Open AccessThe secret life of focus exponents, and what it tells us about fronted verbal projections
Author(s) -
Kordula De Kuthy,
Detmar Meurers
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
proceedings of the international conference on head-driven phrase structure grammar
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1535-1793
DOI - 10.21248/hpsg.2003.6
Subject(s) - definiteness , focus (optics) , linguistics , syntax , information structure , noun phrase , computer science , word order , subject (documents) , artificial intelligence , natural language processing , noun , mathematics , philosophy , physics , library science , optics
The paper investigates a complex word order phenomenon in Germanand the interaction of syntax and information structure itexemplifies: the occurrence of subjects as part of a frontednon-finite constituent and particularly the so-called definitenesseffect excluding (many) definite subjects from this position. Weexplore the connection between focus projection and the partialfronting cases and show that it is the subject of those verbswhich allow their subject to be the focus exponent that can beincluded as part of a fronted verbal constituent. In combinationwith the observation by Webelhuth (1990) that fronted verbalconstituents need to be focused, this provides a naturalexplanation of the definiteness effect in terms of the informationstructure requirements in these sentences. Interestingly, thegenerally ignored exceptions to the definiteness effect arepredicted by our analysis; we show that they involve definite nounphrases which can bear focus, which allows them to be part of afronted verbal constituent. Finally, building on the integratedgrammatical architecture provided in De Kuthy (2002), we formulatean HPSG theory which captures the interaction of constraints fromsyntax, information structure and intonation.