Issues on topics

The present volume contains papers that bear mainly on issues concerning the topic concept. This concept is of course very broad and diverse. Also, different views are expressed in this volume. Some authors concentrate on the status of topics and non-topics in so-called topic prominent languages (i.e. Chinese), others focus on the syntactic behavior of topical constituents in specific European languages (German, Greek, Romance languages). The last contribution tries to bring together the concept of discourse topic (a non-syntactic notion) and the concept of sentence topic, i.e. that type of topic that all the preceding papers are concerned with

Information structure and the referential status of linguistic expression : workshop as part of the 23th annual meetings of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft in Leipzig, Leipzig, February 28 - March 2, 2001

This volume comprises papers that were given at the workshop Information Structure and the Referential Status of Linguistic Expressions, which we organized during the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS) Conference in Leipzig in February 2001. At this workshop we discussed the connection between information structure and the referential interpretation of linguistic expressions, a topic mostly neglected in current linguistics research. One common aim of the papers is to find out to what extent the focus-background as well as the topic-comment structuring determine the referential interpretation of simple arguments like definite and indefinite NPs on the one hand and sentences on the other

A preliminary bibliography on focus

[I]n its present form, the bibliography contains approximately 1100 entries. Bibliographical work is never complete, and the present one is still modest in a number of respects. It is not annotated, and it still contains a lot of mistakes and inconsistencies. It has nevertheless reached a stage which justifies considering the possibility of making it available to the public. The first step towards this is its pre-publication in the form of this working paper. […] The bibliography is less complete for earlier years. For works before 1970, the bibliographies of Firbas and Golkova 1975 and Tyl 1970 may be consulted, which have not been included here

Sinhala and Tamil : a case of contact-induced restructuring

PhD ThesisThe dissertation presents a comparative synchronic study of the morphosyntactic features of modern spoken Sinhala and Tamil, the two main languages of Sri Lanka. The main motivation of the research is that Sinhala and Tamil, two languages of diverse origins—the New Indo-Aryan (NIA) and Dravidian families respectively—share a wide spectrum of morphosyntactic features. Sinhala has long been isolated from the other NIA languages and co-existed with Tamil in Sri Lanka ever since both reached Sri Lanka from India. This coexistence, it is believed, led to what is known as the contact-induced restructuring that Sinhala morphosyntax has undergone on the model of Tamil, while retaining its NIA lexicon. Moreover, as languages of South Asia, the two languages share the areal features of this region. The research seeks to address the following questions: (i) What features do the two languages share and what features do they not share?; (ii) Are the features that they share areal features of the region or those diffused into one another owing to contact?; (iii) If the features that they share are due to contact, has diffusion taken place unidirectionally or bidirectionally?; and (iv) Does contact have any role to play with respect to features that they do not share? The claim that this research intends to substantiate is that Sinhala has undergone morphosyntactic restructuring on the model of Tamil. The research, therefore, attempts to answer another question: (v) Can the morphosyntactic restructuring that Sinhala has undergone be explained in syntactic terms? The morphosyntactic features of the two languages are analyzed at macro- and micro-levels. At the macro-level, a wide range of morphosyntactic features of Tamil and Sinhala, and those of seven other languages of the region are compared with a view to determining the origins of these features and showing the large scale morphosyntactic convergence between Sinhala and Tamil and the divergence between Sinhala and other NIA languages. At the micro-level the dissertation analyzes in detail two morphosyntactic phenomena, namely null arguments and focus constructions. It examines whether subject/verb agreement, which is different across the two languages, plays a role in the licensing of null arguments in each language. It also examines the nature of the changes Sinhala morphosyntax has undergone because of the two kinds of Tamil focus constructions that Sinhala has replicated. It is hoped, that this dissertation will make a significant contribution to the knowledge and understanding of the morphosyntax of the two languages, the effects of language contact on morphosyntax, and more generally, the nature of linguistic variation.Scholarship Programme of the Higher Education for the Twenty First Century (HETC) Project, Ministry of Higher Education, Sri Lanka

Interventionseffekte in Fragen

This dissertation is concerned with the phenomenon of intervention effects, observed in three different domains: wh-questions, alternative questions (AltQ) and Negative Polarity Item (NPI) licensing. I propose that these three domains share some common properties, namely, they all involve focus-sensitive licensing, and are thus sensitive to an intervening focus phrase. The overview of the dissertation is as follows. In chapter 2, I discuss the phenomenon of intervention effects in wh-questions, brought to light in the discussion of German in Beck (1996), and Korean in Beck and Kim (1997). The basic idea of their analysis is that quantifiers block LF wh-movement. I show that intervention effects are observed in many other languages, too, suggesting that the intervention effect has a universal character. I then point out some problems with the analysis proposed by Beck (1996) and Beck and Kim (1997). In chapter 3, I propose a new generalization of the wh-intervention effects, namely that the core set of interveners, which is crosslinguistically stable, consists of focus phrases (and not quantifiers in general). Furthermore, I argue that the wh-intervention effect is actually an instance of the more general intervention effect, the "Focus Intervention Effect", which says that in a focus-sensitive licensing construction, no independent focus phrase may intervene between the licensor Op and the licensee XP. The underlying idea is that the Q operator is a focus-sensitive operator and that wh-phrases in-situ are dependent (i.e., semantically deficient) focus elements, which must be associated with the Q operator in order to be interpreted. An intervening independent focus operator precisely blocks that association. I further propose that the domain of focus-sensitive licensing includes not only wh-licensing, but also AltQ-licensing and NPI-licensing. In chapter 4, I show that alternative questions are also subject to the focus intervention effect, just like wh-questions. I provide evidence that the intervention effect in wh-questions and in alternative questions should receive a parallel analysis, in terms of focus-sensitivity. In chapter 5, I discuss a third construction which is sensitive to the focus intervention effect: the licensing of Negative Polarity Items (NPIs). I show that focus consistently blocks NPI licensing, with data from German and Korean. I propose that NPIs are also semantically deficient focus elements, which need to be associated with a NEG operator. Finally, chapter 6 summarizes the intervention effects and suggests some topics for future research into the precise nature of the intervention effect.Gegenstand dieser Dissertation ist das Phänomen der Interventionseffekte, die in drei verschiedenen Bereichen zu beobachten sind: W-Fragen, Alternativfragen und Lizenzierung negativer Polaritätselemente. Mein Vorschlag ist, dass diese drei Bereiche gewisse gemeinsame Eigenschaften teilen, nämlich, dass es bei allen um eine Lizenzierung geht, die fokussensitiv ist, und eine intervenierende Fokusphrase diese Lizenzierung blockiert. Die Dissertation ist folgendermaßen gegliedert: In Kapitel 2 diskutiere ich das Phänomen der Interventionseffekte in W-Fragen, die in Arbeiten von Beck (1996) über deutsche Daten und von Beck & Kim (1997) über koreanische Daten dargestellt wurden. Ihre Grundidee ist, dass Quantoren LF-W-Bewegung blockieren. In dieser Dissertation zeige ich, dass auch in vielen anderen Sprachen Interventionseffekte zu beobachten sind, was auf einen universalen Charakter des Interventionseffekts hinweist. Des Weiteren stelle ich noch einige Probleme der Analyse von Beck (1996) und Beck & Kim (1997) dar. In Kapitel 3 schlage ich eine neue Generalisierung der W-Interventionseffekte vor, nämlich, dass die Gruppe der Intervenierer, die crosslinguistisch stabil ist, aus Fokusphrasen besteht (nicht aus Quantoren im Allgemeinen). Darüber hinaus argumentiere ich, dass der W-Interventionseffekt eigentlich eine Instanz von einem allgemeineren Intereventionseffekt ist. Diesen allgemeineren Interventionseffekt nenne ich "Fokusinterventionseffekt", was bedeutet, dass in einer fokussensitiven Lizenzierungskonstruktion keine unabhängige Fokusphrase zwischen dem lizenzierenden Operator und der zu lizenzierenden XP intervenieren darf. Ich behaupte, dass der Q-Operator ein fokussensitiver Operator ist und W-Phrasen in-situ semantisch abhängige Fokuselemente sind, die mit diesem Q-Operator assoziiert werden müssen, um interpretiert werden zu können. Diese Assoziation wird von einem intervenierenden Fokusoperator blockiert. Ferner zeige ich, dass die Domäne der fokussensitiven Lizenzierung nicht nur W-Lizenzierung, sondern auch die Lizenzierung der Alternativfragen und die Lizenzierung negativer Polaritätselemente erfasst. In Kapitel 4 wird gezeigt, dass Alternativfragen auch dem Fokusinterventionseffekt unterliegen, genauso wie W-Fragen. Ich argumentiere, dass Interventionseffekte in W-Fragen und Alternativfragen in Bezug auf Fokussensitivität parallel analysiert werden sollen. In Kapitel 5 wird eine dritte Konstruktion diskutiert, bei der man Fokusinterventionseffekte beobachten kann. Dabei handelt es sich um die Lizenzierung negativer Polaritätselemente. Anhand deutscher und koreanischer Daten zeige ich, dass Fokusausdrücke auch die NPI-Lizenzierung blockieren. Ich schlage vor, dass negative Polaritätselemente ebenfalls semantisch abhängige Fokuselemente sind, die mit einem NEG-Operator assoziiert werden müssen. In Kapitel 6 fasse ich abschließend die Interventionseffekte zusammen und gebe einen Ausblick auf weitere Aspekte, die bezüglich des Interventionseffekts noch untersucht werden müssen