DP-internal information structure: topic, focus and other illocutionary forces University of Amsterdam & Utrecht University Information structure. A fundamental question in linguistic research is why there are different ways of expressing the same propositional content. A propositional content like John kissed Mary, for example, can have different formal manifestations, such as: (a) John kissed Mary; (b) John, he kissed Mary; (c) John kissed her, Mary; (d) Mary, John kissed, (e) Mary was kissed by John, (f) It was Mary who John kissed, et cetera. It is generally assumed that these different formal manifestations of the proposition John kissed Mary are related to the discourse context in which they are used. It is generally assumed that a speaker structures or packages the information in such a way that there is an optimal exchange of information. The linguistic study which is concerned with the formal organization of linguistic expressions in relation to their discourse functions is called information structure (cf. among others Halliday 1967, Chafe 1976, Prince 1981, Lambrecht 1986). Prominent notions used in the information structural description of propositions are topic (the element about which new information is conveyed) and focus (the new information in the sentence). Other notions that play an important role at the grammar-discourse interface concern the discourse-related meaning properties of noun phrases: e.g. specific versus non-specific, definite versus indefinite, familiar/d(iscourse)-linked versus unfamiliar/non-d-linked, et cetera. Information structure and the functional architecture of the clause. Syntactic research on the phrasal architecture of the clause and on the nature of various clauseinternal displacement phenomena has led to the identification of various phrase structural layers within the clausal projection. A general characterization that emerged from this research is that the clause is organized syntactically in the following way (cf. Chomsky 1986, 1995): (i) There is a core predicate layer, where s-selection is relevant (i.e. the lexical domain involving predicate-argument relations); (ii) On top of the lexical layer, there is an inflection domain, responsible for agreement and/or inflectional features (e.g., tense, mood, aspect, negation); (iii) The highest layer, often referred to as the left periphery (or the edge ) of the clause, encodes discourse-linked features. Schematically, we have the following organization of the clause: (1) [ [Discourse-linked features] [ [Inflectional/agreement features] [ [core predicate and its arguments] ]]] It is the left peripheral layer (say, the CP, i.e. Complementizer Phrase) that is taken to play a role in the formal expression of discourse-related properties such as topic and focus (i.e. what Chomsky 2002 calls surface-related meaning properties). In Rizzi (1997), a particular articulation of the CP-layer is proposed where specific positions are made available for topic and focus phrases found in the left periphery of the clause. In other words, information structural notions such as topic and focus are associated with specific positions in the syntactic architecture of the sentence. Information structure and the phrasal architecture of the noun phrase In the late eighties, various studies on the internal syntax of the noun phrase (cf. among others, Abney 1987 and Szabolcsi 1987) have tried to lay bare the functional architecture of the noun phrase. An important outcome of this research is that the
internal organization of the noun phrase seems to parallel that of the clause. More specifically, the lexical domain NP is taken to be the structural layer at which predicate-argument relations are defined. On top of that various functional layers have been identified which each represent some formal-grammatical property, such as Number/Quantity (NUMP/QP) and referentiality (DP). The cross-linguistic studies by Pollock (1989), Rizzi (1997), and Cinque (1999) on clausal structure inspired further research on the structure of the noun phrase (Longobardi 1994, Cinque 1994 inter alias), which led to a finer characterization of the parallels between clause structure and the noun phrase. Among others, it was shown that the typology of displacement phenomena attested in the clausal domain were also attested in the nominal domain; e.g. head movement operations (N-to-D movement) and DP-internal phrasal movement to Spec,DP (cf. e.g. Bennis, Corver & Den Dikken 1998). The cross-categorial parallelism between the clausal domain and the nominal domain raises the question to what extent parallels can be found as regards the ways in which information is packaged formally in these structural domains. That is, how is information structured within the noun phrase and to what exent do we find crosscategorial symmetries between the clausal domain and the nominal domain? Under the view that the clausal projection CP constitutes the structural zone where discourse-related properties like topic, focus et cetera are encoded, the question arises to what extent DP, generally considered to be the left periphery of the nominal domain, also constitutes the structural zone in which discourse-related properties are encoded. With regard to the left periphery, for instance, Bernstein (1997, 2001), Haegeman (2004), and Aboh (2004) among others argue that the nominal left edge D-domain is similar to the clausal C-domain in encoding topic, focus or illocutionary force and representing a discourse-syntax interface point. The instantiation of this idea comes primarily from the existence of specialized NP-internal morphological expression of focality (2), topicality (3) and interrogation (4) that ultimately license the noun head in discourse. (2) a. Den här mannen [Swedish, Berstein 2001] This here man-the b. I talked to John himself/alone (3) a. Đè gbákú hw có bí x m [Gungbe] take-off hat before enter room in Take off your hat before entering the room b. Đè gbákú l hw có bí x m take-off hat Det [+specific] before enter room in Take off your hat [i.e. the one I referred to earlier] before entering the room (4) a. What Nú-t thing-inter b. Where Fí-t place-inter
Aims of the workshop. Data like those in (2-4) give thrust to the research on encoding of information structure inside the nominal domain and its reflexes on the clausal level. However, a proper study of interaction between nominal structure and information structure is still missing. The workshop seeks to promote such research by providing a forum for specialists from different linguistic fields (syntax, semantics, pragmatics and typology) working on DP structure. Questions to be put forward fall under four main themes: 1. Formal encoding of Topic, Focus and other illocutionary forces. That intralinguistic morpho-syntactic variation can be distinguished for the expression of some meaning relationship (e.g. possession, partitivity, quantification, et cetera) and in what ways does this variation reflect differences in the packaging of information. What morpho-syntactic means are available in natural language to structure information within the nominal domain? For example, are there DP-internal displacement phenomena involved in the expression of topic and focus? Or are there morphological markers of these discourse related properties? How are information structural notions such as Topic and Focus formally expressed within the extended nominal projection? How are illocutionary properties such as interrogation and exclamation expressed within the nominal domain? Does nominal expression of features such as topic and focus provide sufficient evidence for postulating designated projections inside DP (i.e. a Topic Projection, a Focus Projection)? In what morpho-syntactic ways are discourse-meaning-related notions such as (non)specificity, (in)definiteness, (non)-d-linking expressed in the noun phrase (e.g. in the form of special determiners, Case, special particles) 2. Ellipsis What phenomena of ellipsis within the noun phrase can be distinguished and how does ellipsis relate to the expression of information structure? Arguably, elliptic information can be taken to be presupposed at the level of discourse. (cf. This is John s; three of those men) What phenomena of DP-internal pronominalization can be distinguished? (cf. a yellow one, which one) What is the discourse meaning of various pronominal elements (strong personal pronouns, weak/clitic pronouns, demonstratives, wh-pronouns, et cetera) and to what extent are these meaning properties reflected in the structural make-up of those pronouns? 3. DP/CP - parallellism To what extent does the edge of the DP fulfil the same grammatical role as CP with respect to subextraction phenomena? What is the relation between the sentential left periphery and the nominal left periphery? To what extent, is their structural organization the same? 4. Micro- and Macrovariation What cross-linguistic variation (at the macro- and micro-level) can be attested in the formal (i.e. morpho-syntactic, phonological) expression of discourse
related properties within the nominal domain? E.g. do languages/dialects use different formal strategies for the expression of focus within the noun phrase? How can we account for such cross-linguistic variation in a principled way? What does the interaction between grammar and discourse tell us about conditions on interfaces in general? References Abney, Paul S. 1987. The English Noun Phrase in its Sentential Aspect. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. Aboh, Enoch O. 2004. Topic and Focus within D. Linguistics in The Netherlands 21: 1-12. Bennis, Hans, Norbert Corver and Marcel den Dikken (1998). Predication in nominal phrases. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 1, 85-117. Bernstein, Judy. 1997. Demonstratives and Reinforcers in Romance and Germanic languages. Lingua 102: 87 113.. 2001a. Focusing the Right Way in Romance Determiner Phrases. Probus 13 1: 1 29. Chomksy, Noam. 2002. On nature and language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cinque, Guglielmo. 1994. On the Evidence for Partial N-movement in the Romance DP. In Guglielmo Cinque, Jan Koster, Jean-Yves Pollock, Luigi Rizzi, & Raffaella Zanuttini, eds., Paths towards Universal Grammar. Georgetown University Press, Washington, D. C.. 1999. Adverbs and Functional Heads, A Cross-linguistic Perspective. Oxford University Press, New York. Haegeman, Liliane. 2004 DP-periphery and Clausal Periphery: Possessor doubling in West Flemish. In Peripheries, Adger, de Cat, and Tsoulas eds. Kluwer: Dordrecht. 211 240. Longobardi, Giuseppe. 1994. Reference and Proper Names: A Theory of N-Movement in Syntax and Logical Form. Linguistic Inquiry 25: 609 665. Pollock, Jean-Yves. 1989. Verb Movement, Universal Grammar, and the Structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 20: 356 424. Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery. In Liliane Haegeman, ed., Elements of Grammar. Kluwer, Dordrecht, Boston, London. Szabolcsi, Anna. 1987. Functional Categories in the Noun Phrase. In István Kenesei ed., Approaches to Hungarian. JATE, Szeged. Description of the expertise of the invited speakers: One of the many important contributions of the work of Professor Guglielmo Cinque (University of Venice) work concerns his research on DP-syntax. More in particular, he worked on N-movement versus NP-movement in relation to the order of adjectives and other DP-internal material. Recently he came up with a thought provoking structural implementation of Greenberg s Universal 20. Professor Liliane Haegeman (Université de Charles de Gaulle, Lille 3) has contributed to the linguistic field is different ways. She has not only written one of the most important introductions to Generative Grammar, but she also made important contributions to the study of clitics and clitic-doubling, negation and verb movement among others. Importantly for our workshop, she has published on DP-internal syntax from a microvariation perspective, both on DP-internal negation and possessor doubling in West Flemish.
Professor Anna Szabolcsi s (New York University) work concentrates on the syntaxsemantics interface. Importantly, she was one of the first to investigate the structure of the noun phrase in relation to the structure of the clause (Szabolcsi 1987). This work has been an inspiration for many researchers in the field of DP-syntax. Furthermore, she has focused on information structure from both a semantic and a syntactic point of view. Professor Frans Plank (University of Konstanz) is a well-known typologist. He has worked on various fields concerning the typology of noun phrase structure. Recently (Plank 2002) he has worked on so called double articulation, the phenomenon in which articles (definite or indefinite) appear more than once within a single noun phrase.