wh-word. We will pursue this point in Section 5.
Type 2 questions may also be used as simple requests for information, especially
with the question word où (where).
(44) Où tu les amènes dîner? (Zazie)
Where you they take dine
‘Where are you taking them for dinner?’

(45) Où vous avez pris ça, s’il vous plait? (Zazie)

Where you have taken that, if it you please
‘Where did you get that if you don’t mind my asking?’

Quillard finds a strong tie between Type 2 questions and rhetorical questions.
I found a certain number of examples of this function in my corpus, with or with-
out the complementizer que after the question word.
(46) Alors moi, de quoi j’aurais l’air? (Zazie)
So me of what I would have the look
‘Well how would I look?’

(47) De quoi je me mêle? (Zazie)

Of what I me mix
‘What is it to me?’

(48) De quoi que tu te mêles? (Zazie)

Of what that you you mix
‘What’s it to you?’

(49) Pourquoi que j’aurais confiance en vous? (Zazie)

Why that I would have trust in you
‘Why should I trust you?’

2.4â•… Type 3: Wh fronted + subject-verb inversion

This structure was long considered by grammarians to be the only correct way
to ask questions in French. However, statistical studies based on authentic usage
prove that this is far from being the case. Across social categories and discourse
types, this construction clearly accounts for a minority of wh-questions in contem-
porary spoken French. My own statistics show a high point of 77% for Chroniques,
made up of transcriptions of court proceedings, and a low point of 3% for Julliard,
made up of spontaneous conversation among college students, with an overall
average of 14%.
 Wh-questions in French and English 

This observation is especially interesting from a comparative point of view,

since wh-raising and subject-auxiliary inversion constitute the standard
�wh-question form for non-subject questions in English, with little or no vari-
ation possible. What explains the continuing existence of this question type in
French? What are its specific pragmatic functions?
According to Weinrich (1989), pronoun inversion is very rare in spoken lan-
guage unless there is a particular stylistic pretention in order. He suggests that with
inversion one can establish a certain distance between oneself and the interlocutor,
either to show respect or to demand that respect be shown. This is clearly the case
in the Chroniques corpus, made up essentially of questions asked by the judge.

(50) Pourquoi n’avez-vous jamais voulu dire qui était ce quelqu’un? lui demande
le président, Dominique Coujard.
‘Why haven’t you ever been willing to say who this ‘someone’ was? Judge
Coujard asked her.’

(51) Dans quel état d’esprit êtes-vous à cet instant là?

‘So what was your state of mind at that precise moment?’

In the Tardi corpus, where there is a lot of third degree interrogation, the detec-
tive interrogating the suspect often uses the inversion structure, while the suspect
never does so.

(52) Que dit l’autopsie? (Tardi)

‘What does the autopsy say?’

(53) Où est ton frère? (Tardi)

‘Where is your brother?’

(54) Quelles sont vos conclusions, Frantz? (Tardi)

‘What are your conclusions, Frantz?’

Myers (2007) notes that inversion can be used to mark a change in register, such
as in “teacherese”, while Quillard (2000) suggests that inversion can be used to put
ironic distance between the speaker and his/her question.
Interestingly, in the Julliard corpus, one of the sole uses of inversion corres�
ponds to a play-acting context, where the students are clearly making fun of
themselves. This ironic, mocking use of inversion is also reported in Myers
(2007: 170–171).

(55) Mathilde sera-t-elle acceptée au sein de l’équipe ou bien se retrouvera-t-elle

sur le banc de touche? (Vous le saurez dans quelques instants.)
‘Will Mathilde be made part of the team or will she be rejected? You’ll find out
in a few minutes.’
 Paul Boucher

Dewaele (1999) found that inversion is used to introduce a new topic or a new
theme within a topic. In the Rue corpus, made up of transcriptions of a radio talk
show, this is especially clear. At the beginning of the program, and each time a
change in topic is formally introduced and a new discussion is begun, the speaker
uses the complex inversion construction.5
(56) Les centres d’excellence attirant les meilleurs chercheurs, les meilleurs
professeurs et les meilleurs étudiants, la France peut-elle retrouver une place
digne de ses ambitions?
‘The best universities attract the best researchers, the best teachers and the best
students. (Given this fact) can France attain the rank she deserves?’
(57) Université-entreprises: le loup est-il dans la bergerie? C’est le dossier aujourd’hui
de Rue des Entrepreneurs.
‘Businesses on campus: is the wolf in the sheep-shed? This is today’s topic on
“Rue des Entrepreneurs”.’
(58) Les universités françaises vont-elles retrouver leur place dans ces
classements mondiaux?
‘Will French universities be able to regain their international ranking?’

2.5â•… Type 4: Wh-fronting + est-ce que + SVO

Several studies (Myers, Quillard) point out that the choice of this construction is
linked to the choice of the wh-pronoun. In my corpora, Type 4 questions corres�
ponded to the choice of que 99% of the time. Questions with adverbials such as où
(where), comment (how) or pourquoi (why) tend to be Type 2 questions. Questions
with quand (when) are almost always Type 1. Questions with qui (who) in the
subject position are in fact a special sort of Type 1 question, in which the in situ
position just happens to be at the head of the sentence. When qui is the object of
the verb or of a preposition, it is almost always in situ.
Many researchers have noted that est-ce que questions tend to be longer and
more involved than Type 1 or Type 2 questions. Myers (207: 176) records use of
est-ce que with questions that overlap several conversation turns.
Myers’ Example 5.40
C: Mais c’est dingue! (It’s crazy!)
E: Alors là vraiment (Yeah, it really is crazy)
M: Qui assistent Madame B.! (Who is helping Mrs B)

.â•… As the reader can see, these are in fact examples of Yes-No complex inversion questions.
I did not find examples of wh-inversion questions with this particular function in my corpus.
 Wh-questions in French and English 

C: Mais c’est dingue, comment est-ce que euh est-ce qu’on peut nous donner (It’s
crazy. How can they give us…)
M: Ce que je comprends pas (What I don’t understand…)
C: la responsabilité de, de de, de corriger des copies (…the responsability for
correcting papers…)
M: quand on a juste une connaissance, enfin de (When we barely know…)
C: sur un cours, qu’on on (…for a course that we…)
M: Un cours où les gens ils payent euh quand même cinquante dollars le crédit, je
sais pas combien, et et on a aucun/inaudible/c’est un cours, un cours trois mille
hein, ça veut dire qu’ils vont bientôt avoir leur license!
(a course that people are paying fifty dollars a credit for, or something like that,
and you have…it’s a course, a course three thousand euh that means that they’ll
be getting their B.A.!)

The nature of these questions clearly necessitates overt marking of the illocutionary
question-asking feature, which explains the presence of est-ce que.
In my corpora, I found that Type 4 questions are most often “unrestricted
‘open’ conversational questions”, in the terms of Selting (1992), that is, explicit
requests for information rather than requests for explanation or for clarification.
They may be used as rhetorical questions but never as echo questions. They are fre-
quently used to indicate a move to a new topic or a new aspect of a current topic,
without the stylistic connotations of the inversion construction. When combined
with a cleft structure (c’est) they often have a ‘challenging’ tone to them, that is,
something we could paraphrase as “Is it really true that X?” or “Do you really think
that X?” This last value is especially clear in the Rue corpus.6
(59) Mais, Jean Tirol, est-ce que c’est le manque d’argent, dans une interview récent
du Nouvel Observateur, Bernard Belloc, l’ancien président de l’université de
Toulouse I, disait ce n’est pas le manque d’argent qui fait des projets mais les
projets qui font venir l’argent.
‘Listen, Jean Tirol, is it really the lack of money? In a recent interview in the
Nouvel Observateur, Bernard Belloc, the former president of the University of
Toulouse 1, said that it’s not a lack of money that creates projects but it’s projects
that create money.’
(60) Est-ce que c’est la bonne approche aujourd’hui?
‘(but) Is that (really) the best way to go about it today?’

.â•… Again, I have had to use Yes-No rather than wh est-ce que questions to make my point. In
this particular case, my choice is due to the fact that 99% of my est-ce questions were “Qu’est-ce
que” questions. Since que cannot be fronted without either verb movement or est-ce que inser-
tion, it is impossible to test its pragmatic function.
 Paul Boucher

Myers (2007:  179) notes that Type 4 questions often occur when the speaker
already knows the answer to his/her question. This may explain the “challenging”
or rhetorical nature of many of these questions. Since the information contained
in the answer to the question is already known to both speaker and hearer, the
est-ce que question serves to comment on it in some way.

2.6â•… Conclusion
In this section, after looking at some statistics, we have discussed the pragmatic
use of the four basic question types in contemporary spoken French. We can
summarize our findings as follows:

Type 1:
–â•fi Syntax: Wh in situ, SVO order;
–â•fi Pragmatics: appropriate in a strongly presupposed context, which often takes
the form of a highly constrained social situation (ordering, shopping, interro-
gation, etc.); frequently used as requests for clarification, as echo or as phatic
questions; cannot be used rhetorically.

Type 2:
–â•fi Syntax: Wh-pronoun raises to the left edge of the clause, SVO order;
–â•fi Pragmatics: generally correspond to a request for explanation; may also express
surprise, disapproval or incredulity, possibly corresponding to a colloquial
version of ‘What the hell/que diable’ questions; may also be used as requests
for information or as rhetorical questions.

Type 3:
–â•fi Syntax: Wh-pronoun raises to the left edge of the clause, “S–V inversion”;
–â•fi Pragmatics: true requests for information but with a strong connotation of
social distance; can be used to change topics.

Type 4:
–â•fi Syntax: Wh-pronoun raises to the left edge of the clause, est-ce que is generated
to the left of the in situ subject;
–â•fi Pragmatics: “unrestricted ‘open’ conversational questions” which optionally
may signal a change of topic or call into question the validity of a presupposi-
tion linked to the question.

In the following section we will examine the pragmatic functions of English

�wh-questions, based essentially on the discussion in Freed (1994).
 Wh-questions in French and English 

3.â•… The pragmatic functions of English wh-questions

Freed (1994) presents an analysis of 1275 questions in English recorded in approxi�

mately seven hours of conversation between twelve pairs of same-sex friends. She
establishes a taxonomy of question functions, showing how questions vary along
an information continuum going from those which seek factual information to
those which express information rather than solicit it. She groups these functions
into four main categories:
–â•fi External questions: questions either seeking information in the public domain,
or about the speakers themselves, or concerning the immediate physical envi-
ronment, or “social invitations”, that is indirect speech acts.
–â•fi Talk questions: that is, questions concerning the discourse itself: requests for
clarification or repetition or confirmation of information.
–â•fi Relational questions: that is, questions which refer the speaker to specific
information in the discourse, or which seek to establish the existence of shared
information, or “phatic questions” which allow the speaker to check that the
hearer is following.
–â•fi Expressive style questions: that is, questions which have a didactic or a rhe-
torical function or a humoristic or a self-directed function or which convey
indirect speech.
She then classifies the questions into five syntactic groups and establishes statistics
for their use, first overall, then per pragmatic function.
The syntactic forms of English questions observed in her corpus and the fre-
quency of their overall use can be seen in Table 3 below.

Table 3.╇

Syntactic forms Number of occurrences Percentage of use

Yes-No questions 519 41

Wh-questions 401 31
Yes-No intonation questions 231 18
Question tags 66 5
Wh intonation questions 49 4
How/What about questions 9 1
Total 1275 100

As predicted, we find nowhere near the syntactic variety observed in French.

Putting Yes-No and Tag questions aside for the moment, we see that wh-questions
in English can take only two forms, standard and in situ forms, the latter called “into-
nation” questions here. The latter account for approximately 9% of all wh-questions.
 Paul Boucher

Concerning their pragmatic functions, wh in situ questions occur in all of the four
main pragmatic categories, making up 7% of “external” questions, 2% of “talk”
questions, 1% of “relational” questions and 1% of “expressive” questions. While
36% of standard wh-questions were used for “external” or information seeking
questions, 43% of them were used to express information, including rhetorical
questions, the rest, respectively 9 and 12%, were used either as “talk” questions or
as “relational” questions.
Looking at the problem the other way around, that is, from function to form,
we find that 65% of “questions seeking information about the immediate conver-
sational context”, which we called “requests for clarification” or “follow-up ques-
tions” above, were Yes-No intonation questions, that is questions which left the
verb in situ and simply signaled the question form with rising intonation at the
end of the sentence. Freed also found that tag questions tended to be used as “rela-
tional” questions, especially as “phatic information” questions.
In other words, while most of the functions observed in Section 2 for French
questions are also found in the English language corpus, though not necessarily
in the same order or with the same name, the mapping from function to form
gives totally different results, aside from a clear tendency in both languages to use
intonation rather than movement for requests for clarification of information in
the preceding discourse. Whatever light future studies may be able to shed on this
question, it seems clear that English does not use syntactic variation in the French
sense to express pragmatic functions.
This is confirmed by the English translations of the four basic French question
forms found in Zazie dans le Métro. Only two syntactic forms are observed, the
standard construction and the in situ construction used for echo questions. Below
are some representative examples.

I. Wh in situ + V in situ

(61) Répéter un peu quoi?

Say what again? (echo)

(62) Alors c’est pourquoi?

Why is it then?

(63) Et ça coute combien?

And how much are they?

(64) Et ça, ça vaut combien?

And these? How much are these?

(65) Ce sera quoi?

What can I get you?
 Wh-questions in French and English 

(66) (Faut pas egzagérer, dit le type.) – Egzagérer quoi? demande Charles.
Egzaggerate what? (echo)
(67) Ce sera quoi? (Du brie?)
What would you like? Brie?
(68) Je vous dois combien?
How much do I owe you?
(69) Vous, dit le type, vous vous appelez comment?
What about you, what’s your name?
(70) (Je vois.) Elle voit quoi?
What does she see?
(71) (Tu verras de tes propres yeux.) Je verrai quoi?
What’ll I see?
(72) (C’est la seule façon.) La seule façon de quoi?
The only way to what? (echo)
II. Wh moved, V in situ
(73) Alors moi, de quoi j’aurais l’air?
And what’d I look like then?
(74) Non mais de quoi je me mêle?
No but what am I letting myself in for?
(75) En quoi ça consiste?
And what does that consist of?
(76) Quelle gueule il fait maintenant?
How does he look now?
(77) Où vous avez pris ça, s’il vous plait?
Where’d you get that from please?
III. Wh moved, V moved
(78) Et petite, où vas-tu comme ça?
Hey, Zazie, where do you think you’re going?
(79) Pourquoi aurais-tu témoigné à huis clos?
Why should you give evidence in camera?
(80) Et où habites-tu?
And where do you live?
(81) Et pourquoi pleurais-tu tout à l’heure sur le banc?
And why were you crying just now on the bank?
(82) Alors, tonton, comment trouves-tu mes bloudjinnzes?
Well, uncle Gabriel, how d’you like my blewgenes?
 Paul Boucher

IV. Wh moved + est-ce que

(83) Qu’est-ce qui pue comme ça?

What on earth’s that stench?

(84) Qu’est-ce que ça serait alors?

Well what would it be then in your opinion?

(85) Qu’est-ce qui t’intéresse alors?

What are you interested in then?

(86) Quand est-ce qu’elle va finir, cette grève?

And when’s this strike going to be over?

(87) Qu’est-ce que tu t’imagines?

What are you thinking of?

(88) Et vous? Dans quoi est-ce que vous vous mettez pour qu’on vous admire?
And what about you? What do you put yourself in so’s people can admire you?

In the following section we will try to sketch out some of the reasons for this situation.
This in turn will lay the foundations for a formal analysis of the two languages.

4.â•… The diachronic perspective

4.1â•… Word order change

O’Connor (2001) argues that SVO has been the preferred order for French interroÂ�
gatives since the 16th century, based on a corpus of questions in plays written
between the 16th and the 20th centuries.

Old French (9th to 12th centuries) was a verb second (V2) language that
required inversion of the inflected verb and the subject in both declaratives and
interrogatives.

She gives the following examples of declarative (89) and interrogative inversion (90).

(89) a. Einsi aama la demoiselle Lancelot

Thus loved the maiden Lancelot
‘Thus the maiden loved Lancelot.’
b. Or voi ge bien….
Now see I well
‘Now I see clearly….’
 Wh-questions in French and English 

(90) a. Viendra le roi?

Will-come the king
‘Will the king come?’
b. Comment fu ceste letter faitte?
How was this letter made
‘How was this letter written?’
c. Faites le vus de gret?
do it you of will
‘Do you do it willingly?’
d. Que vex tu faire?
what want you to-do
‘What do you want to do?’

“By the beginning of the Modern French period in the 17th century, all types of
inversion had been lost in declaratives, while in interrogatives, only subject-clitic
inversion, as in [(90c)] and [(90d)] above, remained.” O’Connor found the following
statistics for the 16th century:

–â•fi 92% of all questions, both Yes/No and wh-questions, were formed by subject-
clitic inversion;
–â•fi est-ce que questions or SVO ‘intonation questions’ accounted for only 1% each
of the corpus;
–â•fi questions with complex inversion (Jean, va-t-il en ville?) made up approxi-
mately 3% of the total.

However, by the 20th century the situation was as follows:

–â•fi ‘intonation questions’ had risen to 48%,

–â•fi subject-clitic inversion made up 33%,
–â•fi est-ce que questions accounted for 18% and
–â•fi complex inversion made up only 1% of the total number of questions.

4.2â•… Contributing factors

Alongside the loss of V2 status and the restriction of verb movement to subject-
clitic inversion and complex inversion constructions, other factors contributed
to maintaining SVO order in interrogatives. First of all, the old expressive cleft
construction est-ce que evolved towards a sort of ‘interrogative particle’, which is
generally presumed to occupy the left periphery position normally reserved for
inflected verbs. (Druetta (2002)) This problem is extensively discussed in Poletto &
Pollock (2009) and will not be pursued here. De Boer, quoted in Rouquier (2002),
 Paul Boucher

further argues that changes in the prosodic system of French may have played a
role in this evolution, by contributing to the grammaticalisation of est-ce que and
reinforcing the wh-in situ construction:
Enfin nous avons cru constater que la cause essentielle de la formation et de la
‘grammaticalisation’ des formules interrogatives du français doit être cherchée
dans l’accentuation finale spéciale du français, rythme qui, d’un côté, invite la
langue à placer le mot à accentuer sous l’accent final, et qui, d’autre part, rend
la place initiale tellement faible, que cette faiblesse force presque la langue à
renforcer le mot interrogatif, lorsque celui-ci se trouve au début de la phrase.
 (Rouquier 2002: 102)7

4.3â•… Wh-pronouns
Old French inherited a paradigm of strong, or ‘tonic’ interrogative words from
Latin, which I will call ‘kw-words’ (quoi [kwa] (< Latin quid, quod, quia, quam),
and cui [kwi] (< Latin qui), and had a complementary paradigm of ‘weak’ or
‘atonic’ wh-pronouns, which I will call ‘ke-words’ (que [kε], qui [ki]) (Foulet(1974),
Rey (2006), Brunot and Bruneau (1969), Druetta (2002)). Like all ‘strong’
forms (Cardinaletti and Starke (1999)), the former are stressed, can be objects
of prepositions, have richer morpho-semantic features and remain in situ,
while the latter, like other ‘weak’ or ‘clitic’ forms, are unstressed, cannot be
objects of prepositions, have underspecified semantic content and must leave
their base position and raise to some higher functional position in the left
periphery of the clause.
While the two ‘who’ pronouns – cui, [kwi] and qui [ki] – eventually merged
into a single form, for reasons that we need not go into here, the two ‘what’ pro-
nouns – quoi [kwa] and que [kε]] – survived in Modern French. The clitic form que
continues to raise to its high left periphery target, either by attaching itself to the
‘spurious cleft’ construction, est-ce que, in the terms of Poletto and Pollock (2004),
or by getting a ‘free ride’ through subject-clitic inversion, while the tonic form quoi
is maintained in the base position in all SVO questions. The co-existence of two
complementary positions for question words led to a form of ‘pragmatic specialiÂ�
zation’, with a difference not only in register, but also in function.

.â•… My translation: ‘It would seem that the main cause of the formation and grammaticalisa-
tion of French question forms is to be found in the phrase-final stress marking which is peculiar
to French. This type of stress placement not only encourages placement of the word to be
stressed in the final position, but also so weakens the initial position that an interrogative
pronoun placed there needs reinforcement.’
 Wh-questions in French and English 

5.â•… Formal analysis

5.1â•… Syntactic optionality

In the Generative Syntax literature the discussion of wh-questions in French has
been mainly concerned with the question of syntactic optionality (see Adli 2004a)
and has been generally limited to discussion of wh-in situ questions. The central
assumption of many of these papers is that movement versus non-movement of
interrogative words corresponds to different syntactic restrictions as well as differ-
ent interpretational and intonational characteristics.
One line of investigation has been to treat French wh in situ questions as if
French had in fact chosen the ‘Asian option’, that is, to signal questions with a par-
ticle instead of movement. Cheng & Rooryck (2000) is fairly typical of this type of
analysis. They propose that optionality is only apparent in French questions. Assum-
ing a rising intonation contour for wh in situ questions, they posit an intonational
Q-morpheme in the Array which obviates the need for overt movement to check the
[wh] feature, thus making French in situ questions look very much like their Chinese
counterparts, with the intonation morpheme acting like a question particle.
Unfortunately however, this analysis runs aground as soon as it is confronted
with realistic data on French questions. Adli (2004a and b), after a careful review
of recent and traditional literature on French intonation (see also Di Cristo 1998
for an overview), as well as extensive fieldwork of his own, demonstrates that rising
intonation actually characterizes fewer than 10% of all wh in situ questions in
French. The vast majority of them have the same sort of falling intonation as other
wh-questions, with a few minor differences. I would add that to the extent that a
wh-question in French does have rising intonation the latter needs to be studied as
a distinct signal of other pragmatic factors, such as surprise or disagreement.
Boškovic (1998) assumes, along with Cheng and Rooryck (2000), that wh-in
situ questions are limited to matrix clauses (91–92) and are impossible in negative
sentences or in the scope of modals or quantifiers (93–95).
(91) *Jean et Pierre croient que Marie a vu qui?
John and Peter think that Mary saw who?
(92) *Marie pense que Jean a acheté quoi?
Mary thinks that John bought what?
(93) *Il n’a pas rencontré qui?
He hasn’t met whom?
(94) *Il peut rencontrer qui?
He can meet whom?
(95) *Plusieurs personnes ont rencontré qui?
Several people have met whom?
 Paul Boucher

However, Poletto & Pollock (2006) find all of the above constructions perfectly
acceptable and Adli (2004a) found that the vast majority of the native French
speakers he interviewed accepted such constructions as grammatical. This differ-
ence of acceptability corresponds in my opinion to different interpretations of the
scope of the question. Given the strong contextualization attached to Type 1 ques-
tions, they can always be interpreted as “echo questions” or as “requests for clarifi-
cation or confirmation” and in this case become perfectly acceptable.

(91′) Jean et Pierre croient que Marie a vu qui?

‘(Who did you say that) Jean and Pierre think that Mary saw?’
(92′) Marie pense que Jean a acheté quoi?
‘(What did you say that) Marie thinks that Jean bought?’
(93′) Il n’a pas rencontré qui?
‘(Who did you say) he didn’t meet?’
(94′) Il peut rencontrer qui?
‘(Who did you say) he can meet?’
(95′) Plusieurs personnes ont rencontré qui?
‘(Who did you say that) several people have met?’

These two examples are in no way intended to represent the entire range of pro-
posals in the literature on French wh-questions. They leave aside a number of
important papers, including recent work by Eric Mathieu which goes in the direc-
tion indicated here, that is, that the syntactic variants discussed in Section 2 are
pragmatically motivated.8 However, they do serve to underscore the necessity of
studying French interrogatives in terms of their specific pragmatic functions in
authentic contexts. In the following sub-sections I will suggest a more fruitful line
of investigation, which will rely on two important notions to distinguish English
and French, namely contextual grounding and pronoun strength. I’ll begin with
the latter.

5.2â•… Pronouns
The investigation of French pronouns, both interrogative and personal, leads us in
two interesting directions. First of all, several recent studies, summarized in Elsig
(2009), suggest that French subject pronouns are no longer independent syntactic
arguments but are evolving towards, or perhaps have already reached the status of

.â•… Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out to me, referring to Mathieu (2009).
 Wh-questions in French and English 

agreement markers, that is, of functional heads. This has important consequences
for the analysis of Type 3 questions, which Elsig claims are no longer productive
in French. Crucially, he argues that so-called “subject-verb inversion” has effec-
tively disappeared from Modern French and that wh-raising in French does not
target a high left periphery target such as Spec,CP, but rather a clause-internal
position, Spec,TP.
Secondly, the fact that French nominal wh-pronouns, as we saw in the preced-
ing section, fall into two different morphological categories: strong or “tonic” on
the one hand, clitic or “atonic” on the other, not only explains the presence of in
situ questions from the very beginning of French, but it also provides us with the
basis for a formal binding mechanism for analyzing them and for differentiating
them from their English counterparts.

5.2.1â•… Subject pronouns and interrogative syntax in French

Elsig (2009) claims that French clitic pronouns are evolving towards the status
of agreement markers. Support for this argument comes from the tendency in
French to double subject DPs with clitics. Elsig (2009: 172) argues that this is
now not an exception but the unmarked default case, since empirical studies
show that more than half of all sentences with a subject DP also contain a sub-
ject clitic. This, he says, argues against treating such constructions as cases of
clitic left dislocation with topicalized DPs. He considers that in fact the DP is in
the normal subject position while the clitics are agreement markers on the
finite verb.
Friedemann (1997), cited by Elsig, states that preverbal pronouns are not yet
merged in the inflectional head position but rather are base generated in its specifier.
He bases this assumption on the fact that clitic doubling of preverbal subject DPs
is not yet obligatory in French. Only when French shows obligatory doubling, as
in Northern Italian dialects (NID), will one be able to infer that subject pronouns
have grammaticalized into syntactic heads.
Postverbal subject pronouns, on the other hand, clearly exhibit properties of
interrogative agreement markers merged in the inflectional head according to
Friedemann, who cites equivalent constructions in NIDs where the postverbal
pronouns appear in a different form from their preverbal counterparts.
That even preverbal subject pronouns are on their way to becoming agree-
ment markers can be seen in their lack of autonomy: contrary to DP subjects (96),
they cannot be separated from the finite verb host (97), nor can they be deleted in
coordination structures (98).

(96) Cet étudiant, d’après moi, a écrit une bonne thèse.

This student, in my opinion, wrote a good thesis.
 Paul Boucher

(97) *Il, d’après moi, a écrit une bonne thèse.

He, in my opinion, wrote a good thesis.
(98) Elle danse et *(elle) chante.
She dances and ╇ sings.9

Further arguments cited by Elsig in support of the “morphological” as opposed to

the “syntactic” analysis of clitic pronouns include the Theta Criterion and produc-
tivity. In the first case, he points out, if pronouns in doubling constructions were
independent arguments, then we would expect the Theta Criterion to be violated,
since a single argument role cannot be assigned twice. Elsig also cites data on Quebec
French which shows that pronominal inversion is no longer productive, since it is
restricted to specific linguistic contexts, i.e. second-person subject pronouns and
a small class of lexical verbs: vouloir, voir, avoir, être (2009: 175). “If Pronominal
Inversion,” he writes (p. 174), “was in fact the result of a syntactic analysis of clitic
pronouns, the restriction to 2nd person contexts would be unexpected.” Thus it
seems clear that pronominal subjects are in fact the phonological realization of
some functional verbal features in the form of an inflectional morpheme.
This discussion of clitic pronouns in French is important to our study because
of the link established by the authors quoted above between pronoun strength and
wh- and verb movement. This idea has led a number of researchers (cf. Heap &
Roberge 2001) to posit that in fact there is no verb movement in so-called subject-
clitic inversion questions in French (Type 3). Noonan (1989) for instance, asserts
that the finite verb stays in T0 and that the subject-clitic is base-generated in
Spec,VP as a spell-out of the subject trace under VP. It then cliticizes to the inflec-
tional head.
(99) [TP où [T′ sont-elles [vP elles [v′ sont [VP elles [ V′ sont [PP où ]]]]]]]

If this analysis is on the right track then we can truly say that verb movement has
ceased to be an option in contemporary French. This has direct consequences for
our study of French wh-questions. If verb raising has ceased to be an option in
Modern French, then it follows that wh-raising cannot target the high left periphery
of the clause, since in that case the wh-criterion could not be satisfied at the CP
level. In order for the wh-phrase and the inflected verb to be in a local Spec-Head
relationship, the former must raise to the Spec,TP position. That French satisfies
the wh-criterion at the TP level, while English does so at the XP level as we will

.â•… The same phenomenon can be seen with nominal determiners:

(i) Il a vu les vaches et *(les) chevaux dans le pre.

He saw the cows and ╇ horses in the meadow.
 Wh-questions in French and English 

claim below (Section  5.2.5), turns out to be a crucial part of our answer to the
question of how to map the syntax of French questions to their pragmatic func-
tions. We will now look at the nature of French wh-pronouns, comparing them
respectively to their equivalents in NIDs and in English.

5.2.2â•… Wh-pronouns in French

The difference in the status of French interrogative pronouns, which we discussed in
Section 4.3, has had a number of consequences for the evolution of French syntax.
First of all, in conjunction with changes in the prosodic system (cf. Section 4.2),
it has obviously had an impact on word order in French. Although not all interro�
gative pronouns show strong and weak forms, most of them can occupy both the
fronted and the in situ positions, as we saw in the discussion of the data.
Secondly, the fact that est-ce que has now become a grammaticalized interro�
gation marker, along with the clitic status of que, has lead to a fusion of the two
into a single fronted interrogative word, in the opinion of a number of researchers,
including Elsig and Myers. Elsig (2009: 191–199), based on a study of 19th and
20th century Quebec French, extends this analysis to other interrogative words,
analyzing constructions like où est-ce que [uεsk] or où ce que [usk] or où ce [us] as
simple wh-words. This analysis lends support to Myers’ (2007) claim that “Qu’est-ce
que” questions are in fact Type 2 questions, with a fronted wh-word followed by
SV(O). Moreover, it suggests that weak (où, qui) or clitic (que) pronouns have
weakened to the extent that they rely on the support of an overt marker carrying
the [wh] feature.
The discussion in this and the previous sub-sections leads us to the follow-
ing conclusion: Modern French has evolved to a situation where verb raising has
effectively disappeared from colloquial usage and wh-pronouns may either raise
to Spec,TP or remain in situ. In all four wh-question types examined in Section 2,
SVO word order is maintained. In the former case, the wh-criterion is satisfied
through Spec-Head agreement at the TP level.
This ties in with Féry’s (2001) claim that French, contrary to English or German,
cannot use pitch accent to express focus domains and must resort to a combination
of prosodic phrasing and syntactic restructuring in order to position a given infor-
mation item relative to preceding discourse, co-speaker expectations or speaker
presuppositions. As a result, wh-pronouns in French are placed at either the left or
right edge of the prosodic phrase that represents their focus domain, in this case
TP, in order to anchor the intonation contour to a boundary tone.
If it is true that raised wh-phrases in French bind their traces from Spec,TP,
how does binding work for in situ pronouns? We will propose a possible answer
to this question in the following section by returning to the parallel suggested by
Friedemann between French and NIDs.
 Paul Boucher

5.2.3â•… Northern Italian dialects

In Section 5.2.1 we cited work by Friedemann (1997) suggesting that French subject
pronouns can be compared to those in NIDs. We will now look at an analysis
drawing a similar parallel between Modern French and NID interrogative pro-
nouns. This parallel has been extensively discussed in a series of papers by Poletto &
Pollock (2004, 2009) and Munaro & Pollock (2005). NIDs have much richer para-
digms of wh-pronouns than French. Like French these languages can have left-
edge, cleft or in situ wh-forms, and they also show a curious phenomenon, called
“wh-clitic doubling” by the authors.

(100) a. S’a-lo fat che? Illasi (Verona): Wh-clitic doubling

What has-he done what?
‘What has he done?’
b. Ndo e-lo ndat endoe?
Where is-he gone where?
‘Where has he gone?’

(101) a. Ch’et fat? Monno (Brescia): Wh in first position

What have-you done?
‘What have you done?’
b. Ngo fet majà?
Where do-you eat?
‘Where do you eat?’

(102) a. Fet fà què? Monno (Brescia): Wh in situ

Do-you do what?
‘What have you done?’
b. Fet majà ngont?
Do-you eat where?
‘Where do you eat?’

(103) a. Da cusè l’↜è che ta parlat? Mendrisiotto: Cleft wh-questions

About what it is that you talk?
‘What are you talking about?’
b. Chi l’↜eva che t’↜è parlaa de sta roba
Who it was that to you has talked of this thing?
‘Who told you about this?’

Poletto & Pollock’s analysis of the NID wh-clitic doubling construction of the type
found in (100) assumes that such wh-words form ‘pairs’, of the type found when
clitic pronouns double DPs, so-called ‘DP doubling’ constructions, originally dis-
cussed in Kayne (1972) and further studied in Uriagereka (1995). They propose that
this analysis “should carry over to wh-doubling: the wh-clitic and the wh-phrase,
start out as a single complex item and then split and move to different projections,
 Wh-questions in French and English 

due to the distinct features they have to check.” (Poletto & Pollock 2009:  2) In
order to host these doubled wh-words, they posit two distinct operator positions
in the interrogative clause, WhP1 and WhP2.
(104) [WHP1 Wh01 [FORCEP F0 [GROUNDP G0 [TOPP [WHP2 Wh02 [IP …]]]]]]

They further claim that the members of this ‘wh-pair’ “instantiate a (set of)
feature(s) in the complex functional structure of wh-items which parallels the dif-
ferent layers of the CP projections” (p.11). Since in some NIDs three sorts of wh-
words are found: clitic forms, like se, weak forms (Cardinaletti 1991) like cusa,
and strong forms like cusé, with three different distributions, respectively “high”,
“middle” and “low”, the authors reason that the clitic member is a disjunction
operator instantiating the higher ‘disjunction feature’, the ‘weak’ member is an
existential operator instantiating the ‘existential feature’, while the ‘strong’ member
is a restrictor operator instantiating the ‘restrictor feature’.
(105) [DISJUNCTION OPERATOR se [EXISTENTIAL OPERATOR cusa [RESTRICTOR cusè ]]]

These ‘doubled’ operators map onto clause structure as in (106).

(106) [WH1P DisjOp [FORCEP [GROUNDP ExisOp [TOPP [WH2P RestrOp [IP …]]]]]]

In Poletto & Pollock’s ‘remnant movement’ analysis, the lower wh-word is not actu-
ally in situ, that is, in its base position. It has, in fact, risen to WhP2. Then the rest
of the clause moves to GroundP (or alternatively the VP raises to GroundP and
the subject to TopP; see Poletto & Pollock 2004: 262). The left-edge clitic wh-word
then raises to WhP1, from which position it has scope over the entire structure
below it. I will not discuss this aspect of their analysis but concentrate on the clitic
doubling aspect only.

5.2.4â•… “Wh-doubling” in French

Poletto & Pollock extend the wh-pair analysis to French, claiming that one or the
other members of the pair is represented by a null operator.
(107) a. [Ø, quoi]
b. [que, Ø]

In their analysis of French, the clitic que lexicalises the ‘disjunction feature’, while
its null associate has both existential and restrictor features; the non-clitic quoi lexi-
calises the ‘restrictor feature’, while its non-lexical associate has both disjunction
and existential features. If we assume, like Poletto & Pollock, that French interro�
gatives involve covert wh-doubling, that is, “that wh-in situ and wh-doubling are
two sides of the same coin”,10 the natural conclusion would then seem to be that

.â•… From the abstract for Poletto & Pollock (2004: 2).

 Paul Boucher

French in situ expressions in fact function like the lower member of a wh-operator
pair, with the null ‘disjunction operator’ acting as the higher member of the pair.
(108) øTu as fait quoi?
You have done what
‘What did you do?’

Let us pursue this line of reasoning and now try to tie together the descriptive data
discussed in Section 2 with the formal analysis.
We saw that Type 1 in situ questions in French are always strongly grounded
in their contexts, being used in most cases either in highly constrained situations
where a limited number of possible answers are available, or as “follow up” ques-
tions or “requests for clarification” of the previous conversational turn. I would like
to propose that French wh-in situ questions in fact exploit the intermediate “exis-
tential” position by inserting a covert existential operator in just such contexts.

(109) [DISJUNCTION OPERATOR Ø/que [EXISTENTIAL OPERATOR Ø/∃ [RESTRICTOR quoi/Ø ]]]

We now have the necessary ingredients, namely a pair of wh-operators and an

intermediate existential operator, for treating French in situ questions as a form of
multiple question. The idea for this approach comes from Pesetsky’s (1987) analy-
sis of multiple questions in English, in which he exploits the notion of D-linking.
It is generally considered that such in situ expressions move covertly at LF,
unless they are D-linked, since they show Superiority Effects.

(110) a. *Qu’est-ce que qui a fait?

b. *What did who do?

D-linked wh-expressions, on the other hand, do not show such effects and are
therefore assumed not to move at LF but rather to have their scope assigned by
some other mechanism such as unselective binding (Pesetsky 1987) or choice
function (Tsai 1994; Reinhart 1987). In Pesetsky’s analysis the higher wh-word
unselectively binds both its own trace and the in situ word, which is therefore
considered to function like an indefinite in the sense of Heim (1982).

(111) a. Quel garçon a épousé quelle fille?

b. Which boy married which girl?

(112) a. Quelle fille as-tu convaincu quel garçon d’épouser?

b. Which girl did you convince which boy to marry?

Recall that in Heim’s analysis of so-called “donkey pronouns” like it in (113), it

is precisely the possibility of “existential closure” by an overt or covert operator
 Wh-questions in French and English 

which allows the higher indefinite to function like a quantifier (≅ every man) and
thus to bind the lower indefinite, which in turn can bind the pronoun it.11
(113) A man who has a donkey (always) beats it.

Assuming that the proposition in TP corresponds to the Ground or Presupposition

on which the French in situ question is based, it would seem that French exploits
a sort of “weak D-linking” mechanism in its syntax. A covert existential operator is
adjoined to TP in wh in situ questions through contextual grounding. This allows
the higher covert wh-operator, in Poletto & Pollock’s sense, to function like a quan-
tifier and to bind the lower, overt operator, which acts like a bound variable intro-
duced by the covert member of the pair.
Conversely, in Type 2 questions, where the wh-phrase is fronted, the higher,
overt wh-word functions like a disjunction operator ranging over the two pos-
sible values for the implicit existential operator adjoined to TP, i.e. ∃/¬∃, relative to
the lower restriction operator, represented by the covert member of the pair. The
result is the so-called "request for explanation" or "surprise" interpretation. Given
the absence of verb raising in these constructions and the predilection for adver-
bial wh-expressions, it may be that this is in fact a form of adjunction, rather than
�wh-movement stricto sensu.

5.2.5â•… Wh-pronouns in English

Comparing wh-questions in Chinese and English, Tsai (1994: 17) wonders why it
is that English cannot satisfy the wh-criterion by leaving the wh-word in situ (114),
contrary to Chinese ((22b), reproduced below as (115)).
(114) *You like what?
(115) Ni xihuan shenma ne?
You like what part
‘What do you like?’

.â•… Kratzer (2004: 2): “Irene Heim (1982) and Hans Kamp (1981) […] argued that the quan-
tificational behavior of indefinites was an illusion. It derived from overt or non-overt opera-
tors present in semantic representations, or alternatively, from the mechanics of the semantic
interpretation procedure itself. According to Heim and Kamp, indefinites introduced mere
variables with conditions attached to them into semantic representations.” Partee (1995: 567):
“What appears to account for the quantificational interpretation of such sentences is the
existence of various ‘default’ or unmarked operators with interpretations such as ‘universal’,
‘modalized universal’, and ‘generic’, alongside other possibilities such as implicit existential
quantification.”
 Paul Boucher

This fact seems all the more puzzling since, argues Tsai, the in situ solution should
always be preferred by UG on the grounds of economy. In the terms of the mini-
malist approach,

binary substitution [i.e. Generalized Transformation:] (8a) has intrinsic priority

over singulary substitution [i.e. Move α:] (8b):

(8) a. [X′ ∆ [X′ …wh…]] → [X′ Op[q] [X′ …wh…]]

b. [X′ ∆ [X′ …wh…]] → [X′ whi [X′ …ti…]] (ib.)

Tsai’s answer to this is based on the notion of pronoun strength: “given that opera-
tor features such as [+wh] are strong in English, procrastination of wh-movement
is not allowed” (ib.: 18). In fact, he pursues, English does take advantage of the
economical solution in (8a), but it does so at the XP level, that is, within the wh-word
itself. His reasoning is based on a proposal that goes back to Katz & Postal (1964)
in which English interrogative and demonstrative pronouns are analyzed in terms
of their sub-morphemes:

Wh words pronominals
wh-o wh-en th-ey th-en
wh-om wh-ere th-em th-ere
wh-at th-at

Given the free relative construals of wh-words (whoever, etc.), which are impos-
sible with th-words (*thatever, etc.), Tsai (1994: 20) concludes “wh does not block
binding from the suffix -ever, which contributes universal force to the indefi-
nites” (whatever ≅ anything, whoever ≅ anyone, etc.). In contrast, pronominals
cannot be suffixed by -ever since th- blocks the binding construal between -ever
and the indefinite.

(116) a. N0

N0 -everx

wh- ind(x)

b. *N0

N0 -everx

th- ind(x)  (Tsai’s (14a))

 Wh-questions in French and English 

In Tsai’s analysis English wh-words correspond to operator-variable pairs, with the

wh-sub-morpheme representing the disjunction operator and the indefinite sub-
morpheme (â•‚o, -om, -at, -ere, -en) representing the restriction. He writes
since what in itself is an operator variable pair […], binary substitution is
uncalled-for.[…]

(18) a. [CP ∆ [IP …what-Op[q]…]] ≠> [CP Op[q] [IP …what-Op[q]…]]

b. [CP ∆ [IP …what-Op[q]…]] → [CP what-Op[q]i [IP …ti…]]

[…] Since the [wh] feature is strong in English, singulary substitution must apply
before SPELLOUT to make sure that what is in the matrix CP Spec for feature-
checking, as illustrated by (18b). (Ib.: 22)

Thus the in situ interrogative (114) is ruled out for failing to check the strong fea-
ture of what in overt syntax.
As we have seen no such rule applies in French and the reason seems to be the
difference in pronoun strength between the two languages. French interrogative
pronouns have a weak [wh] feature, which allows them to remain in situ. As argued
above, the French pronoun system overall is evolving towards a state similar to
that observed for NIDs. Covert wh-doubling ensures that there will always be a
higher disjunctive operator to bind the in situ wh-phrase.

6.â•… Conclusion

My goal in this paper has been to find a way to map the syntax of French
�wh-questions to their pragmatic functions and to distinguish them formally from
their English counterparts. This is not an easy task and it would be presumptuous
to assume that I have attained my goal and that everything now fits together seam-
lessly. Obviously there are still many loose strings to tie up. Let us review the various
aspects of the problem discussed in Sections 2 and 2 before concluding.
The central thesis here, following Lambrecht (1994), is that syntactic variation
in French questions is grounded in pragmatics. The same idea underlies several
of the studies discussed above, especially Quillard (2000), Myers (2007) and Elsig
(2009). What emerges from these studies, all of which are based on corpora of
authentic data, is that the fronting (Type 2) and the in situ construction (Type 1)
have become the default interrogative constructions in Modern French and that
verb movement has effectively disappeared from Modern French. Therefore, con-
trary to English, French appears to respect economy and to resort to binary substi-
tution whenever possible, possibly using covert operators to ensure proper binding
 Paul Boucher

relations. It also seems that French interrogative pronouns function as suggested

by Féry (2001), occupying either the left or the right edge of the clause in order to
ensure focalisation.
However, it is not at all clear just what the “left-edge position” might be.
We have looked at two divergent analyses in Section 3, both of which reject the
standard analysis in which the wh-phrase raises to Spec,CP and the inflected
verb moves to C0 or, alternatively, est-ce que is generated directly under C0.
Elsig (2009) and several of the studies he cites, argue that in fact there is
no longer any form of verb raising in French, that the verb remains in T0 while
the wh-phrase targets Spec,TP. Poletto & Pollock (2004, 2009), on the other
hand, posit two distinct operator positions in the high left periphery, mov-
ing IP/GroundP through Remnant Movement to a position above the lower
�operator position.
My own solution has been to borrow elements from both analyses. On the
one hand, I have followed Friedemann (1997) and Elsig (2009) in considering
that French pronouns have weakened to the point that the analogy with NIDs
has become plausible and that indeed a form of covert wh-doubling may very
well be at work in French. On the other hand, my analysis of the pragmatic func-
tions of Type 1 and Type 2 wh-questions has shown that in both cases, there is a
strong dependence on contextual grounding, in the first case in order to confirm
or complete the information contained in the presupposition, in the second case
in order to call into question or show surprise relative to the information in the
presuppo�sition. Finally, I have suggested that French in situ questions exploit a
form of weak D-linking through contextual grounding to ensure that an exis-
tential operator will be adjoined to TP so that binding can take place through
unselective binding.
It goes without saying that all of this is very tentative. However, the difference
in the nature of the pronoun systems in the two languages and the use of syntactic
variation in French as opposed to prosodic stress in English to ensure focalisation
are two crucial factors in the discussion. Whatever analysis finally emerges will
have to take these into consideration.

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 A comparative perspective
on intensive reflexives
English and Hebrew

Dana Cohen
Université Paris 8

Position variability is one of the defining properties of intensive reflexives

(IRs). This distributional pattern often leads to isomorphic, even polysemous
treatments. This paper presents a unified account of IRs based on the examination
of IRs in English and Hebrew. The proposed analysis establishes a single core
function for the expression, the establishment of comparison. This core function
involves a set of relations (inclusion, exclusion and scalarity) that bear the status
of conversational implicatures in this construction. It is argued that the choice
of IR position marks scope differences and signals variations in information
structure. Despite various morpho-syntactic differences between the languages,
the proposed analysis is shown to account for the function of IRs in English
and Hebrew alike.

1.â•… Introduction1

This paper presents a comparison of the intensive reflexive (IR) constructions in

English and in Hebrew.2 The English IR has been analysed in a variety of treatments,

.╅ This article is based on my contribution to the Contrastive Information Structure

Analysis conference (18–19 March 2008, University of Wuppertal). I would like to thank
Carsten Breul for organising this interesting event, and the participants for stimulating dis-
cussions. I am grateful to the editors and anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on
earlier drafts.
.â•… The term ‘intensive reflexive’ is adopted here following Leskosky (1972) and Edmondson &
Plank (1978). Various terms are used to refer to this construction, most commonly ‘inten-
sifiers’ (Moravcsik 1972; König 1991; Gast 2006) and ‘emphatic reflexives’ (Moyne 1971;
McKay 1991; Kemmer 1995; Creswell 2002). However, these terms are not used exclusively
 Dana Cohen

many of which from a polysemy/ambiguity perspective, leading to the distinction

of an array of IRs, categorised by interpretive and distributional differences. The
position advocated here is that the similarity between the various IR types merits a
unified approach into which any differences must be systematically incorporated.
The analysis outlined here is shown to account for the data of Hebrew and English
alike, thereby lending support to the monosemous approach adopted and substan-
tiating its cross-linguistic potential.
Cross-linguistic comparison of phenomena undoubtedly enhances our com-
prehension of the language system in general and of particular linguistic processes
on all levels of representation, whether syntactic, phonological or pragmatic. Only
through such comparative study can we establish the existence of parallels or gaps
between languages and discover the language-specific ways in which more general
phenomena are realised. All too often, however, comparative analyses focus on
dissimilarities of the examined phenomena, while parallels are taken for granted
and disappear into the background. Yet, the significance of the one can only be
understood against the backdrop of the other, and it is their combination that
bears on tangent phenomena and furthers our understanding of the language sys-
tem in general.
IR constructions are found in many languages, and frequently converge on the
form used as a reflexive anaphor (see, Moravcsik 1972; König & Siemund 2000).
Nonetheless, it has been argued that the dual function of English â•‚self – as reflexive
anaphor and IR – must be explained through the unique diachronic development
of English, as it cannot be accounted for on a synchronic basis (see, Gast
2006: 208ff.). Comparison with the equivalent construction in Hebrew, which also
serves both functions, sheds light on this issue. Given that the two languages are of
different families and the constructions display different diachronic development,
the strong parallels found between these constructions cast doubt on a unique
diachronic explanation of the dual function limited to English.
The following section provides some background for the discussion of IRs.
Section 2.1 outlines a few basic features of the IR construction in both languages;
Section 2.2 presents some pertinent aspects of prior analyses of the English IR.
The main points of the proposed analysis are detailed in Section 3. Section 4 is
devoted to a discussion of IR scope and its contribution to context selection and
signalling of information status. English and Hebrew are examined in parallel in
these sections.

for the constructions under discussion; the term ‘intensifier’ also refers to adverbs like very
(Louw 2005; Anderson 2006), while the term ‘emphatic reflexive’ also indicates phonologi-
cally stressed anaphors or point-of-view reflexives (Ferro 1992; Reinhart & Reuland 1993;
Kemmer 1995).
 A comparative perspective on intensive reflexives 

2.â•… Background

2.1â•… The intensive reflexive in English and Hebrew

The IR in both languages is identical in form to the reflexive anaphor; both are
inflected for person, gender and number and display agreement with an antece�
dent.3 The IR appears in several non-argument positions, as illustrated in (1–2)
below. These can be described as prototypically adverbial, adjunct positions; this is
particularly evident in the various medial positions (1c, 2c, 2e).
(1) a. The judge himself could be guilty.
b. I got a letter from the judge himself.
c. The judge could himself be guilty.
d. The judge could be guilty himself.
e. They will accuse the judge himself.
(2) a. ha.Sofet acmo/beacmo haya aSem.
df.judge himself/p.himself was guilty4
b. dibarti im ha.Sofet acmo.
Talked1sg p(with) df.judge himself
c. ha.Sofet haya beacmo/*acmo aSem.
df.judge was p.himself/*himself guilty
d. ha.Sofet haya aSem beacmo/*acmo.
df.judge was guilty p.himself/*himself
e. ha.Sofet movil beacmo et masa ha.haxpaSa.
df.judge leads p.himself om campaign df.defamation

English IRs appear in three positions: the post-nominal IR (PNself, 1a, b) that
immediately follows the antecedent, the post-verbal IR (VPself, 1d) that follows
the verb and any complements, but can precede or follow other adjuncts, and
the post-auxiliary IR (PAUXself, 1c) that follows (at least one element of) the
auxiliary set. The same positions are available for the Hebrew IR (2a–d), but its
distribution is even freer, as it can, for example, intercede between the V and DO
(2e). In both languages, IRs that are not adjacent to their antecedent must refer to
the subject while the PNself can accompany an antecedent in all syntactic positions
(1a, b, e, 2a, b).

.â•… For the purposes of this paper, this is intended simply as a descriptive characterisation,
without any theoretical implications as to the relations between the two functions.
.â•… Hebrew displays a rich agreement system, in which number, gender and person marking
appears on nouns, verbs, adjectives (not person) and occasionally on prepositions. Whenever
possible, I leave most agreement information out of the gloss, to enhance expository simplicity.
 Dana Cohen

Examples (1–2) illustrate a major difference between the constructions. English

IRs are bare in all positions. In Hebrew, non-adjacent IRs appear with the prepo�
sition b-, which typically marks adverbials (e.g. locative: ba.bayit (=at home),
be.london (=in London), directional: ba.derex (=en route), be.xazara (=return),
temporal: be.arba (=at 4), ba.boker (=in the morning) and manner expressions:
be.ofen iSi (=personally), be.xavana (=intentionally)).5
The next section provides some pertinent factors and problems in previous
analyses. Unfortunately, only a brief summary of the major points can be given in
this context (see, Cohen 2004, in prep.). The discussion below is limited to treat-
ments of the English IR, as there are no analyses of the Hebrew counterpart, but
the problems noted are relevant to the Hebrew construction as well.

2.2â•… Previous analyses

IRs exhibit a range of similarities and differences. The latter generally take prece-
dence in analysis, leading researchers to assume polysemy/ambiguity and charac-
terise distinct IRs based on correlations between interpretation and distribution.
Various concepts (often very loosely characterised) have been put forward to cap-
ture IR interpretations, (see, Edmondson & Plank 1978; König 1991; Kemmer 1995;
Baker 1995; Siemund 2000; Gast 2006; inter alia.). The PNself has been analysed as
indicating contrast, remarkability, prominence or centrality (all terms associated
with even), while non-adjacent IRs have been analysed as indicating direct involve-
ment, inclusion and exclusion (similar to also and only). Aspects of other linguistic
elements have been proposed as distinguishing factors and associated with the
range of senses and readings; these include properties of the predicate (agentivity,
telicity, aktionsart), plurality and indefiniteness of the antecedent. However, this
approach only provides partial solutions: the diverse characterisations cover only
subsets of IR data, leaving some uses unaddressed, and crucially leaving the simi-
larities between the subtypes largely unaccounted for. Furthermore, there is a wide
range of productive exceptions to the supposed distinguishing factors (for detailed
discussions of exceptions to various apparent restrictions, see, Cohen 2004, in
prep.; Gast 2006). Even the basic correlation between interpretation and position
is problematic, as illustrated below. The assumption of rigid correspondences and

.â•… Hebrew is a pro-drop language. Only a b- IR can refer to the null subject.

(beacmi/*acmi) giliti (beacmi) et xedvat ha.matematika (beacmi).

(p.myself/*myself) discovered1sg (p.myself) om joy df.mathematics (p.myself).
 A comparative perspective on intensive reflexives 

distinctions is fundamental to the polysemy/ambiguity approach; the absence of

correlation therefore undermines the basis for such an analysis.6
As noted, in polysemy/ambiguity accounts, the terms remarkability or promi-
nence/centrality are largely restricted to the interpretation of the PNself and non-
adjacent IRs are associated with inclusive or exclusive ‘direct involvement’. However,
as shown in (3–4), these labels can be used to characterise both PNself and VPself,
given the right context,7 and both aspects can be obtained simultaneously.

(3) a. The president himself invited me.

b. The president invited me himself.

(4) a. Derek himself signed the letters.

b. Derek signed the letters himself.

In (3a–b) the IRs in both positions can be characterised as indicating remarkability

or prominence/centrality, while the IRs in (4a–b) can be characterised as indicat-
ing ‘direct involvement’. Of course, the reverse is also possible in the right context.
The slight intuitive difference between (3) and (4) can be attributed to our encyclo�
paedic knowledge associated with president, which facilitates a scalar interpretation
relative to (4), in the absence of additional context. This is further demonstrated in
(5), where the combination of both aspects is more immediately obtained.

(5) The president signed the letters himself.

In addition, all these examples can be interpreted as either inclusive or exclusive

(again, depending on context). The choice of object stresses this aspect. Replacing
the object the letters in (4) and (5) by an object like the petition facilitates the inclu-
sive (‘also’) interpretation (since the object brings out an expectation for multiple
signers) while the singular the letter highlights the exclusive (‘only’) interpretation.
Ambi�guity analyses that differentiate inclusive and exclusive IRs would resort to
distinct structures for these examples.

.â•… The confusing range of labels and categories drawn in the various analyses underscores
the absence of a clear correlation. A case in point is the classification of the PAUXself. This
position is identified as a distinct IR in Edmondson & Plank (1978) and Verheijen (1986), the
first identifying its function as ‘reversal of semantic roles’. Gast (2006: 82) does not distinguish
the PAUXself, but includes it with some uses of the VPself, as necessarily inclusive. Conversely,
Siemund (2000: 85–87, 112–114) argues that tokens of PAUXself can fall into all three IR types
that he identifies (adverbial-exclusive, adverbial-inclusive and even adnominal).
.â•… The influence of contextual factors on IR interpretation has been noted in some polysemy/
ambiguity analyses (see, König 1991: 93; Siemund 2000; Gast 2006).
 Dana Cohen

As demonstrated, interpretation cannot consistently be confined to a specific

IR position; rather, all IRs systematically produce similar interpretations in simi-
lar contexts. It is also important to acknowledge that these labels are not the only
possible interpretations. The fluidity of interpretation exemplified challenges the
predictions of the ambiguity approach and remains unexpected and unexplained
under this slant. In light of the above, I outline a monosemous account based on
the similarity between IRs that seeks to address these problems while integrating
insights from past analyses.

3.â•… Intensive reflexives – monosemy

The analysis outlined here aims to account for IR data in both English and Hebrew.
The primary goal of this analysis is to account for the fluidity of interpretation
evident in IRs. The present analysis was originally developed for English and its
successful adaptation to Hebrew raises language-specific questions. An additional
goal of the proposed treatment, therefore, is to pinpoint the contribution of the
preposition that accompanies the Hebrew IR and contrast it with the English data.
The analysis outlined here gives a significant role to parallels between IRs and
markers like even, only and too. Markers of this type contribute a contrastive/com-
parative aspect to the meaning of a sentence, which depends on the identification
of two components, frequently termed focus and scope.8 Such a marker focuses
on a constituent and relates it to a set of contextually dependent alternatives of
the same conceptual or semantic type (König 1991; Kratzer 1991; Rooth 1992;
inter alia). The focused entity is typically related to the alternatives in terms of
exclusion, inclusion and scalar ranking.9 Broadly speaking, exclusion indicates that
the alternatives are not substitutes for the focused entity (as in only); inclusion indi-
cates that relevant information on the focused entity also applies to the alternatives
(as in also); scalarity indicates that the alternatives are hierarchically ordered on
some scale and the focused entity is at one extreme of that scale (as in even).

.â•… This is reflected in the terms used for these markers, including ‘focal particles’ (Atlas 1991),
‘focus particles’ (Hoeksema & Zwarts 1991; König 1991; Rullmann 2003), ‘focusing adverbs’
(Taglicht 1984; Rooth 1992), ‘focus-sensitive operators’ (Vallduví & Zacharski 1994; Krifka
2006), ‘scopal adverbs’ (Brugman 1986; McCawley 1996), and ‘scopal operators’ (Kay 1990).
.â•… The status of these aspects of meaning in set markers is debated; they have been classi-
fied as presuppositions (Horn 1969; König 1991; Lycan 1991; Rooth 1992; Kadmon 2001),
conventional implicatures (Karttunen & Peters 1979; Bennett 1982; Francescotti 1995) and
generalized conversational implicatures (see, Atlas 1996).
 A comparative perspective on intensive reflexives 

It is important to note the multiplicity of concepts associated with the term

focus. In theories of information structure, focus is a central concept that refers to
the new or asserted part of an utterance (for recent presentations see, Gundel &
Fretheim 2004; Ward & Birner 2004).10 The term focus is also used to refer to con-
trastive elements which are interpreted relative to a set of alternatives (Rooth 1992;
Krifka 2006; inter alia). The relation between rhematic focus and contrastive focus
remains under dispute. Contrastive focus is frequently linked to rhematic focus as
well as to the placement of a prosodic focal accent. Conversely, it has been argued
that contrastiveness is not synonymous or coextensive with rhematic focus. Rather,
contrast should be considered a distinct category of information packaging, which
can operate on both rhematic focus and topic constituents (Vallduví & Vilkuna
1998; Molnár 2002; Hedberg 2006). Specifically, the focus associated with markers
such as only does not necessarily correlate with either prosodic accent or rhematic
focus (see, Vallduví & Zacharski 1994). In accordance with the latter position, I
distinguish relationally new/rhematic focus from contrastive focus. Reference to
focus that produces a set of alternatives is intended here to refer only to contras-
tive/comparative set focus and need not coincide with rhematic focus. To avoid
terminological confusion, I refer to contrastive focus markers as ‘set markers’.
IRs share much of their distribution and function with set markers. Most
notably, IRs occupy positions typical of set markers, display similar positional vari-
ability (as noted above), evoke alternatives to the focused entity and display scope
effects. IRs follow the expression in their focus and are typically intonationally-
prominent; the correlation of both points systematically patterns with post-focal
set markers (such as too, alone).11 These correspondences lead König (1991) to
include IRs in a comparative analysis of set markers (for arguments in favour

.â•… The main distinction in information structure studies divides the conceptual/semantic
representation of a sentence into relationally given and relationally new information (Gundel &
Fretheim 2004), frequently termed topic/ground/theme and focus/rheme. The differences
between researchers are not only terminological but also conceptual. Consequently, the same
phenomenon can be classified as new by some definition and given by another (see, Hedberg
2006). Various theories recognise that a binary distinction is not sufficient to account for the
range of phenomena sensitive to information structure. Prince (1992), for instance, proposes
a combination of factors: discourse-old/-new, hearer-old/-new and presupposition/focus (see
also, Birner & Ward 1998).
.╅ There are two major differences between set markers and IRs (in English and Hebrew):
set markers are typically uninflected while IRs in both languages are inflected for number,
person and gender; set markers can typically focus on constituents of any category while IRs
can only focus on nominal constituents. These factors are briefly addressed below.
 Dana Cohen

and against this categorisation, see, König 1991: 87ff.; Siemund 2000: 13ff.; Gast
2006: 62ff.; Cohen in prep. §2.3).
Following König (1991), I assume that IRs function like set markers, and show
that the operative elements in the analysis of set markers can be employed in a sys-
tematic monosemous analysis of IRs. This paper outlines the general principles of
the proposed treatment from a pragmatic perspective, linking various interpreta-
tions through conversational implicature. No specific syntactic or semantic analy-
sis is addressed in this work.12 The following section illustrates how the range of
meanings associated with IRs can be incorporated into an overall generalisation.
As noted above, set markers relate the focused entity to a set of alternatives
in terms of exclusion, inclusion and scalar ranking. These relations, in isolation
and in combinations, can be extended systematically over the various IRs in both
languages. The interpretations provided are approximations intended to articulate
the senses relevant for discussion and do not illustrate the full range of positions
or possible interpretations (especially given the effect of contextual factors on this
construction, discussed below).
(6) a. Derek (himself) wrote the letter (himself).
b. Yoni (acmo) katav (beacmo) et ha.mixtav (beacmo).
Yoni (himself) wrote (p.himself) om df.letter (p.himself)
Exclusive: Nobody else (in the relevant set) wrote the letter.
(7) a. Derek (himself) signed the petition (himself).
b. Yoni (acmo) xatam (beacmo) al ha.acuma (beacmo).
Yoni (himself) signed (p.himself) p(on) df.petition (p.himself)
Inclusive: Someone besides Derek/Yoni signed the petition.
(8) a. Derek (himself) invited me (himself).
b. Yoni (acmo) hizmin oti (beacmo).
Yoni (himself) invited me (p.himself)
Scalar: Derek/Yoni is a particularly prominent member of the set to invite me.

The examples above show the three interpretations in isolation. In the absence of
further context, (8a, b) do not necessarily display either the inclusive or the exclu-
sive interpretation – the sentences do not imply that anyone else did or did not
invite the speaker. Similarly, (6–7) do not necessarily display scalarity, providing

.â•… There are various proposals for the semantic derivation of focus interpretations (Kratzer
1991; Rooth 1992; Kadmon 2001 for overview and references). Various syntactic analyses of
adverbs have also been put forward (as in Alexiadou 1997; Cinque 1999; Ernst 2002; Göbbel
2007). The choice between these proposals is outside the scope of this paper.
 A comparative perspective on intensive reflexives 

no necessary requirement that the focused entities rank higher or lower relative
to the alternatives. This option is not ruled out, however. The scalar implicature
produced by the IR can be combined with exclusion and inclusion, as it does with
prototypical set markers. This option is illustrated below. The examples in (9) illus-
trate the scalarâ•‚exclusive combination.
(9) (Context: Since the plumber never showed up)
a. Chloe (herself) fixed the tap (herself).
b. Miri (acma) tikna (beacma) et ha.berez (beacma).
Miri (herself) fixed (p.herself) om df.tap (p.herself)
Exclusive: Nobody but Chloe/Miri fixed the tap.
Scalar: Chloe/Miri is a particularly prominent member of the set to fix the tap.

In (9), the referent is interpreted as a prominent member of the set to fix the tap
(in this case, the relevant scale can be unexpectedness), and the activity is associated
with her exclusively. (10) exemplifies the scalar-inclusive combination, typically
associated with even.
(10) a. Bill Gates (himself) uses Firefox (himself).
b. Bill Gates (acmo) miStameS (beacmo) b.firefox (beacmo).
Bill Gates (himself) uses (p.himself) p(in).firefox (p.himself)
Inclusive: Someone besides Gates uses Firefox.
Scalar: Gates is a particularly prominent member of the set to use Firefox.

As shown above, the contribution of the IR in its various positions is similar to

that of prototypical set markers, triggering a set of alternatives and displaying
inclusion, exclusion and scalarity in various combinations. Unlike prototypical set
markers (which can freely focus on constituents of any grammatical category), the
IR can only focus on its antecedent. This restriction to nominal foci correlates with
the referential properties of the IR, in both languages, as a reflexive pronoun that
is dependent on an antecedent for its reference. It is reasonable to conclude that
the two factors are causally related, that the IR is limited to focusing on nominals
due to its referential nature.13 In the analysis of set markers, the type of the focused
entity determines the type of alternatives. The set of alternatives evoked by the IR
is therefore a set of referents.

.â•… The referential properties of English IRs as a reflexive pronoun are discussed in Leskosky
(1972) and Moravcsik (1972).
 Dana Cohen

An important component of the outlined analysis is the underspecification of

the IR,14 which marks the major functional difference between IRs and prototypi-
cal set markers. In the latter, inclusion, exclusion and scalarity are coded in the
marker itself independently of context, and contextual factors serve to provide
the relevant alternatives. In contrast, the IR does not predetermine these relations;
rather, their appearance and their combinations result from an inferencing process
based on the relevant contextual factors. That is, the core meaning encoded in the
IR is underspecified, leaving these relations as conversational implicatures trig-
gered by the linguistic and extra-linguistic context. This aspect is illustrated in the
following examples.

(11) a. The sniper himself was released.

(12) a. ha.calaf acmo Suxrar.

df.sniper himself releasedpass

A sentence like (11/12a), out of context, does not indicate the nature of the rela-
tion between the entity in the IR focus (the sniper) and its alternatives and implies
neither the exclusion nor inclusion of the alternatives. Out of context, the contri-
bution of the IR is only that there are others besides the sniper who are relevant.
Since the choice of relation to the alternatives is left open, the sentence can display
different implicatures in different contexts.

(11) b. The DA prosecuted the heads of the organisation. The sniper himself
was released.
c. The DA couldn’t convict the heads of the organisation. The sniper himself
was released.

(12) b. hugSa tvi’a neged raSey ha.irgun.

served prosecution p(against) heads df.organisation
‘A prosecution was served against the heads of the organisation.’
ha.calaf acmo Suxrar.
df.sniper himself releasedpass
‘The sniper himself was released’.

.â•… Underspecified meaning and the pragmatic inferential processes required to comple-
ment it are discussed extensively within Relevance Theory (see, Sperber & Wilson 1986/1995;
Carston 2002; Wedgwood 2003, 2007). Relevance theorists emphasise the importance of extra-
grammatical inferencing processes in the construction of meaning. It is argued that the
meaning of any utterance must combine encoded and inferential elements. The processes of
inferencing and context selection are based on a search for relevance, guided by principles of
informativity and processing effort.
 A comparative perspective on intensive reflexives 

c. nixSela ha.tvi’a neged raSey ha.irgun.

failed df.prosecution p(against) heads df.organisation.
‘The prosecution against the heads of the organisation failed.’
ha.calaf acmo Suxrar
df.sniper himself releasedpass
‘The sniper himself was released’.

The context given in (11/12b) raises the exclusive implicature – nobody (in the
set) but the sniper was released, whereas the context in (11/12c) raises the inclusive
implicature – others besides the sniper were also released. A similar effect is evi-
dent in (13/14).
(13) a. The mayor attends the talks himself.
b. The mayor attends the talks himself and his deputy is never seen there.
c. The mayor attends the talks himself and his deputy is there all the time.

(14) a. rosh.ha.ir megia la.diyunim beacmo.

df.mayor comes dfp(to).talks p.himself
‘The mayor attends the talks himself.’
b. rosh.ha.ir megia la.diyunim beacmo.
df.mayor comes dfp(to).talks p.himself
sgano nimna mi.lehagi’a la.makom.
deputyposs avoids p(from).infarrive dfp(to).place
‘The mayor attends the talks himself. His deputy avoids the place.’
c. rosh.ha.ir megia la.diyunim beacmo.
df.mayor comes dfp(to).talks p.himself
sgano nimca ba.ulam kol yom.
deputyposs present dfp(in).hall every day
‘The mayor attends the talks himself. His deputy is in the hall every day.’

Out of context, (13/14a) implies neither exclusion nor inclusion. The context of
(13/14b) raises the exclusive implicature – no one (in the set) but the mayor attends
the talks, whereas the context in (13/14c) raises the inclusive implicature – others
also attend the talks. The same effect applies to the scalar implicature. Consider (15).
(15) I can’t look after the children tonight. I am going out myself.

The context clearly raises the inclusive implicature, but the scalar implicature may
or may not arise in (15) depending on additional contextual factors relevant for
the interlocutors. If the addressee assumes that the speaker does not go out (as the
regular babysitter perhaps), the scalar implicature may be triggered as well. If, how-
ever, no such assumption exists in the relevant context, scalarity need not arise.
These examples illustrate that these aspects of interpretation are not specifically
encoded in the IR. The results of comparison remain context-dependent aspects
 Dana Cohen

of the interpretation and can therefore be classified as conversational implicatures.

Thus, contextual factors promote some of the potential interpretations and rule
out others, thereby constraining the choice of interpretation. The relevant con-
text affecting the inferencing process includes various linguistic factors such as the
type of nominal (as illustrated in the discussion of the object in (4) and (5)).
The underspecification of IR meaning and the availability of a number of con-
versational implicatures means that the cancellation of a specific implicature does
not (usually) rule out a sentence, but simply brings another implicature into play.
This is not the case with set markers that predetermine the type of evaluation. Thus,
the doctor was late too is inappropriate if the rest of the staff arrived on time, and
only the doctor was late is inappropriate if others of the staff were late, whereas an IR
(the doctor himself was late) can be suitable in both cases. Crucially, prototypical set
markers encode the result of comparison between their foci and alternatives: also/
too automatically evoke inclusion, even automatically evokes scalar inclusion and
only/alone automatically evoke exclusion. According to the presented analysis, the
IR does not predetermine this result. A variety of possibilities is available, inferred
in each case on the basis of relevant context (linguistic and extra-linguistic). This
accounts for the high context dependence and fluidity of these interpretations in
the case of the IR, which is not found with prototypical set markers.
A particularly interesting consequence of the status of comparison results as
conversational implicatures is the combination of inclusion and exclusion (16–17),
which does not usually occur with prototypical set markers.
(16) (Context: That computer always crashes, but)
a. the program (itself) is unstable (itself).
b. ha.toxna (acma) lo yeciva (beacma).
df.program (p.herself) neg stable (p.herself)
Exclusive: Nothing else contributed to the instability of the program.
Inclusive: Something besides the program is unstable.

In the appropriate (and all too familiar) context in which a computer malfunctions
regularly and a specific application is causing additional problems, (16) can easily
trigger both inclusion and exclusion implicatures. This theoretically contradictory
combination is possible because the two relations stem from somewhat different
aspects of the situation. In this case, both operate on the same set of alternatives,
{causes for instability in the system}, but the inferencing process involves a divi-
sion of this set based on the relevance of distinct time frames. Thus, the result-
ing inclusion aspect indicates that at various points other elements besides the
program display instability, while exclusion indicates that in certain time frames
instability is directly caused by this program rather than by elements outside it.
 A comparative perspective on intensive reflexives 

The equivalent sentence without an IR does not trigger any set of alternatives and
neither of these interpretation arises. Their appearance can therefore be attributed
to the IR itself.15 The existence of the inclusive-exclusive combination in the range
of interpretations available to the IR emphasises the fluidity of IR interpretations.
As argued above, the results of comparison are conversational implicatures,
not an obligatory element encoded in the IR. In this light, a basic, core function of
the IR emerges, the element common to all its instantiations – triggering a set of
alternatives against which the focused entity is evaluated.16 This core function is
sometimes evident in isolation, as illustrated in (17).

(17) a. His [John Clay] grandfather was a Royal Duke, and he himself has been to
Eton and Oxford. [Conan Doyle: 142]
b. At his hip he [Arren] wore a sword in a sheath of new leather figured with
inlay of red and gold; but the sword itself was plain, with a worn cross hilt
of silvered bronze. [Le Guin, Shore: 7]
c. Context: a report of a tour for prospective parents at the maternity facilities
of a hospital.
exad me.ha.avot Se.hiStatfu ba.siyur haya
One p(from).df.fathers that.participated dfp(in).tour was
beacmo pag Se.nolad ba.makom.
p.himself preemie that.born dfp(in).place
‘One of the fathers that participated in the tour was himself a preemie born
in the hospital.’
 [http://www↜.shnorkel.co.il/gal.asp?gal_id=443]
d. im pa’am nod’a ta’avato le.Seonim […] harey hayom
if once known desireposs p(for).watches […] indeed today
hu mit’ave la.zman acmo
he desires dfp(for).time himself
‘While he was once known for his love of watches […], now he longs for
time itself.’
 [http:↜//www↜.haaretz.co.il/hasite/pages/ShArt.jhtml?more=1&itemNo=
 865579&contrassID=2&subContrassID=4&sbSubContrassID=0]

.â•… While this combination requires some division, it is not, of course, limited to the temporal
set-subset configuration in this example.
.â•… This aspect is most clearly evident in cases where explicit comparison markers like ‘as x
as’ supplement the function of the IR.
 Dana Cohen

The contribution of the IR in these examples does not lie in the exclusive or inclu-
sive implicature, and there is certainly no scalar implicature involved. The import
of the IRs in (17) seems to be in relating the focused entity to a relevant alternative
in the context. In other words, the IR can be used to contribute nothing more than
triggering a comparison between the focused entity and its alternatives. The vari-
ous options illustrated above are summarised in Table 1.

Table 1.╇ Interpretations Triggered by the Intensive Reflexive

Core Single implicature Combined implicatures

Inclusive Inclusive-Scalar
Comparison Exclusive Exclusive-Scalar
Scalar Inclusive-Exclusive

Comparison is taken here to be an evaluation process between elements

(showing similarities and dissimilarities) without predetermining the result of
evaluation or granting precedence to a specific option. Both exclusion and inclu-
sion involve differences and similarities, but their communicative function is
crucially different: the purpose of exclusion (as in only/alone) is in highlighting
the differences between items while the relevance of inclusion (as in also/too) is
to emphasise similarity (whether or not the differences are of any significance).
Contrast has been used as a cover term for both types in some of the linguistic
literature, but is generally used to indicate oppositionality.17 Therefore, the term
comparison, which encompasses both relations, is adopted here to refer to the
broader relation, while contrast retains its narrower, oppositional significance. The
term comparison enables a more precise characterisation of IRs.18 Along the same
lines, comparison can be viewed as a common component to all set markers, thus

.â•… Definitions of contrast abound in the linguistic literature (see, Bolinger 1961; Chafe 1976;
Prince 1998; Culicover & Rochemont 1983; Taglicht 1984; Lambrecht 1994; Erteschik-Shir
1997; de Hoop & de Swart 2004); characterisations of the concept often imply or explicitly call
for opposition, frequently requiring a preference between the contrasted items. For discussion
and comparison of various uses of the term contrast in linguistics and the relation between
the underlying concepts, see, Molnár (2002) and Umbach (2004).
.â•… The term contrast has been raised in several treatments of IRs, typically in relation to the
PNself, although the underlying concept differs (see, Edmondson & Plank 1978; Baker 1995;
Kemmer 1995; Golde 1999; Creswell 2002). Creswell explicitly suggests a non-oppositional
notion of contrast in order to include relations of similarity and identity.
 A comparative perspective on intensive reflexives 

incorporating under a single notion the range of relations signalled between the
focused entity and its alternatives.

4.â•… Intensive reflexive scope

4.1â•… Scope effects with intensive reflexives

The previous section established that IRs display systematic similarities and out-
lined a common denominator in their function, based on the analysis of set mark-
ers. The next phase is to incorporate the differences displayed by the various IRs,
which motivated the polysemy/ambiguity approach in previous analyses. A major
component in the contribution of set markers is the scope, the domain on which
the marker operates. Scope effects with IRs have been noted in previous treat-
ments (see for example, Moravcsik 1972; König 1991; Siemund 2000; Cohen 2004;
Gast 2006; although the treatments differ). This section only provides a brief illus-
tration of the major factors (see, Cohen 2004, in prep. for a detailed discussion of
English IR scope).
Moravcsik (1972) attributes the interaction of IRs with substitutive do to scope
distinctions, as in (18).

(18) a. He signed the letter himself, but I didn’t.

b. He himself signed the letter, but I didn’t.

The second clause of (18a) means, to quote Moravcsik: “’but I didn’t sign it myself;
rather, I had someone else do it.’ [(18b)] means ‘but I didn’t sign it.’ Do includes
the sentence-final intensifier [=VPself] but not the head-bound one [=PNself] in
its scope” (1972: 274–5). The interpretation of (18b) indicates that the PNself is
outside the scope of do and suggests that it is not a part of the predicate in the first
clause. Hebrew data, as in (19) shows parallel effects.

(19) a. derek kara et ha.mixtav beacmo, aval ani lo.

Derek read om df.letter p.himself, but I neg
‘Derek read the letter himself, but I didn’t.’
b. derek acmo kara et ha.mixtav, aval ani lo.
Derek himself read om df.letter, but I neg
‘Derek himself read the letter, but I didn’t.’

In (19a), as in (18a), the ellipsis in the second clause of the VPself example includes
the IR, so the clause can mean that someone else read the letter to the speaker.
This interpretation is not available in (19b), in which the second clause means
 Dana Cohen

‘but I didn’t read it.’ The interpretation thus indicates that the PNself is not
in the ellipted material and suggests that it is not a part of the predicate in the
first clause.
IR interaction with negation in both languages supports this conclusion (as
shown in (20–21)).

(20) a. The president himself did not erase the tapes.

b. The president did not erase the tapes himself.

(21) a. ha.nasi acmo lo maxak et ha.haklata.

df.president himself neg erased om df.recording
‘The president himself did not erase the recording.’
b. ha.nasi lo maxak et ha.haklata beacmo.
df.president neg erased om df.recording p.himself
‘The president did not erase the recording himself.’

In the PNself examples in (20a, 21a), set construction is based on the negated open
proposition x not erased the tapes. The PNself is therefore outside the scope of
negation. The negated predicate then applies to the focused entity (the president),
producing the set of {individuals who did not erase the tapes} and the focused
entity is interpreted as a member in it. In (20b, 21b), negation affects the entire
clause including the VPself. The comparison set is {individuals who erased the
tapes}, formed prior to the application of negation. Negation applies to this set,
and negates the inclusion of the focused entity (the president) in this set.
The interaction of IRs with scope-related phenomena suggests that scope
plays a significant role in accounting for differences between IRs. Specifically, it
is argued that IR scope affects the determination of the relevant context for set
construction and for comparison. The importance of surface position to the estab-
lishment of the relevant set is illustrated in cases such as (22–24) where the VPself
is not predicate-final and the set is based on the part of the predicate preceding it,
without including the following material. Hebrew allows a wider range of options
here, allowing an IR between verb and DO.

(22) He had a friend who lost his money in a bank, and another friend who was
ruined by an absconding solicitor, and he lost some money himself in a
fraudulent company. [Christie, FC: 39]

(23) ha.rabi civa le.kol ha.zkenim lirkod ve.gam

df.rabbi ordered p(to).all df.elders infdance and.also
rakad beacmo esrim dakot.
danced p.himself 20 minutes
‘The rabbi ordered all the elders to dance and danced himself for 20 minutes’.
 A comparative perspective on intensive reflexives 

(24) hi nirge’a, kirva eleha et ha.calaxat ve.axla

she relaxed, brought.close to.her om df.plate and.ate
et ha.basar. hu axal beacmo xaci treisar xatixot.
om df.meat he ate p.himself half dozen pieces
‘She relaxed, brought the plate closer (to herself) and ate the meat.
He ate half a dozen pieces himself.’ [http:↜//www↜.isf.co.il/article.asp?ref=1216]

As shown above, the English PNself is outside the scope of negation and not
included in VP ellipsis; the English VPself is in the scope of negation and included
in VP ellipsis, while the set it triggers does not include parts of the predicate that
follow the VPself. Examination of similar data for various IR positions indicates
that the English IR takes scope over the element that immediately precedes it. The
integration of these factors into the analysis leads to the conclusion that the scope
of the IR restricts the type of comparison set triggered, directing the addressee
in selecting the relevant context for IR interpretation. The VPself has scope over
the part of the VP that precedes it; therefore, the focused entity is established
as a member of the set triggered by the predication and evaluated against other
members of the same set. The PNself takes scope only over its nominal antece�
dent, indicating that the choice of alternatives is not restricted by the predicate
(although this is the most immediate interpretation, especially in the absence of
additional context). The set is chosen based on any relevant context (linguistic,
previous discourse or encyclopaedic knowledge) based on some property of the
focused entity that is contextually relevant. The PAUXself takes scope over the
preceding auxiliary. Therefore, the set it triggers necessarily involves the predi-
cate, and is based on the elements of the auxiliary set that precede the IR, but not
on the ones following it. The examples in (25) illustrate these distinctions (square
brackets indicate IR scope).

(25) a. [Derek] himself will dance with Harriet.

b. Derek will [dance with Harriet] himself.
c. Derek [will] himself dance with Harriet.

In the simplest case, Derek is evaluated against a set of {dancers with Harriet}.
This is the only possibility for (25b) and no other set is under consideration.
In (25a), the set is not necessarily related to the predicate. Set construction is
inferred based on properties of the referent in any way that seems relevant for
comparison in the context. The predicate is a relevant piece of information in the
context, so (25a) can have the same interpretation as (25b), but it is also appro-
priate in a context where the predicate itself is irrelevant for comparison and
triggers other sets. This is evident in the context in (26) where (25a) is possible
but (25b) is inappropriate.
 Dana Cohen

(26) Derek’s party will be as boring as the last one! Jack and Fred will play cards,
and everyone else will just watch TV.
a. Derek himself will dance with Harriet (and won’t notice anyone).
b. #Derek will dance with Harriet himself (and won’t notice anyone).

The PAUXself in (25c) produces a more subtle effect. The IR in (25b) takes scope
over the VP which triggers the set of {dancers with Harriet}, and the utterance
indicates that Derek will be included in that set at some point in the future. The
PAUXself takes scope over the auxiliary itself, so its contribution, temporal, aspec-
tual etc., is the governing factor in the set construction. The set triggered in (25c)
is the set of {future dancers with Harriet}. The difference is highlighted in (27).
(27) a. Harriet will waltz with Jack and Fred. Derek will dance with her himself
later tonight.
b. Harriet will waltz with Jack and Fred. Derek will himself dance with her
later tonight.
c. Harriet waltzed with Jack and Fred. Derek will dance with her himself
later tonight.
d. Harriet waltzed with Jack and Fred. # Derek will himself dance with her
later tonight.

When the context includes future dancers, as in (27a–b), both positions are pos-
sible. However, when the context includes past dancers with Harriet, as in (27c–d),
the set of future dancers is irrelevant and the PAUXself version that triggers it is
dispreferred. Returning to (25c), the predicate is signalled as relevant for set con-
struction, as it is in (25b). Consequently, the PAUXself is also dispreferred in the
list setting in (26), where the predicate is not relevant for the set. The crucial aspect
is that a set based on the predicate is only one of many possible options for the
PNself, whereas it is the only possibility for the VPself and the PAUXself.
As illustrated in (19–23) above, the Hebrew IR displays similar scope effects
to its English counterpart. As in English, the scope of the Hebrew IR directs the
addressee in selecting the context relevant for the set, as shown in the following
examples.
(28) a. Derek acmo cilem et ha.zira.
Derek himself photographed om df.crime-scene
b. Derek cilem et ha.zira beacmo.
Derek photographed om df.crime-scene p.himself

Out of context, Derek is evaluated against a set of {photographers of the crime

scene}. Both (28a) and (b) are compatible with such a context, but for the VPself
in (28b), this is the only option and no other set is under consideration. This is
illustrated when we set these examples in the contexts in (29–30). When a set of
 A comparative perspective on intensive reflexives 

photographers is available, as in (29), both IRs are possible. Conversely, a context

that does not favour a set based on the predicate, as in (30), is perfectly suitable for
the PNself, but inappropriate for the VPself.
(29) anSey ha.cevet hitpazru ba.Setax im maclemot.
peopleposs df.team dispersed dfp(in).area, p(with) cameras
‘The team members dispersed in the area with cameras.’
axarkax histaber Se-.
later turned.out that
‘Later, it turned out that.’
a. Derek acmo cilem et ha.zira. (=28a)
Derek himself photographed om df.crime-scene
b. Derek cilem et ha.zira beacmo. (=28b)
Derek photographed om df.crime-scene p.himself

(30) ha.cevet hitpazer ba.dira, iS iS le.mesimotav.

df.team dispersed dfp(in).flat, each p(to).tasksposs
‘The team dispersed in the flat, each to his own tasks’.
a. Derek acmo cilem et ha.zira. (=28a)
Derek himself photographed om df.crime-scene
b. #Derek cilem et ha.zira beacmo. (=28b)
Derek photographed om df.crime-scene p.himself

While IR scope effects are evident in both languages, they differ somewhat in the
specific linguistic marking of this scope. As in English, some Hebrew IRs mark
their scope by linear position. Thus, the bare PNself and the b- marked VPself
take scope backwards over the preceding segment (28–29 above). However, two
important differences must be considered: the wider range of positions open to the
Hebrew IR and its occurrence with a preposition. Unlike English, Hebrew requires
prepositional marking with some IRs. As noted in Section 2, bare IRs can occur
with any nominal antecedent and must immediately follow it, and so are identi-
fied as PNself. In contrast, b- IRs require subject antecedents. The latter point is
illustrated in the contrast between (31a) and (31b).
(31) a. ha.ed (beacmo) hu’aSam (beacmo) be.bizyon (beacmo).
df.witness (p.himself) accusedpass (p.himself) p(in).contempt (p.himself)
‘The witness was accused of contempt (of court) himself.’
b. dibarnu im ha.yeled acmo/?? beacmo.
talked1pl p(with) df.boy himself/?? p.himself
‘We talked with the boy himself.’

The data suggests that the b- IRs, regardless of their positions, take scope over the
predicate (or some part of it) and mark it as relevant for set construction. This is
 Dana Cohen

most evident in post-subject IRs, where both bare and b- forms can occur in the
same linear position. In (32) the b- IR is only appropriate in the context in (32a)
that allows a set based on the information in the predicate, {individuals accused},
suggesting that it takes scope forward over the predicate, while the bare IR is com-
patible with other contexts as well, as in (32b), and allows other relevant sets.

(32) a. ha.mitpar’im ba.ulam huamdu le.din.

df.rioters dfp(in).hall stoodpass p(for).trial.
‘The rioters in the courtroom were prosecuted.’
ha.ed acmo/beacmo hu’aSam be.bizyon.
df.witness himself/p.himself accusedpass p(in).contempt
‘The witness was accused of contempt (of court) himself.’
b. ha.kahal ba.ulam hiStolel.
df.audience dfp(in).hall went-berserk
‘The audience in the courtroom went berserk.’
ha.ed acmo/*beacmo hu’aSam be.bizyon.
df.witness himself/*p.himself accusedpass p(in).contempt
‘The witness was accused of contempt (of court) himself.’

Thus, a b- IR in this position behaves like its VPself counterpart in taking scope
over the predicate. The bare PNself in the same linear position takes scope over the
antecedent, and its set is not restricted to the predicate. The combination of these
factors indicates that IR scope in Hebrew is not exclusively signalled by position
but also marked by the preposition b-.19
To summarise, this section illustrates how IR scope constrains the selection
of the comparison set. In English, scope is signalled by the linear position of the
IR, while in Hebrew, both position and prepositional marking play a role. In both
languages, the PNself takes scope over the antecedent, indicating that the choice
of alternatives for comparison is not restricted to the predicate. The resulting
comparison set may be based on any relevant property of the focused entity. The
focused entity is thus evaluated on a contextually relevant parameter against a
contextually relevant set. The VPself takes scope over the preceding part of the VP.
The focused entity is therefore established as a member of the comparison set trig-
gered by the predication in question and compared to other members of the same
set. The PAUXself takes scope over the auxiliary preceding it. The triggered set

.â•… In some varieties of colloquial spoken Hebrew, the b- IR alternates with the bare IR in
PNself positions and for some speakers even replaces the bare version completely. In these
cases, the preposition no longer marks scope but seems to be reinterpreted as a frozen part
of the IR form.
 A comparative perspective on intensive reflexives 

requires the predicate but is centred on the contribution of the specific auxiliary.
This pattern, in English, leads to the generalisation that the IR systematically takes
scope over the segment that immediately precedes it. Hebrew also utilises prepo-
sitional marking, whereby the prepositional variant of the IR marks the predicate
as necessary for set construction. In both languages, IR scope affects the set of
alternatives and restricts the search for relevant context.

4.2â•… Intensive reflexive scope and information status

Theories of information structure argue for the existence of links between an
utterance and the context (see, Chafe 1976; Gundel 1978, 1985; Prince 1981, 1992;
Vallduví 1990/1992; Lambrecht 1994; Erteschik-Shir 1997; Birner & Ward 1998;
inter alia.). According to these theories, the speaker’s choice of linguistic construc-
tions (such as word order) is assumed to guide the addressee in the integration
of the information conveyed – to optimise the entry of data into the addressee’s
knowledge store, as well as to establish and maintain relations between discourse
entities. Linking between the utterance and the discourse is defined in Birner &
Ward (1998) as information that stands in a salient set relationship with informa-
tion evoked in the prior context. Accordingly, it is argued here that the IR not only
signals comparison with contextual alternatives, but also discourse linking and
differences in the status of information, which are established through the trig-
gered comparison set.
The IR does not impose specific information status on the utterance. That is,
on the utterance level, the IR referent may be topical or focal/rhematic, or operate
as topical and/or focal within a subordinate IS (Erteschik-Shir 1997). This range
is evident in the data provided in this article: (17a, b) present a topical referent
(involving a return to an older topic) with a new/focal predicate, (22–24) present a
topical referent with a topical verb, (17d) presents a new/focal referent with topical
subject and verb; examples provided without a context (as in 6–8, 10, 25, 28, 31b)
are open to various topic/focus patterns. The common informational contribution
is not, therefore, in specific functions on the utterance level, but in signalling old/
new relations with respect to the comparison set, which may or may not coincide
with the old/new relations of the utterance with respect to prior discourse in more
general terms.
Specifically, it is argued that IR scope, through its role in set construction,
signals linking to the prior context via the comparison set, indicating which
information in the utterance serves as a contextual reference point and how the
new information should be incorporated. Thus, the scope of the PNself marks the
referent as an anchor to which the newer information should be linked, the entry
under which new information is inserted. The VPself marks the predicate similarly,
 Dana Cohen

thereby marking the set based on it as the anchor entry. The PAUXself takes scope
over the informationally poor auxiliary. In this case, the IR signals that both the
predicate and the referent are discourse-old and already activated, thereby mark-
ing them as anchor entries, while highlighting the connection between them as the
new information in the discourse.
The linking relations signalled by the IR involve subtle distinctions in status.
These subtleties are highlighted when contrasted in the same context, as in (34),
based on the attested (33).
(33) Context: an article discussing criticism of ethnic jokes recounts a joke about
Catholic schools.
My mind goes back to a teenager I met in America in the 1960s, who told me a
story about Christianity which I have never forgotten. […] the kid who told me
the story was himself Catholic. Catholics often tell the best anti-Catholic jokes.
 [Independent]
(34) a. The kid himself was Catholic.
b. The kid was Catholic himself.
c. The kid was himself Catholic.

As is evident from the full original context, both antecedent and predicate refer to
discourse-old entities, already activated in the prior context. It is only the relation
between them that is discourse-new. The scope of the various positions signals
different linking patterns to the context. In (34a), the PNself marks the referent
as the anchor to which the information in the predicate is related – Catholicism
is a property ascribed to the kid; in (34b) the VPself marks the predicate as the
anchor – the kid is linked to the previously established set of {Catholics}; in (34c)
both referent and predicate serve as anchors, and the relation between them is the
element being highlighted as new – a link is established between the previously
evoked kid and Catholicism.
Subtle differences in anchoring to the prior context are evident in Hebrew
IRs as well, as illustrated below. The alternations in (36) show different anchoring
variations, based on the attested context in (35).
(35) Context: Article details a debate over the pension that is due to a specific retiring
judge. The issue was resolved in arbitration.
ha.poe’nta hi Se.ha.borer haya beacmo Sofet.
df.point is that.df.arbitrator was p.himself judge
 [http:↜//www↜.faz.co.il/story_2052]
(36) a. ha.borer acmo haya Sofet.
b. ha.borer haya Sofet beacmo.
c. ha.borer haya beacmo Sofet.
 A comparative perspective on intensive reflexives 

In the original context, both antecedent (the arbitrator) and predicate (being a
judge) refer to discourse-old entities and it is only the relation between them that
is discourse-new. In (36a), the PNself marks the referent as the anchor to which
the information in the predicate is related – being a judge is a property ascribed
to the arbitrator; in (36b) the VPself marks the predicate as the anchor – the arbi-
trator is linked to the previously established set of {judges}; in (36c) both referent
and predicate serve as anchor, and the relation between them is the element being
highlighted as new – a link is established between the previously evoked arbitrator
and judge.
The different linking signalled by the choice of IRs account for the so-called
changes in emphasis associated with IRs. The delicate shifts in linking created by
this choice are nicely illustrated in the attested (37), in which two IR examples are
juxtaposed.

(37) Context: discussion of the nature of structural codification.

[…] this fact of structure may indeed point out to a process of selectivity,
by which only a few – often only two – functional “peaks” along a continuum
become strongly coded, thus often producing the illusion that the semantic
or pragmatic dimension itself is discrete and binary. In many areas of discourse
pragmatics, however, the evidence strongly suggests that the underlying scale
dimension is itself non-discrete, and even its associated code is n-ary rather
than binary. [Givón 1987: 177]

The prior context in this example ascribes a limited, often binary discreteness to
structural coding. The referent of both the PNself and the PAUXself is the semantic
or pragmatic dimension, and the alternative is the structural code. In both cases,
the IR triggers the inclusive interpretation, highlighting the similarity between the
referent and the alternative. The PNself indicates that the properties of binarity and
discreteness should be attached to the referent marked as anchor (all this embed-
ded under illusion). The following PAUXself signals that the current informational
contribution is the connection created between the referent (the aforementioned
dimension) and the predicate (the non-discrete continuum), both of which serve
as anchors.20 The cues of discourse linking and anchoring signalled by the IRs thus
enable subtle shifts in the status of the referent and predicate.

.â•… The position of the IR in both cases complements additional linguistic cues, such as the
use of however and even. Nevertheless, the effects of the IRs remain intact if these additional
linguistic instructions are removed.
 Dana Cohen

5.â•… Conclusion

This paper presents a unified analysis of IRs in English and in Hebrew. The pro-
posed treatment adopts mechanisms and concepts that are independently moti-
vated and applied in the analysis of other linguistic expressions. It has been shown
that in both languages a similar range of interpretations is available to the IR in its
various positions, a fluidity of interpretation that is more easily and economically
accounted for by a monosemous analysis. According to the proposed analysis the
core function of the IR is to signal a comparison of its focused entity against a
contextually determined set of alternatives. The choice of appropriate set and the
relevant parameters for comparison are determined by context-driven, relevance-
oriented inferencing processes.
Scope differences affect context selection and mark information structure,
indicating a subtle change in anchoring to the prior context. English scope is sig-
nalled by position and Hebrew scope is marked by position and prepositional
marking. In both languages, the VPself has scope over the preceding part of the
VP, so the predicate is necessary for the choice of the set. The predicate is marked
as the anchor, and the referent is identified as a member of the set based on it. The
PNself takes scope only over its antecedent, so the set of alternatives is based on
properties of the referent that are relevant in the context and is not restricted to
the predicate. The referent is marked as the anchor in this case. The PAUXself takes
scope over the auxiliary preceding it, and incorporates the predicate due to the
auxiliary-predicate relationship. Consequently, the set triggered by the PAUXself
requires the predicate but is centred on the contribution of the specific auxiliary.
Here both referent and predicate serve as anchors, and the relation between them
is the element being highlighted. These factors are summarised in Table 2.

Table 2.╇ Properties of Intensive Reflexives

PNself VPself PAUXself

Comparison Yes Yes Yes

Scope Antecedent Predicate Auxiliary
Set Any relevant set Predicate based Aux. + Predicate based
Antecedent Any NP Subject Subject
Anchor Referent Predicate Referent + Predicate
Informational (properties of) Referent Connection between Referent &
contribution Referent/Predicate Predicate

It is argued that the behaviour of the IR in both languages stems from the com-
bination of its properties as a pronominal/referential element and its properties as
a set marker. IRs differ from prototypical set markers in two respects: (a) easily
identifiable set-focus and scope (via position in English and a combination of
 A comparative perspective on intensive reflexives 

position and prepositional marking in Hebrew) and (b) the underspecification of

the result of evaluation. Unlike other set markers, the result of this comparison is
not encoded by the IR and remains underspecified, to be filled by an inferencing
process based on contextual factors. In other words, no specific conversational
implicature is directly triggered by the use of the IR itself. This combination of
factors is responsible for many of the differences in interpretation noted between
IRs and (prototypical) set markers.
Beyond their use in the analysis of association with focus, sets of alternatives
have also been applied in the analysis of negative polarity items (Krifka 1995; Israel
2004), scalar implicatures (Hirschberg 1991) and various non-canonical word-order
constructions (see, Ward & Prince 1991; Prince 1998; Birner & Ward 1998 and refer-
ences therein). The IR and other set markers are therefore among a wide range of
linguistic phenomena/constructions that link the information in an utterance to
the discourse via set relations using sets of contextually salient alternatives.
I have demonstrated that the analysis presented applies to both English and
Hebrew IRs. As defined at the outset, one purpose of this cross-linguistic compari-
son was to determine the cross-linguistic applicability of the proposed analysis and
identify language-specific elements. The comparison outlined here indicates that the
various components of the analysis differ in their dependence on language-specific
parameters. Extrapolating on this basis, the core function of the IR – triggering
alternatives and comparison – is likely to be exhibited by similar phenomena in
other languages. The status of underspecification, on the other hand, may vary
cross-linguistically, as it is on a cline with lexically-coded meaning. While in both
English and Hebrew the IR is underspecified and exhibits a similar range of conver-
sational implicatures, language-specific factors (such as the properties of other set
markers) may limit the range of possible interpretations down to a single encoded
meaning, as evident in languages in which the IR has developed into a prototypical
set marker (such as German selbst (≈even) at least in some of its distribution). The
possible surface positions available to the IR and the specifics of scope marking
are likely to be even more variant across languages, as they are highly-dependent
on language-specific grammars. This is clearly demonstrated in the comparison
above, which shows parallel scope effects of the IR in both languages, but exhibits
some differences in its marking.
Finally, as noted above, the multiplicity of functions of English â•‚self – as ana-
phoric reflexive and intensifier – has been argued to stem from the unique dia-
chronic develop�ment of English, lending particular importance to the historical
combination and fusion of the accusative pronominal with the intensifying adver-
bial â•‚self (see, Gast 2006: 208ff.); for analyses of the diachronic development of ana-
phoric uses of â•‚self from an older intensifying function, see, Keenan 2002; König &
Siemund 2000b; van Gelderen 2000). However, the diachronic development of
the Hebrew reflexive pronoun is clearly different, stemming originally from the
 Dana Cohen

possessive form of ‘bone’, and already displaying a similar range of uses in Mishnaic
Hebrew. The properties of the IR construction in the two languages are almost
completely parallel, as shown above, and both function similarly as reflexive ana-
phors. Given the diachronic differences, the strong synchronic parallels suggest
that these properties are not language-specific and are therefore unlikely to be the
result of unique historical processes. Rather, these parallels point to a more cogni-
tive, synchronically-based approach to the combination of functions as offered
here with respect to the IR function alone.

Printed sources of data

[Christie FC] Christie, A. 1980. Miss Marple’s Final Cases. London: Fontana/ Collins.
[Conan Doyle] Conan Doyle, A. 1891. The red-headed league. In The Adventures of Sherlock
Holmes [Wordsworth Classics edition (1992)], p.142. London: Wordsworth.
[Independent] Kingston, M. 2005. Go on, have a laugh “while it’s still legal”. In The Independent
(London), June 24, 2005.
[Le Guin Shore] Le Guin, U.K. 1975. The Farthest Shore. Toronto: Bantam Books.

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 Focus types and argument asymmetries
A cross-linguistic study in language production

Stavros Skopeteas & Gisbert Fanselow

Universität Potsdam

The effects of focus on syntax differ across languages: some languages encode
focus in situ, while in other languages focus induces an array of constructions that
deviate from the canonical configuration, such as non-canonical orders or clefts.
This article presents semi-spontaneously produced data from American English,
Québec French, Hungarian, and Georgian which shows that speakers of these
languages select different structures under identical discourse conditions. The
observed cross-linguistic differences are accounted for by means of grammatical
properties of the object languages that hold independently of information
structure. This account leads to the conclusion that a non-compositional mapping
between information structural concepts and structural configurations is an
unnecessary complication of the grammatical model.

1.â•… Preliminaries1

Previous work on information structure has identified two asymmetries with

respect to the realization of focused constituents. The first asymmetry relates to
the focus type, i.e. the type of contribution the focused constituent makes to the
discourse context. Though there is a variety of functional concepts that have been
used in order to establish classifications of focus (see Dik 1997; Siewierska 1991;

.╅ The present article evolved within the project D2 Typology of Information Structure, which
is part of the SFB 632 Information Structure at the University of Potsdam/Humboldt University
Berlin (financed by the German Research Foundation). We would like to thank Carsten Breul,
Caroline Féry, Edward Göbbel, Sam Hellmuth, Manfred Krifka, and Malte Zimmermann for
their comments on the interpretation of the experimental data and on previous versions of
this article. Special thanks are due to Rusudan Asatiani, Alain Thériault, Elizabeth Medvedovsky,
and Krisztián Tronka, who contributed to the data collection and the analysis of the data sets
of the individual languages. This article was presented at the conference Contrastive Information
Structure Analysis (Wuppertal, 18 March 2008).
 Stavros Skopeteas & Gisbert Fanselow

Gussenhoven 2007, and Krifka 2007 for some detailed classifications), there is a
major division between those instances of focus that simply express non-presupposed
information and those that come with an additional function that operates on
the relation between the focused constituent and its antecedent(s) in discourse.
Following Kiss (1998: 262), we use the term ‘identificational focus’ for the latter
variety and we assume that this type of focus involves a quantificational operation
over a set of referents, in particular an operation excluding some (contrastive) or all
(exhaustive) relevant alternative referents to the focused element in discourse. We
use the term ‘non-identificational focus’ for the former instances of focus that do
not bear any quantificational properties (also called ‘information focus’, see Kiss
1998). Cross-linguistically, it has been claimed that these focus types differ in their
structural realization. In general, deviations from the canonical syntactic configu-
ration are more likely to be induced by the identificational instances of focus than
by the non-identificational ones. Some syntactic models capture this asymmetry
by assuming that non-canonical syntactic configurations arise through the appli-
cation of some syntactic operation that is associated with identificational focus
(or a subtype of it) (see Kiss 1998, 2009; Drubig 2003). The asymmetry of focus
types is summarized in the implicative relation in (1) which should be read as
follows: “If a non-canonical structure occurs with the non-identificational
instances of focus, it is expected to occur with identificational instances of focus”.
The predictive power of (1) is that it excludes a grammar in which non-canonical
structures occur with non-identificational instances of focus while identificational
instances of focus are expressed through canonical structures. We conceive the
asymmetry in (1) as an observational generalization. As we are going to show
in the discussion of our empirical data, this asymmetry may be derived by the
interaction of contextual conditions with particular structural properties of the
grammars at issue.
(1) Asymmetry of focus types
Identificational focus ← Non-identificational focus

The second asymmetry that is discussed in this article relates to the argument
hierarchy. It has already been observed for some languages that focus on subjects
obligatorily induces a non-canonical structure while focus on non-subjects only
optionally does so. Evidence for subject/non-subject asymmetries has been pro-
vided for several languages including French (Lambrecht 2001), Spanish (Büring &
Gutiérrez-Bravo 2001), Hausa (Hartmann & Zimmermann 2007), West Chadic
languages (Zimmermann 2008), several Kwa and Gur languages (Fiedler & Schwarz
2005), Northern Sotho (Zerbian 2007), etc. This asymmetry is summarized in the
implicative relation in (2) which should be read as follows: “If a non-canonical
structure occurs with focus on non-subjects, it is expected to occur with focus on
 Focus types and argument asymmetries 

subjects too”. This implicative relation reflects the observation that nonâ•‚canonical
structures for the expression of focus occur either (a) equally for subjects and non-
subjects, or (b) for subjects but not for non-subjects, or (c) for neither structural
category. The argument asymmetry in (2) excludes a language type in which a
non-canonical construction is used for focusing non-subjects and a canonical one
for focusing subjects.
(2) Asymmetry of focused arguments
Subject ← Non-subject

Similarly to (1), we conceive the asymmetry in (2) as an observational general-

ization. Several explanations about the rules of grammar that account for this
asymmetry have already been proposed in previous literature. A straightforward
account for the asymmetry in (2) is the assumption of a constraint that bans
focus on subjects of canonical sentences (see Lambrecht 2001; Van Valin 1999).
A further possibility would be to assume a default association ‘subject ↔ topic’
implying that deviations from this configuration should be structurally marked
(see Lambrecht 2001: 490; Zerbian 2007: 336; Hartmann & Zimmermann 2007).
These accounts have in common that they directly map information structural
concepts on syntactic functions. Alternatively, it is possible to derive the argument
asymmetry by general properties of the linearization or the prosodic structure,
such as the phonological requirement for the rightmost prosodic constituent
to be the head of a phonological phrase (see effects on argument asymmetry
depending on the ranking of phonological and syntactic constraints in Büring &
Gutiérrez-Bravo 2001).
This article presents comparative empirical evidence from Georgian,
Hungarian, American English, and Québec French. These languages form an
interesting quadruple for testing hypotheses on focus-related operations. In
Georgian and Hungarian, focus may induce deviations from canonical word
order, while American English and Québec French display fairly rigid word
order (reorderings are constructionally and stylistically restricted). Moreover,
English displays a freedom in the placement of prosodic prominence which
allows for the expression of focus without any syntactic operation, while Georgian,
French, and Hungarian are restrictive in this respect. These differences are
outlined in Section 2.
A central issue in the present volume is the question of tertium comparationis
with respect to the cross-linguistic analysis of information structure. Descriptions
of information structure in different languages not only differ with respect to their
theoretical foundations but also with respect to the range of data that they consider.
In order to achieve comparability of the primary data, we developed an elicitation
task that establishes particular context types by means of visual stimuli and minimal
 Stavros Skopeteas & Gisbert Fanselow

verbal contributions (e.g. several questions).2 The use of the same elicitation
procedure in all object languages yields a data set of semi-spontaneous expressions
that is ideal for the testing of cross-linguistic hypotheses. This elicitation task is
presented in Section 3 and the empirical results are reported in Section 4.
The theoretical question of this article is whether the cross-linguistic differences
that are captured by the observational generalizations in (1) and (2) reflect:
(a) non-further-decomposable differences of the individual grammars with respect
to the association of information structural concepts with structural operations
or (b) the interaction of universal information structural principles with structural
differences of the grammars at issue. From a conceptual viewpoint, an account
of the latter type has the theoretical advantage of being less stipulative, since it
explains discourse-related phenomena on the basis of structural rules that inde-
pendently hold. To the extent that a compositional account of this type is possible,
it will give further support to the view that the correlation between information
structural concepts and structural operations is not the result of a non-further
decomposable ‘discourse:syntax’ association but rather the product of the
interaction of discourse-related principles with the output of syntactic rules, i.e.
particular linearizations and prosodic possibilities (see Wedgwood 2003; Fanselow
2006, 2007; Fanselow & Lenertová (to appear); Zimmermann 2007). Nevertheless,
the possibility of an account of this type is an empirical question that is dis-
cussed in Section 5.

2.â•… Strategies for expressing narrow focus

2.1â•… Focus in situ

A source of cross-linguistic variation that interacts with information structure
relates to the possibility in a particular grammar to express focus in situ. This
property probably depends on prosodic constraints (e.g. the possibility of deviating
from the default prosodic structure, see Büring & Gutiérrez-Bravo 2001)
that are beyond the scope of this article (see Féry 2010 for a prosodic account
on the same data set). For our purposes, it is important to distinguish between
languages that may express focus in situ and those that do not, since this possibility

.â•… The task presented in this paper is part of a longer elicitation agenda, namely the
Questionnaire on Information Structure (QUIS), which is the collaborative product of the
project Typology of Information Structure at the University of Potsdam/Humboldt University
Berlin (see Skopeteas et al. 2006).
 Focus types and argument asymmetries 

interacts with focus-related syntactic operations: if focus may be expressed in situ

(through prosodic prominence), then ex situ focus occurs only in a subset of the
instances in which a constituent bears a focus feature. This implies that focus is not
a sufficient condition for triggering the related syntactic operation.
English is the textbook example of a language with free focus placement, i.e.
any constituent may be rendered prosodically prominent in situ (see Gussenhoven
2007 and references therein).
Georgian is certainly restrictive in comparison to English,3 but previous
research has shown that there are two alternative realizations of narrow focus that
do not differ in their interpretational properties (see Skopeteas & Fanselow 2010
for detailed discussion). The one option is to express focus in situ and the other
option to apply a movement operation (see Section 2.2).
Spoken French is known to have a constraint against preverbal foci (Lambrecht
2001:  492). This observation is in line with the prosodic properties of French, in
particular with the fact that prosodic prominence in this language is obligatorily
realized at the right edge of the Phonological Phrase and cannot be displaced from
this default position in order to signal focus on non-phrase-final constituents in situ.
Féry (2001) argues that French does not display pitch accents for the signaling of
focus, a property which is traced back to the absence of lexical stress in this lan-
guage. In this view, the prosodic prominence at the right edge of the Phonological
Phrase is a correlate of phrasing, i.e. a boundary tone, and not a pitch accent. It is
crucial for our purposes that French does not use the possibility of free pitch accent
placement in order to signal that a non-phrase-final constituent is focused.
Following Kiss (1998:  249), in situ constituents in Hungarian cannot be
identificationally focused. However, recent work by Szendrői (2001, 2003) shows
that the asymmetry between the position immediately preceding the predicate and
the postverbal domain can be traced back to properties of the prosodic structure
of Hungarian utterances: movement to the preverbal position is the only possibility
for a constituent to receive prosodic prominence.

2.2â•… Reordering
A further source of cross-linguistic variation with respect to the expression of
information structure relates to the structural possibility of a grammar to allow for
alternative linearizations of the same constituents. Two structural operations are at

.â•… The analysis of the prosodic properties of Georgian is a matter of ongoing research by
Caroline Féry in association with Rusudan Asatiani and Stavros Skopeteas that we do not
anticipate in this paper.
 Stavros Skopeteas & Gisbert Fanselow

issue: (a) instances of movement to A-bar positions that are headed by functional
projections outside the lexical domain, and (b) instances of scrambling within the
lexical domain of the hierarchical clause structure.
Hungarian is a language with VSO canonical order. The occurrence of a
constituent in a preverbal position is licensed by restricted contextual conditions.
Two configurations involving preverbal realization of constituents have to be
distinguished, see (3a) and (3b). Example (3a) could occur in a context with a subject
topic (e.g. as an answer to the question ‘What did Mary do?’), while Example (3b)
could occur in a context that licenses narrow focus on the subject (e.g. as an answer
to the question ‘Who called up Peter?’). In both cases, the subject constituent surfaces
in a position that precedes the predicate. However, the preverb fel ‘up’ surfaces in
its default position in (3a), while in (3b) it surfaces postverbally.
(3) Hungarian (Kiss 1998: 256)
a. Mari fel hívta Pétert.
Mary up called Peter.acc
‘Mary called up Peter.’
b. Mari hívta fel Pétert.
Mary called up Peter.acc
‘It was Mary that called up Peter.’

The phenomenon illustrated through (3a–b) is the basic evidence for distinguishing
two preverbal positions in Hungarian. Topics are realized in a sentence-initial
position which is identified by the fact that it precedes the landing site of focused
constituents (see examples in Kiss 1998). Focused constituents undergo movement
to the specifier position of another functional projection, whose head attracts the
V to the effect that the latter precedes the preverb in the linear order (see Kiss
1998: 256). Both preverbal positions are not argument positions, i.e. they are A-bar
positions above the predicate phrase. The range of contexts that induce the operation
exemplified in (3b) is a matter of debate. Some accounts assume that this position
is associated with a quantificational operator encoding exhaustive identification
of the moved constituent (see Kiss 1998), while other accounts assume that this
position is semantically underspecified (see Wedgwood 2003, 2007).
Georgian is a verb final language (SOV) allowing for considerable word order
freedom determined by information structure (see Apridonidze 1986:  136–143;
Vogt 1971:  222; Skopeteas & Fanselow 2009, 2010; Skopeteas et al. 2009). As
expected for V-final languages (see Haider & Rosengren 2003), Georgian allows
for word order changes of the scrambling type. This means that movement targets
argument positions, which is empirically supported by the fact that the non-
canonical orders establish new binding relations (see evidence and discussion
in McGinnis 1999; Skopeteas & Fanselow 2009). The interaction of scrambling
 Focus types and argument asymmetries 

with the focus set of the utterance is exemplified in (4): (4a) is a canonical SOV
sentence that could be an answer to the question ‘What happened?’ (all focus)
or ‘What did a/the man do?’ (VP focus) or ‘What did a/the man push?’ (object
focus). (4b) illustrates a sentence in which the object is scrambled over the subject
constituent. This order is contextually restricted, i.e. it could be the answer to the
question ‘Who pushed the chair?’ (subject focus) (see experimental evidence as
well as competence data on Georgian word order in Skopeteas & Fanselow 2010).
Speakers’ intuitions indicate that the SOV linearization in (4a) is not felicitous
in subject focus contexts and that the OSV linearization in (4b) is not felicitous
in object focus contexts (see Skopeteas et al. 2009; Skopeteas & Fanselow 2010).
Hence, the generalization in the Georgian data is that a preverbal constituent
in narrow focus has to be realized adjacent to the verb (see Kim 1988 about the
existence of a preverbal focus position in V-final languages).
(4) Georgian
a. k’ac-i sk’am-s a–c’v-eb-a.
man-nom chair-dat pv(io.3)-push-thm-s.3.sg
‘A/the man pushes a/the chair.’
b. sk’am-s k’ac-i a–c’v-eb-a.
chair-dat man-nom pv(io.3)-push-thm-s.3.sg
‘A/the man pushes a/the chair.’

A complication in the Georgian data results from the fact that this language
involves an operation of optional V-fronting. Hence, the SVO order in (5) may
occur in subject focus contexts, in which case it can be accounted for through
the assumption that the focused subject occupies the specifier of a functional
projection whose head attracts the finite verb (see account on the Hungarian
data above). Crucially, the SVO linearization in (5) may also occur out of the
blue as well as in object focus contexts, a fact that motivated previous accounts
that the order of V projection in this language is unspecified (see Anderson
1984:  186). Based on evidence that the V-final order is the basic configura-
tion, Skopeteas & Fanselow (2010) conclude that the SVO order results from
an operation of optional V-fronting (to the position projected by the head of
the tense phrase). The notion of an ‘optional’ structural operation means that
V-fronting is not associated with a restricted information structural trigger, but
it does not imply that it is a random choice. The choice between a VO and an OV
order corresponds to alternative linear and prosodic options whose occurrence
can be motivated by discourse-related phenomena but cannot be captured by
an operation of matching a discrete semantic or pragmatic feature (see detailed
discussion about the consequences for constituent strucure and evidence from
interpretation in Skopeteas & Fanselow 2010).
 Stavros Skopeteas & Gisbert Fanselow

(5) Georgian
k’ac-i a–c’v-eb-a sk’am-s.
man-nom pv(io.3)-push-thm-s.3.sg chair-dat
‘A/the man pushes a/the chair.’

English and French display a number of constructions that involve deviations

from the canonical word order. However, it generally holds that reordering in
these languages is restricted to particular types of constructions (e.g. the quotative
inversion or the locative inversion) and is partially restricted to particular regis-
ters (e.g. French clitic constructions and the related predicateâ•‚subject order are
characteristic of spoken French, see De Cat 2005: 1195). English allows for several
types of reordering, including preposing, postposing, left- and right-dislocation
and argument reversal (see Birner & Ward 2004). For the purposes of our article,
it is relevant that object preposing may be used to express identificational focus;
however, it should be noticed that this construction is generally characterized
as “marked” in English, which implies that it only occurs in a very limited type
of contexts/discourse situations and is associated with processing difficulty (see
Breul 2007).

2.3â•… Cleft constructions

An alternative means for expressing narrow focus is the formation of a cleft
construction (see Rochemont 1986: 127ff.; Lambrecht 2001 among others). The
syntactic analysis of cleft constructions opens a long array of theoretical pos-
sibilities (for a summary, see Hedberg 2000:  907–912), that do not necessarily
motivate different assumptions about the information structural properties of
clefts that are dealt with in this article. The crucial point for the analysis of our data
is the assumption that the cleft construction in (6a) and its canonical counterpart
in (6b) may be used to describe the same situation.
(6) American English
a. It’s a man that’s pushing the car.
b. A man is pushing the car.

English cleft constructions are used in discourse in order to realize a partition

of the utterance into an asserted part, which is the clefted constituent, and a pre-
supposed part, which surfaces as a relative clause. It is generally assumed that the
clefted constituent is identificationally focused (see Kiss 1998:  268; Lambrecht
2001: 497; Rochemont 1986: 133). This property can be implemented in mono-
clausal accounts of cleft constructions quite straightforwardly by assuming that the
landing site of movement is associated with a particular operator (e.g. the
operator [+exhaustive] in Kiss 1998: 268). Alternatively, the focus properties may
 Focus types and argument asymmetries 

be accounted for in terms of independent interpretative principles (see ‘Cleft Focus

Principle’ in Rochemont 1986: 133) which can apply to any syntactic account on
cleft sentences.
Drubig (2003) assumes that the interpretative properties of clefts are directly
derived from the syntactic configuration. Cleft sentences instantiate movement to
a specifier position within the complementizer layer of the clause (CP) and this
operation is associated with a contrastive reading (see Drubig 2003: 14). An apparent
problem for this assumption is that constructions that have (at least) the super-
ficial properties of clefts do not have identical interpretational properties across
languages. For instance, the corresponding French construction in (7), though
superficially identical to the English Example (6a) does not display the same focus
possibilities. Lambrecht (2001) argues that this construction occurs whenever the
subject is part of the focus domain (including cases of narrow and broad focus), a
hypothesis that is experimentally confirmed for Québec French in Thériault et al.
(2008). In this view, the Example in (7) could be an answer to the question ‘Who
is pushing the car?’ (subject focus) or ‘What happens?’ (all focus, i.e. subject is
part of the broad focus domain). The crucial theoretical question is where the
interpretative difference between superficially identical constructions in different
languages comes from (see further discussion in Section 5).
(7) Québec French
C’ est un homme qui pousse l’ auto.
it be:3.sg indef:m.sg man who push:3.sg def.m.sg car
‘It is a man that pushes the car.’

The two further languages in our sample, namely Hungarian and Georgian, also
have the structural possibility to form cleft constructions (the corresponding
constructions in these languages are reversed pseudo-clefts). However, these
constructions occur only rarely in discourse and native speakers’ intuitions
suggest that they are restricted to specific registers (“written styles”).

3.â•… Method

The aim of the elicitation task that is presented in this section is to create a
semi-naturalistic data set that allows us to observe the effects of the asymmetries
presented in Section 1. This elicitation task is part of the Questionnaire on Infor-
mation Structure (see Section 1, Footnote 2). The experimental procedure is based
on the elicitation of spontaneous answers to several question types. The speaker
is presented four pictures and is instructed to look at the presented scenes. When
(s)he is ready, the pictures are taken away and the instructor asks four questions
 Stavros Skopeteas & Gisbert Fanselow

concerning the perceived stimuli. The speaker is instructed to avoid elliptical

answers such as “yes”, “no”, “the man”, etc., and to give a syntactically complete
answer to the question instead.
The examined factors correspond to the asymmetries introduced in Section 1.
The factor ‘focused argument’ is intended to provide evidence for the asymmetry
between focus on subjects and focus on non-subjects, see (2). The factor ‘focus type’
is intended to provide evidence for the asymmetry between non-identificational
and identificational foci, see (1). The permutation of the levels of both factors
results in four experimental conditions that are listed and exemplified in (8a–d).
The non-identificational conditions involve wh-questions that induce narrow
focus on the subject or object constituent, see (8a–b). The underlying assumption
is that wh-questions do not trigger an answer that involves an explicit expression
of exhaustive identification. The possible exhaustive interpretation of the answer
in this context is independent of its form, i.e. it is available also with answers in
the canonical order. This interpretation is the result of a pragmatic inference that
is motivated by the fact that the wh- question is interpreted as a request to assert
the exact subset of referents for which the proposition holds (see Groenendijk &
Stokhof 1984) and the assumption that the utterer of the answer is cooperative,
i.e. (s)he observes the request in the conversational context. The questions in the
identificational conditions induce an answer that involves contrast to either the
subject or the object constituent, see (8c–d).
(8) Conditions
Stimulus: ‘in front of a well, a man is pushing a car’
a. Condition n/sbj: non-identificational, subject
{In front of the well, who is pushing the car?}
b. Condition n/obj: non-identificational, object
{In front of the well, what is the man pushing?}
c. Condition i/sbj: identificational, subject
{In front of the well, is a woman pushing a car?}
d. Condition i/obj: identificational, object
{In front of the well, is the man pushing a bicycle?}
Each participant of the experiment was presented four picture sheets, containing
four pictures each, hence each participant produced a total of 4 × 4 = 16 answers.
Half of these questions correspond to the conditions in (8), which means that
we elicited two answers for each question type per speaker.4 The tasks were

.â•… The data presented in this paper is part of a larger data set that contains two further
question types (selection and confirmation) and has been carried out in 15 languages. A full
account of the obtained data is under preparation.
 Focus types and argument asymmetries 

pseudo-randomized and part of a longer elicitation session that contained several

tasks of the Questionnaire on Information Structure.

4.â•… Results

The effects of focus on the clause structure may be tested in the subset of answers
that (i) realize the intended contextual conditions and (ii) involve a lexically realized
verb. Answers that do not meet these requirements were coded as ‘non-valid’ and
are discarded in the further analysis (which means that they are natural answers
in the examined discourse condition, but irrelevant for the hypotheses at issue).
(9a) illustrates an answer in the English data set that does not meet requirement (i)
and (9b) an answer in the Georgian data set that does not meet requirement (ii). The
observations made in the following sections are based on the remaining answers that
were decoded as ‘valid’.
(9) a. {In the scene with cloudy sky, who is looking at the girl?}
Who is looking at the g…? The man is looking at the girl? (Condition n/sbj)
b. {In front of the well, who is pushing a/the man?}
bič’-i.
boy-nom
‘A/the boy.’ (Condition n/sbj)

4.1â•… Georgian5
In the set of valid data, we encountered two types of realization of the focused
constituent. The first type consists of sentences in which the focused constituent
(either subject or object) is placed in the immediately preverbal position, which is
the case in the orders SOFV, OFVS, OSFV, SFVO, OFV, and SFV (see Table 1). The
crucial observation is that while the (X)YFV pattern occurs in several configura-
tions, the XFYV pattern is not attested at all. This contrast provides evidence for
the generalization that a preverbal constituent in narrow focus has to be realized
adjacent to the verb, see 2.2. The following examples illustrate two deviations from
the canonical SOV order (see Skopeteas & Fanselow 2010 for further examples

.â•… A first dataset with 4 speakers was recorded and transcribed by Rusudan Asatiani
(January-June 2005). A second dataset containing 16 further speakers was collected by
S. Skopeteas and transcribed by Sh. Bartaia and N. Tsereteli (September 2005). All participants
are native speakers of Georgian and residents of Tbilisi (11 women, 9 men, age range: 18–26,
average: 21.9).
 Stavros Skopeteas & Gisbert Fanselow

and discussion of this data set): the focused subject in (10a) is realized adjacent to
the verb in an OSFV order; in (10b), the focused object is left adjacent to the verb,
while the given argument is realized postverbally.

(10) a. OSFV
{In the scene with the blue sky, is a/the man hitting a/the man?}
ara, k’ats-s kal-i u-rt’q’-am-s.
no man-dat woman-nom pv(io.3)-hit-thm-s.3.sg
‘No, a/the woman is hitting a/the man.’ (Condition i/sbj)
b. OFVS
{In the scene in the room, what is a/the man hitting?}
sk’am-s u-rt’q’-am-s igi.
chair-dat pv(io.3)-hit-thm-s.3.sg that:nom
‘He is hitting a/the chair.’ (Condition n/obj)

The second option of realization of the focused constituent in Georgian is postverbal,

as exemplified in (11a) for SVOF and (11b) for OVSF. Following our account in
Skopeteas & Fanselow (2010), these sentences involve optional Vâ•‚movement to a
higher position in the hierarchical clause structure, see discussion in Section 2.2.
Hence, the focused constituent in both examples is realized in situ.

Table 1.╇ Georgian data set

Non-identificational Identificational
Object Subject Object Subject
n % n % n % n %

total 40 40 40 40
â•… non-valid 16 19 14 15
â•… valid 24 100.0 21 100.0 26 100.0 25 100.0
â•…â•… SVO 12 50.0 11 52.4 7 26.9 20 80.0
â•…â•… SOV 6 25.0 – –  13 50.0 – – 
â•…â•… OVS 3 12.5 6 28.6 – –  1 4.0
â•…â•… OSV – –  3 14.3 – – 2 8.0
â•…â•… OV 3 12.5 – –  6 23.1 – – 
â•…â•… SV – –  1 4.8 – –  2 8.0

(11) a. SVOF
{In the scene in front of the fence, what is a/the girl hitting?}
gogo u-rt’q’-am-s mankana-s.
girl(nom) pv(io.3)-hit-thm-s.3.sg car-dat
‘A/the girl is hitting a/the car.’ (Condition n/obj)
 Focus types and argument asymmetries 

b. OVSF
{In the scene with the blue sky, who is hitting a/the man?}
k’ac-s u-rt’q’-am-s kal-i.
man-dat pv(io.3)-hit-thm-s.3.sg woman-nom
‘A/the woman is hitting a/the man.’ (Condition n/obj)

The impact of the contextual conditions on the choice among preverbal/postverbal

focus is reflected in the means presented in Figure 1 (calculated on the basis of
proportions of preverbal focus per speaker). A repeated-measures analysis of
variance on the proportions obtained by each speaker separately revealed a
significant main effect of ‘focused argument’ (F1,14 = 8.44, p < .01) and of ‘focus
type’ (F1,14 = 5.05, p < .04) and no significant effect of the interaction between the
two factors. The two main effects indicate that both factors have an impact on the
occurrence of orders in which the focused constituent is placed in the immediately
preverbal position in Georgian, i.e. that focused subjects are more likely to occur in
this position than focused objects, and identificational focus is more likely to occur in
this position than non-identificational focus. The absence of a significant interaction
indicates that the impact of these factors is independent from one another.

100

80
% of n valid answers

60
Non-identificational
Identificational
40

20

0
Object Subject

Figure 1.╇ Percentage of preverbal focus in Georgian (averages of speakers’ means)

4.2â•… Hungarian6
We have seen in Section  2.2 that the surface placement of Hungarian preverbs
provides evidence for the distinction between a sentence initial position and an

.â•… The Hungarian data was collected and transcribed by Krisztián Tronka (Piliscsaba,
Hungary, 2006–2007). Four native speakers participated in the experiments, all residents of
Piliscsaba and students.
 Stavros Skopeteas & Gisbert Fanselow

immediately preverbal position. The Examples in (12) illustrate the word orders
in our data set (SVO, SOV, and OVS) in which the verb precedes the preverb, indi-
cating thus that the preverbal constituent occupies the type of preverbal position
in Hungarian that invokes Vâ•‚attraction (compare with the preverb-verb order in
(14)).

(12) a. SF Vp O
{Is a man hitting the man?}
Nem, egy nő üti meg a férfit.
no indef woman hit:3.sg prf def man:acc
‘No, a woman is hitting the man.’ (Condition i/sbj)
b. S OF Vp
{What is the man kicking?}
A férfi a széket rúgja meg.
def man def chair:acc kick:3.sg prf
‘The man is kicking the chair.’ (Condition n/obj)
c. OF Vp S
{Whom is the man kicking?}
Egy másik férfit rúg meg a férfi.
indef other man:acc kick:3.sg prf def man
‘The man is kicking another man.’ (Condition n/obj)

In a further subset of our data, the speakers selected verbs without preverbs (see
(13)). In these utterances, the only evidence for the properties of the position at
issue is the adjacency to the verb. The distribution of these sentences in Table 2
shows that SVO sentences only occur with subject focus, while SOV/OVS sentences
only occur with object focus.

(13) a. SF V O
{Who is carrying the pot?}
Egy férfi cipeli a cserepet.
indef man carry:3.sg def pot-acc
‘A man is carrying the pot.’ (Condition n/sbj)
b. OF V S
{Whom is the man carrying?}
Egy nőt cipel a férfi.
indef woman-acc carry:3.sg def man
‘The man is carrying a woman.’ (Condition n/obj)

Example (14) is the only utterance in our data set, in which the focused constituent
(object) is realized in situ. The preverbal realization of the preverb adds evidence
 Focus types and argument asymmetries 

that the given subject in the left periphery is not in the position that invokes
V-attraction. Following discourse-configurational accounts on Hungarian syntax,
the postverbal argument may only bear new information focus, which means
that the answer in (14) is not contextually congruent, since the context involves
correction (see Kiss 1998). However, Example (14) displays a heavy object con-
stituent, indicating that movement to the position that hosts focused constituents
in Hungarian interacts with non-pragmatic preferences on the linearization (such
as the preference for heavy constituents to be realized late in the utterance, that is
known to influence Hungarian word order, see Kiss 2008: 445–447).
(14) Identificational focus in situ
{Is the woman hitting a flower?}
Nem, a nő ki-tépi az utolsó fát a környéken.
no def woman out-pull:3.sg def last tree-acc def neighborhood-sup
‘No, the woman is pulling out the last tree in the neighborhood.’
 (Condition i/obj)

Table 2.╇ Hungarian data set

Non-identificational Identificational
Object Subject Object Subject
n % n % n % n %
total 8 8 8 8
â•… non-valid – 1 1 –
â•… valid 8 7 7 8
â•…â•… S pV O – – 1 14.3 –
â•…â•… S Vp O – 3 42.9 – 1 12.5
â•…â•… SO Vp 2 25.0 – 2 28.6 –
â•…â•… O Vp S 2 25.0 – 1 14.3 –
â•…â•… S V O – 4 57.1 – 7 87.5
â•…â•… S O V 2 25.0 – 3 42.9 –
â•…â•… O V S 2 25.0 – – –

The Hungarian data set reveals a categorical pattern as shown in Figure 2. The
focused constituent is realized immediately in front of the verb and this holds for
both focus types and both focused arguments examined in this elicitation task.
Whenever a preverb is available, then this preverb appears postverbally which
supports the view that the constituent that occurs left adjacent to the verb occupies
the specifier position of a functional projection whose head attracts the verb. The
only exception to this pattern is a single example in the condition of identification-
ally focused objects. However, we argued that there is no reason to assume that
 Stavros Skopeteas & Gisbert Fanselow

100

80
% of n valid answers

60 Non-identificational
Identificational
40

20

0
Object Subject

Figure 2.╇ Percentage of preverbal focus in Hungarian (averages of speakers’ means)

this �difference depends on the examined condition, since the utterance at issue
contains a heavy object constituent that is probably realized in situ for reasons that
do not relate to information structure.

4.3â•… American English7

In the American English data, we encounter three types of sentences: canonical
SVO sentences as exemplified in (15a), (b) it-clefts (see (15b)), and (c) presen-
tational constructions (see (15c)). The distribution of these answer types in the
conditions of the elicitation task is presented in Table 3.
(15) a. Canonical sentence
{Who is carrying the pot?}
Some guy’s carrying the pot. (Condition n/sbj)
b. it-cleft
{Is a woman pushing the car?}
No, it’s a man that’s pushing the car. (Condition i/sbj)
c. Presentational construction
{In front of the well, who is pushing the man?}
There is a dark skinned man pushing a white skinned man. (Condition n/sbj)

The presentational constructions in (15c) are not bi-clausal, since the predicate
is not expressed through a relative clause. These constructions may occur in two

.â•… The data was collected and transcribed by Elizabeth Medvedovsky (Chicago, December
2005). 20 native speakers (age range 20–26), all inhabitants of Chicago participated in the
elicitation task.
 Focus types and argument asymmetries 

different discourse conditions in English: either as thetic sentences, hence in

an all-new context, or involving non-exhaustive subject focus (see Lambrecht
2001: 505–507). The distribution of this construction in the experimental con-
ditions (see Table 3) shows that they only occur if the subject constituent is in
focus. This fact suggests that presentational constructions are induced by subject
focus in our data, which is in line with the view that these constructions are a
way to place information that has to be stressed in the position that is assigned
stress in neutral prosodic structures, i.e. phrase finally (cf. the pragmatic account
in Birner & Ward 2004: 163).

Table 3.╇ English data set

Non- identificational Identificational
Object Subject Object Subject
n % n % n % n %

total 40 40 40 40
â•… non-valid 12 12 6 12
â•… valid 28 28 34 28
â•…â•… simple clause 28 100.0 24 85.7 34 100.0 20 71.4
â•…â•… it-cleft – – – 6 21.4
â•…â•… presentational – 4 14.3 – 2 7.1

Figure 3 presents the percentages of it-clefts in the data set and shows that the
only context in which this type of cleft occurs in our data set is the condition of
identificational focus on subjects.

100

80
% of n valid answers

60
Non-identificational
Identificational
40

20

0
Object Subject
Figure 3.╇ Percentage of it-clefts in English (averages of speakers’ means)
 Stavros Skopeteas & Gisbert Fanselow

4.4â•… Québec French8

The answer types in the Québec French data set are presented in (16). Next to the
canonical type of sentences in (16a), we encountered two types of cleft construc-
tion, those that are introduced by the identificational predicate c’est (see (16b)) and
those that are introduced by the presentational predicate y a (see (16c)).

(16) a. Canonical sentence

{In front of the bridge, who is carrying the pot?}
Un homme transporte le pot.
indef.m.sg man transport-3.sg def.m.sg pot
‘A man transports the pot.’ (Condition n/sbj)
b. C’est cleft construction
{In front of the bridge, who is carrying the pot?}
C’ est un homme qui transporte le pot.
it be:3.sg indef.m.sg man who Transport-3.sg def.m.sg pot
‘It is a man that transports the pot.’ (Condition n/sbj)
c. Y a cleft construction
{In front of the bridge, who is carrying the pot?}
Y a un homme qui transporte le pot.
there have:3.sg indef.m.sg man who Transport:3.sg def.m.sg pot
‘There is a man that transports the pot.’ (Condition n/sbj)

The distribution of these answer types in the examined contextual conditions is

presented in Table 4. The contrast between the two types of matrix predicate (c’est
vs. y a) encodes the distinction between identificational and existential clauses in
the language. In a compositional view, the occurrence of these types of predicate
in what surfaces as a matrix clause in cleft constructions is expected to correlate
with the contrast between identificational and presentational clefts (the former
occurring in narrow focus and the latter in broad focus utterances). However,
the occurrence of y a clefts in narrow focus constructions in Table 4 suggests
that the semantic properties of the matrix predicates do not have a composi-
tional contribution to the semantics of cleft constructions of Québec French.

.â•… The data was collected and transcribed by Alain Thériault in Montreal (August–December
2007). 10 speakers (4 men, 6 women; age range: 25–49; average: 34.6) participated in the
experiment, all residents of Montreal, native speakers of Québec French and bilingual in
English. Each speaker has been presented the entire set of questions (hence gave 8 tokens for
each experimental condition), which resulted in a larger data set (total: 320 answers).
 Focus types and argument asymmetries 

Both types of predicate are merely alternative lexicalizations for a particular

syntactic configuration (of the cleft type).
All cleft constructions in the data set involve a clefted subject constituent;
constructions with clefted objects do not occur at all. This also holds for the three
cleft constructions that are encountered in object focus conditions in Table 4, exem-
plified in (17). The question is what triggers the marginal occurrence of clefted
subjects in the context of object focus questions. Recall from Section 2.3, that
French clefts may occur whenever the subject constituent is part of the focus
domain, including cases of narrow and broad focus. Since narrow focus on the
subject does not apply in this context, we assume that the three subject cleft
constructions in the context of object questions represent the (marginal) case
that speakers give an out-of-the-blue description ignoring the content of the
question. Under this reading, the answer in (17) is not congruent to the question,
though it is an informative contribution to the discourse (see Thériault et al.
2008 for further discussion).
(17) {In the scene with the blue sky, whom does the woman hit?}
Y a une femme qui frappe un homme.
there have:3.sg indef.f.sg woman who hit-3.sg indef.m.sg man
‘There is a woman that hits a man.’ (Condition n/obj)

Table 4.╇ Québec French data set

Non-identificational Identificational
Object Subject Object Subject
n % n % n % n %

total 80 80 80 80
â•… non-valid 11 5 10 7
â•… valid 69 100.0 75 100.0 70 100.0 73 100.0
â•…â•… canonical 68 98.6 34 45.3 68 97.1 19 26.0
â•…â•… cleft 1 1.4 41 54.7 2 2.9 54 74.0
â•…â•…â•… c’est – 32 78.0 2 100.0 49 90.7
â•…â•…â•… y a 1 100.0 9 22.0 – 5 9.3

Figure 4 presents the proportions of the data in which the respective focused
constituent is clefted. The data pattern is different from the English one in Figure 3.
First, clefting the focused constituent frequently occurs in both conditions of subject
focus and only in these (recall that the three cleft constructions in the object-focus
conditions involve clefted subjects, see Example (17)). Second, the proportions
of cleft constructions in these conditions are higher than the corresponding
 Stavros Skopeteas & Gisbert Fanselow

100

80
% of n valid answers

60
Non-identificational
Identificational
40

20

0
Object Subject

Figure 4.╇ Clefted focus constituent in Québec French (averages of speakers’ means)

proportion in English (see Figure 3). A repeated measures analysis of variance at

an alpha level of.05 revealed a significant main effect of the factor ‘focused argu-
ment’ (F1,9 = 34.15, p < .001), no significant effect of ‘focus type’ nor of the inter-
action between the two factors. According to these findings, there is no evidence
that the examined focus types have a distinct impact on the selection of cleft
constructions in Québec French. The asymmetry between subject and object
focus has a significant impact though, such that cleft constructions are more
likely to occur in the former discourse condition than in the latter.

5.â•… Discussion

5.1â•… Summary of empirical findings

In sum, the elicitation task revealed the following empirical generalizations:

a. Georgian: Narrow focus is optionally expressed through the immediately

preverbal position or otherwise in situ; the proportions of focus in the preverbal
position reveal a significant effect of argument asymmetry and a significant
effect of the asymmetry of focus type.
b. Hungarian: Narrow focus is always expressed ex situ (a single counterexample
is accounted for through the influence of heaviness constraints).
c. American English: Identificational focus on subjects induces a low proportion
of cleft constructions.
d. Québec French: All types of narrow focus on subjects induce high proportions
of cleft constructions.
 Focus types and argument asymmetries 

Apart from Hungarian, all languages display a subject/object asymmetry, such

that subject focus induces a non-canonical structure more frequently. In Georgian,
the pattern is probabilistic, while in American English and Québec French the
pattern is categorical (only clefted subjects).9 Georgian and American English
reveal an asymmetry depending on focus type: identificational focus induces a
greater proportion of preverbal focus in Georgian and only identificational focus
induces clefts in English.

5.2â•… Interaction with grammatical possibilities

The aim of this section is to account for these empirical differences on the basis
of the grammatical background that is introduced in Section  2. We assume
that native speakers select a structural possibility from a set of alternative
options for the expression of narrow focus that are determined by the grammar.
The relevant sets for the languages at issue are given in (18). Following the
grammatical information of Section 2.1, Georgian and American English have
the possibility to express narrow focus in situ through prosodic properties that
apply independently of syntax. This possibility does not hold for Hungarian. In
French, prosodic prominence falls by default to the sentence-final constituent,
see Section 2.1, which implies that objects may be focused in situ, while sub-
jects do not. As introduced in 2.2, the grammar of Georgian and of Hungarian
allow operations of simple reordering that may be applied in the examined
context, while the reordering options of English and French are constructionally
and/or stylistically restricted and do not apply to the context at issue. Finally,
all languages have the possibility to form constructions that are (at least)
superficially bi-clausal.

(18) Sets of structural alternatives per discourse condition

Georgian: sbj|obj FOC → {in situ, reordering, clefting}
Hungarian: sbj|objFOC → {reordering, clefting}
Am. English: sbj|objFOC → {in situ, clefting}
Q. French: sbjFOC → {clefting}
objFOC → {in situ, clefting}

The grammatical properties presented in Section 2 and summarized in (18) already

explain a part of the obtained data patterns. They explain why we did not get any
instances of in situ focus in Hungarian (apart from a single example with a heavy

.â•… Recall that also the clefts that were encountered in the object-focus contexts involved a
clefted subject constituent, see Section 4.4.
 Stavros Skopeteas & Gisbert Fanselow

constituent), and why we obtained a subject/object asymmetry in Québec French.

The asymmetry in the Québec French data refers to the difference between the
proportion of clefts in the object focus condition and the corresponding proportion
in the subject focus condition, which is statistically reflected on the significant
main effect of the factor ‘focused argument’, see Section  4.4. Apart from this
difference, we obtained a substantial amount of canonical SVO sentences in all
conditions. If the occurrence of a construction in an experimental condition is
taken as evidence that this construction encodes the corresponding contextual
configuration, then this part of the data provides evidence that focus on subjects
may be realized in situ, hence counterevidence to the expectation for sbjFOC in
(18) that corresponds to Lambrecht’s constraint against preverbal foci in spoken
French (see 2.1). This interpretation results in a strong claim based on the residue
of the empirically attested differences. Crucially, SVO sentences are the canonical
configuration in French, hence it cannot be excluded that these utterances are
informative reactions to the subject question without an overt expression of
subject focus, i.e. without a focus-background articulation (for a prosodic analysis
of these utterances, see Féry 2010). From the empirical viewpoint, the interpre-
table part of the dataset refers to the obtained differences, which provide evidence
that the factor ‘focused argument’ has a significant effect on the choice among a
canonical and a cleft construction, which is in line with Lambrecht’s constraint on
preverbal foci and the prediction on French sbjFOC in (18).

5.3â•… Minimality condition

The alternative structures in (18), namely in situ, reordering, and clefting, differ
in structural complexity. In particular, in situ focus does not involve any syntactic
operation, hence it qualifies as the least complex structure. Since a cleft construc-
tion contains additional structural material, we may plausibly assume that clefting
involves a higher degree of structural complexity than simple reordering. These
considerations lead to a markedness scale that is presented in (19).

(19) Scale of structural complexity

in situ < reordering < clefting

Some properties of the data pattern are straightforwardly explained if we assume

that speakers’ choices are guided by economy. The concept of economy that
applies to the type of data from language production reflects the same fundamental
assumptions with the concept of economy in derivational syntax (see Chomsky
1992:  47f.). In the production data presented here, economy determines the
speaker’s choice among existing structural alternatives for the expression of the
same propositional content, reflecting the ‘least effort’ principle which has been
 Focus types and argument asymmetries 

shown to account for several properties of language processing (see Bornkessel &
Schlesewsky 2006 and references therein); it has already been observed that the
asymmetry between optimal and suboptimal structures has an even stronger effect
in production data since optimal candidates always win the competition to their
alternatives in discourse (see Featherston 2005). In this spirit, we formulate the
minimality condition for the production data as follows.

(20) Minimality condition (for language production)

If two structures s1 and s2, such that s1 < s2 in structural complexity, may be used
for the same information structural configuration, the speaker selects s1.

The minimality condition accounts for a further subset of the empirically attested
differences. It explains why French speakers did not use cleft constructions in the
object focus conditions, as well as why cleft constructions are not attested at all in
the Georgian and Hungarian data sets (though they are possible structural con-
figurations in the grammar). That is, with the assumptions made so far, we may
completely account for the data pattern in Hungarian and Québec French, but not
yet for the subject/object asymmetry and the identificational/non-identificational
asymmetry in the Georgian and American English data.

5.4â•… Asymmetry of focused arguments

Based on the grammatical background on Georgian in Section 2.2, the subject/
object asymmetry in this language may be accounted for as an interaction of the
canonical word order properties with the obligatory V-attraction. In situ focus on
object constituents may be realized in the canonical SOV order, while in situ focus
on the subject is not possible in the SOV order and may appear only in sentences
in which the V is raised to a higher clausal position.
In English, focus on the object is realized through prosodic prominence on
the sentence-final constituent which corresponds to the default prosodic structure
in this language (see Gussenhoven 2007), while in situ focus on the subject has
to be realized by a non-canonical prosodic structure. This difference implies that
the choice of an alternative strategy will be more likely whenever non-sentence
final constituents are in focus. The fact that English provides prosodic means to
signal in situ focus in contrast to French is reflected on the difference between the
proportion of cleft sentences in American English (21.4% in identificational
subject focus contexts) and the proportion of cleft sentences in Québec French
(54.7% in non-identificational subject focus and 74% in identificational subject
focus). However, since the non-sentence final constituents in our data set are
subjects, the evidence for an asymmetry depending on the ‘focused argument’ can
 Stavros Skopeteas & Gisbert Fanselow

be due to further structural differences as well. It is known that extraction out

of relative clauses is subject to locality constraints, such that extraction of lower
constituents (in our case, objects) is less likely than extraction of higher constituents
(in our case, subjects). The four examined discourse conditions do not allow us to
disentangle these factors. However, the crucial point for our considerations is that
the obtained subject/object asymmetry in American English may be accounted
for on the basis of structural differences and does not imply a non-compositional
constraint on the mapping between the information structural concept of focus
and the syntactic status of the focused constituent.

5.5â•… Asymmetry of focus types

English (in subject focus) and Georgian reveal an asymmetry depending on
focus type: (a) identificationally focused constituents are realized more frequently
in the preverbal position in Georgian and (b) only identificationally focused
subjects invoke cleft sentences in English. This data shows that information struc-
tural categories like the distinction between identificational/non-identificational
focus have an impact on syntax. However, models based on the idea of biunique
associations between information structural concepts and syntactic operations
cannot explain our data in a straightforward manner. Two properties of our
data count against the assumption of biunique association: (a) the effect of the
identificational focus on the preverbal placement of a constituent in Georgian is
weaker than the corresponding effect in the Hungarian data set, which suggests
that the operation we observe in Georgian is an optional choice; (b) the effect of
the identificational focus on clefting in English is weaker than the corresponding
effect in the French data set, which suggests that clefting identificationally
focused subjects is optional in English; (c) the selection of the structures at issue
is also sensitive to further asymmetries in the language (such as the subject/
object asymmetry) that relate to structural properties, as shown in Section 5.4.
These properties cannot be straightforwardly accounted for through the assumption
of a biunique association between information structural distinctions and
syntactic configurations.
This view is supported by interpretational evidence. The alternative con-
structions in both languages do not contrast with respect to the possibility of
an exhaustive interpretation. Hence, both Georgian Examples in (21) invoke the
intuition that the focus on the object constituent excludes any alternative referents
that may be relevant in the discourse: (21a) exemplifies the structural option of
preverbal focus; (21b) exemplifies the structural option of in situ focus in a con-
struction in which the V is raised to a higher position (see Skopeteas & Fanselow
2010 for further evidence).
 Focus types and argument asymmetries 

(21) Georgian10
{Maria, Nino, Kote, and Lela are sitting in the room.}
a. KOT’E u-cem-i-a maria-s.
Kote(nom) pv(io.3)-hit-pf-s.3.sg Maria-dat
‘Maria has hit KOTE.’ (→ not Nino and Lela)
b. maria-s u-cem-i-a KOT’E.
Maria-dat pv(io.3)-hit-pf-s.3.sg Kote(nom)
‘Maria has hit KOTE.’ (→ not Nino and Lela)

The same holds for the English counterparts in (22). The effect of excluding
possible alternatives in discourse does not only hold for cleft constructions, such
as in (22a) (see Kiss 1998: 268), but also for in situ focus in (22b).
(22) {Mary, Paul, John, and Tom are sitting in the room.}
a. It’s Mary that hit John. (→ Paul and Tom did not)
b. MARY hit John. (→ Paul and Tom did not)

The interpretational properties show that both the canonical and the non-canonical
options of expressing focus in English and Georgian allow for the inference of
exhaustive identification. Hence, English and Georgian differ from Hungarian, in
which postverbal constituents do not exhibit exhaustive readings (see Kiss 1998,
2009). The interpretational evidence supports the view that identificational focus
is not a sufficient condition for the licensing of the non-canonical structures in
these languages, as already suggested by the data pattern of our elicitation task.
For these reasons, we assume that the empirically attested asymmetry of focus
types in Georgian and English does not reflect the non-compositional associa-
tion between the feature [+identificational] and particular syntactic operations,
but a contextual asymmetry resulting in a probabilistic correlation with certain
types of answers. Wh-questions (conditions n/sbj, n/obj) introduce a variable and
a presupposition. Answers that only assert the referent that instantiates the variable
are highly expected, i.e. their information structure is fully predictable by the
context, even if it is not signaled by grammatical means. The conditions i/sbj and
i/obj, on the other hand, involve rejection of a part of the presuppositions of the
speaker, hence involving a focus feature that is not predictable by the question.
By means of this asymmetry we may reasonably assume that the latter context
is more likely than the former to induce a structure that articulates the focus
domain at issue. The empirical confirmation of this prediction is the significant

.â•… Note that these examples involve case inversion which is licensed by the perfect tense,
i.e. the agent constituent bears dative case and the patient constituent nominative case (see
Harris 1981).
 Stavros Skopeteas & Gisbert Fanselow

main effect of ‘focus type’ in Georgian and American English. During the produc-
tion process, this asymmetry interacts with markedness constraints resulting in
a data pattern that contains a larger proportion of violations of the minimality
condition in the identificational contexts. The empirical proof of this expectation
is the significant interaction effect between ‘focus type’ and ‘focused argument’ in
American English.

6.â•… Conclusions

The semi-spontaneous data presented in this article shows that the asymmetry of
focus types and the asymmetry of focused arguments have cross-linguistically dif-
ferent effects on the choice of syntactic structure. We accounted for the obtained
differences by means of grammatical differences between the languages at issue,
notably the possibility of expressing narrow focus in situ and the availability of
operations that allow for the expression of focus through simple manipulation
of the linear order. By assuming a minimality condition in language production
we were able to predict the preference for structurally less complex operations
whenever they compete with more complex alternatives in particular contexts. By
assuming a difference between identificational and non-identificational contexts,
we predicted that the former are more likely than the latter to license violations of
minimality in the speakers’ choices.
In sum, we were able to explain the properties of the behavioral data set on
the basis of structural differences between the observed languages and without
recourse to the assumption of associations between certain information struc-
tural concepts and particular syntactic operations. The obtained data provides
evidence against a cross-linguistic 1:1 mapping between types of focus and struc-
tural operations. Hence, while French clefts occur whenever the subject is part
of whatever focus domain, English clefts only occur in contexts that license an
identificationally focused subject. The empirical data shows that English clefts
occur in different contextual conditions than focus movement in Hungarian,
which is counterevidence to the assumption that both structures are licensed by
the same feature of exhaustive identification (see Kiss 1998). The difference in
our data is in line with the conclusion of Wedgwood et al. (2006) that the range
of interpretations and corpus occurrences of focus movement in Hungarian has
a significantly underspecified semantics in comparison to English clefting. In
our view, this difference is accounted for by the fact that English has an in situ
alternative for signaling narrow focus, while Hungarian does not, and furthermore
by the fact that the choice between an in situ alternative and a cleft construction
interacts with structural factors.
 Focus types and argument asymmetries 

The argumentation in this article advocates the line of thought that a substantial
portion of the attested cross-linguistic differences on the effects of information
structure on syntax is explained if we take into account the structural possibilities
of the grammars at issue and their interaction with communicative intentions
in discourse. To the extent that these effects are predictable through structural
generalizations, a non-compositional mapping between information structural
concepts and structural operations leads to an unnecessary contamination of the
constituent structure with pragmatic concepts.

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 Topicality in L1-acquisition
A contrastive analysis of null subject expressions
in child French and German

Nicole Hauser-Grüdl
Bergische Universität Wuppertal

Although the study of human information structure has become a major field
of linguistic interest, little research has examined topicality in L1-acquisition.
Those studies dealing with topicality in child speech almost all focus on the
question if children do or do not possess the adult ability to correctly identify
and encode topics. The child’s performance of encoding topical information is
thus classified as “correct” if it corresponds to the adult norm or as “deficient”
in case it doesn’t. Such a way of interpreting the data does not consider that
children’s topic-marking may follow its own rules, which are based on a
different understanding of children of what a topic is. This latter possibility
will be discussed in this article for the domain of null subjects in child French
and German.

1.â•… Introduction

Up to now, the notion of topicality has almost exclusively been examined on the
basis of adult speech data. Contrastive analyses in this field usually aim at describ-
ing what is common and what is different about two or more languages with respect
to how topic expressions are marked syntactically, morphologically and phoneti-
cally (see e.g. Cinque 1983; Molnár 1998 and Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl 2007).
Though contrastive in nature, this study looks at topicality from a different per-
spective – namely the child’s. By analyzing and contrasting the person and num-
ber feature specification of null subjects in early French and German of three
bilingual and two monolingual children, it is shown that – despite considerable
differences in the quantity of the children’s null subject use in French and German –
it is in both languages preferably 1st and, in around 40% of the cases, also 2nd Â�person
referents that are expressed by a null subject in early L1-acquisition. Since 1st and
2nd person null subjects in child French and German typically represent topic
expressions (see Section 4), this result of the study allows two conclusions as to the
child’s understanding of topicality.
 Nicole Hauser-Grüdl

First, it could be argued that the preferred null-realization of 1st and in many
cases 2nd person subject referents reflects a child’s understanding of topicality
which is different from that of adult speakers in that in children it is predomi-
nantly permanently available referents, i.e. entities specified for either [+speaker]
or [+hearer], that are interpreted as topics and expressed by means of a null subject.
In adults, on the contrary, subject topic drop mainly affects discourse-active 3rd
person referents. Schmitz, Patuto & Müller (forthcoming) show for German, for
instance, that null subjects are specified for 3rd person at a rate of more than 90%.
An alternative interpretation of the results of the study would be to argue that
the predominant use of 1st and in some children also of 2nd person null subjects
is due to the particular difficulty of learning the syntax and pragmatics of deictic
subject pronouns. Analyses of the different contexts in which 1st person subject
omissions occur suggest that, in the early years of L1-acquisition, children may
treat 1st person subject expressions in analogy to 3rd person anaphoric expres-
sions, i.e. as referring back to a preceding discourse topic. If this were the case,
children would not necessarily have an understanding of topicality different from
adult speakers. Their overuse of 1st and partly 2nd person null subjects would
rather be due to a misinterpretation of deictic subject expressions. Both ways of
interpreting the results of the study will be discussed and evaluated in detail.

2.â•… The notion of topic in adult and early child speech

The rising linguistic interest in information structure has, over the past decades,
produced an extensive amount of literature in this field with the result that numer-
ous definitions of the term “topic” have been put forward. Generally, definitions can
be grouped into syntactic ones, where the topic is defined as a particular constitu-
ent located in the left periphery of the main clause, into semantic ones, where the
topic is understood to be what is being spoken about in a sentence, and into infor-
mational ones where the topic is seen to represent “old” or “given” information, i.e.
information already known to the interlocutor.1 For L1-acquisition research, the
problem with all these definitions is that they have been elaborated on the basis of

.â•… For an overview of syntactic approaches see Gómez-González (2001: 49ff.), for a semantic
approach see Lambrecht (1994). A detailed discussion of various informational approaches as
well as of their sometimes differing interpretation of what exactly “givenness” means can be
found in Prince (1981: 225ff.).
 Topicality in L1-acquisition 

adult speech data, which makes them rather unsuitable to be applied to early child
speech, i.e. to adequately determine what a topic is for young L1-learners.
To give an example, even very elaborate approaches to adult information struc-
ture, such as the one by Lambrecht (1994), encounter difficulties if they are used
to identify topic expressions in child speech. This is due to the fact that although
Lambrecht (1994: 118) defines “topic” semantically as “[…] the thing which the
proposition expressed by the sentence is ABOUT”, in his approach the identifi-
cation of topic constituents draws heavily upon specific prosodic and syntactic
means used by adults to explicitly mark topicality. In the early stages of language
acquisition, however, children typically do not yet master the full range of for-
mal devices needed for adult-like topic marking in their L1(s). Therefore, to try
to identify topic expressions in child speech on the basis of adult-typical formal
marking of topic constituents will, in many cases, prove impossible.
What further complicates the study of topicality in child language is that at
least some of the factors considered crucial in determining topicality in adults
do not seem to hold true for young children. For adult speakers it is commonly
assumed, for example, that a referent, in order to be pragmatically acceptable as
a topic, needs to be discourse-active and thus cognitively accessible to the inter-
locutor. In other words, the topical status of an entity in adult speech depends
on either its prior mention in the linguistic context (in which case topicality is
established anaphorically) or its saliency in the extralinguistic context. In the latter
case, topicality is established deictically, i.e. the referent of a given discourse entity
is unequivocally determined by gestures or eye gaze. This connection between an
entity’s discourse activation, its cognitive accessibility and its pragmatic accept-
ability as a topic is illustrated by Lambrecht (1994: 165) by means of his so-called
“topic acceptability scale” (see Table 1):

Table 1.╇ The topic acceptability scale

Cognitive accessibility Pragmatic acceptability

active most acceptable

accessible
unused ↓
brand-new anchored
brand-new unanchored least acceptable

As can be seen from the scale, it is those referents which are active in the
discourse that are most easily cognitively accessible and, at the same time, most
acceptable as topics from a pragmatic point of view. For such active, easily accessible
topics it has been shown that they are typically expressed by either an unaccented
 Nicole Hauser-Grüdl

pronominal or a null morpheme in adult speech. Brand-new referents, on the con-

trary, are usually represented by a lexical DP, since, at the time of the utterance,
they represent new and thus non-identifiable information for the interlocutor (see
e.g. Gundel, Hedberg & Zacharski 1993; Lambrecht 1994: 165f.).
In early L1-acquisition this is different. As illustrated in (1), which is an
example of early child German speech, children omit arguments (here: the subject)
irrespective of whether or not their referent is discourse-active and hence cog-
nitively accessible to all interlocutors. In (1), for instance, the child twice leaves
out a subject the referent of which is not obvious from either the linguistic or
the extralinguistic context. The referent cannot be identified anaphorically, since
there has been no prior mention of it during the preceding discourse. It cannot
be unambiguously identified through the situational context either, since there is
no clear gesture or indication by the child as to which of the models shown in the
magazine she is actually talking about.

(1) (context: Kerstin and adult are looking at models in a fashion magazine)
(child): gucke mal / neue hos(e), ge(ll) /
Ø hat s(ch)oene schuhe an /
Ø hat auch s(ch)uhe an /
‘Look! a new pair of trousers, isn’t it?’
‘(She) is wearing nice shoes.’
‘(She), too, is wearing shoes.’ Kerstin 2;7,23

Since the entity represented by the omitted subject expressions (i.e. the respec-
tive model the child has in mind when speaking) is clearly “the thing which the
proposition expressed by the sentence is ABOUT” (Lambrecht 1994:  118), it is
reasonable to assume the dropped subjects are regarded as topical by Kerstin. This
topical status, however, does not seem to be linked to the subject referent’s prior
discourse-activation and thereby its unequivocal contextual identification, as is
the case with adults. For adult speakers, the subject referents in (1) clearly would
be less acceptable topics (if they were classified as topics at all), since the inter-
locutor has to try to infer them from a rather ambiguous extralinguistic context.
Kerstin’s subject drop, therefore, is illicit in adult speech.
The question which thus arises from child speech samples such as the one
above is on what basis young L1-learners determine topicality. The fact that subject
expressions obviously are omitted regardless of whether or not their referent has
previously been mentioned or, alternatively, been activated deictically, suggests
that children may have a different (possibly broader) understanding of “topic”
than adult speakers – at least in the early stages of language acquisition.
 Topicality in L1-acquisition 

3.â•… Previous research on child encoding of information

Whereas there is a vast number of publications dealing with information struc-

ture in adult speech (see e.g. Schwabe & Winkler 2007 for the question of how
the linguistic form of adult information structure interacts with its interpre�
tation across languages), relatively little research has examined topicality in child
speech. Those researchers who have worked on this subject can be divided into
two major groups.
The first group argues that the notion of topic is deficient in early acquisi-
tion, which means that young L1-learners are not able to identify topics in a
target-like (i.e. adult-like) manner (cf. Bromberg & Wexler 1995; Wexler 1998;
Schaeffer et al. 2002 amongst others). Such a view is based on observations similar
to the one in the preceding section that children’s encoding of information differs
from that of adults in many respects. Basically, what these approaches show is that
children often treat new information as if it were commonly known and thus topi-
cal. This is illustrated by their use of pronouns in contexts where lexical DPs are
needed as well as the use of definite DPs in contexts where adults would use indefi-
nites (see Karmiloff-Smith 1981 and Emslie & Stevenson 1981). With respect to
the higher frequency of subject drop in children than in adults, it is argued that this
is due to a lack of ability in the children to license topics adequately. It is assumed
that the children are not yet familiar with the pragmatic conditions which, in adult
speech, lead to subject topic drop (cf. Wexler 1998: 34f.).
The second group of researchers have exactly the opposite view and argue that
children, from very early on, are able to differentiate between new (focal) and old
(topical) information. One main representative of this group of researchers is de
Cat (2002, 2005, 2008), who argues that children as young as 2;6 are able to cor-
rectly identify and encode topics. She bases her assumption on analyses showing
that dislocation structures (which obligatorily encode topics in spoken French)
are mastered from very early on by children acquiring French as their L1. Accord-
ing to de Cat this early target-like use of French children of dislocation structures
provides clear evidence that, in contrast to what Wexler (1998) claims, children do
have the pragmatic competence to adequately encode topics right from the onset
of word-combinations. Her findings are thus compatible with those of Baker &
Greenfield (1988), who, on the basis of the analysis of longitudinal speech data
of four English speaking children born in Los Angeles, came to the conclusion
that even at the one-word stage, the children’s language production is governed by
principles of informativeness.
In this article, a third perspective on topicality in L1-learners is presented.
This perspective differs from the ones mentioned above in that it does not aim at
 Nicole Hauser-Grüdl

finding an answer to the question if children lack or if they possess the ability to
correctly identify and encode topics from early on. What is focused on instead
is if the differences observable in children’s and adults’ encoding of information
may be due to a different understanding by children and adults of what a topic is.
To be more precise, it will be suggested that children do not consider the topical
status of an entity dependent on the entity’s discourse activation in the adult sense
(which is through prior mention or explicit deictic reference, see page 201 above),
but primarily on the psychological status of this entity as a permanently available
referent, i.e. its specification as either [+speaker] or [+hearer]. According to this
view, the higher frequency of subject drop in child speech, for the most part, is the
result of children regarding other factors relevant for an entity to be topical than
adults. This does not exclude, however, that there are, as de Cat has observed, cer-
tain language-specific linguistic structures used to mark topicality by both adults
and children, since there may be a certain overlap in what children and adults
identify as a topic.
In order to test the hypothesis that children, at least in the early years of lan-
guage acquisition, may have a different understanding of “topic” than adult speak-
ers, a detailed analysis of child null subject expressions has been carried out in this
study. The results of this analysis, which focuses on examining the person speci-
fication of the omitted child subjects but also considers the frequencies of child
subject drop, will be presented and discussed in detail in Sections 5 and 6. Before
this is achieved, however, subject omissions in adult and child French and German
will be investigated more thoroughly in order to identify the differences between
the two languages and between both adult and child speakers.

4.â•… Subjects and subject omission in adult and child French and German

In languages like French and German, there is a close relationship between sub-
ject and topic, which makes the subject domain an interesting field for studying
topicality. This close relationship between subject and topic is due to the fact that
in such languages “[…] the topic-comment articulation is the ‘unmarked prag-
matic sentence articulation’” (Lambrecht 1994:  132), which means that, if there
is no syntactic or prosodic evidence to the contrary, the subject of a sentence
is automatically interpreted as a topic expression. In isolation, i.e. without con-
textual or prosodic clues, a German sentence such as Die Kinder lieben Fußball
(‘The children love football’) is thus construed by the language user as a topic-
comment structure where the subject die Kinder is identified with the pragmatic
role of topic and lieben Fußball as a property attributed to the children.
 Topicality in L1-acquisition 

There are, however, a few exceptions to this rule which concern sentences
with a topicalized non-subject constituent as well as so-called event-reporting and
presentational sentences. In the case of topicalization, as for instance in German
Den Mann dort hat sie geküsst (‘That man over there she kissed’), both the topi-
calized constituent (i.e. den Mann dort) and the subject (i.e. sie) can be regarded
as topical expressions. This is because the sentence is intended to not only con-
vey information about the referent of sie, but also about the man (cf. Lambrecht
1994: 147, who suggests that in cases like this the subject may be called the “primary
topic”, the topicalized object the “secondary topic”).
As for event-reporting sentences (i.e. sentences such as Es regnet ‘It is rain-
ing’), which, instead of ascribing a certain property to the subject, merely inform
the addressee of an event that has happened) and presentational sentences (i.e.
sentences such as Es gibt hunderte verschiedener Blumen ‘There are hundreds of
different flowers’), it is commonly assumed that these are entirely focal, since they
represent new information only. Unlike in most other cases, the subject, therefore,
does not have topical status (see e.g. Lambrecht 1994: 133). This is important to
know since in adult French subject omission often affects presentational sentences.
This is illustrated in the following.
Although neither French nor German is a null-subject language, subject omis-
sion is target-like in both languages in certain well-defined contexts (cf. Pillunat
et al. 2006: 9). These contexts differ, however, depending on which of the two lan-
guages is being spoken. In French, subject omission is lexically licensed. The drop
of the subject only occurs with a very restricted number of verbs such as falloir
and avoir and almost always affects 3rd person expletive il as can be seen from the
examples in (2). (2b) illustrates the drop of a subject in a presentational sentence.

(2) a. Ø faut mettre le tableau là.

‘You have to put the painting there.’
b. Ø y a du gâteau.
‘There is some cake.’

Since expletive il only has morpho-syntactic function but neither meaning nor ref-
erence, it does not have topical status. In adult French, therefore, subject omission
is expletive drop, no topic drop.
In German this is different. Here, subject omission is licensed syntactically. As
a V2-language, German allows sentence-initial topic-drop, which means that con�
s�tituents immediately preceding the inflected verb can systematically be omitted in
sentence-initial position only if their referent is unambiguously identifiable from the
discourse. This typically requires that the referent has been mentioned at least once
before in the immediately preceding speech context (see e.g. Hamann 1996:  170;
 Nicole Hauser-Grüdl

Pillunat et al. 2006: 9). Subject omission in adult German hence is the omission of
discourse-active, topical information (see (3)).

(3) a. (speaker A): Sind deine Hausaufgaben jetzt endlich erledigt?

‘Is your homework finally done?’
(speaker B): Ja, Ø sind erledigt.
‘Yes, (it) is done.’
b. (speaker A): Warum seid ihr gestern nicht zur Party gekommen?
‘Why didn’t you come to the party yesterday?’
(speaker B): Ø hatten keine Zeit.
‘(We) didn’t have time.’

As can be seen from (3b), the drop may not just affect 3rd person subjects (although
this is the most frequent case (see page 200 above)), but also 1st and 2nd person
ones, provided their referent represents the previously established discourse topic.
Child subject drop differs from adult subject drop in many respects. The rea-
son for this is that children, at least in the early stages of L1-acquisition, omit
subjects irrespective of the restrictions there are for such drop in their respec-
tive L1(s). In French, for instance, children omit topical subjects although only
expletive drop is licit (see examples (4a) and (4b)). In German, children omit
subjects regardless of the syntactic restriction that the drop is only allowed with
constituents immediately preceding the inflected verb in sentence-initial posi-
tion (see (4c)). Furthermore, they leave out subjects which, against the rules of
German subject topic drop, are not identical to the precedingly established dis-
course topic, but which cause a shift in topic instead (see (4d)). This results in a
considerable number of target-deviant, i.e. ungrammatical, subject omissions in
early L1-acquisition.

(4) a. (context: Amélie and adult are looking at a picture showing a boy
dressing himself)
(adult): i met son pyjama /
‘He puts on his pyjama.’
(child): oui / Ø va faire dodo maint’nant /
‘Yes / (He) is going to sleep now.’ Amélie 2;7,6
b. (context: Amélie pretends she is making a cup of coffee)
(adult): alors montre moi comment tu prépares /
‘Okay show me how you do it!’
(child): euh / Ø prends ça /
‘Euh. (I) take this.’ Amélie 2;6,11
 Topicality in L1-acquisition 

c. (context: Kerstin has said something the adult has not properly understood)
(adult): was macht die mama jetzt nicht mehr? /
‘What has Mum stopped doing?’
(child, not quite answering the question, but referring to what her mother
is doing at the moment):
bett mach Ø jetzt /
‘(She) is making the bed now’ Kerstin 2;9,11
d. (context: Kerstin and adult are looking at a picture showing a child sitting
on a tricycle)
(adult): gucke mal, was macht denn das kind hier? /
‘Look, what is the child doing here?’
(child, turning round to leave the room):
Ø auch auto holen /
‘(I), too, will get my car.’ Kerstin 2;1,2

Characteristically, and this, too, can be seen from the examples in (4), target-deviant
child subject drop is the omission of a topic expression. This means that the sub-
jects left out by the children, in the case of target-deviant drop, typically repre-
sent the entity the child wants to say something about in the sentence. In (4a), for
instance, it is the boy from the picture book about whom Amélie wants to provide
information, namely that he “is going to sleep now”. In (4b), the topic is Amé-
lie herself and the information conveyed by the speaker about herself is how she
proceeds in making a cup a coffee. Target-like child subject drop, however, is not
necessarily the omission of a topical entity, since 3rd person expletives may also be
dropped (see above).
In the analysis of the bilingual and monolingual French and German child
speech data presented in the following, both target-like and target-deviant subject
omissions have been investigated. However, since it is primarily the target-deviant
omissions that represent the drop of a topic expression, it is these which are of
particular interest to this study.

5.â•… The analysis of the child speech data

5.1â•… The children included in the study

The present analysis of null subjects in child French and German has mainly been
based on bilingual speech data, since in bilingual children we find two languages but
one single performance system. A contrastive analysis of subject omissions in a bilin-
gual child’s two languages can therefore exclude that possible differences attested
 Nicole Hauser-Grüdl

between the languages result from inter-child performance differences (such as,
for instance, different capacities of children’s working memories), as may be the
case in a contrastive study of monolingual French and German L1-acquisition.
The data examined in this study are longitudinal speech data of three bilingual
French-German children as well as one monolingual French child and one mono�
lingual German child – the latter two being included in the study to test if the results
obtained for the bilinguals’ subject omissions can be generalized to monolingual
Â�children, too. The bilingual data were collected in the research project “Bilingualism in
early childhood: Comparing Italian/German and French/German”,2 the monolingual
data have been taken from the CHILDES database (McWhinney & Snow 1985).
As for the bilinguals, all three children examined (Alexander, Amélie and
Céline) lived in Hamburg, Germany, at the time the research was carried out. They
were raised by one German and one French parent who spoke to them in their
respective mother tongue (so-called “one parent – one language principle”, see
Romaine 1995: 181ff.). The children were videotaped during spontaneous interac-
tion with either an adult French or German native speaker in regular two-week
intervals for a period of approximately five years. Each recording was around
30 minutes long for each of the children’s languages.
The monolinguals’ data are based on either audio recordings (in the case of
Kerstin, Miller corpus) or both audio recordings and videotapes (in the case of
Max, York corpus). All recordings were conducted either at the children’s home
or at a location which was at least familiar to the children. Intervals between the
recordings varied depending on the respective corpus and researcher and so did the
period of time for which the two children were studied. Child Max (monolingual
French) was recorded from age 1;9 to 3;2, child Kerstin (monolingual German)
from 1;3 to 3;4.3
To make the data of the bilingual and monolingual children comparable,
approximately one recording per month has been analyzed for each child and each
of its languages from age 2;0 to 3;5 in this study. For some children no recordings
were made at certain age points so that the number of transcripts analyzed slightly

.â•… This project was financed by a grant given to Natascha Müller by the Deutsche ForschungsÂ�
gemeinschaft and was run at Hamburg University from 1999 till 2005. The data gathered in
the project are now being analyzed in the Wuppertal research project “The architecture of
the  early bilingual language faculty: a comparison of Italian/German and French/German
children in Italy, Germany and France” financed, too, by the DFG.
.â•… Max is a Canadian child who, at the time of the recordings, lived in Montréal and thus
acquired Québec French. Since no major differences are known between subject omission in
European and Canadian French, Max’s Montréal origin should not prove problematic as to
what is tested in this study.
 Topicality in L1-acquisition 

varies from child to child.4 On average, 14 transcripts per child and language have
been analyzed, and a total of 112 transcripts are included in this study of child
subject drop.

5.2â•… Methodology and characteristics of the study

As mentioned in Section 3, the hypothesis that children may have, at least in the
early years of language acquisition, a different understanding of “topic” than adult
speakers, has been tested in this study on the grounds of a detailed analysis of
the child use of subject omissions. Both a quantitative analysis examining the fre-
quency of subject omission and a qualitative analysis examining the feature specifi-
cation of the omitted subject expressions have been carried out for all five children
mentioned above.5 By comparing the person and number features of the omitted
subjects in both the bilinguals’ and the monolinguals’ French and German, it was
hoped to identify potential intra- or even inter-language regularities from which
conclusions could be drawn as to what makes children assume that a given subject
is a topic expression and therefore need not be overtly realized.6
The counting and analysis of the child speech data were based on the follow-
ing criteria:

–â•fi Since I was interested in the relative frequency with which subject omissions
marked for 1st, 2nd and 3rd person occur in proportion to subject realizations
bearing the same feature specification, both omitted and overtly realized sub-
jects were counted and analyzed for their person and number feature.
–â•fi Omissions were divided into target-like and target-deviant omissions, i.e.
those resulting in grammatically acceptable utterances and those resulting in
ungrammatical ones. Since target-deviant omissions in particular reveal pos-
sible differences in the children’s and adults’ understanding of topic, they were
primarily focused on in this study.

.â•… Alexander, for instance, was first recorded at age 2;2 and Max’s recordings stop at age 3;2
already. For Kerstin, only very few recordings are available from age 2;10 onwards.
.â•… The idea that the person feature may play a significant role in the realization and omission
of arguments in early child language goes back, amongst others, to Clancy (1993), Serratrice &
Sorace (2003), Serratrice, Sorace & Paoli (2004), Serratrice (2005) and Allen (2008).
.â•… Evidence that topic expressions may be dropped comes both from German sentence-
initial subject and object topic drop (cf. Fries 1988; Cardinaletti 1990 and Rizzi 1992) as
well as from French object drop in, for instance, imperative constructions (cf. Cummins &
Roberge 2005).
 Nicole Hauser-Grüdl

–â•fi Only those utterances were included in the analysis that contained either a
finite or a non-finite verb form. Others, such as ich da in German or moi là in
French, were not taken into account.
–â•fi Imperatives as well as verb forms which, in child speech, could possibly repre-
sent an imperative were excluded from the analysis, since the syntax of impera-
tives differs considerably from that of declaratives, especially in French.
–â•fi Root infinitive constructions, such as essen das in German or manger ça in
French, were interpreted as incidents of target-deviant subject omission. If it
was clear from the situational context who was meant to be the subject referent
of essen (‘eat’), the person feature of the omitted subject was noted accordingly.
In all other cases, the feature specification was listed as being unknown.
–â•fi Incomplete child utterances, imitations and repetitions were discarded.
–â•fi In total, 9006 subject expressions were analyzed, 3907 French and 5099 German
ones. The number of subjects analyzed per child, language and age period can
be seen in Table 2.

Table 2.╇ Total of subject omissions and realizations in absolute frequencies

French German

2;0–2;5 2;5–3;0 3;0–3;5 2;0–2;5 2;5–3;0 3;0–3;5

Alexander 152 587 347 46 369 221

Amélie 264 655 528 105 754 342
Céline 3 70 191 181 727 453
Max 162 531 417
Kerstin 267 894 740

5.3â•… Results of the study

5.3.1â•… The frequency of child subject omission and realization
In what follows, the frequency of the children’s use of subject omissions and realiÂ�
zations will be presented. As can be seen from Figures 1–4, which show how the
rate of subject omissions and realizations develops in Alexander’s and Amélie’s two
languages with increasing age, the percentage of target-deviant omissions is con-
siderably higher and more difficult to eliminate in German than in French. This
holds for Céline as well, although her data (presented in Figures 5–6) may, at first
glance, seem contradictory.
Let us take a look at each child in detail. If the results obtained for Alexander’s
two L1s are compared (Figure 1 illustrates the results obtained for French, Figure 2
 Topicality in L1-acquisition 

those obtained for German), it can easily be seen that the rate of target-deviant
subject omission is clearly higher in German than it is in French. This is true for
each of the three stages of language development examined (i.e. age 2;0 to 2;5, age
2;5 to 3;0 and age 3;0 to 3;5), but particularly for the first stage, where in German
the rate of target-deviant omissions amounts to almost 40%, whereas in French it
amounts to only 13%. With increasing age of Alexander, the rate of target-deviant
omissions decreases in both languages but, as mentioned earlier, this decrease
takes longer in German than it does in French. Whereas in French, non-target-like
omissions are reduced to 4% at age 3;0–3;5, in German the percentage of target-
deviant omissions still amounts to 10% at the same age period.

100%
90%
80%
70%
60% Target-deviant omissions
50% Target-like omissions
40% Realizations
30%
20%
10%
0%
Age 2;0–2;5 Age 2;5–3;0 Age 3;0–3;5

Figure 1.╇ Subject omission and realization in French, Alexander

100%
90%
80%
70%
60% Target-deviant omissions
50% Target-like omissions
40% Realizations
30%
20%
10%
0%
Age 2;0–2,5 Age 2;5–3;0 Age 3;0–3;5

Figure 2.╇ Subject omission and realization in German, Alexander

 Nicole Hauser-Grüdl

What has been said for Alexander also holds true for Amélie, whose devel-
opment of subject omissions and realizations is illustrated in Figures 3 and 4 for
French and German respectively. Like Alexander, Amélie, too, shows higher rates
of target-deviant omissions in German than in French and she, too, takes longer to
eliminate those non-target-like null subjects in her German L1. In fact, the develop�
ment of the rate of subject omission is almost identical in both children. In German,
they both start with a relatively high percentage of target-deviant omissions of
around 40% at age 2;0–2;5, which they then reduce to 10% or less (7% in the case
of Amélie) at age 3;0–3;5. In French, target-deviant subject drop is comparably low
in both children at all three age periods. The initial rate of 5% target-deviant omis-
sions at age 2;0–2;5 in Amélie and of 13% in Alexander decreases in both children to
around 3% at age period 3;0 to 3;5. Compared to the children’s average rate of 8.5%
target-deviant subject drop in German at this stage, this rate is considerably lower.

100%
90%
80%
70%
60% Target-deviant omissions
50% Target-like omissions
40% Realizations
30%
20%
10%
0%
Age 2;0–2;5 Age 2;5–3;0 Age 3;0–3;5

Figure 3.╇ Subject omission and realization in French, Amélie

100%
90%
80%
70%
60% Target-deviant omissions
50% Target-like omissions
40% Realizations
30%
20%
10%
0%
Age 2;0–2,5 Age 2;5–3;0 Age 3;0–3;5
Figure 4.╇ Subject omission and realization in German, Amélie
 Topicality in L1-acquisition 

As for Céline, her results are more complicated. Whereas her development
of subject omissions and realizations in German (see Figure 6) is almost the
same as in the other two bilinguals (target-deviant omissions amount to 38% at
age 2;0–2;5 and to 10% at age 3;0–3;5), the results obtained for her French (see
Figure 5) seem, at first glance, to contradict those obtained for Alexander and
Amélie. In contrast to the latter, Céline shows rates of target-deviant French
subject drop which are substantially higher than those of the other two children
and higher, too, than the percentages obtained for target-deviant subject drop in
her German. As can be seen from Figure 5, a rate of 34% non-target-like French
subject drop has been calculated for age 2;5–3;0 and one of 12% for age 3;0–3;5

100%
90%
80%
70%
60% Target-deviant omissions
50% Target-like omissions
40% Realizations
30%
20%
10%
0%
Age 2;0–2,5 Age 2;5–3;0 Age 3;0–3;5

Figure 5.╇ Subject omission and realization in French, Céline

100%
90%
80%
70%
60% Target-deviant omissions
50% Target-like omissions
40% Realizations
30%
20%
10%
0%
Age 2;0–2,5 Age 2;5–3;0 Age 3;0–3;5

Figure 6.╇ Subject omission and realization in German, Céline

 Nicole Hauser-Grüdl

(percentages in German are 13% and 10% respectively). For age 2;0–2;5 no sub-
ject omission rate has been determined, since Céline’s French data, at this age
period, only contain 3 utterances with a verb (cf. Table 2, page 210 above), which
is too small a sample to be meaningful.
Céline’s unexpectedly high rate of target-deviant subject omissions in French
can easily be explained, however. It is a likely consequence of Céline being a lan-
guage unbalanced bilingual child, which means that she develops her French more
slowly than her German and more slowly also than the French of Alexander and
Amélie, who both have been shown to be language balanced.7 Céline’s rate of 34%
target-deviant French subject omissions at age 2;5–3;0 hence can be seen to corresÂ�
pond to similar rates of target-deviant subject drop in the other children’s French
at an earlier stage of language development some time before the age of 2. Further-
more, when interpreting Céline’s data, it has to be considered that at a very young
age Céline shows a strong preference for using her German L1, which means
that she hardly ever speaks any French at the early stages of language acquisition.
Therefore, it is not surprising, in fact, that at age 2;0–2;5 only 3 utterances contain-
ing a verb can be found in Céline’s French.8 However, since Céline’s development
in French is clearly delayed, her strikingly high rate of French subject omission
should by no means be considered as counter-evidence to what has been said ear-
lier, namely, that omission rates, in general, are clearly higher in German than they
are in French.
This, too, is confirmed by the results of the analysis of the monolingual children’s
subject omissions, as can be seen from Figures 7 and 8.9 Figure 7 shows for the
monolingual French speaking child Max that target-deviant subject drop amounts
to 11% at age 2;0–2;5 – a rate which equals that of child Alexander at the same
age period. From age 2;5–3;0 onwards, target-deviant omissions are almost non-
existent in Max’s French.

.â•… For further details see e.g. Cantone et al. (2008).

.â•… As can be seen from Table  2, a total of 264 and 152 utterances qualified for analysis
in Amélie’s and Alexander’s French at the same age period; in Céline’s German, 181 utter-
ances did.
.â•… Figure 7 as well as Figure 15 (i.e. those figures illustrating the results of the analyses of
child Max’s subject omissions) are partly based on counts done by an MA student of the Wup-
pertal Romance linguistics department, Marisa Patuto. To guarantee that the counts are com-
parable to those of the other children’s data, they have been carefully adjusted to the criteria
of the present study such as presented in Section 5.2.
 Topicality in L1-acquisition 

100%
90%
80%
70%
60% Target-deviant omissions
50% Target-like omissions
40% Realizations
30%
20%
10%
0%
Age 2;0–2;5 Age 2;5–3;0 Age 3;0–3;2,23

Figure 7.╇ Subject omission and realization in French, Max (monol.)

100%
90%
80%
70%
60% Target-deviant omissions
50% Target-like omissions
40% Realizations
30%
20%
10%
0%
Age 2;0–2;5 Age 2;5–3;0 Age 3;0–3;4,3

Figure 8.╇ Subject omission and realization in German, Kerstin (monol.)

In the monolingual German child, Kerstin, this is different. As illustrated in

Figure 8, subject omission rates are not only considerably higher than in Max’s
French, but higher, too, than in the German of all three bilingual children ana-
lyzed. Whereas the bilingual children show rates of target-deviant subject drop
of around 40% at age 2;0–2;5, of around 12% at age 2;5–3;0 and of around 10% at
age 3;0–3;5, Kerstin starts off with a percentage of more than 50% target-deviant
omissions, which interestingly she reduces relatively slowly. At age 2;5–3;0 she still
shows a rate of non-target-like omissions of 41%, which she finally manages to
minimize to 14% at age 3;0–3;4,3.
Since at all age periods examined, Kerstin’s percentage of subject drop exceeds
that of the bilinguals in German, it is reasonable to assume that subject omission
 Nicole Hauser-Grüdl

in child French and German is a phenomenon prone to cross-linguistic influence.

Analyses of subject omission in a second monolingual German child, Chantal,
further support this assumption, since like Kerstin, Chantal, too, shows higher
rates of German subject omission than both Alexander, Amélie and Céline (see
Hauser-Grüdl 2008: 15). Supposing this difference between the monolingual and
bilingual children in the amount of German subject drop reflects a general ten-
dency, it could be argued that, when French and German are acquired simultane-
ously, the French language exerts an accelerating influence upon the acquisition
of the German subject system. Both the lower rates of target-deviant subject drop
in the bilinguals’ than in the monolinguals’ German and the earlier convergence
of the bilingual children to the German target subject system would then be the
result of such accelerating cross-linguistic influence.
To summarize the findings of this part of the analysis, one can say that target-
deviant subject omissions are more frequent and more persistent in German than in
French. This difference in the two language systems is evident from both the bilin-
gual and the monolingual data and will be discussed further in Section 6. Before
this is done, however, the results of the second part of the study examining the
person and number specification of the omitted child subjects will be presented.

5.3.2â•… The feature specification of child subject omission and realization

As mentioned in Section 5.2, the aim of analyzing the person and number features
of the children’s subject omissions has been to identify potential principles on the
basis of which children determine that a certain subject expression is topical and
can be dropped. Following Clancy (1993) and Serratrice (2005), who suggest that
person marking may play a role in early child argument omission, all subjects left
out by the children were thus analyzed for their respective person and number
feature. The results of the analysis are presented in Figures 9 to 14, which, for each
bilingual child and each of its languages, illustrate the frequency with which 1st,
2nd and 3rd person singular subjects are realized and omitted. Since plural entities
hardly function as subject referents in the early stages of language acquisition,10
the analysis of the omitted subjects has been restricted to subjects being specified
for the [+singular] feature. The analysis shows that despite the quantitative dif-
ferences in subject omission in French and German, there is a clear tendency for
the children to preferably drop 1st person subjects in both languages. Omission
of 2nd person subjects in almost all cases is either 2nd most frequent or at least as
frequent as 3rd person subject omission.

.â•… Plural subject expressions, whether omitted or overtly realized, amount to only about
5% in this study.
 Topicality in L1-acquisition 

Let us look again at each child separately. As can be seen from Figures 9 and 10
for Alexander, omission rates clearly are highest for 1st person singular subjects,
followed in 2nd place by 2nd person singular subject omissions and finally by omis-
sion of 3rd person subjects.11 Although the actual percentages of the dropped 1st,
2nd and 3rd person subjects vary for French and German (rates of target-deviant
drop are consistently higher in German than in French no matter which person fea-
ture the subjects are specified for), this is the same for both the child’s languages.

100%
90%
80%
70%
60% Realizations
50% Target-like omissions
40% Target-deviant omissions
30%
20%
10%
0%
1. sg. 2. sg. 3. sg.

Figure 9.╇ Relation of 1st, 2nd and 3rd person singular subject omission and realization;
Alexander, French

100%
90%
80%
70%
60% Realizations
50% Target-like omissions
40% Target-deviant omissions
30%
20%
10%
0%
1. sg. 2. sg. 3. sg.

Figure 10.╇ Relation of 1st, 2nd and 3rd person singular subject omission and realization;
Alexander, German

.╅ Only the target-deviant omissions are of interest here, since target-like subject drop, at
least in French, is the drop of a non-topic expression (see Section 4).
 Nicole Hauser-Grüdl

The analysis of Céline’s subject realizations and omissions (see Figures 11 and
12) shows similar results. Again, of all singular subject expressions used by the child,
it is in both languages 1st person subjects which are most frequently omitted. With
omission rates of 1st, 2nd and 3rd person singular subjects of 19%, 13% and again
13% in German, Céline very much performs like Alexander, who drops 19% of his
1st, 12% of his 2nd and 9% of his 3rd person singular subjects. The only difference
is that, whereas Céline shows equal rates of 2nd and 3rd person subject drop, Alex-
ander omits slightly more of all subjects marked for 2nd person than he does of all
subjects marked for 3rd person. In French, subjects of any feature specification are

100%
90%
80%
70%
60% Realizations
50% Target-like omissions
40% Target-deviant omissions
30%
20%
10%
0%
1. sg. 2. sg. 3. sg.

Figure 11.╇ Relation of 1st, 2nd and 3rd person singular subject omission and realization;
Céline, French

100%
90%
80%
70%
60% Realizations
50% Target-like omissions
40% Target-deviant omissions
30%
20%
10%
0%
1. sg. 2. sg. 3. sg.

Figure 12.╇ Relation of 1st, 2nd and 3rd person singular subject omission and realization;
Céline, German
 Topicality in L1-acquisition 

more often omitted by Céline than by Alexander, which is likely to be due to her
slower development of French (see above). However, the sequence of the omitted
subjects as to which expressions are left out most frequently is the same in both
children, namely 1st person singular omissions > 2nd person singular omissions >
3rd person omissions.
The results obtained for the third child examined, Amélie, do not quite fit
the observation, based on the other bilinguals’ speech data, that 1st person sub-
jects are most prone to be omitted in both French and German. Whereas Amélie’s
French data, illustrated in Figure 13, show a relatively clear tendency for Amélie to
preferably drop 1st person singular subjects – thereby supporting the observation
mentioned above – her German data, illustrated in Figure 14, do not. Of all German
1st person singular subjects, a rate of 9% is dropped by Amélie, whereas of all 3rd
person singular subjects, 11% are omitted (target-like ones not being taken into
account). In other words, in the case of Amélie’s German, the rate of omitted 3rd
person subjects slightly exceeds that of omitted 1st person ones. Furthermore, of
all the bilinguals examined, Amélie is the only child who, in one of her languages,
namely in German, shows lower rates for 2nd than for 3rd person singular subject
drop. In all other children as well as in Amélie’s French, the percentage of 2nd
person omissions is either higher than or at least equally high as that of 3rd person
subject omissions.12

100%
90%
80%
70%
60% Realizations
50% Target-like omissions
40% Target-deviant omissions
30%
20%
10%
0%
1. sg. 2. sg. 3. sg.

Figure 13.╇ Relation of 1st, 2nd and 3rd person singular subject omission and realization;
Amélie, French

.â•… In Amélie’s French, the relation of 2nd and 3rd person singular subject realizations and
target-deviant omissions is identical (omissions amount to 1% in each case).
 Nicole Hauser-Grüdl

100%
90%
80%
70%
60% Realizations
50% Target-like omissions
40% Target-deviant omissions
30%
20%
10%
0%
1. sg. 2. sg. 3. sg.

Figure 14.╇ Relation of 1st, 2nd and 3rd person singular subject omission and realization;
Amélie, German

To summarize the results of the person feature analysis of the bilingual chil-
dren’s subject omissions, one can say that all three children preferably drop 1st
person subjects and that, except for Amélie in German, they do so in both their
languages. As for 2nd person subject drop, of all six child/language combina-
tions examined, there are three cases where 2nd person drop is more frequent
than 3rd person drop, two cases where the relation of 2nd and 3rd person subject
omissions and realizations is identical and one case where 2nd person subjects
are the ones that are omitted the least. In what follows, the results of the bilingual
children’s data will be cross-checked against the results obtained for the mono-
lingual children to determine if they hold true also for monolingual learners of
French and German.
As can be seen from Figures 15 and 16, which illustrate the person specifi-
cation of the monolingual children’s subject realizations and omissions, it is in
both Max’s and Kerstin’s language 1st person singular subjects which are most fre-
quently omitted. The observation, based on the bilingual speech data analysis, that
1st person subjects are the most preferably dropped ones, is thus supported by the
monolingual data. No matter if a child is raised with either French or German or
with both languages simultaneously, 1st person subject omissions seem to be the
ones which occur most often. Amélie’s slightly diverging German data, therefore,
is seen in this study as some kind of individual variation from the norm. Whereas
it is always questionable to try and explain diverging results by means of inter- or
intra-individual variation, it is argued that in the case of Amélie’s German such
an interpretation is licit, since, although omission of 3rd person subjects is more
frequent than that of 1st person subjects, both rates are almost equally high (11% vs.
9%, see Figure 14).
 Topicality in L1-acquisition 

100%
90%
80%
70%
60% Realizations
50% Target-like omissions
40% Target-deviant omissions
30%
20%
10%
0%
1. sg. 2. sg. 3. sg.
Figure 15.╇ Relation of 1st, 2nd and 3rd person singular subject omission and realization;
Max, monol. French

100%
90%
80%
70%
60% Realizations
50% Target-like omissions
40% Target-deviant omissions
30%
20%
10%
0%
1. sg. 2. sg. 3. sg.
Figure 16.╇ Relation of 1st, 2nd and 3rd person singular subject omission and realization;
Kerstin, monol. German

As for 2nd person subject omissions, Max and Kerstin slightly diverge from
the majority of the bilingual children in that, like Amélie in German, they omit
fewer 2nd person singular subjects than both 1st and 3rd person ones (in the case
of Max, 2nd person singular subject drop is, in fact, non-existent). What seems
to be a general tendency for most bilingual children, namely that the rate of 2nd
person omissions is either higher than or at least equally high as that of 3rd per-
son subject omissions, hence is not confirmed by the monolingual data. On the
whole, there are three cases in which the rate of omitted 2nd person subjects
exceeds that of 3rd person ones (2nd > 3rd), three cases in which exactly the
opposite (3rd > 2nd) holds true and two cases in which the rate of 2nd and 3rd
person omission is equally high (2nd= 3rd).
 Nicole Hauser-Grüdl

6.â•… Discussion

The results of the analysis of the children’s subject omissions as described above
raise two major questions which will be discussed in the following. (1) How can
the quantitative differences observable in both bilingual and monolingual children
between subject omissions in German on the one hand and French on the other
hand be explained? (2) What exactly does the children’s preference to omit 1st
(and in some cases also 2nd) person subjects tell us about the children’s under-
standing of “topic”?
As to question (1) it is argued that the differences in the rate of subject omission
in French and German are due to the differing grammatical systems of the two
languages. This claim is based on observations which show that the higher rate of
subject omission in German than in French, particularly in the early stages of lan-
guage acquisition, correlates with a far more frequent use in child German of root
infinitive constructions. In such constructions, for which examples are given in (5),
the vast majority of subjects are omitted by the children (as shown in (5b)).
(5) a. (context: Alexander is trying to climb onto a cupboard)
(adult): du willst auf den schrank klettern? /
‘You want to climb onto the cupboard?’
(child): ich krabbeln /
‘I crawl’ (where crawl is the infinitive) Alexander 2;2,20
b. (context: Adult and child are talking about what would happen if the child
hurt its knee)
(adult): dann weinst du. /
und was soll dann die mama machen ? /
‘Then you cry.’
‘And what is mum supposed to do then?’
(child): pflaster drauftun /
‘put on plaster’ (where put on is the infinitive and no subject
is mentioned) Kerstin 3;2,8

The above mentioned facts about child root infinitives are illustrated in Figures 17
and 18 for bilingual Alexander. Figure 17 shows the difference in Alexander’s use
of root infinitives in French and German, Figure 18 demonstrates that root infini-
tive constructions are extremely prone to subject drop.
As can be seen from Figure 17, Alexander’s use of root infinitives at age 2;0–2;5
amounts to 29% in German, but only to 4% in French.13 More than four fifths,

.â•… These percentages are consistent with those of Lasser (1997) and Jakubowicz & Rigaut
(1997). The latter find 32% root infinitives in the monolingual German child Kerstin at age 2;1
and 3.9% root infinitives in French children with average age 2;4,10.
 Topicality in L1-acquisition 

namely 81%, of his root infinitives in German are used without a subject (see
Figure 18). This naturally makes the rate of subject omissions increase in Alexander’s
German and thereby helps to account for the discrepancy there is between the
quantity of his subject omissions in German and in French at age 2;0–2;5 (39% vs.
13% respectively, see page 211 above). The higher rate of subject omissions in
German than in French in later periods of language acquisition (child age 2;5–3;0
and 3;0–3;5) seems to reflect that the French adult system, in which subject omis-
sions are licensed lexically, is easier to acquire for children than the German adult
system, in which subject omission represents a more complex grammatical phe-
nomenon requiring both specific syntactic and pragmatic knowledge.

100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50% Finite verb forms
Root infinitives
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
German French

Figure 17.╇ Use of child Alexander of root infinitives (age 2;0–2;5)

19%

RI + subject omission
RI + subject realization

81%

Figure 18.╇ Subject omission and realization in root infinitive contexts in German;
Alexander (age 2;0–2;5)

How can it be explained, however, – and this brings us to question (2) – that
despite the differing target systems and despite the differences there are between
subject omissions in French and German both languages are alike in that subject
drop mostly affects 1st person entities? Or put differently: What are the possible
reasons that make children preferably omit 1st (and some children also 2nd) person
 Nicole Hauser-Grüdl

subjects both in French and in German14 and what may be concluded from this as to
a child’s understanding of “topic”?15 It is argued that two conclusions are possible.
Following Hauser-Grüdl (2007), it could first be argued that the children’s
preferred omission of 1st (and sometimes also 2nd) person singular subjects is
due to the fact that children in the early stages of language acquisition primarily
interpret those entities as topics which are permanently physically present in a
given discourse context and which, therefore, are constantly active in the children’s
memory. This is equivalent to the claim that, whereas linguistic discourse activa-
tion is a decisive factor for topicality and thus subject topic drop in adult speakers,
in children it is rather the psychological status of an entity as a permanently avail-
able referent, i.e. its specification as being either [+speaker] or [+hearer], which
forces its topic interpretation and which makes children drop 1st and 2nd person
subject pronouns.16 Such an explanation of the data supports the hypothesis pre-
sented in Section 3 that children have a different understanding of what a topic is
than adult speakers.
A second, alternative interpretation of the results of the study is as follows. It
could be argued that rather than having a different understanding of topicality, young
children misinterpret 1st and 2nd person deictic subjects as anaphoric expres-
sions, i.e. as expressions in line with 3rd person subjects that refer back to a previ-
ously mentioned discourse-topic (see Schmitz, Patuto & Müller Â�(forthcoming)).
Such an interpretation is based on both the observation that the use of deictic
subject pronouns is more difficult for children to learn than that of 3rd person

.â•… Note that with adults this is different (see Section 4).

.â•… I am well aware that possibly not all subjects omitted by the children in this study are
topic expressions in the adult sense. This is valid, for instance, for subjects of event-reporting
sentences, which, though non-topical from an adult’s point of view, were included in the
analysis for two reasons: (1) In many cases it could not be determined if a given subject was
the subject of an event-reporting sentence or a topic-comment structure since the contexts
equally allowed for both interpretations. (2) It is not clear if the topic understanding of chil-
dren as young as age 2 to 3;5 already differentiates between those two types of information
structure, which, in certain contexts, obviously prove problematic even for adult speakers.
From this viewpoint, the inclusion of event-reporting sentences into this study seems almost
imperative. Moreover, since 1st, 2nd and 3rd person subject omission in event-reporting sen-
tences is proportionally relative to the use of 1st, 2nd and 3rd person expressions in total, it is
argued that this inclusion has had no major effect on the results of the study as such.
.â•… Erteschik-Shir (2007: 17ff.) uses the similar term “permanently available topic”. In con-
trast to the term “permanently available referent”, however, the one employed by Erteschik-Shir
does not only refer to hearer and speaker but also to what she calls “stage topics”, i.e. paraÂ�
meters such as the specific time and location in which a particular sentence is uttered and
which, according to Erteschik-Shir, function as the implicit topic with respect to which the
sentence is evaluated.
 Topicality in L1-acquisition 

ones and the assumption that this is due to a more complex kind of interaction
between pragmatics and syntax in the former. Since there is plenty of evidence
that young children tend to avoid more complex grammatical structures by using
less complex ones instead,17 the interpretation of 1st and 2nd person subjects as
anaphoric could be claimed to be such a case where a more complex analysis is
abandoned in favor of a less complex one.
Evidence for the assumption that the use of deictic subjects poses a problem
for young children comes from child speech samples like the ones in (6), which
illustrate children’s difficulties in assigning correct reference to deictic subject pro-
nouns. In the examples given, the child incorrectly uses a 2nd person singular
subject pronoun to refer to herself instead of using a 1st person one.
(6) a. (context: Child is pointing at her head)
(child): ei- vi- vie- viele vögl aufm kopf hat /
‘One – man- man- many birds has on the head.’
(adult): wer ? /
‘Who?’
(child): du / (referring to herself)
‘You.’
(adult): du hast viel vögl auf dem kopf talli ? /
‘You have many birds on your head, Talli?’
(child): ja /
‘Yes.’ Chantal 2;7,0
b. (context: Child is sucking a coconut sweet; she wants to say she likes the
coconut flavour)
(child): du mag nüsse /
‘You like nuts.’
(where you (German du) refers to the child herself and like
(mag) is either 1st or 3rd person singular)
(adult): du magst nüsse ? /
‘You like nuts?’ (in surprise)
(child): ja /
‘Yes.’
(adult): aber du isst gar keine nuss / […] / da is’n
bisschen kokosnuss vielleicht drin […] /
‘But you are not eating a nut. […]. There may be a bit of coconut
in there […].’ Chantal 2;10,0

.â•… Cross-linguistic phenomena in bilingual children are a very good example here. As
shown for example by Müller et al. (2002), it is always the language which, in a particular
grammatical domain, is the less complex one of a child’s two L1s which exerts influence on
the child’s other L1.
 Nicole Hauser-Grüdl

Further evidence for a child’s difficulties in using deictic subjects in sentences

comes from examples such as “ich macht” ‘I makes’ (German) and “je va” ‘I goes’
(French), where a 1st person subject pronoun is combined with a finite verb with
3rd person inflection. Since, interestingly, 3rd person anaphoric subjects never
occur with verbs of 1st or 2nd person inflection, mistakes of this kind are likely
to be related to the deictic nature of the subject pronoun as well as to the fact that
the child has not yet acquired the full pragmatic and syntactic knowledge neces-
sary for the correct use of 1st and 2nd person subjects in sentences.18 What is
particularly difficult to learn about deictic subjects is that their referent changes
according to who is speaking or who is spoken to. This is different with anaphoric
subjects which have a fixed referent introduced in the preceding linguistic con-
text as the discourse topic. It is this fixed reference of anaphoric but not deictic
subjects that preferably makes the former but not the latter undergo adult German
topic drop.19

.â•… According to one reviewer of this article, there is also a different explanation for why
children use deictic subject pronouns with verbs of 3rd person inflection, namely that children
treat 3rd person singular verb forms as some sort of unmarked default. There are, however,
examples of cases where children combine a 2nd person subject pronoun with a 1st person
verb form, which cannot be explained by means of a default hypothesis, but rather supports
the analysis put forward in this article. A couple of examples of children’s use of 2nd person
subject pronouns with a finite verb with 1st person inflection are shown in (i) below:
(i) a. (context): Adult pretends he is removing fleas from a toy monkey
(child): was du hole da ? /
‘What are you picking out of there?’
(where German hole (‘pick’) is 1st person singular) Kerstin 2;7,23
b. (context): Child is sliding forwards and backwards with her feet, pretending
she is skiing; the referent she is talking about is herself
(child): du mach gleich [z]agat / (= Spagat)
‘You’ll soon do the splits.’
(where German mach (‘do’), again, is 1st person singular)
(adult) ja / du machst gleich spagat /
‘Yes. You’ll soon do the splits.’ Chantal 2;8,2
.â•… German 1st and 2nd person subject topic drop only occurs in very restricted contexts
such as, for instance, diary, e-mail or telegram writing where the 1st person subject referent
can unambiguously be identified since only one person is involved in the specific situational
context (cf. Fries 1988: 27). The drop of 1st and 2nd person deictic subjects furthermore is licit
in specific question-answer contexts like the one in (ii), where speaker B is explicitly being
asked to provide information about himself, so that, again, the referent of the omitted 1st
person subject is unambiguously identifiable in the given situational context.
 Topicality in L1-acquisition 

As child speech samples such as the one in (7) suggest, however, this necessity for
subject drop of an unambiguously identifiable subject referent may not be obvi-
ous to child language learners during the early stages of L1- acquisition. In (7), for
instance, which is an example of early child German speech, the child leaves out
a 1st person deictic subject where no such drop is permitted. It is reasonable to
assume that the child interprets the omitted 1st person subject as somehow linked
to the preceding ich-expression in the adult utterance and that this is what triggers
the drop.20
(7) (context: Adult and child are fishing small plastic fish)
(adult): huh, huh, ich hab einen /
‘Huh, huh, I’ve got one.’
(child): ha, Ø habe einen auch /
‘Ha, (I) have one, too.’ Kerstin 2;4,16

The child would thus treat the 1st person deictic subject as if it were anaphoric, i.e.
as if it referred to a previously mentioned, and therefore droppable, discourse topic.
Evidence for such anaphoric topic drop comes from 3rd person subject and object
drop in German as well as from 3rd person object drop in French (cf. Note 6). What
the child does not yet seem to have understood then is that 1st person subjects
cannot be anaphoric in nature since, rather than having one fixed referent, they
may refer to different people depending on who is speaking.

(ii) (Speaker A): Willst du was essen?

‘Would you like something to eat?’
(Speaker B): Nee, Ø hab keinen Hunger, danke.
‘No, (I) am not hungry, thanks.’

Why adult speakers use 1st and 2nd person subject drop rather infrequently even in examples
in which, like in (ii), the drop seems licit, is still unknown. One possible explanation, suggested
to me by Joachim Jacobs, is that 1st and 2nd person subject drop is no anaphoric drop such
as is typical of German topic-drop constructions. The omitted 1st person ich-expression in
(ii), for instance, is not anaphorically linked to the preceding 2nd person du pronoun but
indirectly via its deictic interpretation. This obviously makes the drop less likely to happen.
.â•… Another, possibly even more convincing example is the one in (iii), which I witnessed
when visiting one of my godchildren who, at that time, was 2;6 years old. While we were
playing Memory, his mother asked me to come and help her with something in the kitchen.
The utterances in (iii) are to be understood as both my own and Tim’s reaction to
her demand:
(iii) (adult): ich komme gleich /
‘I’ll come in a minute.’
(child): Ø komme auch /
‘(I) come, too.’
 Nicole Hauser-Grüdl

7.â•… Conclusion

This article has dealt with the question if children have, at least in the early years
of language acquisition, a different understanding than adult speakers of what
a topic is. Since in the two languages examined, French and German, there is a
strong correlation between the (aboutness-)topic and subject, the subject domain
was chosen to investigate children’s understanding of topicality. In consistency with
the concept of topicality as an information structural, language-universal pheno�m��
enon, the study can show that in all children and both languages examined it is
preferably 1st (and sometimes also 2nd) person referents which are omitted.
The discussion of the results has illustrated that two ways of interpreting
the data are possible and that, depending on which of the two interpretations is
adopted, the hypothesis that young children have a different understanding of topic
than adults may or may not be found confirmed. Which of the two interpretations
is more adequate to account for the data – the psychological interpretation suggesÂ�
ted first or the linguistically oriented second one – needs to be further investigated
in future studies, ideally examining child speech data of languages other than
French and German.
Since the two interpretations suggested do not exclude each other, a third
explanation of the results of the study seems reasonable, too, namely that psycho-
logical as well as linguistic factors play a major role in the preferred omission of
1st and partly also 2nd person subjects. This is equivalent to the claim that both
interpretations discussed in this article are correct and that the extensive use
of 1st and 2nd person subject drop is a phenomenon linked both to a different
understanding of children of what a topic is and to difficulties in acquiring the
syntax and pragmatics of deictic subject pronouns. What this study shows, in
any case, is that since no evidence disproving the hypothesis of a different under-
standing of topicality by children as opposed to adults has been found, further
research should always consider the possibility that children, at least in the early
stages of L1-acquisition, may deem other factors relevant for an entity to be topical
than adults.

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nation of the optional infinitive stage. Lingua 106: 23–79.
 Formal and functional constraints
on constituent order and their universality

Peter Öhl
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

This paper addresses the competition between syntactic relations and the
structural encoding of discourse semantic functions, and, more specifically,
the question of how much the distributional restriction of syntactic linearisation
can be constrained by the inventory of functional features of Generative Syntax.
The variation between typologically distinct languages is explained by the
potential of a generative syntactic system to fix constituent order by means
of functional phrases, something not implemented to the same degree in all
languages. Moreover, the various information structural properties a sentence
topic can have imply that notions like topic and comment are not primitives as
such, but that it is more primitive features of perspectivation which determine
the choice of constituents to act as sentence topics.

1.â•… Introduction

The competition between syntactic relations and the structural encoding of discourse
semantic functions, which, according to a commonly held view, yields two different
syntactic systems of natural language, has often been discussed in the literature:
Languages have been said to be either subject-prominent or topic-prominent, or,
following a more concise division, some languages are discourse configurational,
whereas for other languages, the canonical order1 is primarily constrained by
syntactic relations and/or argument structure.
The more recent the research on this topic (cf. Kiss 2001), the more common
the opinion that there is no real sharp division between these two classes. Almost
every language can be said to have either property to at least some degree. The
only statement that remains unarguably true is that languages may differ in their
options for marking discourse functions structurally, as they may differ in their
formal restrictions on linearising the sentence constituents. Whether there is a

.╅ By canonical we understand the normal case, which is the most unmarked one according
to structural regularities.
 Peter Öhl

correlation between these two domains of syntactic organisation is not yet clear.
Thus, our challenge is to identify two different classes of universal principles of
ordering and their parameterisation and to elaborate on the features relevant for
ordering. Therefore, we discuss data from and different accounts of languages
where the order of constituents seems to be fixed through various criteria (English,
Hungarian, Italian) and compare them to languages where the order is freer
(German, Japanese, Korean).
The paper is structured as follows: after introducing our basic assumptions
in Section 2, we discuss earlier approaches to discourse configurationality and con-
stituent order (Section 3.1), the identification of subject and topic positions (3.2),
and the classification of languages according to parameters in systems with (3.3)
and without (3.4) functional phrases (henceforth FPs). In Section 4, we develop a
model of interacting constraints on constituent order. We take a closer look at the
notion of topicality and discuss further options of information structuring and
the evidence this gives for and against FPs. Finally, we propose a model of features
constraining the linearisation in different kinds of syntactic systems.

2.â•… Basic assumptions

As our framework we have chosen a moderate version of Generative Syntax,

seeking to avoid mere technical discussions by not presupposing too many
architectural peculiarities such as antisymmetry in the Kaynean (1994) sense,
derivations vs. representations in syntax (cf. Lasnik 2001), purely formal triggers
for movement (Chomsky 1995) or probing and edge features (Chomsky 2000, 2008;
for approaches to information structure within the phase model see Drubig 2007;
McNay 2009). What we adopt from Generative theory are two main assumptions:
autonomy of the interacting modules syntax, semantics and pragmatics, and three
universal bases of structural order which they provide.
The first such base is the conceptual hierarchy of argument structure, which is
part of the lexical conceptual structure (LCS) of predicates in Generative terms
(cf. Jackendoff 1990). Expressed in a simplified way, it provides the basic linearisation
of arguments according to a conceptual hierarchy of thematic roles like AGENT
and PATIENT in (1a), which is mostly taken to be universal. This will be returned
to in more detail below.2

.â•… Of course we do not claim that this is the only semantic aspect of linearisation, it is just the
most basic one. Scope relations in quantification, the definiteness or specificity of referents, and
other similar properties are all semantic factors applying in addition to (though not necessarily
after) the conceptual order. More on this follows in Section 4.
 Formal and functional constraints on constituent order and their universality 

Secondly, there are formal constraints on encoding syntactic relations. By

syntactic relation we understand the purely formal relationships between elements
such as sentence predicates and their subjects and objects. In most Generative
accounts, this relationship is associated with abstract case, morphological case
marking being a secondary option. Taking the nominative-accusative-system as
one representative of a relational system,3 the so-called grammatical subject is
associated with the nominative. Moreover, it is in an agreement relation with the
predicate of its clause. That languages like English display canonical orders like
SVO or have a canonical subject position is a basic empirical observation. The
reason why a syntactic relation should be relevant for ordering is not obvious.
Correlating the order to phrase structural positions like SPEC/IP on the grounds
of coinciding formal properties like case or agreement is an abstraction from
this coincidence, but not an explanation. Thus, for the moment, we just state that
syntactic relations can constrain constituent order in addition to the thematic
hierarchy (see 1b).

(1) a. [IP The police (AGENT; nom pl) have (3pl) [VP put a linguist
(PATIENT; acc sg) into jail].
b. [IP No linguist (PATIENT; nom sg) has (3sg) [VP been put into jail
[PP by the police (AGENT)]].

Thirdly, there appears to be a cognitive need for fitting information into the hearer’s
knowledge store. There are pragmatic rules concerning the systematic selection and
structuring of information and its integration in a (linguistic) context, determined
by the need to make the hearer comprehend the message communicated. Thus the
constituents may be ordered by being packed in a syntactic information structure.
Vallduví (1992: 15; 53ff.) defines information packaging in terms of instructions to
the hearer:

(2) Information Packaging (Vallduví 1992: 15)

A small set of instructions with which the hearer is instructed by the speaker
to retrieve the information carried by the sentence and enter it into his/her
knowledge store.

An appropriate syntactic information structure may be created by dividing

the sentence into entities such as an ‘(aboutness)-topic’ (a link in the terms of

.â•… We ignore here other relational systems, such as the ergative-absolutive one, which we
regard as variants of the universal formal condition of linking conceptually hierarchical
semantic roles to arguments ordered according to a language specific case system.
 Peter Öhl

Vallduví 1992: 43ff.) and a comment-like part.4 We also adopt the well-founded view
that constituents in their basic order and with normal accentuation are unmarked
with respect to information structure, which means that they potentially represent
maximal focus (i.e. sentence focus in the terms of Lambrecht 1994: 223).5 Discourse
semantic features such as familiarity, salience, point of view etc. apply in addition
to the basic syntactic rules and may change both the order and the accentuation
of defocused elements (cf. Cinque 1993; Höhle 1982; Abraham 2007 and Molnárfi
2007 for German). We suggest subsuming them under the term perspectivation,
which we borrow from functionalist work such as Graumann & Kallmeyer (2002;
see Section 4.2). How they apply will be as much a point of our discussion as the
question of how many of them are necessary or sufficient features of topicality.
We want to emphasise that we consider syntactic relations primarily a formal
aspect of sentence structure, as we do argument structure and other semantic
factors of linearisation. The discourse configuration is primarily a functional
aspect of structure building. Taking the proper distinction of form and function
seriously, we strongly reject any account attempting to explain the notion of gram-
matical subject functionally, as proto-topic (Lambrecht 1994: 131) or mediator of
topicality (Sasse 1995: 1065):

Subjects are essentially topics that have become integrated into the case frame
of a verb. (Sasse 1995: 1067)
In a relational system (…), the primary grammatical relation (PGR) indicating
the topic has obvious implications of semantic roles and can therefore be used to
denote them.6 (Sasse 1982: 276)

.â•… Vallduví (1992: 53ff.) argues that the term ‘comment’ can be abandoned, if the packages of
information are divided into focus and (back)ground. We agree that the term as used in the lit-
erature is imprecise and misleading if it is not made clear whether defocused elements belong
to the comment or not. In Vallduví’s (1992: 53ff.) system, they form the ground together with
the link, i.e. an aboutness topic. We will continue to use the term comment in a rather more
traditional and theory-neutral sense, as something that is said about one (or more) topic(s),
ignoring the differentiation of focused and defocused constituents it may contain.
.â•… Lambrecht (1994) distinguishes the sentence focus of thetic sentences from the predicate
focus of categorical sentences and from argument focus, i.e. focus on just one constituent.
.â•… Original: “In einem relational gerichteten System, gleichgültig ob es ergativisch oder
akkusativisch funktioniert, enthält die TOPIC-anzeigende primäre grammatische Relation
(PGR) eindeutige Implikationen semantischer Rollen und kann daher als Mittel zu ihrer
Bezeichnung eingesetzt werden.”
 Formal and functional constraints on constituent order and their universality 

We provide some evidence showing that neither topicality nor a semantic role can
define a ‘grammatical subject’. Data from languages like English or German clearly
show that the presence of a subject is independent from any discourse function.
(3) a. [IP The police (nom pl) are (3pl) [VP coming]]. (thetic sentence)
b. Die Polizei (nom sg) kommt (3sg).

(4) a. [IP There has (3sg) [VP happened an accident (nom sg)]].
 (presentational sentence)
b. Es geschah (3sg) ein Unfall (nom sg).7

Both thetic (Jacobs 2001: 674; Frey 2004a: 11) and presentational sentences (Kuno
1972: 299; Frey 2004a: 11) belong to the so-called ‘anti-topic constructions’ (Jacobs
2001: 674). This does not at all touch the subject condition, however. Moreover,
subjects can even be fully unsuitable as topics, as shown by the following examples
from German, where the prepositional object in (5a) and the temporal adverbial
in (5b), respectively, are the sentence topics.
(5) a. Damit hatte niemand gerechnet. (negative quantifier)
that-with had nobody calculatetd
‘Nobody expected that.’
b. Damals wurde ein Knabe geboren.
then was a boy born
 (unspecific indefinite subject; Kiss 1996: 120ff.)

Both temporal and locative adverbials are generally quite suitable as topics:
(6) a. In Wuppertal leben etwa 360.000 Menschen.
in W. live about 360,000 people
b. Im Jahr 2007 lebten in Wuppertal etwa 360.000 Menschen.
in-the year 2007 lived in W. about 360,000 people

The sentence initial referents in (6) are as topical as they are in (7).
(7) a. Wuppertal hat etwa 360.000 Einwohner.
W. has about 360,000 inhabitants
b. Das Jahr 2007 hatte 365 Tage.
the year 2007 had 365 days

.â•… Here and below we use italics to highlight constituents referred to in the text, in this
case the subjects. In order to indicate pitch accented syllables, we follow the convention of
using small capitals. Occasionally, in later examples, rising and falling tones are indicated
by ‘/’ and ‘\’, respectively.
 Peter Öhl

The functional overlap of subject and topic is empirically much smaller than is
often assumed. In our view, there is no direct relation between topicality and any
one syntactic function. Therefore, subjects cannot be something like a ‘grammati-
calised topic’. Moreover, they cannot be identified with a salient semantic role (like
AGENT) either. It is well known that subjects can even be patients or carry no
semantic role at all:

(8) a. Offensichtlich ist einem Linguisten ein

obviously is a-dat linguist-dat a-nom
Fehler unterlaufen. (patient-subject of an ergative verb)
mistake-nom happen-past-ptcp
‘Obviously, a mistake was made by a linguist.’
b. Der Mannschaft wurde ein Preis verliehen.
the-dat team-dat was a prize awarded
 (patient-subject of a passivised verb)
c. Vorhin klopfte es an der Tür. (formal subject)
a-while-ago knocked it-nom on the door

The so called grammatical subject is very clearly defined through a number of

formal properties (i.e. case and agreement) that cannot be explained by prag-
matic or semantic features. It may be true that in NOM-ACC languages like
German or English the occurrence of an AGENT has very high frequency. The
simple reason is that the majority of verbs are either transitive or unergative.
That this role is regularly assigned to the subject follows from the Θ-hierarchy.
It may also be true that topical subjects occur more frequently than non-topical
ones (Sasse 1995: 1065). The simple reason could be that the topic-comment
relation is the unmarked pragmatic sentence articulation (Lambrecht 1994: 131)
and therefore the most frequent one. If the unmarked constituent order in
such a language is the subject-initial one and the unmarked pragmatic arti�
culation is the topic-comment structure, everything else but high frequency
of topical subjects would be statistically improbable and unexpected. Thus,
there is no reason to induce a formal correlation – in fact this would be an
inverted conclusion.
Thus, the constraints on linearisation given by the autonomous modules
semantics, syntax and pragmatics are essentially independent from one another.
If all these constraints yielded absolute restrictions, linearisation conflicts
would be unavoidable in the syntax of every language. Since they are not, the
constraints must be weighted, which is cross-linguistically observable and obvi-
ously variable. Some restrictions may be universally absolute, but many of them
are significantly weaker, and structural systems differ in the strength of the
 Formal and functional constraints on constituent order and their universality 

different classes of restrictions on the order of elements. The relevant questions

to discuss are:

1. Is there a universal gradation between formal or functional constraints, or do

they only depend on the options chosen by a grammatical system?
2. Can languages be divided according to prototypes in a classification along
the axes of discourse configurationality vs. (sit mihi venia verbi) relation
configurationality?
3. Another point, though very closely related, is this. It has often been proposed
by Generative grammarians (e.g. Cinque 1998; Roberts & Roussou 2003;
several articles in Rizzi 2004) that cross-linguistic variation can be explained
by a universal hierarchy of FPs in which only the distribution of elements
(like subject vs. topic) parametrically varies. Can this in fact be explanatorily
adequate?

We will defend the view that the problem can be solved by a small number of
assumptions: firstly, there is no universal hierarchy of FPs. Instead, languages
differ parametrically by the number of phrases hosting specific kinds (or classes)
of constituents. The fewer FPs there are in the syntax of a language, the more
options it has for the linearisation of constituents. Secondly, instead of a universal
hierarchy of phrases, there is a global hierarchy of structural, conceptual and
discourse-functional features determining the parameterisation of FPs on the one
hand, and the linearisation of constituents in the so-called ‘free word order lan-
guages’ that are characterised by only few FPs, on the other hand. The hierarchy
of these features is not absolute but relative and rankable, the options depending
on the class a specific feature belongs to. The reason why word order is more or
less fixed in different kinds of languages is that different kinds of FPs are fixed by
language acquisition, blocking the structural variation in performance.

3.â•… Earlier approaches to discourse configurationality and word order

3.1â•… Subject-prominence vs. topic-prominence

In the functionalist typological work on comparative syntax of the early 1970s,
it was quite common to divide languages into the types ‘topic-prominent’ and
‘subject-prominent’ (Li & Thompson 1976: 459). It had been noted that, in many
languages, sentences were constructed in relation to topical elements, rather than
in relation to a subject. These were called the topic-prominent languages.
Some characteristics of topic-prominence that are relevant for our discussion
are listed below (taken from Li & Thompson 1976: 466f.; Gundel 1988: 222).
 Peter Öhl

(9) a. Topic-prominent languages have (mostly sentence initial) canonical

topic positions.
b. Topic-prominent languages may have morphological topic marking.
c. Topic-prominent languages predominantly have SOV order.
d. In topic-prominent languages, there are so called ‘double subject
constructions’, where an aboutness topic not selected by the predicate
occurs in addition to a subject argument.
e. If a constituent can be identified as subject (e.g. by morphology),
this never correlates with a specific position.

All of these properties except (c), which can be attributed to properties such as the
high productivity of scrambling in SOV languages (cf. Section 4.2 below), can be
exemplified by the sentences in (10).
(10) a. sakana wa tai ga oisii
fish top Tai nom delicious
‘Speaking of fish, Tai is delicious.’ (Japanese; Li & Thompson 1976: 468)
b. pihengki nun 747 ka khu-ta.
airplane top 747 nom big-stative
‘Speaking of airplanes, the 747 is big.’ (Korean; ibid.)

Subject-prominent languages, on the other hand, are said to have the following
characteristics (among others; abstracted from Li & Thompson 1976: 466f.):
(11) a. Subject-prominent languages have a canonical subject position.
b. Subject-prominent languages have a regular active/passive diathesis.
c. Subject-prominent languages have formal subjects without any semantic role.

Whereas English was regarded as a typical subject-prominent language displaying

all of the relevant properties, not all languages could be clearly classified. Besides the
prototypical languages, there were mixed languages and languages that seemingly
had neither property of Li & Thompson’s (1976: 460; 483) classification. Japanese
and Korean were taken as mixed languages because they have subject and topic
morphology. On the other hand, Tagalog, which seems to have neither a canonical
topic nor a canonical subject position (Schachter 1976: 494f.), was taken as neither
subject- nor topic-prominent, even though it has topic morphology.
(12) a. subject-prominent: Indo-European, Semitic, …
b. topic-prominent: Mandarin, Burmese, …
c. subject- and topic-prominent: Japanese, Korean, …
d. neither subject- nor topic-prominent: Tagalog, …

More recent Generative accounts (e.g. Kiss 1995, 2001) broaden this spectrum to
a more general division into discourse configurationality and the prominence of
grammatical relations, both of them assumed to be bound to specific positions.
 Formal and functional constraints on constituent order and their universality 

We call a language discourse configurational if it links either or both of the

discourse-semantic functions topic and focus to particular structural positions.
(…) Most of the (… [discourse configurational]) languages are both topic- and
focus-prominent. (Kiss 2001: 1442)

This means that the syntactic configuration is criterial for typological classifica-
tion rather than morphological marking. Languages like Japanese, which have a
canonical position for topics but not for subjects, are then to be regarded as typical
discourse configurational languages.8
Kiss (1994, 2002) compares mainly English and Hungarian as prototypes of
their classes. She makes generalisations about the treatment of subjects and topics
on the basis of data as follows (Kiss 1995: 7f.):
(13) a. Fido is [VP chewing a bone]. (categorical sentence)
b. A dog [VP came into the room]. (thetic sentence)

The English examples in (13) display the canonical order subject-predicate-(object)

independently of whether they are categorical or thetic judgements, i.e. whether the
subject is simultaneously the topic of the sentence or not (cf. Sasse 1987). In the
parallel Hungarian examples, however, only the subject of categorical sentences is
fronted. If the subject is not the topic, it follows the verb:
(14) a. Fido [VP rág egy csontot] (categorical sentence)
F. ╇╇ chews a bone
b. [VP Van egy kutya a szobában] (thetic sentence)
â•… came a dog the room-into

Kiss (1995: 7f.) assumes that the two languages basically differ by one property: the
constraint forcing a constituent to leave the VP. In English, the grammatical subject
is always fronted. In Hungarian, it has to be topical. Moreover, the following data
show that non-subjects are also fronted if they are topics:
(15) a. *Egy kutya [VP van a szobában]
b. A szobában [VP van egy kutya]
the room-into â•… came a dog

According to Kiss, this suggests that English and Hungarian differ by the inventory
of canonical positions in at least one respect: Whereas English has one for the
subject, Hungarian has one for the topic. Since, unfortunately, Example (15b) from

.â•… Note that Kiss (1995:  6) calls Japanese one of the best known examples of discourse
configurational languages.
 Peter Öhl

Kiss (1995) resembles cases of locative inversion in English where the corresponding
order is also grammatical, some brief discussion is needed.
(16) [[PP into the room] [VP came a dog]]

Firstly, true locative inversion is restricted to locative arguments (mostly direc-

tionals; Bresnan 1994: 80). Locative inversion with adjuncts is suspected of being
heavy-NP-shift of the subject to the right (Culicover & Levine 2001: 291f.). Secondly,
Bresnan (1994: 103f.) and Culicover & Levine (2001: 284) show that, in the argu-
ment cases, locatives have a number of subject properties they do not have if they are
in situ. Therefore, true locative inversion can be treated as inversion of the argument
structure (Bresnan 1994: 92). Whereas Culicover & Levine (2001: 284) try to show
that the locative is, in fact, in SPEC/IP, Bresnan discusses reasons to assume that it is
adjoined to IP, the SPEC position staying empty for unknown reasons.9
If the inversion was triggered by information structure, it should also be a
puzzle why it is restricted to locatives:
(17) a. He [VP mistrusts the police].
b. *The police [VP mistrusts he].
(18) a. The students [VP know syntax well].
b. *Syntax [VP know the students well].

Locative inversion thus cannot be a process driven by discourse semantics. Generally,

the structural encoding of discourse functions is rather marked in English:
(19) a. ?The police, he mistrusts.
b. ?Syntax, the students know well.

Thus, there is no canonical topic position in English but there is a canonical subject
position. In Hungarian, however, background subjects always stay in situ, whereas
topical elements are fronted independently of their grammatical function:
(20) A szintaxist jól [VP tudják a diákok]
the syntax-acc well â•… know the students-nom

How, then, can canonical positions be derived? As a standard assumption in

Generative Grammar, not only the subject position but also the existence of
non-referential subjects results from the Extended Projection Principle. In the GB
version of the framework of Principles and Parameters, the EPP roughly stated

.â•… Since locative inversion is not possible with transitive verbs, Alexiadou & Agnastopoulou
(2001) argue that the ‘subject’ in situ does not have to move on grounds of the option to leave
one case feature in the VP unchecked.
 Formal and functional constraints on constituent order and their universality 

that there is a position SPEC/IP for an argument agreeing with the finite verb to be
assigned nominative case.
The EPP is another principle regulating syntactic structure […]: sentences must
have subject positions, [Spec/IP] positions, at all syntactic levels. It is important
to point out here that the EPP imposes that the [Spec/IP] position be generated.
 (Haegeman 1994: 339f.)

Expletives and non-referential subjects are inserted in the subject positions of

languages like English and German because of the obligatoriness of SPEC/IP:
(21) a. [IP It [seems that [IP there [I’ are [three students in this room]]]]]
b. …dass [IP es [sich darüber trefflich streiten] lässt]
↜that ╅╛it itself over-that excellently argue lets
‘…that this matter is very suitable to argue about.’

In the feature based phrase structure model of the Minimalist Program, the
concept of the EPP was saved but implemented by a formal feature that is checked
irrespectively of case and agreement,10 which allows accounting for subjects in situ
agreeing with the verb (see 16 and 21a above):
I suggest that the strong feature in this instance is an “EPP feature” residing in
Agr, hence the same feature that drives overt subject raising, the modern technical
implementation of the EPP. (Lasnik 2001: 81)

Note that this formal way of deriving obligatory SPEC positions is not bound to a
specific phrase like IP. Thus, it can also be applied to other functional projections
and it can be considered a matter of parameterisation whether a SPEC position
has to be filled or not (the generalised EPP from Chomsky 2000: 109). Language
specific properties like V2 in German can be explained in an elegant way by the
application of the EPP to a higher FP (e.g. CP) plus an independent condition
making the finite verb move to C0 (see also Roberts & Roussou 2002):
(22) [CP Linguisten [C’ sind [IP immer wieder Fehler unterlaufen]]]
╅ linguists-dat ╅╛↜渀屮are ╅╛↜渀屮always again errors-nom happen-past-ptcp
‘Errors were made by linguists again and again.’

Very much in this sense, Kiss (1995: 6f., 14) distinguishes between the canonical
position of grammatical subjects and notional subjects (i.e. the subjects of predication).
In subsequent work (Kiss 2002), she suggests that a subject-prominent language
like English is characterised by the EPP parametrically yielding the obligatory

.â•… It is not clear to us why only some arguments but no adjuncts can check this feature.
This is another technical problem that cannot be discussed here.
 Peter Öhl

filling of SPEC/IP. Languages like Hungarian, on the other hand, do not have to fill
SPEC/IP. A non-notional subject stays inside the VP:
(23) a. [IP a guest [VP has telephoned]
b. [IP[VP telefonált [DP egy vendég]]]
â•…â•… telefoned â•… â•⁄ a guest (Kiss 2002: 109)

According to her analysis, it is the subject of predication which moves to a higher

position c-commanding the VP in topic-prominent languages. It moves to the
SPEC position of a topic phrase (TopP) in order to satisfy the EPP.11
(24) a. [TopP a diákok szerintem [jól [VP tudják a szintaxist]]]
╅╅↜the students-nom in-my-opinion ↜well ╅ know the syntax-acc
b. [TopP a szintaxist szerintem [jól [VP tudják a diákok]]]
╅╅↜the syntax-acc in-my-opinion ↜well ╅ know the students-nom
 (Kiss 2002: 109)

In the following subsection, we take a closer look at the two kinds of canonical
positions and how they are identified in the Generative model of phrase structure.

3.2â•… Subject and topic positions in hierarchical phrase structure

We start this section with a discussion of Italian which apparently challenges the
hypotheses of canonical subject or topic positions. Note firstly that both agent and
non-agent subjects can occur on the left or on the right of the predicate.
(25) a. Gianni ha telefonato.
G. aux telephoned
‘John has telephoned.’ (Giusti 1995: 1349)
b. La brocca è stato rotta (da Maria).
the pitcher aux been broken ↜by M.
‘The pitcher has been broken (by Mary).’ (ibid.)
(26) a. È intervenuto uno studente (a risolvere il problema).
aux intervened a student to solve the problem
 (Giusti 1995: 1349)
b. Ha telefonato Maria.
aux telephoned M. (Giusti 1995: 1353)

Assuming the orders in (25) to be canonical, authors have made several proposals to
derive the data in (26). Firstly, Italian being a pro-drop-language, data like (26a)

.â•… Note that earlier GB accounts like Rothstein (1985; also quoted by Chomsky 1986: 4, fn. 5)
derived the EPP from a condition of predicate linking.
 Formal and functional constraints on constituent order and their universality 

can be explained as presentational sentences with a null-expletive (Giusti 1995: 1352).

Secondly, sentences like (26b) are explained as rightward movement of the subject
for information structural reasons (Frascarelli 2000: 50f.). This leads us directly to
the question of the canonical positions of topic and focus. According to Frascarelli
(2000:  50ff.; 103ff.), both topic and focus can be left or right peripheral. She
analyses right focus as focus in situ (i.e. subject in SPEC/Agr), with movement of
AUX+Vinf to a position higher than IP (Frascarelli 2000: 115), which she supports
by prosodic reasoning.12 Left focus, on the other hand, she treats as movement to a
FocP in a split-CP model (cf. Rizzi 1997; see Section 3.3). Taking focus in situ to be
the normal case for the underived VP order in many languages (see above), there
is only one position on the left where focused constituents go.
What is of more interest with respect to our discussion is the distribution
of topics. In recent accounts, topicalisation in Italian is more or less identified
with clitic left dislocation;13 clitics seem to be obligatory with topics bearing
the accusative, whereas they are optional with other arguments and adjuncts
(Frascarelli 2000: 145). Thus, clitics are a reliable indicator of topicality, which
is crucial for the analysis of right hand topics. In the corpus used by Frascarelli
(2000: 144), 64% of the topics are on the left-hand side, whereas 36% are right
peripheral. Compare:
(27) a. [TopP gli amici di Sara [Gianni è partito senza
â•…â•… the friends of S. â•— G. aux left without
neanche salutar-li]]
even greet-them
b. [TopP nel-la sua casa di Roma [IP Paolo ci va poco spesso]]
╅╅ in-the his house of Rome ╅╛↜渀屮P. cl goes little often

(28) a. hanno deciso di girare l’Europa in macchina [DP Cesare

aux-3pl decided to travel the-Europe in car â•… C.
e sua moglie]
and his wife
‘Cesar and his wife decided to travel through Europe by car.’
b. non voglio più uscir-ci [PP con gli amici di mio fratello]
neg want-1sg anymore go-out-cl ╅╗↜with the friends of my brother
‘With the friends of my brother, I do not want to go out anymore.’

.â•… Note that there is also independent distributional evidence for the movement of non-finite
verb forms to a rather high position in Italian (Giusti 1995: 1352).
.â•… Note that left dislocation also indicates topicality in languages like German (Jacobs
2001: 659).
 Peter Öhl

The right peripheral topic in (28b) is doubled by a clitic, exactly like the left
peripheral ones in (27). Subjects are never doubled by a clitic in pro-drop Italian.
Thus, defocused postverbal subjects can be treated on a par with topics.
Moreover, the options of ordering multiple topical elements are equivalent
on both sides of the sentence (Frascarelli 2000:  139). Furthermore, Frascarelli
(139; 161ff.) provides several arguments for the position of both kinds of topics
being identical and proposes that the whole FocP moves to the left in cases of right
topicalisation. We do not want to go into the details of this analysis but would
also like to refer the reader to Vallduví’s (1992: 85; 101) analysis of right periph-
eral topics in Catalan. He proposes a model of mirrored adjunct positions for
topics in the same c-command position, which could also be translated into left
and right specification of a TopP. The difference is not really crucial from our
point of view. The advantage of such a model would be the replacement of the
notion of precedence by a notion of c-command. Either option, both movement
of the FocP and mirroring, provides the possibility of a canonical topic position
in phrase structural terms also for languages like Italian. Assuming a canonical
subject position on the grounds of these observations the following hierarchy
is derived:
(29) TopP > FocP > IP > VP

Kiss (2002) proposes a different hierarchy of FPs for Hungarian. Firstly, she assumes
no IP. Secondly, there is evidence for a position specific to strong quantifiers.
(30) TopP > QP > FocP > VP

Kiss (2002) states that quantified and focalised expressions precede the verb but
follow sentence adverbials which express the speaker’s attitude (31a). Adverbials
are often taken as indicating the borders between specific positions for different
classes of constituents (cf. Cinque 1998). She generalises elements preceding them
as topics and, thus, as identifying a topic phrase (31b).
(31) a. Szerintem [QP minden diák [FocP a szintaxist
in-my-opinion â•… every student â•…â•… the syntax
[VP szereti legjobban]]]
â•… likes best
b. [TopP A diádok [szerintem [VP jól [VP tudják a szintaxist]]]]
╅╅↜the students in-my-opinion ╅ well ╅ know the syntax

There is considerable work on German topicalisation by Frey (2000, 2004a+b;

2007), suggesting that German also has a canonical topic position. Like Kiss
(2002), he takes sentence adverbials to indicate the boundary between topics
and non-topics. Taking cataphoric discourse anaphora as reliable indicators of
 Formal and functional constraints on constituent order and their universality 

topicality (cf. also Reinhart 2004: 296), Frey (2007) concludes that the subject
preceding the sentence adverbial in sentences like those below is a topic:
(32) a. Weil er müde war, hat ein Student leider während
because he tired was has a student unfortunately during
der Vorlesung geschlafen.
the lecture slept (Frey 2007: 333)
b. *Weil er müde war, hat leider ein Student während der Vorlesung geschlafen.

Subjects of thetic sentences cannot bind discourse anaphora:

(33) After they*i had turned up the music, the polícei came.

On the basis of data like the above, (Frey 2004a+b; 2007) makes a strong assumption
about a canonical (or designated) topic position in German:
(34) Designated Topic Position
In the middle field of the German clause, directly above the base position
of sentential adverbials (…), there is a designated position for topics (in the
aboutness sense): all topics occuring in the middle field, and only them,
occur in this position. (Frey 2007: 232)

Frey does not use a model with a fixed hierarchy of FPs. Instead, he assumes
that FPs vary according to the class of elements they can host. His topic position
is below the FinP hosting the finite verb. Contrasted elements are located in a
ContrP dominating FinP (35a). Non-contrastive topical elements move to the
C-domain only in the absence of contrastive ones, and in one of two scenarios:
firstly, when there is formal movement of the highest element from the so-called
middle field to SPEC/FinP (35b) due to an EPP-like condition that one specifier in
the C-domain has to be occupied; secondly, left dislocation, which he also regards
as a case of topicalisation, bringing topics to SPEC/CP. This is possible both in
root clauses where SPEC/FinP is occupied by a co-indexed pronoun (35c) and in
subordinate clauses with a complementiser (35d), where the co-indexed pronoun
is in the actual topic position.
(35) a. [ContrP Mit dem Hammer [FinP[Fin’ hat [TopP Otto [das
╅╅╇╛↜with the hammer ╅╅ ╅ ↜渀屮has ╅╅ Otto ╗↜the
Fenster eingeschlagen]]]]]
window smashed
b. [FinP Otto1 [Fin’ hat [TopP t1 [das Fenster eingeschlagen]]]]
╅ Otto ╅ ╇ ↜渀屮↜has ╅╅╅ the window smashed
c. [CP Den Otto1 [FinP den1 [Fin’ mag [TopP t’1 [jeder t1]]]]]
╅ the Otto ╅ ╇ him ╅╇↜likes ╅╅ ╅ ╛everyone
 Peter Öhl

d. Jeder glaubt, [CP den Hans1 [C’ dass [FinP [TopP den1 [jeder t1 mag]]]]]14
everybody thinks ╅ ╇ the John ╅ that ╅╅╅ ╅ him everyone likes

He concludes that the canonical topic position is not in the so called prefield but
topmost in the middle field, which yields the following hierarchy for German:
(36) CP > ContrP > FinP > TopP (Frey 2004b: 29)

Consideration of features of subject-prominence, such as regular passivisation

and the existence of formal subjects (see above, pp. 238, 241), might lead one
to suggest that the hierarchy should be amended with the insertion of an IP below
TopP. However, in the following subsection 3.3 we are going to discuss reasons
to assume that, like Hungarian, German can dispense with an IP, and that the
assumption of a canonical topic position is equally not really forced by the data.

3.3â•… Does the EPP approach yield a proper classification of languages?

If it is true that the application of the EPP applied to different levels of projection
results in one (or more) canonical position(s), we end up with a system of four
classes of languages, much like the earlier typological approach. In languages
like English, a parametric condition of occupying SPEC/IP is criterial for gram-
maticality. In contrast, topic movement is far from being obligatory. Thus, English
rather clearly belongs to the class with a canonical position for subjects but
without one for topics. Similarly, Hungarian may be classified as ‘topic-prominent’.
Whereas Italian seems to have canonical positions for both classes of constituents,
languages like Tagalog may have neither. It would be possible to state these properties
in a table like the following one:

Table 1.╇ Canonical structural positions

Subject Topic

yes e.g. English, Italian, German (?) e.g. Hungarian, Italian, German (?)
no e.g. Tagalog, Hungarian, German (?) e.g. Tagalog, English, German (?)

However, a binary system like this cannot, in our view, be considered a

sufficiently explanatory adequate solution. In fact, it suggests that the options of
encoding topicality and subjecthood can be reduced to positions. We, however,
assume that the options in systems with fewer FPs are just different because

.â•… Note that this example taken from Frey (2004b) is considered ungrammatical by speakers
of northern German varieties. Sentences like these are quite common in the south of Germany,
though, especially in Bavaria.
 Formal and functional constraints on constituent order and their universality 

the relevant features apply more freely, and that languages like German (and
also Japanese and Korean) differ from most languages in this table with regard to
this property.
There has been much discussion of the status of German as being either
topic- or subject-prominent from the typological point of view (e.g. Lötscher 1992).
Even though German has some of the features typical for ‘subject-prominence’ in Li
& Thompson’s (1976) classification, it also has properties of topic-prominence. So
called ‘double subject constructions’ and free nominatives (‘nominativus pendens’)
as hanging topics occur with high frequency at least in the spoken language:
(37) a. %Bäume stehen dort nur (noch) Tannen. (double subjects)
trees stand there only ↜yet firs
‘As far as trees are concerned, there are only firs left there.’
b. %Rotwein schmeckt mir (eigentlich) nur Bordeaux.
red-wine tastes to-me ↜actually only B.
‘As far as red wine is concerned, I actually like nothing but Bordeaux.’

(38) a. Fritz, ich war gestern bei ihm.

F. I was yesterday with him
 (nominativus pendens; Sasse 1982: 282)
b. Langer Samstag, da sind die Leute wie verrückt.
long Saturday then are the people like crazy
‘On a ‘long Saturday’ [i.e. a Saturday on which shops are open all day],
people work themselves into a frenzy.’

It is also significant that there are verbs which can fully dispense with an
overt subject:
(39) a. Mir graut vor aller Theorie.
pron-(dat) cause-shudder by all theory
‘I shudder to think of any theory.’
b. Mich dürstet nach Wissen.
pron-(acc) thirst(verb)-3sg after knowledge
‘I am thirsty for knowledge.’

These sentences belong to a group of constructions also found in topic-�prominent

languages such as Japanese: the so-called ‘dative-subject-phenomenon’. Non-
�nominative subjects of predication that are topmost in the thematic hierarchy of
the predicate can be base-generated above all other arguments, one of which may
even bear nominative case:
(40) watasitati ni wa [Yumi ga ut-teiru no] ga kikoeru (Japanese)
we dat top Yumi nom sing-prg sub nom can-hear
‘We can hear that Yumi is singing.’
 Peter Öhl

They occur regularly in German as well:

(41) a. Schon immer schmeckten Kindern süße Soßen.
already always tasted-good children-dat sweet sauces-nom
‘Children have always liked sweet sauces.’
b. Immer wieder unterlaufen Syntaktikern Fehler.
always again happen syntacticians-dat mistakes-nom

Formal movement of the German subject to SPEC/IP cannot be empirically

motivated. If an argument, and thus also a subject, is outside of the VP, this must
be triggered by discourse semantic markedness:
(42) a. dass unglücklicherweise immer wieder [VP Syntaktikern solche
that unfortunately always again ╅ ╛↜to-syntacticans such
Fehler unterlaufen]
mistakes happen
‘… that unfortunately such mistakes happen to syntacticians again and again.’
b. *dass unglücklicherweise immer wieder [IP Fehleri [VP Syntáktikern ti
unterlaufen]]
c. dass unglücklicherweise [solche Fehler]i immer wieder [VP Syntáktikern ti
unterlaufen]
d. dass [solche Fehler]i unglücklicherweise immer wieder [VP Syntáktikern ti
unterlaufen]
Haider (1997a+b; 2000, 2010) correlates the absence of canonical positions to the
basic VP of a language. Note that dative subjects were also there in English before
it changed to a SVO language with positional licensing (cf. Kiparsky 1997). It could
be argued that, in languages allowing such order, the arguments are linearised
according to the conceptual hierarchy of thematic roles rather than according to
positions that are related to syntactic functions; this means that the syntactic order
corresponds to the LCS (lexical conceptual structure; cf. Jackendoff 1990). Since
this option seems to be restricted to SOV languages, Haider (1997b) assumes that
in a right-headed VP where V0 licenses its arguments to the left, V′can inherit
the selectional properties of V0 and argument insertion is just the successive
saturation of the predicate’s Θ-grid. Secondly, constituent order is determined by
information structure. Remember that SOV was said to be the predominant order
in so-called ‘topic-prominent languages’ (see above, p. 237ff.). The OV-property of
languages such as German, Japanese and Korean implies relatively free word order
compared to languages such as English, where the VP is left-headed (cf. also Fukui
1995; Abraham 2007: 186f., 191). In a left-headed VP, the head can license only
one complement to its right. Therefore, VP-shells are necessary, providing SPEC-
positions to positionally license the arguments of V (for a detailed presentation of this
branching-and-discharge-model cf. Haider 2000).
 Formal and functional constraints on constituent order and their universality 

That the order DAT-NOM is not derived by scrambling but is actually the
basic one is also shown by the fact that it is the only grammatical order found in a
fronted VP (Haider 1993: 132ff.):
(43) a. [Syntaktikern Fehler unterlaufen]i sind immer wieder ti
syntacticians-dat mistakes-nom happen-past-ptcp are always again
b. *[Fehler Syntaktikern unterlaufen]i sind immer wieder ti

Examples like these serve Haider (1993, 1997b; 2000, 2010) with a major empiri-
cal argument against a canonical subject position in German that the fronted VP
can contain the subject with ergative and passivised transitive verbs shows that
there is no English-like syntactic requirement of ‘externalisation’:
(44) a. [VP Bäume ausgerissen] wurden hier heute noch nicht.
â•… trees pulled-out were here today still not
 (passivised transitive verb)
b. [VP Zuhörer eingeschlafen] sind uns aber, Gott sei Dank,
â•… listeners slept-in are us-dat but god-dat be thank
auch nicht. (unaccusative verb)
also not
‘But we didn’t have any listeners falling asleep either, thank God.’

That it is the VP and not the IP which is fronted is indicated by the fact that the
phrase preceding Vfin in C0 may not contain its trace (Haider 1993: 151):
(45) a. [VP ein Zug angekommen (*tk)]i istk hier noch nie ti
â•… a train arrived is here still never
b. *[IP ein Zug an tk]i kamk hier noch nie ti

Obviously, German subjects do not move to SPEC/IP, but stay in situ in the
unmarked case (whereas cases of subject in situ, as in locative inversion, are clearly
the marked case in languages such as English). The two potential explanations
in the Generative model are that either the EPP does not hold for the IP in
German, or that German does not have an IP at all – and thus no canonical subject
position (Haider 1993: 142ff.; 1997a+b; 2000, 2010: 45–85; detailed discussion of
arguments against an IP in German can also be found in Sternefeld 2006: 507ff.
and in Öhl 2003: 104–134). Haider (2010: 271) puts it like this: “the word order is
not determined by case licensing requirements but by the ranked lexical argument
structure that determines the order of projection/merger”.
There are also reasons to doubt whether the criteria presented in Section 3.2
for the identification of a TopP in German are sufficient. Firstly, it is obvious that
more than one sentence adverbial can occur in a sentence. If the positions of these
adverbials were fixed, one would expect that nothing could intervene between them.
 Peter Öhl

Moreover, all topics, but nothing else, should precede them. Neither prediction
seems to hold, however. In the following examples, there are no topics given by
the context. That each of the three answers to the question in (46) is thetic is
also indicated by the initial expletive that cannot occur in sentences with topical
subjects (Frey 2004a: 11).
(46) You are looking so glad – what do you expect?

(47) a. Es wird erfreulicherweise wahrscheinlich ein Student die ganze

today will fortunately probably a student the whole
Vorlesung aufzeichnen.
lecture record
b. Es wird erfreulicherweise ein Student wahrscheinlich die ganze Vorlesung
aufzeichnen.
c. Es wird ein Student erfreulicherweise wahrscheinlich die ganze Vorlesung
aufzeichnen.

According to our native intuition, the main difference between the sentences in
(47a) vs. (b) and (c) is that the subject in (47a) is non-specific. This can be easily
confirmed by a discourse continuation like “I am going to introduce him to you
soon.”, which would be possible only in (47b+c). Thus, the specific subject can occur
in two positions. It seems that in German, these adverbials may precede, follow,
or frame other constituents. Whether all elements preceding sentence adverbials
in languages like Hungarian are in fact topical is difficult for us to test. Assuming
them to be universal indicators of topicality, Kiss (1996:  128ff.) proposes two
different ‘subject positions’ in English, one being associated with topic features.
(48) a. In most cases, boys will be born.
b. *Boys will in most cases be born.
c. Boys will in most cases know the novels of Karl May.

However, if the subject in (c) above is in a higher position than in (a), why should the
modal will also be forced to move there? It is not in other cases of topicalisation:
(49) *The novels of Karl May will in most cases boys know.

In our view, data like these only show that an adverbial taking scope over the
proposition cannot be adjoined below a subject within sentence focus. Sentence
adverbials precede the discourse semantically unmarked constituents, but they can
follow defocused constituents on the grounds of factors which will be discussed
more deeply in Section 4. For the time being, we just state that the data in (47) do
not support the assumption of a fixed position for sentence adverbials in German.
Moreover, constituent order also varies when there are several elements that
are topical according to the assumption that cataphors are a reliable indicator of
topicality (cf. Frey 2007; Reinhart 2004).
 Formal and functional constraints on constituent order and their universality 

(50) a. Weil sie ihn interessierte, hat ein Student diese Vorlesung
because it him interested has a student this lecture
erfreulicherweise ganz aufgezeichnet.
to-my-pleasure totally recorded
b. Weil sie ihn interessierte, hat ein Student erfreulicherweise diese Vorlesung
ganz aufgezeichnet.
c. Weil sie ihn interessierte, hat diese Vorlesung erfreulicherweise ein Student
ganz aufgezeichnet.
d. ?Weil sie ihn interessierte, hat erfreulicherweise ein Student diese Vorlesung
ganz aufgezeichnet.
e. ??Weil sie ihn interessierte, hat erfreulicherweise diese Vorlesung ein Student
ganz aufgezeichnet.
f. Weil sie ihn interessierte, hat diese Vorlesung ein Student erfreulicherweise
ganz aufgezeichnet.

The orders in (50b) and (c) are as natural as those in (50a), and not even the order
in (50d) is fully bad. The order in (50e) is rather marked because of scrambling
in the basic focal domain, whereas (50f) shows that different orders above these
adverbials are possible. This also indicates that the order may be determined by
various factors. We shall return to this point in Section 4 as well, where we investi-
gate the distributional options of non-focal elements in more detail. Again, we just
state that the existence of a canonical topic position for German is debatable.15
There is also Italian evidence for several potential topic positions. It is for this
reason that the cartographic split-CP-approach of Rizzi (1997) has to build on the
assumption of at least two TopPs, one between the positions of complementisers
and focused elements, and one between focused elements and Rizzi’s FinP.

(51) Credo [ForceP che [TopP a Gianni [FocP QUESTO [TopP domani
think-1sg ╅╅ that ╅╇ ╛↜渀屮to G. ╅╅ THIS ╅╇ tomorrow
[FinP [IP gli dovremmo dire]…]
╅╅╅↜渀屮objcl must-fut-1pl say
‘THIS, I think we have to tell to John tomorrow.’ (Rizzi 1997: 295)

.â•… Among others, Abraham (1997) also argues for such a canonical topic position on the
grounds of functional projection. In order to avoid misunderstanding, it might be necessary
to draw the attention to some of our assumptions defended in the course of this paper. We
would like to emphasise that we are not arguing against discourse configurational properties of
German in general. However, we assume two factors supporting discourse configurationality:
first, the existence of specific functional phrases like TopP; second, the absence of functional
phrases restricting word order, which facilitates free serialisation according to information
structural features by means of adjunction. See also the arguments against functional phrases
between the German VP and CP in Haider (2010: 45–85).
 Peter Öhl

Rizzi (1997) obviously takes different kinds of thematic elements to be of the same
class. Since more than one of them can occur in both partitions of the split CP, he
simply states that the TopPs in his system are iterable.
(52) [ForceP [TopP Il libro [TopP a Gianni [TopP domani
╅╅╅╅ the book ╅╅ to Gianni ╅╇ tomorrow
[FinP[IP glielo darò senz’altro]…]
╅╅╇╛╛╛indirObjCl.dirObjCl give-fut.1sg surely (Rizzi 1997: 290)

Rizzi (2001) found evidence for even another potential Italian topic position. The
sentences in (53) show that the Italian subordination marker che cannot follow a
topic (53a), whereas the interrogative complementiser se can (53b). He concludes
that there is an Interrogative Phrase (IntP) below ForceP, with another potential
topic position above it:
(53) a. *Credo, a Gianni, che avrebbero dovuto
think-1sg dat G. that aux-pastperf-subj-3pl must-pastpart
dirgli la verità.
say-inf det truth
‘I think that they should have told the truth to John.’
 (Italian; Rizzi 2001: 289)
b. Non so, [ForceP [TopP a Gianni [IntP se [[IP avrebbero
neg know-1sg ╅╅╅╅╇ dat G. ╅╇╛↜if aux-pastperf-subj-3pl
potuto dirgli la verità]…]
can-pastpart say-inf det truth
‘I do not know if they could have told the truth to John.’ (Rizzi 2001: 289)

Similar accounts have been proposed by Roussou (2000: 79ff.) for Greek and by
Öhl (2004:  165) for Persian and Bengali. The options of positioning topics are
very clearly not bound to a single canonical position in these languages. Moreover,
Benincà & Poletto (2004) observe that the distribution of different kinds of topics
in Italian is, in fact, restricted to different layers of the C-domain. Instead of
iterable topic phrases, they propose a more differentiated hierarchical order of FPs
which they relate to specific discourse semantic functions:
(54) Sublayers of the C-Domain (Benincà & Poletto 2004: 73)
[ForceP [hanging topic [scene setter [left dislocation [list interpr.

frame theme

[contr.foc1 [contr.foc2 [ inform. foc [FinP ]⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ]

focus
 Formal and functional constraints on constituent order and their universality 

However, if the constraints on linearisation in the C-domain are conceptual rather

than syntactic, would it not then be more plausible to assume that different kinds
of topics are adjoined at different levels according to a conceptual hierarchy?

3.4â•… Linearisation without functional phrases

If Haider (1993, 2000, 2010) is right in assuming no IP in German syntax, the lack
of this FP should be the reason for the absence of a canonical subject position.
Now the question is whether we need FPs to derive the discourse semantically
marked positions outside of the VP. In order to answer this question, we want to
discuss VP-fronting again. First note that fronted VPs must not contain any traces
which would not be c-commanded by their antecedents. As soon as an argument
has been moved out of the VP, the latter is blocked for fronting:
(55) a. [VP gerne Kindern Märchen erzählt]i haben Großeltern
â•… gladly to-children fairy-tales told have grandparents
schon immer ti
yet always
b. *[VP gerne [VP Kindern tk erzählt]i haben Großeltern Märchenk schon immer ti

(56) *[VP Syntaktikern tk unterlaufen]i sind solche Fehlerk immer wieder ti

Thus, the following structure should be ungrammatical, too. The given example,
however, is not.

(57) [VP (*tk) Fehler unterlaufen]i sind [TopP Syntaktikernk [immer wieder ti]]

Thus it is improbable that topics and comparable elements are moved from the
VP to structurally higher positions in FPs. Since it is implausible to assume that
V’ can be fronted to SPEC/CP, the fronted phrase must be a complete VP. This is
possible if we assume that the fronted phrase is a segment of VP, i.e. if the whole
VP is analysed as an adjunction structure. We follow Haider (1997a+b; 2000) in
assuming that head final VPs are not constituted by shells that are projected by
separate heads like v0, but rather are iterated or extended by adjuncts licensed to
the left by V0.

(58) a. [VP Kindern Märchen erzählt] haben [VP Großeltern [VP schon
╅╇ to-children fairy-tales told have ╅ ╛↜grandparents ╅ ╛↜yet
immer [VP gerne [VP ti]]]]
always ╅ ╛↜gladly
b. [VP Märchen erzählt] haben [VP Großeltern [VP Kindern [VP schon immer
[VP gerne [VP ti]]]]]
 Peter Öhl

c. [VP Fehler unterlaufen]i sind [VP Syntaktikernk

╅ ╛↜mistakes happen-past-ptcp are ╅ ╛↜to-syntacticans
[VP immer wieder [VP ti]]]
╅ ╛↜again-and-again

In a representational model of Generative Syntax in the style of Haider

(1993: 101ff.), Öhl (2003: 79; 126ff.) suggests replacing movement by a concept
of procrastinated saturation of a predicate’s Θ-grid. Consistent with standard
assumptions, the projection of V is complete in this model if the arguments are
inserted according to the Θ-hierarchy. However, arguments that are discourse
semantically marked may be inserted later in the upper partition of the middle
field. This kind of procrastination leaves an empty position only if it takes place
before other arguments are inserted. In this case, the VP is blocked for fronting.
(59) a. Solche Fehleri sind ti wahrscheinlich schon oft
such mistakes are probably already often
[VP Syntaktikern ti unterlaufen].
â•… to-syntacticans undergo-past-ptcp
‘Such mistakes probably happen rather often to syntacticians.’
b. *[VP Syntaktikern ti unterlaufen]k sind solche Fehleri wahrscheinlich
schon oft tk.

Thus, only arguments which do not have arguments above them in the Θ-hierarchy
are found outside of a fronted VP.
(60) a. Syntaktikerni sind ti wahrscheinlich schon oft [VP solche Fehler unterlaufen].
b. [VP Solche Fehler unterlaufen]k sind Syntaktikerni wahrscheinlich schon oft tk.

If there is no further argument to be inserted in the lower partition, its projection

can be completed without an empty position, even if all arguments are inserted
into syntax later on (for a similar account cf. Haider 1993: 152ff.; 1997b; 2000).
(61) a. Syntaktikerni sind ti solche Fehler wahrscheinlich schon oft
[VP unterlaufen].
b. [VP Unterlaufen]k sind solche Fehler Syntaktikerni wahrscheinlich
schon oft tk. (Nur zugegeben haben sie diese nie).
‘Such mistakes probably HAPPENED to syntacticians rather often.
(It is just that they never admitted them.)’

Abraham (2007:  194ff.) also argues against movement of elements out of VP:
‘Themata are “born” outside, i.e. to the left of VP, whereas rhemata are “born”
inside VP’ (Abraham 2007: 197). We agree with Abraham (2007: 197) that what he
calls thematic elements (we subsume under them topics, discourse old information,
etc.) are base generated in layers above VP interacting with discourse semantics.
 Formal and functional constraints on constituent order and their universality 

Furthermore, as will be shown in the next section, the order of the elements in this
partition is not as strict as a cartographic approach would predict. Thus we also
agree with accounts like Abraham (2007) and Molnárfi (2007) which state that
linearisation in languages like German is not triggered by ‘formalised pragmatic
features’ (Molnárfi 2007: 176).

4.â•… Topicality, perspectivation, and linearisation

Two needs are made obvious by the observations presented in the previous section.
Firstly, if there are, in fact, numerous potential positions for topical elements
and if we still want to assume canonical positions for them as we do for subjects,
we have to find a proper means of identifying these positions. Secondly, it does
not really seem clear how topical elements should be classified. What we need
first of all is a more differentiated model of the semantic and pragmatic criteria
for linearisation. In past research, discourse configurational properties of many
languages have been stated on the basis of empirical observations. Besides those
mentioned above, there are data from Catalan, Romanian, Bulgarian, Russian,
Greek, Nepali, Hindi, Finnish, Arabic and many more (cf. Kiss 2001). Besides
diverging accounts of focus-prominence, we find different uses of the term topic
(as well as of terms such as thematicy and familiarity) that are even more prob-
lematic. Quite often, they are confused with other discourse functional features
and abused to subsume them (cf. Vallduví 1992: 28ff.). Therefore, we would like
to continue by discussing the notion of topicality.

4.1â•… On the notion of topicality

Earlier accounts of sentence topics can be divided into two basic types: authors
from different approaches, like Vallduví (1992), Lambrecht (1994), Rizzi (1997)
and Jacobs (2001) rely on the option of having multiple topics in a sentence, some
of them suggesting different kinds (Choi 1997; Benincà & Poletto 2004; Frascarelli
& Hinterhölzl 2007). Frascarelli (2000: 157) states that, in her corpus, the number
of topical elements is restricted to three, which, in our opinion, is no more than an
empirical generalisation that speakers normally avoid having too many of them.
Other authors argue against multiple topic constructions either from the
semantic (e.g. Reinhart 1981: 56ff.; 2004: 284ff.) or the syntactic point of view (e.g.
Breul 2007: 258ff.; Vermeulen 2007: 194ff.). In order to exclude too many indicators
of topicality, Reinhart (1981) defines topics in a strict aboutness sense and argues
explicitly against a familiarity account (Reinhart 1981: 60ff.; 2004: 297ff.). We follow
this view as far as the status of givenness as a necessary or sufficient feature is
 Peter Öhl

concerned. Just as there can be non-topical old information included in the focus,
there are newly introduced ‘shifted’ topics (as discussed by Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl
2007: 88, 109), probably restricted by an accessibility condition for their being used
as a link for information storage (Vallduví & Engdahl 1996: 498). The following
sentence shows that a topic can be formally licensed although not given contextually
nor by inference:
(62) When she was five years old, a child of my acquaintance announced a theory
that she was inhabited by rabbits. (Reinhart 2004: 296)

Why should a propositional utterance not be ‘about’ more than one discourse
referent, however? Lambrecht (1994: 150) suspects that Reinhart’s (1981) observa-
tions concern the “pragmatic salience of the various topic referents at given points
of the discourse [rather than] the difference between topics and non-topics”. We
also think that Reinhart’s (1981, 2004) restrictions limit the range of the term
topic too much. Firstly, she analyses only NP topics. Reinhart (1981: 56) states that
her analysis could be extended to other topic expressions, but she does not
show this. Secondly, as far as we can see, all of her examples concern the subject
of predication. Reinhart (1981: 54) explicitly identifies aboutness with predication;
even though Reinhart (1981:  58) calls for a pragmatic definition of aboutness
instead of a semantic one, we miss the discussion of non-arguments as topics in
both Reinhart (1981) and (2004).
If the sentence topic were identified with the subject of predication only, there
could be only one. Semantic predication can, however, be only one of the factors
determining topicality. Therefore, it is just one of the dimensions of topic/comment
in work like Jacobs (2001), where it is defined as follows:
(63) Semantic Predication (Jacobs 2001: 647)
In P = (X … Y), X is the semantic subject and Y the semantic predicate iff
a. X specifies a variable in the semantic valency of Y
b. there is no Z such that (i) Z specifies a variable in the semantic valency of
an element in Y and (ii) Z is hierarchically higher in semantic form than X

He gives an example from German where the indirect object is the fronted
topic and subject of predication. This is formalised in the semantic form given
in (b) below.
(64) a. Der Polizei misstraut er. (Jacobs 2001: 648)
the police-(dat) mistrusts he
b. [THE-POLICE(y) & [HE(x) & MISTRUST(x,y)]

Jacobs (2001: 657) extends the semantic subject analysis to adverbials as well by

assuming that they can specify a situation variable, thus belonging to the extended
 Formal and functional constraints on constituent order and their universality 

valency of the predicate. Breul (2004, 2007) develops an account whereby exactly
one topic can move to a canonical SPEC position, which is triggered by a specific
formal feature [–foc]. If we are interpreting his analysis correctly, this movement
applies either to the subjects of categorical sentences, or to elements that are
fronted due to the assignment of a feature turning them into subjects of predica-
tion in the sense of Jacobs (2001: 657). Thus, the singular topic in accounts like
these seems to be restricted to the dimension of semantic subjecthood, which does
not, in our view, exclude further topical elements from being licensed by discourse
semantic functions.
As indicated in Section 1 (and also in the view defended by Reinhart 1981,
2004), a topic should be defined in terms of pragmatic aboutness. Sentence topics
are used as links (Vallduví 1992: 43) respectively cataloguing addresses (Reinhart
1981: 24), i.e. as instructions to the hearer as to where to store the information. A
definition of addressation can also be found in Jacobs (2001: 650).
(65) Addressation
In (X Y), X is the address for Y iff X marks the point in the speaker-hearer
knowledge where the information carried by Y has to be stored at the moment
of the utterance of (X Y).

Since addressation is a dimension of topicality brought into play by Reinhart

herself, it might be daring to contradict her view that there can be only one such
item per sentence. However, the view that more than one addressation topic can
occur per sentence is supported by cross-linguistic evidence. Vallduví (1992: 48)
puts it like this: “Sentences may have more than one link […]. In these cases the
speaker directs the hearer to go to two addresses and enter the information under
both.” He gives an example from Catalan:
(66) El bròquil a l’amo l’hi van regalar.
The broccoli to the.boss it.him aux-3pl-past give
‘As far as the broccoli and the boss are concerned: they gave it to him for free.’16

Similar sentences can be found in Hungarian, which can also be paralleled to

German examples. Both of the following sentences roughly mean: ‘Speaking of
John and Mary, he took her to Paris, last year’.

.â•… Original interlinear translation: “The broccoli the boss (they) gave it to him (for free).”
Like Vallduví (1992) and Frascarelli (2000) we take clitic doubling as indicating topicality. Left
dislocation can be considered a strong indicator of topicality in languages like German as well
(Jacobs 2001: 658).
 Peter Öhl

(67) a. János Marit [tavaly [VP vitte el Páris-ba]

John Mary last-year â•… ╛↜渀屮took away Paris-to (Kiss 1994: 14)
b. Hans, der hat Maria letztes Jahr nach Paris mitgenommen.
John pron-3sg has Mary last year to Paris with-taken

The elements Reinhart considers topics have to fulfil several formal properties,
including having the highest accessibility among potential antecedents for discourse
anaphora (Reinhart 2004: 299).
(68) Max was walking down from school, pondering about the meaning of life. Soon
he ran into Felix and then he suggested that they stop at the bar.

However, if the subject is intended as the sole element with topic potential, this
example seems questionable to us. If it is true that topics are the most accessible
antecedent, this test should also be valid for the exclusion of multiple topics. This
does not seem to be the case, as shown by the following example:
(69) Soon he ran into Felix. Max did not actually want to meet Felix, but then he
suggested stopping at the bar.

In the second sentence above, there is no absolute preference for how to interpret
the discourse anaphor, which should mean that both referents, Max and Felix,
have the potential of being the addressation topic.
Focusing on the function of topics as an instruction for information storage
brings us instantly to another ‘dimension of topic-comment’ from Jacobs (2001),
which is frame setting.
(70) Frame Setting
In (X Y), X is the frame for Y iff X specifies a domain of (possible) reality to
which the proposition expressed by Y is restricted. (Jacobs 2001: 656)

Frame setting expressions are the part of the sentence that specifies the spatial or
temporal framework for the event reported in the sentence, or a particular state of
affairs in which the sentence asserts something (Reinhart 1980: 173). It has often
been noted that languages with topic morphology like Japanese and Korean use
the same markers with frame setters and sentence topics. 17
(71) a. Kinoo wa Hurankuhuruto wa tenki ga yokat ta. (Japanese)
yesterday top Frankfurt top weather nom good past
‘The weather was fine in Frankfurt, yesterday.’

.â•… For data and discussion we are indebted to Yuko-Shige Tamura and Jiro Inaba (Japanese),
Ki-Hyun Yoon (Korean).
 Formal and functional constraints on constituent order and their universality 

b. óje nún nalssi ga jón dokil

yesterday top weather nom whole Germany
esó joh-ass-ta (Korean)
loc beautiful-past-decl
‘The weather was fine all over Germany, yesterday.’
In the sentences below (cf. Jacobs 2001: 655), the first marker is stressed, which
yields a contrastive reading (more on this follows in Section 4.2).
(72) a. Kat ta baai ni wa, chiimu wa soori-daijin kara
win past case dat top team top prime-minister by
hyooshoo sareru. (Japanese)
commendation do-passive
b. sùnglihal kyòngu e nn tim-ùn taetonglyòng ekesò
win-rel case loc top team top president from
pyochang ùl pan ùl kòsita. (Korean)
commendation acc receive acc will
‘If the team win, they will receive a commendation from the president.’
Note that Krifka (2007: 49f.) analyses frame setters on a par with contrastive topics:
both of them are delimitations used in the management of information processing.
Thus, their cross-linguistically parallel representation in the information structure
of sentences may follow from their being an instruction for processing information,
much like addresses or links. In the following sentences, both the frame adverbials
and the subjects therefore can be regarded as topical under a suitable intonation:
(73) a. In meinem /Traum, da war /Peter ein Kroko\dil.
In my dream there was P. a crocodile
‘In my dream, Peter was a crocodile.’ (adapted from Jacobs 2001: 662)
b. In der /Kche, da hat /Peter das Ge\schirr gespült.
In the kitchen there has P. the dishes washed
‘In the kitchen, Peter did the dishes.’ (adapted from Jacobs 2001: 660)

We do not think that, in cases like these, there are two subjects of predication (as
the assumptions made by Jacobs 2001: 15; 660f. would imply). It is rather that the
frame setter restricts the domain for which the predication is valid. This assumption
is supported by an interesting argument by Strawson (1964; Reinhart 2004: 279;
we also refer to earlier discussions in Strawson 1950: 327ff.). He assumes that sen-
tences like the king of France is bald provoke a conflict in assigning a truth value
because, in an extensional context, the subject of predication lacks an extension. If
an element lacking an extension is part of an extensional predication, however, the
proposition must be false.
(74) The exhibition was visited yesterday by the king of France. (→ f!)
 Peter Öhl

We found that this is also true if the subject of predication follows a frame setter
or a contrastive topic:
(75) a. On Friday morning, the king of France was sad. (→ f!)
b. In London, the king of France is adored. (→ f!)
c. For Mary, the king of France would do everything. (→ f!)

In a hierarchy of elements restricting the interpretation of truth conditions, frame

setters and contrastive topics seem to be rather high, and the highest one seems
to be most crucial for judging the truth. This leads us directly to the question of
whether contrastiveness is another dimension of topicality. Choi (1997:  550 for
Korean) and Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl (2007: 88 for Italian, 109 for German) argue
that both continuing (i.e. familiar) and contrastive topics can turn into an aboutness
topic through movement.18 Consider the following example from Italian:
(76) Questo, io ai ragazzi non l’ho detto direttamente.
This I to-the boys not cl-acc.have.1sg told directly
 (Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl 2007: 88)

There are three topical elements present in the left periphery. That the object
demonstrative is a topic is indicated by clitic doubling; the subject pronoun has a
contrastive value, since the speaker “wants to stress that, as for him, he is not going
to tell anything to his students“ (Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl 2007: 88). They label the
constituent ai ragazzi as familiar or background topic (ibid.), since it is contextually
given and moved to the left. Questo is a topic in the aboutness sense, signalling a
shift in the conversation to the addressee. Interestingly, framing can be analysed
in a parallel way (ibid.: 89):
(77) Gestern hat der/Hans die Maria ge\troffen. (ibid.)
Similar observations have been made by Choi (1997: 550ff.) for Korean (see also
Hetland 2007). She states that Korean nún is not a topic marker but a marker of
contrastiveness. Contrastive elements can occur in several positions:
(78) a. Mary-ka ecey Boston-ey-nun ka-ss-ta.
Mary-nom yesterday Boston-to-contr went
b. Mary-ka Boston-ey-nun ecey ka-ss-ta.
c. Boston-ey-nun Mary-ka ecey ka-ss-ta. (Choi 1997: 550)

According to Choi (1997:  550), the nún-phrase gains topichood “gradually as it

moves along to the initial position of the sentence”. Put in a slightly different way, the

.â•… Cf. also McNay (2009: 199), who, looking at a range of different languages, uses a recursive
phase edge feature, [+Link], which carries different semantic import at each phase level, namely
contrastivity at the vP level and aboutness at the TP.
 Formal and functional constraints on constituent order and their universality 

continuing topic Mary in (78a+b) can also be the aboutness topic, used as an address
for information storage. Boston in (78a) has contrastive focus simply because it is
marked by nún and has focus in situ, whereas it is a contrastive topic in Frascarelli &
Hinterhölzl’s (2007: 88, 109) sense in (78b). In (78c) it is an aboutness topic, giving
an addressing instruction to the hearer. Similar observations are described by
Vermeulen (2007: 187ff.; cf. also Kuno 1972; Deguchi 2008) for Japanese.
(79) a. sono inu-wa kinoo kooen-de John-o kande-simatta.
That dog-contr yesterday park-at John-acc bite-closed
b. John-o sono inu-wa kinoo kooen-de kande-simatta.
John-acc that dog-contr yesterday park-at bite-closed
‘The dog bit John in the park yesterday.’ (adapted from Vermeulen 2007: 184)

Vermeulen analyses wa as a marker of discourse anaphoricity rather than contras-

tivity; however, given the contrastive reading of the elements marked by wa in the
sentences above, the Japanese sentences may also be analysed on a par with Choi’s
(1997) analysis of Korean. Note that if the Japanese marker wa (resp. Korean nún)
occurs twice in a sentence, one instance of it is stressed (as a rule the one that is
not fronted, there is an option of also fronting the focus, however; cf. Hetland
2007: 119). It then has contrastive focus properties.
(80) a. John wa sono neko wa pettosyopu de kat ta. (Japanese)
John wa this cat wa petshop loc buy past
‘It was this cat what John bought in the petshop.’
b. John wa sono neko o pettosyopu de wa kat ta.
John wa this cat acc petshop loc wa buy past
‘It was in a petshop where John bought the cat.’

(81) Chelswu-nún ejey ku chayk-n se-ss-ta.

C.-nún yesterday the book-nún bought (Korean; Hetland 2007: 119)

In both Japanese (83) and Korean (84), non-focused contrastive elements can
occur in a lower position and more than one contrastively focused element can
occur per sentence.
(82) A: Of course, mistakes can occur to everyone.
B: Yes, but such a mistake should not happen to such a man.

(83) a. tasikani dare-ni-mo matigai-wa okoriuru.

surely everyone-dat mistake-contr happen-can
b. sikasi sonoyouna hito-ni-wa sonoyouna matigai-wa
But such person-dat-contr such mistake-contr
okora-nai daroo.
happen-neg guess
 Peter Öhl

(84) a. Sesang-e ŏnjena nukunga-eke silsu-ga saengki-nŭn

world-loc always someone-dat mistake-nom occur-adnm
kŏs-I maj-da
fn-nom true-decl
b. kÅ�rae hajiman kÅ�lÅ�n silsu-nŭn kÅ�lÅ�n saram-eke-nŭn
yes but such mistake-contr such man-dat-contr
ilŏna-sŏ-nŭn andoi-n-da
happen-ptc-top neg-pres-decl

All these examples suggest that contrastivity is a property both topical and focal
constituents can have as an additional discourse semantic function. We propose
that contrastivity raises a topical element in the hierarchy by making it a delimiter in
Krifka’s (2007: 49f.) sense, which would mean shifting it to the ‘aboutness’-position
in Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl’s (2007: 95ff., 109ff.) model.
Given the notion of a familiar or continuing topic in the accounts just discussed,
we would like to return to the notion of givenness. Whereas Reinhart (1981) strictly
rejects the familiarity account, many authors rely on its constituting effect on topicality
(Vallduví 1992: 20ff.). However, note that the condition of familiarity can be decisively
weakened by replacing contextual givenness with accessibility (cf. Vallduví & Engdahl
1996: 498, who borrow the term from Ariel 1988; cf. also Reinhart 2004: 298ff.). It is
well known that topics can also be inferred from the background.
(85) a. Gustav hat die ganze Nacht nicht geschlafen. Studenten sind
G. has the whole night not slept students are
ja ununterbrochen am arbeiten.
ptc uninterruptedly at work-inf
‘Gustav hasn’t slept all night. Students are uninterruptedly at work,
as you know.’
b. Gustav geht gleich an die Uni. In der Mensa gibt es
G. goes shortly to the university in the refectory gives it
heute glhwein.
today mulled-wine
‘Gustav is going to the university, soon. In the refectory, they serve mulled
wine today.’

The second sentence in (a) uses a generic expression which can be the topic if it is
part of the common ground that the pre-mentioned referent belongs to this class of
individuals. Similarly, the scene setter in (b) is a suitable topic because speaker and
hearer share the knowledge that universities have refectories. But the conditions
on accessibility are even weaker. It may even be sufficient to know of the existence
or the properties of a referent. Thus, frame setters are always highly accessible.
 Formal and functional constraints on constituent order and their universality 

They are presupposed, like e.g. the existence of a yesterday or the expectation of
a tomorrow.
(86) Yesterday it was raining. Tomorrow it hopefully won’t.
Topics such as those in Reinhart’s Example (62) (When she was five years old, a
child of my acquaintance announced a theory that she was inhabited by rabbits)
are accessible since it is presupposed that people can have acquaintances and that
they can have children. Note that the sentence becomes significantly worse if the
subject is replaced by a bare indefinite that cannot be presupposed, e.g. a person.
However, as also argued by Reinhart (2004:  275ff.), this does not mean that
presupposition implies topichood. Note that the subjects of thetic sentences are
also often presupposed:
(87) The police are coming.
The reason for the often observed interference of topicality with properties such
as givenness, specificity, definiteness etc. must be that they imply high accessibility,
which is a precondition for discourse cohesion (Vallduví 1992: 20), which again is
a reason for choosing constituents as topics. This is why we would like to suggest
regarding these properties as prototypical rather than necessary and sufficient
features of topics.

4.2â•… ‘Perspectivation’
“The speaker may choose very different ‘perspectives’ under which the entire
information to be verbalised is put into sequential order” (Stutterheim & Klein
2002: 66). Since several of the features influencing constituent order seem to exist
independently of topicality, the discussion may be reduced to two major questions.
Firstly, what are the primitives of what we call perspectivation? Secondly, how do
they, in fact, interact with topicality? In the context of the term perspectivation,
the notions of salience and of ‘point of view’ (called empathy by Chafe 1976)
frequently occur in the literature besides ‘topicality’. The options a speaker has for
marking what he finds relevant (or assumes the hearer to), or for illustrating his
point of view, are quite different across the languages of the world due to different
structural means and different formal restrictions.
Since English has a syntactic system with very few options for permutation,
the role of passivisation as a means of changing the word order is important
for marking the point of view. At the same time, the speaker can also choose this
construction type as an instruction to the hearer regarding what to take as an
address for storing the information. e.g.:
(88) a. Caesar conquered Gaul in 52 BC.
b. Gaul was conquered (by Caesar) in 52 BC.
 Peter Öhl

Even though it changes the point of view along with the subject, passivisation
cannot be a means specific to topicalisation. Passivisation does not always result
in the creation of an address for information storing. This is shown by thetic
passive sentences:
(89) Numerous peoples were defeated by the Romans.

Elements marking the point of view relative to other elements tend to precede
them in the sentence. Being the ‘point of view’ may be a feature that is typical
of topics, but it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition. There are
several factors causing elements to precede others. It seems obvious that the more
discourse-prominent features, such as point of view or familiarity, an element has,
the less acceptable the precedence of other elements in the sentence is. The crucial
question to ask now is: When do these features determine the choice of a topic?
Firstly, we would like to discuss some more properties of elements which can
trigger their fronting. Specificity is another feature that is characteristic of topics
but is not a sufficient condition for topicality. Assume the following context:
(90) A: What did he say?
B: That there is probably exactly one country in the world where everything is
better than here.

The following sentences with quantified expressions show that specific indefinites
tend to precede the sentence adverbial in German, whereas non-specific ones
follow it. In (91a), the phrase in genau einem Land (‘in exactly one country’)
follows the sentence adverbial wahrscheinlich (‘probably’). In this case, it must have
a non-specific reading. If it precedes the adverbial, it has a specific but implicit
reference (e.g. Switzerland in 91b).
(91) a. dass auf der ganzen Welt wahrscheinlich in genau einem Land
that in the whole world probably in exactly one land
alles besser ist, als hier.
everything better is than here
b. dass auf der ganzen Welt in genau einem Land wahrscheinlich alles besser
ist, als hier.

It has often been observed that non-specific indefinites must not be moved higher
than specific expressions. The reason is that they always take narrow scope, whereas
specific indefinites may take wide scope (Pafel 1997: 31ff.).
(92) A: Wem hast du ein Buch geschickt? (Lenerz 2000: 266)
‘Who did you send a book?’
B: Ich habe (*ein Buch) dem Verlag *(ein Buch) geschickt.
I have a-acc book the-dat publishers sent
 Formal and functional constraints on constituent order and their universality 

The example in (B) with *… ein Buch dem Verlag geschickt improves immediately if
the indefinite is stressed, or if it occurs with a restrictive attribute (such as ‘delayed
far too long’), giving a quantified object a topical (Endriss & Hinterwimmer
2007: 85; 88) or a specific reading:

(93) a. Ich habe ein Buch dem Verlag geschickt.

b. Ich habe ein schon lange überfälliges Buch dem
I have a already long overdue book the
Verlag geschickt.
publishers sent
‘I’ve sent a book to the publishers that was long overdue.’

It is a commonplace in the research on German information structure since

Höhle (1982) that normal order and normal stress, i.e. base order and sentence
stress on the constituent left of the predicate, license ‘maximal focus’ (sentence
focus in Lambrecht’s 1994 terms).

(94) a. What did he say?

b. …dass [VP schon zweimal [VP eine Olympiade an
╅ that ╅ ╛↜already two times ╅ ╛↜an Olympic-games to
Wuppertal vergeben worden]] ist]
W. given aux-pass aux-perf

Accounts like Haider (1993: 212ff.), Abraham (2007: 183ff.) or Molnárfi (2007: 159ff.)

propose that the VP with its basic internal order represents the focus of the
sentence (see above, Section 3.3):
There is a basic word order in German (and Dutch and West Frisian) with
rhematic (informationally new) material in VP. The hermeneutic identification of
this word order is ‘(one single) grammatical clausal accent’ (GA), which is placed
on the head of the deepest (V0-adjacent) embedding inside VP.
 (Abraham 2007: 184)

This means defocused phrases must be in a position outside of the VP. One often
observed result is the definiteness effect raising discourse semantically marked
definites. Note, however, that definiteness itself does not imply defocusing of a dis-
course referent (Lambrecht 1994: 108; Molnárfi 2007: 176ff.). Salient or singular
referents from the common ground can be inside the focus even if definite
(cf. Molnárfi 2007: 178 about referents like the president or the cat). We consider
definiteness to be primarily a quantificational feature restricting a reference set in
relation to the discourse domain. That is why definites have neither to leave the
‘focus domain’ VP nor be refocused in situ, as proposed by Abraham (2007: 199f.).
 Peter Öhl

Neither definiteness nor specificity crucially forces elements out of the VP (96a);
there must be additional properties, such as being the point of view (96b) or
contrastivity (96c).
(95) What did he say?
(96) a. …dass [VP schon zweimal [VP die Olympiade an Wuppertal vergeben
worden] ist
b. …dass die Olympiade [VP schon zweimal [VP an Wuppertal vergeben
worden] ist
c. …dass die Winterolympiade [VP schon zweimal [VP an Wuppertal vergeben
worden] ist

What occurs in the fronted VP is also in the focus. Therefore, VP-fronting may be
taken as a test for predicate focus or sentence focus.
(97) a. [VP schon zweimal [VP eine Olympiade an Wuppertal vergeben worden]]
ist seiner Ansicht nach
b. [VP eine Olympiade an Wuppertal vergeben worden]] ist seiner Ansicht
nach schon zwei Mal
c. [VP schon zwei Mal [VP an Wuppertal vergeben worden] ist die (Winter)
olympiade seiner Ansicht nach
d. *[VP die Winterolympiade an Wuppertal vergeben worden] ist seiner
Ansicht nach schon zwei Mal

Sentence adverbials, frame setters, aboutness topics, specific expressions, contrastive

topics and similar discourse semantically marked elements occupy positions
outside of the VP in variable and conceptually ranked order.
(98) A: What do you know about Wuppertal?
B: I know that …

(99) a. (dort) überraschenderweise (dort) [VP schon zwei Mal

there surprisingly there â•… already two times
eine Olympiade stattgefunden] hat.
an Olympic-games taken-place has
b. (dort) anlässlich der Schwebebahnerweiterung (dort)
there on-occasion of-the suspension-railway-extension there
[VP eine Olympiade stattgefunden] hat.
╅ ╛↜an Olympic-games taken-place has
c. (dort) [ein bedeutendes Sportereignis] (dort) [VP schon
there one important sport-event there ╅ ╛↜already
zweimal stattgefunden] hat. Das ist die Olympiade.
two-times taken-place has. that is the Olympic-games
 Formal and functional constraints on constituent order and their universality 

d. (dort) eine Olympiade (dort) [VP noch nicht stattgefunden] hat.

there an Olympic-games there â•… still not taken-place has.
(Sie haben aber schon mal ein Schwebebahnrennen gemacht.)
they have but already once a suspension-railway-race made

These examples show that the German middle field can roughly be divided into two
partitions, the lower one containing the sentence or predicate focus, the higher
one containing discourse semantically marked elements, among them also addres-
sation topics. There are options of ‘perspectivation’ in both partitions. In the ‘focus
domain’ VP, however, scrambling is restricted:
(100) What did he say?

(101) a. …dass [VP bald [VP eine Olympiade in Wuppertal stattfinden]] soll
b. ?…dass [VP bald [VP in Wuppertal eine Olympiade stattfinden]] soll

Thus, languages like German are discourse configurational because they lack
specific positions for different kinds of constituents. The order is constrained by
the features themselves, and this obviously often allows for different options. Similar
analyses should be possible for languages like Japanese or Korean. As mentioned
above, earlier research on information structure relied on the assumption that, in
these languages, topics are marked both by specific particles and by fronting to
a specific clause initial position. We have also shown evidence from more recent
research, however, that this view needs more differentiation by considering con-
trastiveness, suggesting that the occurrence of these particles and perspectivation
(especially topicalisation) are independent. This assumption can be supported by
further phenomena of perspectivation as shown by contexts like the one below, pre-
supposing nothing but the frame setter today.
(102) A: Do you know what will happen today?
B: Fortunately, some student will probably record the whole lecture today.

Consequently, no contrastivity marker is used with the subject some student in

the equivalent Japanese and Korean sentences. Nevertheless, there is a potential
permutation of the sentence adverbials to my pleasure and probably. The subject
can be placed after, in between, or before these adverbials.19
(103) kyo nani-ga okotta ka sitteiru? (Japanese)
today what-nom happen comp know?

.â•… For these judgements, we thank again Jiro Inaba (Japanese) and Ki-Hyun Yoon (Korean).
 Peter Öhl

(104) a. kyoo-wa uresii-koto-ni osoraku aru gakusei-ga

today-top to-my-pleasure-dat probably some student-nom
zenbu-no jugyoo-no nooto-o totte-kureru daroo.
all-gen class-gen note-acc take ptc
b. kyoo-wa uresii-koto-ni aru gakusei-ga osoraku zenbu-no jugyoo-no
nooto-o totte-kureru daroo.
c. kyoo-wa aru gakusei-ga uresii-koto-ni osoraku zenbu-no jugyoo-no
nooto-o totte-kureru daroo.

(105) nŏ+nŭn onŭl muŏs–i ilŏna+l-ji a-ni (Korean)

you-top today what-nom happen-fut-comp-ptc know-q-ptc

(106) a. onŭl–ŭn kippŭkedo ama han hansaeng-i kangŭI

today-top to-my-pleasure probably a student-nom lecture
jŏnche-lŭl nokŭmha-l kŏs ida
whole-acc record-fut comp copula
b. onŭl–ŭn kippŭkedo han hansaeng-i ama kangŭI jŏnche-lŭl nokŭmha-l
kŏs ida
c. onŭl–ŭn han hansaeng-i kippŭkedo ama kangŭI jŏnche-lŭl nokŭmha-l
kŏs ida

These examples, which parallel the orders in the German examples in (50) above,
show that there is no clear ‘base position’ for sentence adverbials in Japanese and
Korean either. Besides topicalisation, there are more discourse semantic movements
changing the order between more or less prominent elements in the sentence – based
on the fact that SOV languages like Japanese, Korean and German have scrambling,
offering options of perspectivation beyond those of the canonical positions provided
by functional projections in languages such as English. We would like to conclude
this subsection by referring to an earlier account by Fukui (1995) who proposed
that, besides head finalness, the syntax of Japanese differs from the syntax of English
mainly by the lack of any functional projection dominating the VP.

5.â•… C
 onclusion: Towards a model of interacting constraints
on linearisation

Our discussion shows that information packaging is subject to interface conditions

that are variable with respect to the interaction between syntax, prosody, semantics
and pragmatics. This necessarily allows for a high number of parametrically deduc-
ible language types. Therefore, dividing languages into discourse configurational,
relation configurational, and mixed types cannot yield a proper classification. The
systems of information structure,  argument structure and positional licensing are
 Formal and functional constraints on constituent order and their universality 

subject to autonomous principles. Therefore, the parameters of these systems

cannot, in fact, be as complementary as suggested by the earlier comparative
approaches that were discussed in this article.
It is obvious that precedence rules (expressed in terms of c-command in
hierarchical phrase structure) based on various criteria are needed after all, in
order to account for syntactic variation in an explanatorily adequate way. There
seem to be four basic classes of restrictions for constituent order. First of all, there
are some empirical generalisations we cannot derive from primitives and which
we used mainly as diagnostics for the identification of other syntactic properties.
(107) (Presumably) universal ordering restrictions
– Topical material cannot be interpreted in the nuclear scope of a quantifier
 (cf. Endriss & Hinterwimmer 2007: 86ff.).
– Sentence adverbials take scope over sentence focus (cf. Frey 2004: 188f.).

Secondly, if a language can be identified as having one or the other kind of canonical
position relating to functional projections, their hierarchy is fixed not only by the
order chosen during language acquisition, but also by universal conceptual factors
(cf. Parodi 1998; Rizzi 2000). This does not only apply to functional features: The
order of constituents within the domain of V (including the vP of more recent
Generative accounts) is very clearly constrained by a lexical conceptual hierarchy
(e.g. the Θ-hierarchy of the LCS).
(108) Hierarchy of canonical positions
– C-domain > I-domain
– I-domain > V-domain
– C-domain: TopP > FocP (languages like Italian; cf. Rizzi 1997)
– I-domain: Agr > T
– V-domain: Θ-hierarchy

It seems obvious from the discussions in this paper that languages may lack
canonical positions for topics as they may for subjects. The syntax of these lan-
guages is more liberal with respect to what we called perspectivation. We assume
that there is no universal hierarchy of FPs, but that features, especially those
interfacing with pragmatics (such as the features of illocutionary force, clause
mood and perspectivation), are acquired by the first language learner as he
extends his conceptual knowledge (in fact, this is a proposal we made earlier in a
model of grammar change; cf. Öhl 2009). It depends on the parameterisation of
the inventory of functional features whether the child acquires phrases that then
provide more or less fixed positions in the language specific syntax.
We think that the options for parametrising FPs are subject to more global
hierarchies of features that are made evident by several general tendencies which
 Peter Öhl

can be observed cross-linguistically. Unless they are restricted by interactive

factors, or by relevant projection hierarchies in a syntactic system, they are open to
a certain amount of variation during performance. As far as we can see now, there
is no absolute hierarchy to be established between these tendencies.
(109) Tendencies of syntactic perspectivation20
– Scope is marked by precedence (cf. Endriss & Hinterwimmer 2007: 86ff.).
– The point of view is marked by precedence (cf. above, p. 263ff.).
– Defocusing is marked by precedence (cf. above, p. 265ff.).
– The subject of predication is marked by precedence (cf. above, p. 256ff.).
– Specificity is marked by precedence (cf. above, p. 264ff.).
– Familiarity/accessibility is marked by precedence (cf. above, p. 256).
– Relevance is marked by precedence (cf. above, p. 263).
– …

These tendencies do not necessarily conflict with functional projections. The

corresponding elements are not bound to syntactic functions or semantic roles in
the first place. Whilst scrambling languages allow variation more liberally, there are
also other options, such as the choice of arguments, or certain syntactic operations
like passivisation, which permit speakers to create different perspectives.
The fact that all languages have at least some options of syntactic variation,
and the various information structural properties a sentence topic can have, imply
that notions like topic and comment are not primitives as such, but that it is more
primitive features of perspectivation, like those listed in (109), which determine
the choice of constituents to act as sentence topics. In our view, topicalisation is
no more or less than a central means of perspectivation, i.e. the designation of a
constituent for a prominent discourse semantic role on the grounds of certain
properties. However, just as not all topics have each of these properties (in fact
they cannot), nor is any one of the properties a sufficient condition for being a
topic. Therefore, they have to be regarded as prototypical rather than necessary and
sufficient features.

.â•… We concede that this list is incomplete and neglects some phenomena like floating
quantifiers and others. We also concede that we did not consider the whole range of
literature that might be relevant to that topic. We did not discuss backgrounding and
foregrounding in detail. Much more could be said about it and the topic would deserve a
much more elaborate model to account for it. Nevertheless we hope we could outline the
main idea that we developed on the basis of the contrastive phenomena we compared and
analysed here. This might be the right place and the right time to use the familiar formula
promising future research …
 Formal and functional constraints on constituent order and their universality 

(110) Prototypical features of sentence topics

– being an address (cf. above, p. 257ff.) or delimitation
(cf. above, p. 259f.) for information storage
– being the point of view (cf. above, p. 263f.)
– being the subject of predication (cf. above, p. 256f.)
– defocusing (cf. above, p. 265f.)
– specificity (cf. above, p. 264f.)
– accessibility (cf. above, p. 256f.)
– contrastiveness (cf. above, p. 260ff.)
– …

However, in our view, it is not at all clear whether all of these properties are primi-
tives. Some may instead be consequences of the interaction of more primitive fea-
tures. An adverbial scoping over the whole proposition, and thus marking the point
of view, serves, at the same time, as delimitation for the information processing
(Krifka 2007: 49f.; see above, p. 259). Thus it can serve as a frame setter. A specific
and defocused subject of predication marking the point of view can serve as an
address in Reinhart’s (1981) sense (see above, p. 257). These potential functions
may also be supported by the degree of cognitive accessibility of an element.
From this point of view, the fact that topics and frame setters tend to precede
all other constituents may just follow from the fact that they have several of the
properties in (109). Or, put differently, the more of these properties an element
has, the more probable it is that it is chosen as a frame setter or as a topic. A
closer look at the relevant features and the ways in which they interact should be
possible through intensive empirical research, providing more contrastive data
from syntactic systems with a greater range of variation.

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 On the foundations of the contrastive study
of information structure

Carsten Breul
Bergische Universität Wuppertal

The paper presents some ideas on the delineation of a more specific contrastive
approach to information structure analysis within the larger and more loosely
circumscribed comparative area. It will be argued that this delineation can
be effected by emphasising the methodological role of the notion tertium
comparationis. Ontological and methodological aspects of contrastive information
structure analysis will be discussed, and benefits of taking a specifically
contrastive approach to information structure will be pointed out. Finally, some
lines of argumentation and observations from the preceding chapters of the
present volume that can be construed as instances of contrastive information
structure analysis will be briefly recapitulated.

1.â•… Introduction

The articles in this volume are concerned with comparative approaches to issues
of information structure. This chapter puts forward some ideas on the delineation
of a more specific contrastive approach within the larger and more loosely circum-
scribed comparative area.1 I will be arguing that this delineation can be effected by
emphasising the methodological role of the notion tertium comparationis, which
has been prominent and the focus of much discussion in the history of contras-
tive linguistics and contrastive analysis (see e.g. Krzeszowski 1990: Chapter 1, 2,
Chesterman 1998: Chapter 1 and the references given there). Note that I will
be using the terms contrastive linguistics and contrastive analysis not as referring
to a certain theoretical framework alongside those such as structuralist linguis-
tics, (systemic-)functional linguistics, generative linguistics, and, respectively, to
a style of analysis typical of these frameworks. Rather, I will be using them to refer
to kinds of linguistic research where the concern with the question of the tertium

.â•… I am grateful to Edward Göbbel, Alex Thiel and an anonymous reviewer for corrections
and valuable suggestions. All remaining errors are mine.
 Carsten Breul

comparationis in the comparative endeavour is obvious, either implicitly or

explicitly. That is, the notion ‘contrastive linguistics’ is orthogonal to notions such
as ‘structuralist/functional/generative linguistics’.
In the remainder of this introductory section I will explain what the more
general benefits are of taking a specifically contrastive approach to issues of infor-
mation structure. The topic of the main Section  2 is a discussion of ontological
and methodological aspects of contrastive information structure analysis. Section 2
also contains some relativising remarks on the ideal methodological requirements
on contrastive information structure analysis as discussed before. The point here
is that keeping this ideal in mind and explaining in how far a prospective instance
of contrastive information structure analysis matches it is more fruitful than not
undertaking the analysis in the first place just because it may be impossible to heed
the ideal completely. Section 3 presents some lines of argumentation or observations
from the preceding chapters of this book which I think are, or can be interpreted as,
contrastive information structure analyses or observations.
‘Contrastive information structure analysis’ is not an established label in linguistics.
There is research into information structure and there is contrastive analysis, and
quite a few linguists have indeed investigated issues of information structure from
a more or less explicitly contrastive perspective.2 Consequently, there has accumu-
lated a considerable body of research whose results can be interpreted as results of
contrastive information structure analysis. What seems to be missing so far for
the identification of a more clearly demarcated research paradigm ‘contrastive
information structure analysis’ is some ontological and methodological ground-
work that provides us with the conceptual means, or criteria, for saying when or
in which respects a certain work, or a part of it, represents an instance of contras-
tive information structure analysis. Some suggestions in this direction will be
made below.
What do we need such criteria for, if extensive cross-linguistic, or compara-
tive, research into information structural aspects has proceeded against the back-
ground of existing, well-established frameworks such as functional linguistics,

.â•… Restricting myself to rather explicitly contrastive research on the language pair English/
German where the interplay of syntactic and information structural aspects plays an important
role (i.e. the field of my own main research interests), I may mention, among others, Breul 2007,
2008a, 2008b; Doherty 1996, 1999, 2002; Erdmann 1990, 1993; Esser 1995; Fabricius-Hansen
1999; Firbas 1959, 1964; Kirkwood 1969, 1970; 1978; Klein 1988; Legenhausen & Rohdenburg
1995; Weinert 1995; Zimmermann 1972. In terms of theoretical backgrounds, approaches and
objectives, these works form a highly heterogeneous, but thereby also a rather representative
set for the research in the said domain for the past 50 years.
 On the foundations of the contrastive study of information structure 

generative grammar, or language typology?3 And why should we want to ponder

in which respects and to what degree (part of) this research can also be said to
instantiate work within a new research paradigm characterised by these criteria?
The answer, I believe, lies in the specific benefits of contrastive linguistics as the
overarching type of approach. Whatever the reputation of contrastive linguistics
may have been after its popularity had drastically ebbed down in certain quar-
ters not long after its inauguration in the late 1950s,4 there can be no doubt that
investigating commonalities and especially differences between two languages
on a sound methodological basis is interesting and important in several respects:
for language teaching and learning (see e.g. James (ed.) 1996; Kortmann 1998;
Sheen 1996), for translation practice and translation studies (see e.g. Albrecht
2005, esp. Chapter 4, 5, Chesterman 1998, e.g. p. 198f.), for research into lan-
guage typology (see e.g. Comrie 1986; Hawkins 1986; König 1990, 1992, 1996)
and into language universals (including universal grammar).5 That is, given that

.â•… The various papers in the present volume provide examples and many references to
comparative research on information structure within functional, generative, and typological
frameworks. For a quite recent overview of research on information structure, making ref-
erence to various languages, see Erteschik-Shir (2007). The publications of the Collabora-
tive Research Centre (Sonderforschungsbereich, SFB) “Information Structure: The Linguistic
Means for Structuring Utterances, Sentences and Texts“ (see http:↜//www↜.sfb632.uni-potsdam.
de/main.html) and the references contained in these publications provide a wealth of relevant
bibliographical material. So do the articles collected in Schwabe & Winkler (eds) (2007).
.â•… According to Kortmann (1998: 138f.), the decline of contrastive linguistics was much more
pronounced in the USA than in Europe. Disappointment generated by exaggerated expectations
concerning the benefits of contrastive linguistics (CL) for the purposes of language teaching
and learning affected the more pedagogically oriented CL researchers in the USA more strongly
than the more theoretically and descriptively oriented CL researchers in Europe.
.â•… As to the relevance of a comparative approach that focuses on differences for the study of
universals as conceived of in generative grammar, I may quote Kayne (1996/2000: 3):

Comparative syntax can be thought of as that facet of syntactic theory directly

concerned with the question of how best to characterize the properties of human
languages that are not universal. Put another way, comparative syntax directly
addresses the question of how best to understand the notion of parameter taken to
underlie syntactic variation.

The study of differences among languages must obviously proceed in tandem with
the study of what they have in common, that is, with the study of the principles of
Universal Grammar (UG) that interact with language specific parameters to yield
observed variation. Similarly there is every reason to believe that the search for
universal syntactic principles cannot proceed without close attention being paid to
syntactic variation.
 Carsten Breul

information structure can be conceived of as an object and a domain of linguistic

study similar to objects/domains such as phonology, morphology and syntax, con-
trastive information structure analysis is worth having for the same reasons as it
is worth having contrastive phonological, morphological and syntactic analysis.
Contrastive analyses of information structure (a) focus on the linguistic phenom-
ena and supply data that have to be integrated in theoretical frameworks that aim
at cross-linguistic generalisations over the phenomena (notably generative gram-
mar and language typology) and (b) lend themselves to application, especially in
language teaching and learning and in translation, at least insofar as an awareness
of these phenomena on the part of language teachers and learners or translators is
considered to be beneficial.
It will have become apparent that, by suggesting some ontological and
methodological ideas for a more explicitly framed new sub-domain of con-
trastive analysis, I do not intend to elevate the theoretical status of contrastive
linguistics within linguistics in general. Elevating the status of contrastive lin-
guistics seems to be one of the objectives of Pan & Tham (2007). Two passages
illustrating this may be given:
On the whole, if James has driven the discipline to develop both vertically (into text)
and horizontally (into pragmatics and culture), taking the discipline in the height
and breadth dimension, the inward movement of Chesterman (into language users’
minds) has added the depth. With contrastive rhetoric pushing at the side and
developments in Australia pushing from the back, contrastive linguistics is ready
to grow in full dimensions as a magnificent discipline with high macro-research
vision. This is historical momentum. (Pan & Tham 2007: 66f.)
Our account of the Western contrastive studies shows that many do not
acknowledge their studies to be a branch of linguistics and choose to use the term
‘contrastive analysis’ to emphasize its applied significance in second language
pedagogy. […] the insistence of its belonging to applied linguistics will forever
hinder the advancement of the discipline, particularly in the West and especially
in the US where theoretical linguistics is so divided and challenging. It follows
quite naturally then that contrastivists must feel inferior and fall outside of the
horizon of theoretical linguists. To reverse the situation, a change in paradigm
is required. (Ib.: 167)

Quite to the contrary, I am perfectly content with considering contrastive

linguistics subservient to other paradigms with more fundamental or more
general objectives (e.g. generative grammar, language typology) or with aims
in the domain of application (e.g. language pedagogy, translation). The pro-
posals to be made, however, may bring contrastive linguistics into a position
to perform this task more effectively where aspects of information structure
are concerned.
 On the foundations of the contrastive study of information structure 

2.â•… Ontological and methodological aspects

2.1â•… The distinctive features of contrastive analysis in general

The question of the nature of contrastive linguistics in general and of the way
in which contrastive analysis proceeds or should proceed has been discussed
extensively.6 The bottom line still is that contrastive linguistics is concerned
with the comparison of very few, typically only two, languages with the aim of
detecting commonalities and especially differences between them. As there are
other research paradigms in which the comparison of languages plays a cen-
tral role, notably language typology and generative grammar, it is necessary to
comment on the distinctive features that set contrastive linguistics apart from
these other comparative paradigms. These distinctive features are (a) the import�
ance accorded to the question of the tertium comparationis of a given contrastive
analysis; (b) the methodological constraint that a contrastive analysis has to
involve what may be called the meaning/function side of language on the one
hand and the form side on the other hand, with the tertium comparationis being
established on one of these sides and the comparison being carried out on the
other (cf. Chesterman 1998: 52f.).
Of course, there is a tertium comparationis in cross-linguistic studies within
the various frameworks of generative grammar too. In the principles and param-
eters framework, for instance, this is the set of syntactic features and the set of
syntactic principles that are taken to be universal and taken for granted at the
outset of the study, mostly implicitly so by stating, or allowing the reader to infer,
in which more specific grammar-theoretical framework the study is situated. The
point of the cross-linguistic study, then, is to provide evidence which corroborates
the assumptions about the (universality of the) sets of features and/or principles,
or which enforces a modification of these assumptions, or which demonstrates how
surface differences between languages can be accounted for by different parameter

.â•… See the overview in Pan & Tham (2007: Chapter 4) and the works referred to there.
Pan & Tham’s (2007:  208) own proposal for a “definition” of contrastive linguistics is
as follows:

Contrastive linguistics is a branch of linguistics maintained by foundations in

philosophical linguistics, comprising aspects in theoretical and applied studies
with an object [sic] to contrast two or more languages or dialects to describe the
similarities and, particularly, the differences for an explanation in view of the
relations between human language and its spirit, so as to promote advancement in
general linguistics and facilitate the exchange and understandings of cultures and
civilizations for human harmony.
 Carsten Breul

settings. Kayne’s (1996/2000) point already quoted in Note  5 is reiterated by the

following passages from the chapter “The new comparative syntax” in Haegeman &
Guéron (1999):
Comparative studies of languages can help us to answer the question of what is
language-specific and what is universal: in other words, what is variable from one
language to the next and what is invariant across languages. (Ib.: 587)
Parametric variation is itself predetermined; the values which we can assign to
a parameter are selections made within a restricted class of possibilities. The
purpose of comparative research is to identify the parameters which have to be
set by the learner and what kinds of settings there are. (Ib.: 596)

The blind spot in this type of approach is the question which lexico-grammatical
forms from the different languages in focus one is to select for inclusion in the
study of a given principle or parameter in the first place. (My two examples
involving (1)–(4) below will illustrate this problem.) This question is usually not
raised, and it is usually answered implicitly by taking structures filled with lexi-
cal items into account that are considered to be more or less cross-linguistically
the same in terms of meaning. But this methodological step is not motivated by
the theoretical framework. It may be thought that it is motivated by the addi-
tional assumption that the universal syntactic features and principles are associ-
ated with semantic content from the different languages in such a way that, say,
the same features and the same syntactic operations conditioned by the same
syntactic principles will result in the same meaning. But this, in fact, is rather an
implication of the methodological decision to compare just those structures that
seem to have (roughly) the same meaning; it is not an assumption which could,
in principle, be falsified and which could be taken to motivate this methodologi-
cal decision as long as it is not falsified. Now, what would it mean if it should
turn out that those structures compared are not actually the same in meaning?
Or what does it mean to say that those structures are only roughly the same in
meaning? I will mention two cases that raise these questions in a more concrete
and illustrative way.7
What, for instance, does the availability of know and the unavailability of kennen
in English and German passives mean for generative accounts of passives?

.â•… The examples involve (lexico-)syntactic topics – rather than information structural
ones – in order for me to be able to connect them to the mainstream generative view of the
relation between language specificity, universality and parametricity as laid down in the quo-
tations from Kayne (1996/2000) and Haegeman & Guéron (1999) given above. There is no
mainstream generative view of the elements and principles of information structure, nor of its
place and role in – or in relation to – the architecture of grammar.
 On the foundations of the contrastive study of information structure 

(1) a. Everybody knew him.

a′. He was known by everybody.
b. Jeder kannte ihn.
b′. *Er wurde von jedem gekannt. (Cf. the copulative- adjectival structure Er
war jedem bekannt, which may serve as translation equivalent of (1a′) in
some contexts; but note also that Er war sehr bekannt does not have *He
was very known as a potential translation equivalent.)

Does it mean that the syntactic principles involved in passive formation are
essentially different in English and German? Does it mean that the syntactic prin-
ciples are the same, but in different ways sensitive to syntactically relevant lexical
characteristics of know and kennen, due to different parameter settings? Or does it
mean that the syntactic principles as well as potentially involved parameter settings
are the same, while syntactically relevant lexical features of know and kennen
are different in just those respects that are relevant for passive formation? For a
convincing analysis set in a universalist (notably generative) framework to be
possible, questions such as these have to be raised and plausibly answered. In
addition to triggering such questions, a contrastive syntactic approach provides
the data on the basis of which answers to such questions are to be assessed.
To give another example: Imagine a generative syntactician investigating the
ordering options among phrases that premodify the nominal head in German noun
phrases. Confronted with data such as those in (2), she may start by hypothesising
that the order of adjectival phrase and numerical phrase in pre-head position is
reversible in German.

(2) a. (Wir verbrachten dort) drei schöne Wochen.

b. (Wir verbrachten dort) schöne drei Wochen.

Bringing English into play, the syntactician may then observe that this language
only allows the order numerical phrase > adjectival phrase.

(3) a. (We spent) three pleasant weeks (there).

b. (We spent) *pleasant three weeks (there).

At this point the syntactician may conclude her analysis by proposing a parametrical
difference between German and English in this respect. However, she may also
continue the investigation by taking a more contrastively oriented perspective,
observing that nominal phrases with the German pre-head order adjectival phrase >
numerical phrase actually seem to have English nominal phrases as translational
and semanto-syntactic equivalents (see Krzeszowski 1990) that are slightly, but
significantly, different in structure, as suggested by the examples in (4).
 Carsten Breul

(4) a. And while pollution incidents for 1991–92 reached an all-time high of 29,
524 […], there were a meagre 536 prosecutions. (British National Corpus
(BNC), document CH6)
a′. … magere 536 Anklagen (not: 536 magere Anklagen ‘536 meagre
prosecutions’)
b. Terry, a biscuit kiln fireman, shaved a remarkable 12 minutes off his best
ever time to finish in three hours five minutes. (BNC HBE)
b′. … bemerkenswerte 12 Minuten (not: 12 bemerkenswerte Minuten ‘12
remarkable minutes’)
c. Situated in a former ex-Great Western Railway coach, No. 1160
liveried in chocolate and cream at platform one, the exhibition boasts a
staggering 200 visitors per day during the operating season of the SVR.
(BNC CKK)
c′. … erstaunliche 200 Besucher (not: 200 erstaunliche Besucher ‘200
staggering visitors’)

These data suggest that the pre-head adjectival phrase > numerical phrase order
in German nominal phrases corresponds rather to the somewhat peculiar English
nominal phrases displayed in (4), also in cases such as those in (2b), correspond-
ing to We spent a pleasant three weeks there. (These nominal phrases are peculiar,
of course, in that they apparently feature an indefinite article in construction with
a plural noun, which ‘usually’ leads to ungrammaticality; cf. *a 536 prosecutions;
*a 12 minutes etc.)8 This contrastive observation, then, may lead the hypothetical
generative syntactician to a significantly different analysis than the one mentioned
above. In this alternative analysis based on a contrastive observation the German pre-
head adjectival phrase > numerical phrase order is structurally brought in line with
the syntactic structure of the respective nominal phrases in (4) – whatever their struc-
ture may be – rather than that in (3a). An analysis along these lines would certainly
be more explanatorily adequate than simply postulating a parametrical difference as
in the analytical approach concentrating only on data such as (2) and (3). The second
line of analysis is contrastive in that it takes relevant translation equivalents as tertia
comparationis into account (schöne drei Wochen/a pleasant three weeks) that may have
significant implications for the syntactic analyis.9

.â•… I have found no reference to (analyses of) the peculiar type of construction exemplified
by a pleasant three weeks in the recent comprehensive survey volume Noun Phrase in
the Generative Perspective (Alexiadou & Haegeman & Stavrou 2007). In the Cambridge
Grammar of the English Language (Huddleston & Pullum 2002), this construction type is
described as involving a recategorisation or respecification of a plural measure phrase as
singular (see ib.: 346, 353f.).
.â•… By “relevant translation equivalents” I mean translation equivalents that are semanto-syntactic
equivalents in Krzeszowski’s (1990) sense at the same time.
 On the foundations of the contrastive study of information structure 

Of course there are tertia comparationis in typological studies too. These are
certain grammatical categories or concepts, such as ‘word’, ‘word order’, ‘voice’,
‘tense’, which are mostly taken from or rooted in traditional grammar of the western,
Greek and Latin based, school. Typological studies aim at classifying languages
according to the manifestation of such categories, potentially with the further aim
of uncovering universals. (The notion ‘classifying’ in this context comprises the
assignment of languages to certain positions on continuous classificatory scales,
or to certain positions in spheres around a prototype, in those cases where the
researcher rejects the existence of discrete classes.) Here as well, researchers often
take a more or less implicit recourse to equivalence in meaning or function when
they explore which classes to set up in the first place. This may put the typological
endeavour to a certain risk. On the one hand, a thorough analysis of the ways in
which language B expresses what language A expresses by operating with or on
a form that has been analysed as the manifestation of a certain grammatical cat-
egory or concept makes this analysis look very much like a contrastive analysis. This
may mean nothing more, but also nothing less, than that typology is dependent on
contrastive analysis. On the other hand, the preliminary contrastive analysis may
reveal that the putative grammatical category or concept that the typologist sets out
to explore is so heterogeneous in nature cross-linguistically that it is questionable
whether it can survive as a typological tertium comparationis.10 This is to say that
contrastive analysis has a complementing function vis-à-vis typology as well, a point
that has been emphasised in a series of articles by E. König (1990, 1992, 1993, 1996).
Note also that contrastive analysis cannot be subsumed under typology, at least

.â•… For instance, it may be debated whether the impressive amount of knowledge that has been
accumulated by typologists concerned with ‘grammatical voice’ have left anything coherent of
this notion that may qualify it for the status of grammatical category and thus as typological
tertium comparationis. See e.g. Klaiman (1991), who insightfully surveys and classifies different
voice system, concluding:

Plausibly, then, what is common to different types of voice systems may be that
wherever voice alternations occur, they encode alternative assignments of arguments
to positions which have superior ranking at some grammatically significant level of
organization, be that of relational structure, information structure or some other level.
(One alternative level which will be taken up momentarily is ontological structure.)
 (Ib.: 262f.)

The author hopes that, for all its tentativeness, the present study might provide a
fruitful basis for an enhanced understanding on an intriguing grammatical category
whose nature has long seemed obscure.  (Ib.: 271)

It is not obvious that the generalisation over quite heterogeneous “grammatically significant
level[s] of organization” suggested in the first quotation may serve as a definition or
characterisation of a grammatical category.
 Carsten Breul

not as currently practised in the typological mainstream, as contrastive analysis

does not necessarily share with typology the assumption that any of the gram-
matical categories or concepts used as typological tertia comparationis have a
well-defined, or properly definable, identity in the first place.

2.2â•… Th
 e distinctive features applied to contrastive information
structure analysis
What do the distinctive features (a) and (b) of contrastive linguistics mentioned at the
beginning of Section 2.1 mean in more concrete terms for contrastive information
structure analysis?
The meaning/function side is manifested by the categories of information structure
as identified by a given theory of information structure. By this I mean categories
such as theme and rheme, given and new information, topic and comment, focus
and background – as long as they have been characterised or defined indepen-
dently of formal criteria (cf. further below) – or the three categories identifiability,
activation and focus structure as thoroughly discussed especially by Lambrecht
(1994). As my own conception of information structure is coined by Lambrecht’s,
I may quote his definition:11
Information structure: That component of sentence grammar in which
propositions as conceptual representations of states of affairs are paired
with lexicogrammatical structures in accordance with the mental states of
interlocutors who use and interpret these structures as units of information in
given discourse contexts. (Lambrecht 1994: 5)

This definition allows one to see why, for Lambrecht (and the present author as
well), identifiability and activation also figure under the comprehensive label
‘information structure’, alongside the more prominently discussed phenomena
that he subsumes under the label ‘focus structure’. To give a simple example: The
lexico-grammatical alternatives displayed by (5a, b) below may, in an appropriate
context, be due to nothing but a difference as to whether or not the producer of
(5a) assumes that the policeman is identifiable by her addressee, and as to whether
or not the producer of (5b) assumes that the referent of John/he is active in the
mind of the addressee at the given point in the discourse.

.╅ My reference to Lambrecht (1994) here to the exclusion of other theories of information
structure reflects a personal view to the effect that this work is (still) outstanding by its pre-
cision, clarity, homogeneity and comprehensiveness in explaining what information structure
is about in general. There are other works that are highly insightful and analytically deep on
specific topics of information structure, many of which mentioned in the present volume. But
they do not fit my “metalevel” (as an anonymous reviewer puts it) purposes in this paper.
 On the foundations of the contrastive study of information structure 

(5) a. There is {a/the} policeman standing at the corner. (acceptable with the if
there is only one policeman available in the discourse world)
b. {John/He} is ill.
However, as is well known, theories of information structure have not yet developed
to a stage where there is broad terminological and conceptual consensus and
where the open theoretical issues or questions could be formulated in a manner
that would make sense to every researcher. This is only to be expected in a fairly
young domain of investigation, and contrastive information structure analysis
may be one of the factors that help information structure theory to reach the next
stage in its development.
The form side is manifested by the forms, categories, operations, principles,
constructions identified on the levels of phonology, including intonational pho-
nology, morphology, syntax and the lexicon that have been associated with catego-
ries of information structure by researchers with diverse theoretical backgrounds.
Here as well there is no consensus between representatives of different theoretical
schools about even the most elementary aspects of the nature of such areas as
phonology, mor�phology, syntax, or the lexicon. However, on a more shallow, or
‘surface’, level, certain phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical phenom-
ena seem to be unanimously associated with information structural categories in
at least some languages. I am thinking of certain intonational phenomena (such
as falling pitch accents or tunes), bound morphemes (such as Japanese -wa and
Korean -nun), constituent order phenomena (such as phrase movement to clause
initial position), constructions (such as cleft-constructions) and lexical items (such
as pronouns, definite articles, focus and topic particles) about whose information
structural relevance in some way in certain languages there is no disagreement –
even if disagreement may begin as soon as one delves a little deeper into ques-
tions of the description and explanation of these phenomena as such and of their
relation to information structural categories.
A variety of theoretical backgrounds is no problem in principle for contrastive
information structure analysis. What seems necessary, though, is that the theoretical
background chosen allow the researcher, first, to identify and demarcate their
tertium comparationis and, second, to motivate the assumption that it applies to
both languages under investigation. As to the second point, we may recall the
dilemma of those in the early days of contrastive linguistics who adhered to the
structuralist (of a certain brand) conviction that each language is unique and has
to be described in its own terms and who were interested in doing contrastive
analysis at the same time (see James 1980: 166f.). That is, in order to avoid such
a dilemma, it is necessary that one’s theoretical background not exclude the possi-
bility that the tertium comparationis does in fact apply to both languages involved.
It would make the task of the contrastive analyst even easier if their theoretical
 Carsten Breul

background not only allows for, but suggests that the respective tertium compa-
rationis is cross-linguistically, perhaps even universally, applicable. It has been
pointed out more than once that cross-linguistic or universal applicability of a
tertium comparationis is by no means guaranteed by the mere fact that the same
grammatical term has traditionally been used for the description of a linguistic
phenomenon in language A and of a linguistic phenomenon in language B.12

2.2.1â•… Tertium comparationis on the meaning/function side

As already pointed out above, the tertium comparationis may, in principle, be stated
on the meaning/function side or on the form side. Stating a tertium comparationis
on the meaning/function side presupposes that the respective meaning/function
is in a certain sense ‘equivalently present’ in both languages to be compared.
Strictly speaking, in order to prevent a vicious methodological circularity, a theory
of meaning/functions is required that is independent of categories that serve the
linguistic description of an individual language. This requirement is not fulfilled by
the Hallidayan variety of the notions theme and rheme, for instance, as it conflates
both formal and meaning/function aspects in the definitional characterisation
of these notions. Halliday (1985/1994: 37) writes:

In other languages, of which English is one, the theme is indicated by position

in the clause. In speaking or writing English we signal that an item has thematic
status by putting it first. […] The Theme is the element that serves as the point
of departure of the message; it is that with which the clause is concerned. The
remainder of the message, the part in which the message is developed, is called in
Prague school terminology the Rheme.

.â•… Among others, this point was made by Lattey (1982:  133) and König (1993:  290f.).
According to the latter:

A substantial part of the established terminology used in language-specific

descriptions is totally hostile to and unsuitable for language comparison, since it
treats certain categories as something sui generis and thus inaccessible to comparative
statements. This is most obviously true of all the terms that identify a category purely
on the basis of its form. The labels “-ing form” and “there sentences” are clear cases
in point, but I would also regard the term “expanded form” instead of “progressive
form” as unsuitable for any comparative enterprise. Terms like “gerund”, “gérondif ”,
“gerundio” and “gerundium” are notorious examples of the use of the same term or
at least very similar terms for very different phenomena […].
 On the foundations of the contrastive study of information structure 

This conflation – form: first vs. second position; meaning/function: expressing “that
with which the clause is concerned” vs. expressing that by which “the message is
developed” – renders these notions unsuitable for serving as tertia comparationis in
contrastive information structure analysis. They already presuppose what may actu-
ally be a result of a contrastive information structure analysis, namely that there may
be a systematic relation between the linear position of a formal unit in a linguistic
expression on the one hand and its information structural value (meaning/func-
tion) on the other hand. Actually, the fact that this presupposition does not hold
in a language such as English, as in cases like (6B) (from Lambrecht 1994: 223),
where small capitals signal the word that carries the primary sentence accent, is
then accounted for in terms of markedness in the Hallidayan framework.
(6) A: I heard your motorcycle broke down.
B: My car broke down.

Here my car cannot be said to be “that with which the clause is concerned” (see
quotation from Halliday above) and where broke down cannot be said to be “the
part in which the message is developed” (see ib.) – rather the reversed characteri-
sation is correct. Such cases are conceived of as being ‘marked’ in the Hallidayan
framework (see e.g. Halliday 1985/1994: 59). Markedness and unmarkedness in
fact reintroduce the separation between the formal and the meaning/function
sides, as they provide for the situation that the initial element in a clause is not
“that with which the clause is concerned” (the marked case for themes) and the rest
apart from the initial element is not “the part in which the message is developed”
(correspondingly the marked case for rhemes). This allows one to state, for
instance, that while (6B) is marked, its Italian counterpart in (7) is unmarked in
the Hallidayan sense.
(7) Si è rotta la mia macchina.

However, this simply translates back as saying that in the English case the initial
clausal element (in the Hallidayan sense), my car, is not “that with which the clause
is concerned” whereas in the Italian case it (si è rotta) is. The argumentation has
come back to square one in a full circle. We could have spared ourselves this circle
and started right away with a syntactic analysis of the interesting observation that,
whatever information structural category is equivalently expressed by my car on the
one hand and la mia macchina on the other hand – the category focus for Lambrecht
(1994) – it seems to correlate with a syntactic difference manifested by the different
positions of these phrases in surface structure. And, as Lambrecht (1994) has
shown, this leads to the further interesting observation that the same lexical
material arranged in the same predicate-argument configuration as in sentences
(6B) and (7) requires a different syntactic configuration in Italian while disallowing
 Carsten Breul

a different (surface)13 syntactic configuration in English if the information structural

value of my car/la mia macchina is changed:
(8) What happened to your car?
a. My car broke down.
b. La mia macchina si è rotta.

Lambrecht’s (1994) characterisation of the information structural category

identifiability, for instance, which is based on Chafe (1976), fulfils the requirements
of equivalence and language independence in that it is embedded in a theory of
cognition. Lambrecht (1994: 77f.) writes:
I will postulate the cognitive category of identifiability, using a term once
suggested by Chafe (1976). […] an identifiable referent is one for which a shared
representation already exists in the speaker’s and the hearer’s mind at the time of
the utterance, while an unidentifiable referent is one for which a representation
exists only in the speaker’s mind.

Identifiability being characterised as a cognitive category implies its universality

and hence its applicability to the languages involved in a contrastive information
structure analysis. The notion ‘representation’ entails no commitment to the effect
that the relevant cognitive processes operate with structures that have a linguistic
format; and that these processes operate with structures that have a format cor-
responding to the linguistic structures that are specific to a certain language can
be safely ruled out. Two comments with respect to the identifiability example are
in order:
First, we are confronted with only a rudimentary cognitive theory of
identifiability here, of course. But the question of how elaborated the theory has
to be within which the tertium comparationis is to be stated is of minor importance
for the methodological point aimed at here. A theory as rudimentary as the one
about identifiability expressed by the quotation from Lambrecht (1994) just given

.â•… In previous work (Breul 2004, 2007), I argued that there is an underlying syntactic difference
between such cases as (6B) and (8a):
(i) [FocP [My car]1[+foc] [Foc′ Foc[+foc] [IP t1 broke down]]] (6B)
(ii) [FocP [My car]1[–foc] [Foc′ Foc[–foc] [IP t1 broke down]]] (8a)
In both cases the phrase my car moves to the specifier position of a functional phrase above
IP, called FocP. The movement is triggered by the checking requirement of a syntactic feature,
[+foc] in the first case, and [–foc] in the second case. [+foc] is paired with a semantic focus
feature (my car is an identificational focus expression); [–foc] is paired with a semantic topic
feature (my car is a topic expression).
 On the foundations of the contrastive study of information structure 

is methodologically sufficient for contrastive analyses since it can be used to ask

the question which formal means there are in languages A and B that have the
function of expressing the respective values (± ‘referent is identifiable’) of the iden-
tifiability parameter so characterised. An answer to the question would constitute
the preparatory stage of a specific instance of contrastive information structure
analysis. The contrastive analysis proper would consist of the cross-linguistic com-
parison of the formal means identified within a descriptive grammatical frame-
work that allows for the description of the grammar of both languages involved.
Of course, what kinds of descriptive grammatical frameworks that may be is a dif-
ficult question in its own right. But whatever choice one makes at this point will
probably have interesting and insightful implications not only with respect to
the languages involved but also with respect to the potentials and limitations
of the grammatical framework itself.
Second, with respect to tertia comparationis for contrastive information
structure analyses that are stated on the meaning/function side, such as iden-
tifiability, there will often arise a problem of operability. That is, it will often be
difficult to find the criteria and means for identifying expressions or utterances
from the languages to be contrasted that express identifiability (and other such
categories for that matter). Even if there are such criteria and means developed
within the domain of science in terms of which identifiability is defined, cogni-
tive psychology, their application by a contrastive linguist will, for various rea-
sons, seldom be possible. Sometimes a – at least preliminary – solution to this
problem may present itself in the form of theoretical considerations within a
given theory of information structure in connection with linguistic observations.
For example, it is argued in Breul (2008b) that the DP in as for DP expressions of
the kind in (9), exemplified for English in (10), are identifiable by virtue of the
assumption that they are necessarily active in the sense of Lambrecht (1994) in
connection with the fact that the activeness of a referent entails its being identifiable
in Lambrecht’s theory.
(9) a. as for DP
b. quant à DP (French equivalent of a.)
c. was DP {angeht/(an)betrifft} (German equivalents of b.)

(10) My encounters with girls were destined always to end in rejection until I’d left
my teens behind me. I caught up a bit during the ‘60s when I became the oldest
teenager in town – in fact I was in my early thirties. As for love, I fell easily
and often. (CH8 1762)

The comparison of attested English DPs in as for DP expressions with their trans-
lationally equivalent German counterparts in corresponding was DP angeht
expressions yields interesting observations concerning contrasts in definite article
 Carsten Breul

usage in English as opposed to German and raises interesting syntactic, semantic,

and diachronic questions (see Breul 2008b).
Lambrecht’s (1994) information structure category ‘activation’ (see ib.: 93ff.),
derived from Chafe (1974, 1976, 1987), is equally characterised in terms of cogni-
tion and thus independently of language. Lambrecht’s (1994) information structure
category ‘topic relation’ is defined as “the relation of aboutness between a proposi-
tion and a discourse entity”; and his ‘focus relation’ is characterised as one where
“the relation between a focus denotatum and a proposition is taken to be non-
recoverable and unpredicatable at the time of an utterance” (ib.: 335f.). Although
the notions ‘proposition’ and ‘denotation’ may be conceived as being dependent
on the human language faculty in general, they are certainly not tied to specific
languages. This makes Lambrecht’s information structure categories suitable as
tertia comparationis on the meaning/function side. Let us now turn to the question
of tertia comparationis on the form side.

2.2.2â•… Tertium comparationis on the form side

The situation presents itself similarly here: Strictly speaking, stating a tertium
comparationis on the form side presupposes that the respective form or structure
is in a certain sense ‘equivalently present’ in both the languages to be compared. It
seems that those linguistic theories which are essentially concerned with showing
how forms and structures of individual languages can be derived from universal
linguistic features and principles can be made use of in this connection. If, for
instance, we assume that a certain syntactic operation or construction is syntac-
tically conditioned in the same way in languages A and B in terms of universal
syntactic features and principles, we may say that this operation or construction
is syntactically equivalent in both languages. We may then set out to investigate
what role this syntactic operation or construction plays in the expression of infor-
mation structural categories in language A and in language B and we may note
commonalities and differences.
This approach can be easily exemplified by making use of one point made
by Lambrecht in the present volume. We may assume that the English and
French cleft constructions in (11) below (cf. Lambrecht this volume) are
syntactically equivalent (at least in the relevant aspects)14 in that they can be

.â•… Of course, there are contrastive aspects involved in the syntactic structures of the sentences
in (11) (such as the differences in the structures of the verb phrases, gave it to me versus
me l‘a donnée) whose investigation belongs to the domain of contrastive syntactic analysis. The
implication that these differences are irrelevant may be challenged. Challenges of presupposed
or implicated assumptions of this kind will potentially advance our understanding of the
phenomena involved.
 On the foundations of the contrastive study of information structure 

derived from universal features and principles – an assumption that forms our
tertium comparationis.
(11) a. It’s Isabelle that gave it to me five years ago.
b. C’est Isabelle qui me l’a donnée il y a cinq ans.

Lambrecht’s observation is that the French cleft sentence provided with a suitable
intonation constitutes a perfectly acceptable reply to a context utterance like (the
French counterpart of) I like your shirt, do you remember where you bought it?
whereas the English cleft sentence would be inappropriate in this context with
any intonation. This, then, is a contrastive information structural observation that
involves the information structural category focus structure on the meaning/func-
tion side. The context utterance puts certain constraints on the focus structure of
the reply; the English cleft sentence does not comply with these constraints, while
the French one does.
There is the problem that, most generative approaches apart, some grammatical
theories have built into their very structure the assumption that the formal side,
syntax, for instance, cannot be conceived of independently from the meaning/
function side, information structural categories, for instance. In a strictly func-
tionalist grammatical framework, an item or pattern on the form side is only
identified if it is associated with a certain meaning or function, and the formal
characteristics of this item or pattern are assumed to be determined by this mean-
ing or function. According to Nichols (1984: 97), “[f]unctionalists maintain that
the communicative situation motivates, constrains, explains, or otherwise deter-
mines grammatical structure, and that a structural or formal approach is not
merely limited to an artificially restricted data base, but is inadequate even as a
structural account.” For a contrastive information structure analysis that is based
on such a grammatical theory it does not make sense to state its tertium compa-
rationis on the form side. This is because a meaning or function must have been
identified before an item or pattern on the form side can be said to have been
identified (for otherwise there would be non-functional criteria for identifying
formal entities; the existence, though, of such non-functional criteria is denied).
Consequently, in such a framework it does not make sense to speak of a formal
entity that is equivalent in two languages and whose potentially different charac-
teristics on the meaning/function side are to be investigated. Thus, a contrastive
information structure analysis which is based on a linguistic theory which denies
the independence of the form from the meaning/function side is only possible if
the tertium comparationis is stated on the meaning/function side. That is, in such
a framework contrastive information structure analysis is restricted to the basic
question what the formal means are of expressing a given information structural
category in language A as opposed to language B.
 Carsten Breul

2.3â•… Relativising the methodological ideal

In the preceding discussion of the role of tertium comparationis and equivalence in
contrastive information structure analysis the hedge expression ‘strictly speaking’ has
been used twice. I said: (a) “Strictly speaking, in order to prevent a vicious method-
ological circularity, a theory of meaning/functions is required that is independent of
categories that serve the linguistic description of an individual language.” (b) “Strictly
speaking, stating a tertium comparationis on the form side presupposes that the respec-
tive form or structure is in a certain sense ‘equivalently present’ in both the languages
to be compared.” What is intended by this hedge is this: Given that the methodological
requirements just sketched are considered reasonable in principle – which can-
not be expected to be the case for everybody – they represent an ideal achieving
which may be very hard or even impossible at the present stage for the majority
of potential research questions. I do think, however, that it is an ideal which is
worth keeping in mind if progress is to be made on the way towards the goal of
contrastive linguistics mentioned earlier, namely to assist other research paradigms
in their more general or fundamental objectives or in their applied aims. That is,
reflecting on the tertium comparationis and equivalence problems in each contras-
tive information structure analysis adds to its quality. As far as other aspects of the
contrastive methodology as well as the stages of a contrastive analysis are con-
cerned, I agree with Chesterman’s (1998: Chapter 1) proposals. His “contrastive
functional analysis” (CFA) methodology

derives directly from Popper’s (e.g. 1972) philosophy of science. Popper argues
that all growth of objective knowledge proceeds as a form of problem-solving,
in which hypotheses (tentative theories) are suggested, tested and refuted,
giving rise to revised hypotheses which are in turn tested and revised, and so
on in an endless process of conjecture and refutation. On this view, the goal of
cross-linguistic comparisons is to propose and test falsifiable hypotheses, and
their theoretical value lies precisely in this function (see also Janicki 1990).
 (Chesterman 1998: 53)

It is true, my insistence on the heuristic value of reflection about the tertium

comparationis and the question of equivalence in contrastive information struc-
ture analysis (and other branches of contrastive analysis for that matter), does not
appear to accord well with other passages in Chesterman’s (1998) discussion of his
CFA methodology. For example, he writes

The starting point for a given CFA-type analysis is a perception, made by a

linguist, a translator, a language learner. This is a perception of a similarity
of some kind […]. It is this perception, not some assumed equivalence, that
provides the initial comparability criterion. For the language learner, this initial
 On the foundations of the contrastive study of information structure 

perception is the potential trigger for interference. For the contrastivist, it is

the reason why X and Y are worth comparing. It is significant that this initial
perception is often vague, unspecified: one task of contrastive research is to
clarify and specify such perceptions.  (Ib.: 55f.)
This CFA methodology therefore differs from the traditional one in its
interpretation of the tertium comparationis. Traditionally, this has been taken as
the starting-point of a comparison; however, as suggested above, this view risks
circularity, in that some kind of equivalence is both assumed at the start and
arrived at in the conclusion. In the methodology proposed here, the starting-point
for a comparison is not an equivalence but a perceived similarity: the starting-
point is this perception. The perception is then refined and operationally defined
as a similarity constraint, specifying the acceptable range of similarity. The relation
of identity (equivalence) occurs first in the initial hypothesis to be tested, and
perhaps also as part of the result of such testing. (Ib.: 59)

However, there does not seem to be too deep a rift between Chesterman’s view
and the one sketched in Section 2 above. Of course, the trigger for the detection
of an interesting topic for a contrastive information structure analysis is a per-
ception of similarity or dissimilarity as described by Chesterman. I consider the
reflection on the tertium comparationis and equivalence issues to be the crucial
part of the stage where this perception is “refined and operationally defined as a
similarity constraint” (Chesterman quotation above).15
There is another respect in which the ideal that requires a clear demarcation
of the tertium comparationis on the meaning/function side may have to be rela-
tivised. The point is that a category of information structure is never manifested
independently of other aspects of meaning. For example, identifiability and acti-
vation have to do with denotations or referents of expressions; focus structure,
or the dimensions of topic-comment, of focus-background, and of theme-rheme
have to do with the way in which propositional information is expressed. ‘Denota-
tion’, ‘referent’ and ‘proposition’ essentially being semantic notions, there is no way
of cutting off these meaning aspects from the respective category of information
structure. Consequently, any consideration of the ways in which such a category
is formally expressed in two languages can only proceed against the background
assumption that these necessarily involved meaning aspects do not interfere with
the contrastive analysis. And this presupposes a reliance on being able to keep
these meaning aspects equivalent, with nothing more at our disposal than the

.â•… As far as English/German contrastive information structure analyses are concerned, I may
point to work by Doherty (see Note 2) where this methodological step – refining perceptions
of (dis)similarity and defining them as a similarity constraint – is carried out with utmost
expertise, leading to highly insightful and interesting results.
 Carsten Breul

usual criteria of translational and semanto-syntactic equivalence (or similarity)16

as they have been discussed and shown to be problematic in the contrastive
linguistics literature (see e.g. Chesterman 1998: Chapter 1, Krzeszowski 1990). My
point, however, is not to make a contribution to the discussion of whether or not
there is equivalence on the meaning/function side between languages. The point is
rather that being forced to consider this question in connection with setting up the
tertium comparationis of a contrastive analysis is precisely the heuristic specificity
of contrastive linguistics by which it differs from other comparative approaches.

3.â•… E
 xamples of contrastive information structure analyses
in the present volume

This section illustrates how the ontological and methodological points about contrastive
information structure analysis presented above are at work in some of the contribu-
tions to the present volume. In addition to the reference to Lambrecht’s work (this
volume) in Section 2.2.2 above, I will briefly refer to four more examples.
The main point of Cohen’s contribution with respect to contrastive information
structure analysis – ‘main’ in my construal for the purposes in the present paper,
not necessarily in Cohen’s – is based on a tertium comparationis on the meaning/
function side. It is actually the building up of the tertium comparationis which
provides the bulk of Cohen’s article. Against the gist of several previous studies,
the author presents a unified, monosemous, account of the function of intensive
reflexives (IRs) in English. She explains how her account relates to information
structure, an important aspect of the explanation being as follows:

[T]he scope of the PNself [i.e. post-nominal IR] marks the referent as an anchor
to which the newer information should be linked, the entry under which new
information is inserted. The VPself [i.e. post-verbal IR] marks the predicate
similarly, thereby marking the set based on it as the anchor entry. The
PAUXself [i.e. post-auxiliary IR] takes scope over the informationally poor
auxiliary. In this case, the IR signals that both the predicate and the referent are
discourse-old and already activated, thereby marking them as anchor entries,
while highlighting the connection between them as the new information
in the discourse.  (Cohen this volume: Section 4.2)

.â•… Chesterman’s (1998) Contrastive Functional Analysis is “based on a notion of similarity

rather than one of identity; it explicitly relies on translation competence” (ib.: 40). On the
relativity inherent in similarity, which is substituted by Chesterman for equivalence in other
researchers’ conceptions, see ib.: 5–16.
 On the foundations of the contrastive study of information structure 

Cohen argues that her theory of the function of IRs in English applies equally well to
Hebrew IRs. This step in the line of argumentation might be considered a contras-
tive observation in its own right, based on a tertium comparationis on the form side,
i.e. on the identification of the lexico-grammatical category IR in both languages, and
revealing a cross-linguistic commonality rather than a difference. However, my con-
strual of Cohen’s main contrastive observation affects precisely formal aspects of IRs:

While IR scope effects are evident in both languages, they differ somewhat in
the specific linguistic marking of this scope. As in English, some Hebrew IRs
mark their scope by linear position. Thus, the bare PNself and the b- marked
VPself take scope backwards over the preceding segment […]. However, two
important differences must be considered: the wider range of positions open to
the Hebrew IR and its occurrence with a preposition. Unlike English, Hebrew
requires prepositional marking with some IRs. As noted in Section  2, bare
IRs can occur with any nominal antecedent and must immediately follow it,
and so are identified as PNself. In contrast, b- IRs require subject antecedents.
 (Cohen this volume: Section 4.1)

Thus, strictly speaking, we cannot take the step of argumentation just mentioned to
be a legitimate contrastive observation in its own right, embedded in the main one.
The form side of the IRs in Hebrew in comparison to English is at issue in the main
contrastive observation, revealing a difference. Consequently, it cannot be made the
tertium comparationis of another contrastive analysis aiming at the meaning/function
side. The challenge that Cohen’s main contrastive observation sets, a challenge inviting
attempts at falsification and thus being of significant scientific value, is this: Can
the claim that the differences between English and Hebrew IRs on the form side
do not correspond to differences on the information structural meaning/function
side be maintained in the light of further evidence?
The contribution by López contains several lines of argumentation that con-
stitute instances of contrastive information structure analysis. I will pick one of
them for illustration: On the meaning/function side, López makes a distinction
between ‘givenness’ and ‘discourse anaphoricity’.
(12) a. Context: I’m wearing a red coat. What are you wearing?
i. I’m wearing a blue coat.
ii. I’m wearing a blue shirt.
b. Context: What kind of coat are you wearing?
i. I’m wearing a blue coat.
ii. #I’m wearing a blue shirt.

For López (this volume: Section 1), the expression coat in (12ai) is ‘given’ – by virtue of
being only ‘accidentally’ occurring again, after having been mentioned in the
 Carsten Breul

preceding question, as part of the larger focus expression; cf. the appropriateness
of (12aii) as a reply to (12a). In (12bi) coat is ‘discourse anaphoric’ – by virtue of
being mandatorily coreferential with an antecedent in the previous discourse and not
being a part of the focus expression; cf. the inappropriateness of an alternative like
(12bii) as a reply to (12a). These two information structural categories, ‘givenness’
and ‘discourse anaphoricity’, can be applied to both English and Catalan, that is,
each of them may serve as a tertium comparationis on the meaning/function side.
English and Catalan show interesting non-equivalences on the form side in the
manifestation of these information structure categories. For example, a Catalan
‘discourse anaphoric’ constituent, in contrast to an English one, is obligatorily
clitic right-dislocated, as shown by (13) (see ib., and p.c.).

(13) A: What kind of coat do you have?

B: i. En tinc un de blau, d’abric.
cl have.1st a of blue of-coat
‘I have a blue coat.’
ii. #Tinc un abric blau.
have.1st a coat blue

Also, whereas an English ‘accidentally given’ constituent is obligatorily ‘deaccented’,

as is the case with coat in (12ai), a phonological rule to the same effect does not
exist in Catalan, as shown by (14), where blau receives the main sentence accent
despite its being ‘given’ (see ib.: Section 4).

(14) A: Mary drove her blue convertible. What did John drive?
B: Va conduir el seu sedan blau.
past drive.inf the her/his sedan blue
‘He drove her/his blue sedan.’

The method employed by Skopeteas & Fanselow is based on a tertium comparationis

on the meaning/function side. For each of the languages investigated (American
English, Québec French, Hungarian and Georgian), data are gathered by an elici-
tation procedure that targets utterances where, in a canonical sentence structure,
(a) the subject would be an identificational focus expression, (b) the object would
be an identificational focus expression, (c) the subject would be a non-identificational
focus expression, (d) the object would be a non-identificational focus expression.
The visual stimulus is held constant across languages, and the verbal context is
created by questions that are semanto-lexically and translationally equivalent. I
would like to highlight from among the various very interesting results gained by
this procedure the following observation: As can be expected on the basis of the
previous literature (see the references given by Skopeteas & Fanselow), there is a
 On the foundations of the contrastive study of information structure 

much stronger tendency in (Québec) French than in (American) English of using

a cleft construction in those cases where the elicitation procedure targets utterances
where, in a canonical sentence structure, a subject would be an identificational focus
expression. What I found surprising and in need of further investigation beyond
the suggestion put forward by Skopeteas & Fanselow (this volume: Section 5.2)
is the fact that, even in French, in 26% of these cases the sentence structure
used is the canonical one rather than the cleft construction. One would have
expected a much lower percentage.
Gast’s approach in his contribution to the present volume is the one that is
most explicitly and specifically contrastive in that he discusses the tertium compara-
tionis issue and devotes much care to establishing ‘sub-informativity’ as his tertium
comparationis on the meaning/function side.17 For Gast, tertia comparationis on
the meaning/function side constitute the ideal for contrastive information struc-
ture analysis: “Ideally, such a ‘third of comparison’ should be defined on a purely
notional basis. It constitutes the invariant in the process of language comparison,
while variation is expected in the formal means to encode the relevant categories.”
(Gast this volume: Section 1) This view follows naturally either from scepticism as
to the existence of universals or cross-linguistic constants on the form side, as sug-
gested by the discussion in Section 2.2.2 above, or from scepticism as to whether
universals or cross-linguistic constants on the form side can be made to work as
tertia comparationis in contrastive information structure analysis.
From among the many interesting observations by Gast about the common-
alities and differences between English and German as far as lexical, syntactic and
intonational realisations of sub-informativity are concerned, I would like to draw
particular attention to the following one:

both English and German have contours that are used in contexts of
‘sub-informativity’, but they are used at different levels of generality: the English
fall-rise is a general marker of ‘incompleteness’, and therefore covers ‘sub-
informativity’ […] as one of its functions, whereas the German root contour is a
rather specific marker of ‘context-changing sub-informativity’.  (Ib.: Section 7.3)

This remark reminds me of Hawkins’s (1986, 1988) well-known claim about the
tighter fit in German than in English between syntactic surface structures on
the one hand and semantic relations between predicates and their arguments on
the other. It seems worthwhile investigating whether there is also a tighter fit in
German than in English between intonational patterns on the one hand and the

.â•… “A declarative sentence S is sub-informative relative to a strategy Q (containing S) iff S

does not answer all questions in Q.“(Gast this volume: Section 3.2)
 Carsten Breul

information structural categories they are associated with on the other. Gast’s
observation concerning the English fall-rise and the German root contour points
in this direction.

4.â•… Conclusion

The specific tertia comparationis for contrastive information structure analysis

are either information structural categories from the meaning/function side,
or forms, structures, operations, principles from the form side assumed to be
equivalently present in the languages involved and to be relevant for the expres-
sion of information structural categories in at least one of them. The background
tertium comparationis of contrastive information structure analysis is transla-
tional and/or semanto-syntactic equivalence, as it is for contrastive linguistics
in general as soon as meaning bearing units are involved (i.e. except for con-
trastive phonetics and phonology). By ‘background’ I mean that the range of
forms, structures etc. considered on the form sides has to be constrained by
considerations of translational and/or semanto-syntactic equivalence (see e.g.
Krzeszowski 1990). At the same time, the phenomena which cause translational
and/or semanto-syntactic equivalence to manifest itself as a fuzzy and relative
concept may point to linguistically interesting facts, also in the domain of con-
trastive information structure analysis.

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and Intonational Approach [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 68]. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins.
Breul, C. 2007. Focus structure, movement to spec-Foc and syntactic processing. In On Information
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 Subject index
A E
accessibility╇ 201, 256ff.
AC-profile╇ 35f.
activation╇ 201ff., 286
addressation╇ 19, 257f.
alloquestion╇ 104ff.
alternatives (set of ~)╇ 20f., 42,
144ff., 158f., 162f., 193
B Principle╇ 240ff.,
B-accent╇ 34f., 59
C F
canonical / non-canonical
(constituent order,
position, etc.)╇ 83, 86,
88, 90, 93ff., 170f., 174ff.,
184ff., 190ff., 231, 233,
238ff., 269
Catalan╇ 51ff.
cleft construction╇ 176ff., 186ff.,
pass.
– avoir cleft╇ 93ff.
– c’est cleft╇ 86ff.
clitic left dislocation╇ 55ff.
clitic pronoun╇ 83f., 125ff.
clitic right dislocation╇ 53ff.,
62, 64
comparison (set); see also
‘alternatives’╇ 152, 154f.,
158f., 162f.
contrast, contrastiveness,
contrastivity╇ 15ff., 89, 142,
145, 152, 260ff.
cross-linguistic influence╇ 216
D preposing; see also
definiteness╇ 17, 93f., 263, 265ff.
discourse
configurationality╇ 234,
237ff.
D-linking╇ 130f.
d-tree╇ 22ff.
I
echo question╇ 107ff. identifiability╇ 16f., 286, 290f.
economy╇ 190 implicature╇ 33, 37f., 43,
English╇ 15ff., 51ff., 77ff., 101ff., 146ff., 163
139ff., 169ff., 231ff., 277ff. inclusion╇ 142, 144, 146ff.
equivalence╇ 283ff., 288ff., 292, incompleteness╇ 34, 37f., 41, 44
294ff. inference╇ 148, 150, 162f., 178
exclusion╇ 142, 144, 146ff. Italian╇ 231ff.
Extended Projection i-topicalisation╇ 22
246ff. J
Japanese╇ 231ff.
fall-rise contour╇ 34ff. K
familiarity╇ 255, 262ff. Korean╇ 231ff.
feature specification of omitted
subjects╇ 209f., 216f. L
focus structure╇ 61ff., 77ff., linearisation╇ 70ff., 171ff., 231ff.,
286, 293 253ff.
focus╇ pass. link╇ 31f., 54ff., 233f.
– (non-)identificational
focus╇ 170f. M
– in situ focus╇ 172f. minimality╇ 190f.
forefield╇ 32ff. movement pass.
French╇ 77ff., 101ff., 169ff., – Aʹ-movement╇ 33
199ff. – Formal Movement╇ 33
fronting; see also
‘preposing’╇ 30ff., 175, N
253f., 266f. Northern Italian dialects╇ 128f.
G P
Georgian╇ 169ff. perspectivation╇ 234, 263ff.
German╇ 15ff., 199ff., 231ff., point of view╇ 263ff.
277ff. precedence╇ 269f.
givenness╇ 17, 33, 51ff., 262f. preferred clause
ground╇ 54ff. construction╇ 83ff.
H ‘fronting’╇ 30, 83, 176
hat contour╇ 39f. preposition b- (Hebrew)╇ 142ff.
Hebrew╇ 139ff. presentational
hierarchy╇ 232ff., 242ff., 253ff., construction╇ 184ff.
269f. preverb╇ 174
Hungarian╇ 169ff., 231ff. pronoun strength╇ 126, 132f.
 Subject index

Q strategy╇ 23ff., 28, 42f. topic pass.

question under discussion╇ 18, structural complexity╇ 190f. – topic-comment╇ 20, 26,
23, 26, 33 subject of predication╇ 256 77ff., 86f., 234, 236,
subject prominence╇ 237ff., 256ff.
R 241, 247 – topic prominence╇ 237ff.,
restrictor╇ 20, 129f. sub-question╇ 23f., 28, 31, 42f. 242, 246ff.
resumptive topic╇ 28f. syntactic relation╇ 132f. topicalisation╇ 16f., 21ff., 30ff.,
root contour╇ 19, 34, 39ff. 243ff.
root infinitive╇ 222ff. T
tail╇ 54ff.
U
S target-deviant subject
underspecification╇ 148, 150,
scalarity╇ 144, 146ff. drop╇ 206ff.
163
scope╇ 59, 123f., 129f., 144f., tertium comparationis╇ 16ff.,
153ff., 162f., 250, 269f. 171f., 277f., 281ff., 287ff.,
secondary predication╇ 84ff. 290ff., 277, 281 W
set marker╇ 145ff., 162f. theme / rheme╇ 35, 87f., 145, wh- pronoun╇ 127ff.
specificity╇ 263ff. 288f., 254f. wh-clitic doubling╇ 128
Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today
A complete list of titles in this series can be found on the publishers’ website, www.benjamins.com

169 Sánchez, Liliana: The Morphology and Syntax of Topic and Focus. Minimalist inquiries in the Quechua
periphery. Expected November 2010
168 Feldhausen, Ingo: Sentential Form and Prosodic Structure of Catalan. xiii, 280 + index. Expected
October 2010
167 Mercado, Raphael, Eric Potsdam and Lisa deMena Travis (eds.): Austronesian and Theoretical
Linguistics. vii, 374 pp. + index. Expected October 2010
166 Brandt, Patrick and Marco García García (eds.): Transitivity. Form, Meaning, Acquisition, and
Processing. vi, 300 pp. + index. Expected October 2010
165 Breul, Carsten and Edward Göbbel (eds.): Comparative and Contrastive Studies of Information
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164 Zwart, Jan-Wouter and Mark de Vries (eds.): Structure Preserved. Studies in syntax for Jan Koster.
2010. xxiii, 395 pp.
163 Kiziak, Tanja: Extraction Asymmetries. Experimental evidence from German. 2010. xvi, 273 pp.
162 Bott, Oliver: The Processing of Events. xix, 379 pp. + index. Expected September 2010
161 Haan, Germen J. de: Studies in West Frisian Grammar. Edited by Jarich Hoekstra, Willem Visser and
Goffe Jensma. 2010. x, 384 pp.
160 Mavrogiorgos, Marios: Clitics in Greek. A minimalist account of proclisis and enclisis. 2010.
x, 294 pp.
159 Breitbarth, Anne, Christopher Lucas, Sheila Watts and David Willis (eds.): Continuity and
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158 Duguine, Maia, Susana Huidobro and Nerea Madariaga (eds.): Argument Structure and
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157 Fischer, Susann: Word-Order Change as a Source of Grammaticalisation. 2010. ix, 200 pp.
156 Di Sciullo, Anna Maria and Virginia Hill (eds.): Edges, Heads, and Projections. Interface properties.
2010. vii, 265 pp.
155 Sato, Yosuke: Minimalist Interfaces. Evidence from Indonesian and Javanese. 2010. xiii, 159 pp.
154 Hornstein, Norbert and Maria Polinsky (eds.): Movement Theory of Control. 2010. vii, 330 pp.
153 Cabredo Hofherr, Patricia and Ora Matushansky (eds.): Adjectives. Formal analyses in syntax
and semantics. 2010. vii, 335 pp.
152 Gallego, Ængel J.: Phase Theory. 2010. xii, 365 pp.
151 Sudhoff, Stefan: Focus Particles in German. Syntax, prosody, and information structure. 2010.
xiii, 335 pp.
150 Everaert, Martin, Tom Lentz, Hannah de Mulder, Øystein Nilsen and Arjen Zondervan
(eds.): The Linguistics Enterprise. From knowledge of language to knowledge in linguistics. 2010. ix, 379 pp.
149 Aelbrecht, Lobke: The Syntactic Licensing of Ellipsis. 2010. xii, 230 pp.
148 Hogeweg, Lotte, Helen de Hoop and Andrej Malchukov (eds.): Cross-linguistic Semantics of
Tense, Aspect, and Modality. 2009. vii, 406 pp.
147 Ghomeshi, Jila, Ileana Paul and Martina Wiltschko (eds.): Determiners. Universals and variation.
2009. vii, 247 pp.
146 Gelderen, Elly van (ed.): Cyclical Change. 2009. viii, 329 pp.
145 Westergaard, Marit: The Acquisition of Word Order. Micro-cues, information structure, and
economy. 2009. xii, 245 pp.
144 Putnam, Michael T. (ed.): Towards a Derivational Syntax. Survive-minimalism. 2009. x, 269 pp.
143 Rothmayr, Antonia: The Structure of Stative Verbs. 2009. xv, 216 pp.
142 Nunes, Jairo (ed.): Minimalist Essays on Brazilian Portuguese Syntax. 2009. vi, 243 pp.
141 Alexiadou, Artemis, Jorge Hankamer, Thomas McFadden, Justin Nuger and Florian
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140 Roehrs, Dorian: Demonstratives and Definite Articles as Nominal Auxiliaries. 2009. xii, 196 pp.
139 Hicks, Glyn: The Derivation of Anaphoric Relations. 2009. xii, 309 pp.
138 Siddiqi, Daniel: Syntax within the Word. Economy, allomorphy, and argument selection in Distributed
Morphology. 2009. xii, 138 pp.
137 Pfau, Roland: Grammar as Processor. A Distributed Morphology account of spontaneous speech errors.
2009. xiii, 372 pp.
136 Kandybowicz, Jason: The Grammar of Repetition. Nupe grammar at the syntax–phonology interface.
2008. xiii, 168 pp.
135 Lewis, William D., Simin Karimi, Heidi Harley and Scott O. Farrar (eds.): Time and Again.
Theoretical perspectives on formal linguistics. In honor of D. Terence Langendoen. 2009. xiv, 265 pp.
134 Armon-Lotem, Sharon, Gabi Danon and Susan D. Rothstein (eds.): Current Issues in
Generative Hebrew Linguistics. 2008. vii, 393 pp.
133 MacDonald, Jonathan E.: The Syntactic Nature of Inner Aspect. A minimalist perspective. 2008.
xv, 241 pp.
132 Biberauer, Theresa (ed.): The Limits of Syntactic Variation. 2008. vii, 521 pp.
131 De Cat, Cécile and Katherine Demuth (eds.): The Bantu–Romance Connection. A comparative
investigation of verbal agreement, DPs, and information structure. 2008. xix, 355 pp.
130 Kallulli, Dalina and Liliane Tasmowski (eds.): Clitic Doubling in the Balkan Languages. 2008.
ix, 442 pp.
129 Sturgeon, Anne: The Left Periphery. The interaction of syntax, pragmatics and prosody in Czech. 2008.
xi, 143 pp.
128 Taleghani, Azita H.: Modality, Aspect and Negation in Persian. 2008. ix, 183 pp.
127 Durrleman-Tame, Stephanie: The Syntax of Jamaican Creole. A cartographic perspective. 2008.
xii, 190 pp.
126 Schäfer, Florian: The Syntax of (Anti-)Causatives. External arguments in change-of-state contexts. 2008.
xi, 324 pp.
125 Rothstein, Björn: The Perfect Time Span. On the present perfect in German, Swedish and English.
2008. xi, 171 pp.
124 Ihsane, Tabea: The Layered DP. Form and meaning of French indefinites. 2008. ix, 260 pp.
123 Stoyanova, Marina: Unique Focus. Languages without multiple wh-questions. 2008. xi, 184 pp.
122 Oosterhof, Albert M.: The Semantics of Generics in Dutch and Related Languages. 2008. xviii, 286 pp.
121 Tungseth, Mai Ellin: Verbal Prepositions and Argument Structure. Path, place and possession in
Norwegian. 2008. ix, 187 pp.
120 Asbury, Anna, Jakub Dotlačil, Berit Gehrke and Rick Nouwen (eds.): Syntax and Semantics of
Spatial P. 2008. vi, 416 pp.
119 Fortuny, Jordi: The Emergence of Order in Syntax. 2008. viii, 211 pp.
118 Jäger, Agnes: History of German Negation. 2008. ix, 350 pp.
117 Haugen, Jason D.: Morphology at the Interfaces. Reduplication and Noun Incorporation in Uto-Aztecan.
2008. xv, 257 pp.
116 Endo, Yoshio: Locality and Information Structure. A cartographic approach to Japanese. 2007. x, 235 pp.
115 Putnam, Michael T.: Scrambling and the Survive Principle. 2007. x, 216 pp.
114 Lee-Schoenfeld, Vera: Beyond Coherence. The syntax of opacity in German. 2007. viii, 206 pp.
113 Eythórsson, Thórhallur (ed.): Grammatical Change and Linguistic Theory. The Rosendal papers. 2008.
vi, 441 pp.
112 Axel, Katrin: Studies on Old High German Syntax. Left sentence periphery, verb placement and verb-
second. 2007. xii, 364 pp.
111 Eguren, Luis and Olga Fernández-Soriano (eds.): Coreference, Modality, and Focus. Studies on
the syntax–semantics interface. 2007. xii, 239 pp.
110 Rothstein, Susan D. (ed.): Theoretical and Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Semantics of Aspect. 2008.
viii, 453 pp.
109 Chocano, Gema: Narrow Syntax and Phonological Form. Scrambling in the Germanic languages. 2007.
x, 333 pp.
108 Reuland, Eric, Tanmoy Bhattacharya and Giorgos Spathas (eds.): Argument Structure. 2007.
xviii, 243 pp.
107 Corver, Norbert and Jairo Nunes (eds.): The Copy Theory of Movement. 2007. vi, 388 pp.
106 Dehé, Nicole and Yordanka Kavalova (eds.): Parentheticals. 2007. xii, 314 pp.
105 Haumann, Dagmar: Adverb Licensing and Clause Structure in English. 2007. ix, 438 pp.
104 Jeong, Youngmi: Applicatives. Structure and interpretation from a minimalist perspective. 2007.
vii, 144 pp.