Sylff Research Abroad final report article
January 6, 2013
MISSING SOUND AND THE INTERACTION BETWEEN SYNTAX AND INFORMATION STRUCTURE
Marta Ruda
Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland
The place of information structure in the grammar is a highly debated issue in current
linguistic research (cf., a.o., Erteschik-Shir 2007, Fanselow 2006). Given that information
structural distinctions can be reflected in both the meaning of a sentence and its phonological
realisation, one of the questions which arise with respect to the study of information
structure is its relation to other components of grammar and, in particular, the role of
information structural notions such as topic and focus in syntactic computation. As far as the
interaction between syntax and information structure is considered, one of the approaches to
this questions suggests that information structural categories should be formalised in terms
of functional heads merged within the clausal spine. More specifically, the cartographic
approach to the investigation of the information structure assumes hierarchically ordered
information structural positions within the left periphery of the clause (cf., a.o., Rizzi 1997,
Frascarelli and Hinterhölzl 2007). Within this line of research, a fine-tuned mapping of
categories such as different types of topics into syntactic structure has been proposed with
one syntactic head per each type of distinct information structural property being assumed.
However, the cartographic approach has by no means remained unchallenged. For instance,
that the relation between syntax and information structure is only an indirect one has been
suggested, a.o., in Fanselow (2006) and, further, in light of the fact that operations such as
topicalisation are optional, Erteschik-Shir (2007) suggests that such information structural
phenomena should be attributed to the linearisation process, a property of PF computation.
One of the areas where determining the relationship between information structure, the
syntactic derivation, and interpretational properties of sentences influences the spectrum of
theoretical analyses proposed to account for the relevant data is constituted by elliptical
structures (i.e., structures in which the material present in their logical representation is
absent from the level of the sound system). (1) provides a relevant example:
(1) a. Diana reported the accident and Hannah did too.
b. Diana reported the accident and Hannah did <report the accident> too.
Even though the second clause of the sentence in (1a) is elliptical, the lack of sound does not
prevent an appropriate interpretation from being assigned to the structure (cf. (1b)).
Generally speaking, information structural distinctions have been shown to have an
impact on the acceptability of different types of elliptical constructions. VP ellipsis structures,
as exemplified in (1a), have been investigated in this context, for instance, in Kertz (2010) and
Konietzko and Winkler (2010). Kertz (2010) offers an insight into the nature of the antecedent
mismatch effects under ellipsis by showing that the acceptability of the elliptical structures is
constrained by information structural considerations, more specifically, by the
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topic/comment parallelism for contrastive topics. She shows that the defective contrastive
topic structure created by placing focus on the subject of the elliptical clause decreases the
acceptability of the relevant construction, as illustrated in (2) from Kertz (2010: 59):1
(2) #[The problem]top was looked into by John, and [BOB]top/foc did too.
The unacceptability of (2) has been taken to follow from the subject of the elliptical clause
being interpreted contrastively with the passive agent of the antecedent clause, which does
not meet the requirement of the elliptical structure to have a syntactically matched
antecedent. However, Kertz (2010) suggests that what is violated in the relevant construction
is not the licensing conditions on ellipsis per se but it is rather a well-formedness constraint
on contrastive topics that causes the problem. In particular, in sentences such as (2), the
constituent ‘John’ is not a topic, which is why the problem of the non-topical status of a
member of the intended topic set arises and results in the sentence being unacceptable.
An even more complicated picture as far as the interpretation of elliptical structures is
concerned can emerge in the context of the interplay of information structural properties and
the calculation of anaphoric dependencies. An intriguing illustration of this observation is
constituted by the phenomenon which has been referred to in the literature as the twopronoun puzzle or Dahl’s puzzle in the context of VP ellipsis but which is also found with
missing arguments. This is exemplified by the Basque data in (4) from Duguine (2006: 44),
for which the context (i.e., a sentence which could precede (4a) or (4b) in discourse) is
provided in (3):2
(3) Peioki esan digu [beraki berei ama
ikusi duela.]
Peio
say AUX s/he
his mother see AUX.that
‘Peio told us that he saw his mother.’
(4) a. Jonek esan digu [berak bere ama
ikusi duela].
Jon
say AUX s/he
his mother see AUX.that
‘Jon told us that he saw his mother.’
b. Jonek esan digu [berak [e] ikusi duela].
Jon
say AUX s/he
see AUX.that
‘Jon told us that he saw [e].’
Whereas the sentence in (4a) can show all four interpretational combinations possible as far
as the pronominals berak ‘s/he’ and bere ‘his’ are concerned (cf. (5)), in (4b) the last of the
readings shown in (5) is unavailable:
(5) a. Jon said Jon saw Jon’s mother.
b. Jon said Peio saw Peio’s mother.
The focused constituent is marked here with capital letters. The hash symbol marks the
unacceptability of the sentence.
2 The missing arguments are marked here as ‘[e]’.
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c. Jon said Jon saw Peio’s mother.
d. Jon said Peio saw Jon’s mother.
As revealed by the comparison of the interpretational possibilities of the elliptical structure
in (4b) and its non-elliptical counterpart in (4a), the lack of elements at the level of the sound
system can introduce an interpretive asymmetry of structures containing pronominal
dependencies, which raises the question about the source of this asymmetry. As stated in
Duguine (2006) after Büring (2005), Fox (2000), and Reinhart (2000), the unavailability of (5d)
as interpretation assigned to (4b) can be taken to follow from the interplay of conditions
governing ellipsis and the interpretation of pronouns. The latter of these factors can, in turn,
be influenced by information structural roles borne by nominal expressions in sentences.
Hence, determining the exact nature of the interaction between syntax and information
structure, in addition to constituting an intriguing research question in its own right, seems
important also from the perspective of research on structures whose meaning is richer than
what is represented at the level of the sound system.
References
Büring, D. (2005). Bound to bind. Linguistic Inquiry 36: 259-274.
Duguine, M. (2006). The role of information structure in interpretive asymmetries. In R.
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