intro

[Holger Schauer]

>>>>"LL" == Luuk Lagerwerf schrieb am Tue, 19 Jan 1999 10:04:16 +0100:

 LL> Hi Larry,
 >> A: Who was that on the telephone?
 >>    B1: Mary.
 >>    B2: That was Mary
 >>    B3: ?It was Mary who called.
 >>    B4: ??Mary was on the telephone.

 >> Some syntacticians cite B4 as the evidence that English favors
 >> syntax of discourse when it comes to information structure, but it
 >> seems to me to be questionable.  Have any of you worked with these
 >> issues?  I'd be interested in your thoughts.

Sorry, I don't have a useful comment on your question.

 LL> I do not believe that B4 would be THE evidence for one standpoint
 LL> or the other. The question is presupposing that the person
 LL> calling is known to the speaker.

speaker = A ?

 LL> Re-introducing that person as a discourse referent would be
 LL> confusing.

I don't think that this is correct. Mary as a discourse referent _is_
introduced (mentioned) _first_ in the B sentences. Mary happens to be
the answer B is giving to the question, leaving to A to somehow
"assign" Mary to "the one just having called" (this view is somewhat
oversimplified - in essence, A believes that he will know the caller,
i.e. he has a set of possible assignments for the discourse referent
he is opening. Then the answer by B rules out any other candidates
than Mary).

 LL> So, my guess is that informations structure is determining the
 LL> acceptability judgments here.

I agree, however, because of a different argument: it is the
re-iteration of the "calling event" that is confusing. I think
(disclaimer: I am _not_ a native speaker, so bear with me) a
felicious answer to As question could be

 B5: It was Mary who wanted to know about ...

Holger
--
Holger Schauer                         CLIF - Computational Linguistic Lab
                                       Freiburg University, Germany