Persona

The following three examples illustrate a difference between Focus and Givenness-marking that is analogous to the contrasts drawn in Chapter 3. I begin with the test case built up in (10). First, let’s verify that the intonation pattern in (10) is derivable via Focus-marking. Example (11) illustrates that the intonation can be licensed by contrastive Focus on the scrambled direct object den Heiligen Gral ‘the Holy Grail’. Example (12) shows that the same intonation can also be licensed when the direct object selects a unique answer to the Question Under Discussion. The three informants whose judgments were used to evaluate these examples all found the scrambling in (11) to be slightly more natural than the scrambling in (12), but crucially all three found the scrambled configuration with the intonation pattern given to be an acceptable variant in both contexts.

(11) A: Ger¨uchten

rumors zufolgeaccording-tohathasArthurArthureinema RitterknightExcaliburExcaliburgegeben!given ‘Rumor has it that Arthur gave Excalibur to a knight!’

B: Ich

I habehave geh¨ort,heard dassthat ArthurArthurdenthe Heiligenholy G

RAL

grail einem Ritter gegebena.dat knight given hathas ‘I heard that Arthur gave the Holy Grail to a knight!’

(12) Q: Was

whathathasArthurArthureinema Ritterknightgegeben?given ‘What did Arthur give to a knight?’

A: Ich habe geh¨ort, dass Arthur den Heiligen GRALeinem Ritter gegeben hat

Now we want to test the prediction that this same intonation pattern is not licensed by discourse-salience of the remnant VP alone. We want a context that makes the ExClo of that VP, ∃x._∃y.GIV E(x, P OSSESS(knight, y)) a salient proposition. The context in

(13) does this, and as predicted, all three informants independently judged the scrambled configuration with the intonation pattern given to be completely unacceptable.

(13) A: Die

the Ritterknightsderthe.genTafelrunderound-tableverlangendemand immeralwayssosuchextravaganteextravagant Weihnachtsgeschenke.

christmas-gifts

‘The Knights of the Round Table always demand such extravagant Christmas gifts.’

B: Wirklich? Really? A: Ja.

#Ich habe geh¨ort, dass Arthur den Heiligen GRAL einem Ritter gegeben hat /

Ich habe geh¨ort, dass Arthur einem Ritter den Heiligen GRALgegeben hat

The context saliently suggests that the knights receive Christmas gifts, which entails the ExClo of the remnant VP and makes it Given. There is an independent test of whether this is true; example (14) below shows that the equivalent English discourse context makes the semantically identical VPgiven to a knightsusceptible to de-accenting.

(14) A: The Knights of the Round Table always demand such extravagant Christmas gifts.

B: Really?

CP

C TP

dass DP T’

Vader VP T

DP2 VP [PRES]

den Todesstern ApplP V

DP1 Appl’ anbietet

einem Rebellen Appl (DP2)

FIGURE 42: DOING BUSINESS WITH THE REBELS

It is therefore surprising, in the absence of the feature-based explanation suggested by Chapter 3, that the combination of direct object scrambling and de-accenting of the lower VPeinem Ritter gegebenshould be illegal in this context.

Let’s consider another sentence with the same properties. Consider the CPdass Vader

den Todesstern einem Rebellen anbietet ‘that Vader is offering the Death Star to a rebel.’3

This has the structure shown in Fig.42.

Examples (15) and (16) again show that de-accenting below a scrambled DP is accept- able when the scrambled DP is a Focus. Example (17) again confirms the prediction that a scrambled DP cannot bear the rightmost pitch accent in a Givenness context.

(15) A: Hast

haveduyouschonalreadydietheNachrichtnews geh¨ort?heard Anscheinendapparently hathasVaderVadereinema.dat Rebellen

rebel dietheAT-ATsAT-ATsgegeben!given

‘Have you heard? Apparently, Vader gave the AT-AT units to a rebel!’ 3_{(Darth) Vader is a villain from Star Wars, who opposes the rebels, and the Death Star is his space}

station. The reason I have used names of specific entites like ‘den Heiligen Gral’ and ‘den Todesstern’ in these examples is to create definiteness effects without also biasing the definite DP toward being Given, as anaphoric uses of the definite article would.

B: Ich

I habehave geh¨ort,heard dassthat VaderVaderdenthe T

ODESSTERN

Death-Star einem Rebellen anbieteta.dat rebel offers ‘I heard that Vader is offering the Death Star to a rebel.’

(16) Q: Was

WhatbietetoffersVaderVadereinema Rebellenrebel an?on ‘What is Vader offering to a rebel?’

A: Ich habe geh¨ort, dass Vader den TODESSTERNeinem Rebellen anbietet

(17) A: Man

one sagtsaysdassthat VaderVaderwithmit denthe Rebellenrebels Gesch¨aftebusiness macht.makes

‘Word on the street is, Vader has been doing business with the rebels.’ B: Was

whathasthaveduyougeh¨ort?heard ‘What have you heard?’

A: #Ich habe geh¨ort, dass Vader den TODESSTERNeinem Rebellen anbietet /

Ich habe geh¨ort, dass Vader einem Rebellen den TODESSTERNanbietet.

Again, we can independently test whether the salience of ‘doing business’ really does en- tail, under common-sense contextual assumptions, that offers are being made, thereby ren- dering the remnant VP Given. Example (18) gives the English passive equivalent; no accent is necessary on the VP at all. The absence of an MEC antecedent for the VP is no problem in English, because this is a passive construction. The entire VP can be G-marked with no negative consequences for intonation or felicity. The German scrambling equivalent ex- hibits a recursive VP structure where the argument corresponding tothe Death Star must be dominated by a G-marked VP node if the verb is to be G-marked at all.

(18) A: Word on the street is, Vader has been doing business with the rebels. B: Really? What have you heard?

A: I heard that the DEATHStar was offered to a rebel

Table 14 summarizes the judgments obtained for German ditransitive sentences. Remnant VP Given DO Focused

DO scrambled x �

DO in situ NA �

CP

C TP

dass DP T’

Arthur VPG T

DP2 VPG hat

den H. Gral ApplP VG

DP1 Appl’ gegeben + [GIVEN]

einem Ritter Appl (DP2)

x

. x . x

Prosody [Fdass Ar thur [Gden Heiligen Gral einem Ritter gegeben]hat]

Presupposition ∃φ_∈C. salient(φ) &φ_{→ ∃}x.GIV E(x, P OSSESS(knight, h.grail)) FIGURE43: ARTHUR AND THEGRAIL

These judgments fall in line with the predictions made by the analysis in Chapter 3: Given- ness exists as a formal feature in German just as it does in English, and this has conse- quences for scrambling possibilities. These consequences are illustrated in Figures 43 and 44, which are directly analogous to Figure 36 in Chapter 3.

So we see that scrambling in German is restricted in exactly the same way that ad- junct structures are restricted vis-`a-vis Givenness-marking. This further serves to vali- date the idea that Givenness is a syntactically encoded property of XPs, just like the wh- feature which drives wh-movement in questions. This analogy between G-marking and wh-movement is further considered in the following section, where the interaction between Givenness and pied piping is considered. This is followed by some notes on the interaction between Givenness and V2 syntax in German main clauses. I conclude this chapter with an interim summary before switching gears and diving deeper into the nature of Focus.

CP

C TP

dass DP T’

Vader VPG T

DP2 VPG [PRES]

den Todesstern ApplP VG

DP1 Appl’ anbietet + [GIVEN]

einem Rebellen Appl (DP2)

x . x .

Prosody [Fdass Va der [Gden Todesstern einem Rebellen anbietet] ]

Presupposition ∃φ_∈C. salient(φ) &φ_{→ ∃}x.OF F ER(x, P OSSESS(rebel, d.star))