16.576, Review: Syntax/Semantics: Breul (2004)

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Subject: 16.576, Review: Syntax/Semantics: Breul (2004)

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1)
Date: 25-Feb-2005
From: Judit Gervain < gervain at sissa.it >
Subject: Focus Structure in Generative Grammar 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2005 13:52:27
From: Judit Gervain < gervain at sissa.it >
Subject: Focus Structure in Generative Grammar 
 

AUTHOR: Breul, Carsten
TITLE: Focus Structure in Generative Grammar
SUBTITLE: An integrated syntactic, semantic and intonational approach
SERIES: Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 68
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2004
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-1523.html


Judit Gervain, SISSA Cognitive Neuroscience Sector, Trieste, Italy

"Linguists seeking the integration of information-structural categories into 
syntax have a serious challenge to face and a number of strong arguments 
to counter in order to maintain the viability of their program", claims 
Polinsky (1999:58). It is precisely this challenge that Breul takes up in 
his "Focus Structure in Generative Grammar". The work is an attempt to 
integrate information structure into the core of phonological, syntactic and 
semantic computations. The main theoretical stance of the book is that 
pragmatics/information structure is not just another add-on to the more 
basic symbolic computations of language, but part and parcel of it.

Breul takes up Lambrecht's (1994) theory of information structure, and 
fleshes out its phonological, syntactic and semantic consequences. The 
essence of Lambrecht's proposal, which Breul adapts, is that utterances 
have one of the following three information structures: (i) thetic, found 
discourse-initially, introducing a new state of affairs (1a); (ii) categorical, 
introducing a statement/predication about an entity (1b); or (iii) 
identificational, determining what is the entity about which a statement 
holds (1c).

(1) [Breul 2004:1; capitals indicate primary pitch accent]
a, Q: What happened?
   A: My car broke DOWN.
b, Q: What happened to your car?
   A: It broke DOWN.
c, Q: I heard that your motorcycle broke down?
   A: My CAR broke down.

In the spirit of the general integrative commitment of the book, the basic 
assumption is that one of these information structure types, called focus 
structures by Breul, is always realized in the phonology, syntax and 
semantics of _all_ utterances. Since the analysis is set in a generative 
framework, Breul proposes to motivate this primarily in the syntactic 
component; the phonological and semantic reflexes are then derived from 
the syntactic representation. The main syntactic claim, termed the FocP 
Hypothesis states that:

(2)
(i) All main clauses instantiate one of the three focus structures.

(ii) The focus structure is formally determined by the presence or absence 
of a [+/-foc] property, i.e. feature in the minimalist generative terminology 
(Chomsky 1995): the absence of the feature indicates thetic focus structure, 
the presence of the [-foc] feature corresponds to categorical focus, and the 
presence of the [+foc] feature confers identificational focus. 

(iii) The [+/-foc] feature is accommodated into the structure of a main 
clause through the Focus Phrase (FocP), a functional projection that 
introduces the whole clause; it is to the specifier position of the FocP that 
the lexical item to which the [+/-foc] feature is assigned by the conceptual-
intentional system move to check the feature against the Foc head. The 
constituent that carries [-foc] is a topic, the one that carries [+foc] is an 
identificational focus. Since the [+/-foc] feature is not present in thetic 
utterances, these don't have a FocP, and they are directly introduced by an I
(nflectional)P.

(iv) Movement to FocP can be overt or covert, depending on the strength of 
the [+/-foc] feature in the given language. When the feature is strong, it 
triggers overt movement, as e.g. in English.

One immediate consequence of the FocP Hypothesis is that the C
(omplementizer)P that is traditionally believed to introduce clauses is 
replaced by the FocP, so all phenomena accounted for by the CP in previous 
theories have to be re-analyzed in terms of the new functional projection, 
FocP. Note that this is a non-trivial claim, since some of the most basic 
structures, for instance questions, are usually derived via the CP. Moreover, 
the CP is crucially involved in different sorts of embeddings. The author, 
therefore, has to face the challenge of demonstrating the feasibility of the 
FocP Hypothesis in syntax. In order to achieve that, he tackles the most 
important of the issues raised by the replacement of CP with FocP, including 
fronting, interrogatives, inversion with downward-entailing lexical items 
(such as 'rarely', 'hardly' etc.), verb second and multiple fronting in matrix 
and in embedded clauses. To give a flavor of the kind of FocP syntax Breul 
proposes, the most important of these constructions, namely interrogatives 
and embedding will be sketched out here.

To account for interrogatives in the FocP framework, Breul starts out from 
the empirical observation that interrogatives and fronted topic/focus 
constituents are in complementary distribution. Therefore, argues Breul, it 
is reasonable to assume that wh-words (or the interrogative operator in 
yes/no questions) occupies the same structural position as topic/focus 
constituents, i.e. [Spec,FocP]. Consequently, the wh-words have to carry a 
[+/-foc] feature in order to be attracted to FocP. In addition, to ensure the 
interrogative interpretation, they also carry a [+int] feature that does not 
get deleted in syntax (it's a weak feature that does not trigger movement), 
but carries over to the logical form/semantics. Since there is only one FocP 
in a clause, and it is the ultimate landing site of movement, it follows that in 
every clause, there can only be at most one constituent that carries a [+/-
foc] feature, and thus moves to FocP. Thus the complementary distribution 
of wh-words and topic/focus follows straightforwardly. Moreover, it also 
falls out readily from the assumptions why only one wh-word can be 
fronted in multiple wh-questions (*'Who what wants?'). Note that this 
account does away with the usually assumed [wh] feature completely. 
Another consequence is that languages in which the whP remains in situ, 
and does not move to the left periphery of the clause, e.g. Chinese, can be 
readily explained by simply assuming that in these languages the [+/-foc] 
feature moves to FocP covertly, i.e. it does not bring phonological material 
along. Auxiliary inversion ('do'-support) is accounted for by the 
intermediate strength of the [int] feature on the Foc head. This feature is 
not fully strong in English, so it cannot attract full verbs, but it has some 
intermediate value, strong enough to attract auxiliaries.

As for embedding, previous accounts assume that the left periphery of main 
clauses and embedded clauses is by and large similar, both being 
introduced by a CP. In Breul's analysis, this parallelism breaks down, since 
an utterance has a unique focus structure in a context, independently of 
how many, if any, subordinate clauses make it up. In other words, in the 
whole of an utterance, there can only be maximally one FocP, and it is 
usually at the left periphery of the main clause, since most often that is the 
clause that carries the information structural/pragmatic meaning. 
Therefore, it is focus-structurally deviant for both the main clause and the 
embedded clause to be introduced by FocP, thus embedded clauses are 
usually CPs, not FocPs. However, there is no syntactic reason for this to be 
so; and indeed, in special cases where it is the embedded clause that 
conveys the focus-structural meaning and the main clause is only some 
kind of an adsentential element, embedded clauses can be introduced by a 
FocP. The author illustrates this general point through the discussion of 
several different constructions, such as relative clauses, embedded 
interrogatives (indirect questions) etc. Let us only take a quick look at 
indirect questions here. In the default case, indirect questions are 
pragmatically not real questions, so they are not introduced by a FocP, and 
no lexical item carries a [+/-foc] feature in them. However, the whP still 
moves to the left periphery of the embedded clause, but there is no [+/-foc] 
feature to motivate this. Instead, claims Breul, the [int] feature, which does 
not trigger movement in main interrogatives, is strong in embedded ones 
and thus motivates the movement of the whP to the embedded CP. This 
account, therefore, treats main and embedded interrogatives radically 
differently--a rather unwelcome proposal.

As already pointed out above, the [+/-foc] feature of the Foc head is not 
deleted during the syntactic derivation, rather it survives until the 
phonological and the logical/semantic interfaces, and enters into 
computations there as well. In phonology, the feature determines the 
assignment of the primary pitch accent of the utterance according to the 
Focus Projection Principle, which Breul basically adapts from Selkirk (1995). 
One lexical item is marked for focus, i.e. F-marked, which may project to 
the phrases that contain it, following the two basic principles of Focus 
Projection, namely that (i) the F-marking of a head licenses the F-marking 
of the head's projection, and (ii) the F-marking of a complement licenses 
the F-marking of its head. F-marking is interpreted as the primary pitch 
accent of the utterance. In the three focus structures, the primary pitch 
accent as determined by the Focus Projection Principle is placed in the 
following way:

(3)
(i) In a thetic sentence, the whole IP is licensed as intonational focus.
(ii) In a categorical sentence, the complement of the Foc head contains or is 
a phrase that is licensed as intonational focus.
(iii) In an identificational sentence, the specifier of the Foc head contains or 
is a phrase that is licensed as intonational focus.

It follows from the above, then, that [+foc] featured phrases that move to 
[Spec,Foc] have to be licensed as intonational focus, i.e. be F-marked, or 
have to contain a phrase that is licensed as such, while [-foc] featured 
constituents also move to [Spec,Foc], but cannot be licensed as intonational 
focus, nor can they contain such a constituent. A pitch accented constituent, 
however, is not necessarily F-marked and [+foc], because focus is not the 
only factor to determine pitch accent. Activeness of reference and contrast 
also have their own characteristic intonational patterns, which interact with 
focal pitch.

The semantic contributions of focus-structure are also significant.  As 
already hinted at earlier, Breul takes truth conditions to be always and 
necessarily context/pragmatics-sensitive; no truth value can be computed 
for an utterance without taking its focus structure into account. The input 
for the semantic analysis is provided by the semantic features, which remain 
in situ in their base-generated position even if their corresponding 
phonological features move, i.e. when there is overt movement in the 
surface form. The semantic interpretation proceeds in a basically 
Montegovian model-theoretical, type-semantic fashion, with the additional 
Davidsonian assumption that events and eventualities are also entities in 
the universe. This additional property of the framework has two immediate 
consequences. First, verbs subcategorize for an event argument in addition 
to their usual syntactic ones (noun phrases, clauses, prepositional phrases 
etc.). Second, the temporal/aspectual functional projections of a clause (e.g. 
T(ense)P, VoiceP etc.) denote e-type entities (eventualities), not truth values.

The three different focus structures are semantically distinguished on the 
basis of what relevance presuppositions they are consistent with and what 
additional information they assert. For a thetic sentence, the relevance 
presuppositions are null, and the whole utterance conveys a new assertion. 
For categorical utterances, the presupposition contains the topic 
expression, e.g. 'it'(='my car') in (1b), and the utterance makes an assertion 
about this entity. For identificational utterances, the presupposition 
contains the syntactic predicate, e.g. 'broke down' in (1c), and the utterance 
makes an assertion about to what entities this syntactic predicate applies. 
This focus-structural organization of utterances allows for the precise 
definition of what semantic subjects and semantic predicates are. The 
semantic subject is defined as the constant in the presupposition, and the 
semantic predicate as the assertion made by the utterance.

The semantic effect of the [+/-foc] feature is that it determines the type of 
the object that the phrase carrying the feature can denote. Since it is a 
common observation that topics are generally referential, Breul argues that 
[-foc] featured phrases necessarily denote e-type entities. Consequently, 
phrases that are usually believed to be non-referential, e.g. quantified noun 
phrases, indefinites etc., can only appear as topics (i.e. have a [-foc] feature 
and move to [Spec,Foc]) if they are used exceptionally as e-type denoting, 
that is referential, which accords well with the empirical data (4).

(4) [Breul 2004:394-396]
a, I was curious whether the _boys_ would make it to the station. In fact, 
MOST boys WALKED to the station, but others didn't get there at all.
b, I was curious whether the _boys_ would make it to the station. #In fact, 
EVERY boy WALKED to the station, so none even had to take a taxi.
c, I was curious whether the _kids_ would make it to the station. In fact, 
EVERY boy got there in TIME, but most of the girls didn't make it.

The requirement of referentiality holds true for non-nominal topic 
expression as well. This might appear as a problem for e.g. verb phrase 
fronting (that Breul re-analyzes as PerfP/VoiceP fronting). However, given 
the Davidsonian assumption that the temporal/aspectual functional phrases 
denote e-type eventualities, the problem disappears.

Focus expressions, that is phrases carrying the [+foc] feature, on the other 
hand, denote type shifted, generalized quantifier-like <<e,e>,e> or 
<<e,<e,e>>,<e,e>>-type expressions /bear in mind at this point the 
Davidsonian modification; the t-types have been replaced by e-types/.

Because in Breul's framework, semantics is supposed to work on semantic 
features in their base positions, one very important set of phenomena, 
scope ambiguities of different kinds (5), cannot be derived any more in the 
usual quantifier-raising fashion, since there is no semantically motivated 
raising of any kind at all.

(5) Some boy kissed every girl.
a, There was one boy who kissed all of the girls.
/the existential quantifier takes scope over the universal/
b, For each of the girls, there was at least one boy who kissed her (and this 
can be a different boy for each girl).
/the universal quantifier takes scope over the existential/

Rather, what Breul proposes is that the string appearing in (5) is actually the 
orthographic representation of two focus-structurally different utterances, 
one that has categorical focus corresponding to the reading in (5a), and 
another that has identificational focus structure corresponding to (5b). To 
put it differently, there is no ambiguity, only the orthographic coincidence 
of two discursively different sentences. The semantics nicely follows, since 
the noun phrase 'some boy' is the semantic subject in (5a), and combines 
with the predicate 'kissed every girl', which already contains the universal 
quantifier, and thus can "take scope over it", while the existential noun 
phrase is the semantic predicate in (5b), and takes 'kissed every girl' as its 
subjects, with the universal "taking wide scope". Moreover, in (5a), 'some 
boy' denotes an e-type entity, i.e. refers to a particular boy, whereas in (5b), 
it denotes a generalized quantifier, ranging over the set of boys.

Notice that such a semantic analysis requires flexible type assignment, since 
depending on the focus structure of an utterance, the same noun phrase
'some boy' can be assigned type e or <<e,e>,e> / <<e,<e,e>>,<e,e>>. 
Breul is aware of this issue and makes a few unconvincing attempts to 
refute Heim and Kratzer's (1998) arguments against flexible type 
assignment.

Since Breul's work is essentially the syntactic/phonological/semantic 
formalization of a pragmatic/information structural phenomenon, the 
question of cross-linguistic validity inevitably arises. In this respect, Breul 
notes that some languages, e.g. Hungarian, have different functional 
projections to accommodate the [-foc] and the [+foc] features, or in more 
traditional terms, have different Topic and Focus phrases, and goes on to 
give a somewhat more detailed analysis of some German syntactic 
phenomena.

Overall, Breul's book is an important attempt at unifying pragmatics, syntax, 
semantics and phonology. Such much-needed integrative works are rare, 
and thus precious. The proposal described in the book is certainly a feasible 
one, since the intuition has been very strong and ubiquitous in the field that 
information/focus structure is a Janus-faced phenomenon, relating as 
much to pragmatic as to syntax.

However, the way in which this proposal is developed in the book leaves the 
reader with a certain feeling of unease and perplexity. One has the feeling 
of seeing bits and pieces of a mosaic, but missing the big picture. Many 
issues and phenomena are treated in more or less superficial ways, with a 
lack of in-depth analysis. While this impression stems, to a large extent, 
from problems of organization, exposition and style, some content issues 
also arise. In the remainder, I will point out a few of them.

The most general problem is that Breul fails to relate his proposal to 
previous work on the syntax of focus, and thus leaves his notion of focus 
rather hard to interpret for the syntacticians. (He does give a detailed review 
of what the different conceptions of focus mean with respect to information 
structure/pragmatics, tough.) This negligence is problematic, since focus 
does have an extensive literature in syntax, and ignoring it leads to 
overlooking fiercely debated issues, which, nevertheless, pertain to the core 
of the matter. One such issue is the debate between proponents of a 
feature-based account of focus (e.g. Brody 1995 and subsequent work) and 
advocates of an intonational account (e.g. Reinhart 1995, 1996, Szendroi 
2003, 2004a,b). Since Breul's position is not totally alien to either side, it 
would have been instructive if he had considered the question in some 
detail.

This also leads to empirical problems in Breul's account. A sentence such as 
(6) does not contain identificational focus in Breul's sense (only categorical), 
whereas according to the standard account (e.g. E. Kiss 1998, Szendroi 
2003), sentences of this kind contain the kind of contrastive focus that even 
Breul himself qualifies as identificational in other constructions.

(6) I bought a new CAR (and not a new BIKE).     

If sentences like (6) do indeed contain identificational focus, it is expected 
that the focused constituent, 'a (new) CAR' moves to the left periphery, 
which is exactly the case in so-called discourse-configurational languages 
such as Hungarian. In English, however, contrastive focus is most often 
conveyed by intonation (nuclear pitch accent on the focused element), and 
not by leftward movement (Szendroi 2003). The question arises, then, why 
is focus-structurally motivated leftward movement not more common in 
English? Breul's answer is that discursive and processing constraints 
preclude this configuration from occurring with  a higher frequency. This is, 
however, a particularly weak argument, since these constraints should be 
universal. Nevertheless, the facts show that languages like Hungarian have 
no problem whatsoever implementing focus-motivated leftward movement.

A further empirical issue arises in connection with Breul's treatment of 
quantifier-raising/scope ambiguity. He argues that these two phenomena 
do not exist. Rather the relevant sentences simply allow both an 
identificational and a categorical focus structure, this is how their apparent 
ambiguity emerges (recall the analysis of example (5)). The empirical 
consequence of this account is that the string in (5) should have two 
intonational patterns as in (7a-b), moreover that one of them, (7a) should 
be associated with the meaning in (5a), while the other, (7b) with (5b).

(7)
a, Some boy kissed EVERY GIRL.
b, SOME BOY kissed every girl.

This does not seem to correspond to facts. There has been no claim in the 
literature to this effect; neither have the informants I interviewed confirmed 
this empirical pattern. Actually, Breul himself quotes counterexamples, and 
observes that judgements are very delicate and conflicting in this regard.

It might also be repeated here that, as pointed out before, Breul's treatment 
of embedded clauses, and embedded interrogatives in particular, is rather 
unfortunate.

All in all, Breul's book is an important and resourceful contribution for all 
those who are specialized in syntactic, semantic or intonational research on 
focus.

REFERENCES

Brody, Michael (1995) Focus and checking theory. In Kenesei (1995), 31-43.

É. Kiss, Katalin (1998) Identificational focus versus information focus. 
Language, 74, 245-273.

Heim, Irene and Angelika Kratzer (1998) Semantics in Generative Grammar. 
Oxford: Blackwell.

Kenesei, Istvan, ed. (1995) Levels and Structures. Approaches to Hungarian 
5. Szeged: JATE Press.

Lambrecht, Knud (1994) Information structure and sentence form. 
Cambridge: CUP.

Polinksy, Maria (1999) Review of Lambrecht 1994. Language, 75, 567-582.

Reinhart, Tanya (1996) Interface economy - Focus and markedness. In 
Wilder et al (1996).

Reinhart, Tanya (1995) Interface Strategies. OTS working papers in 
linguistics.

Szendroi, Kriszta (2003) A stress-based approach to the syntax of 
Hungarian focus, The Linguistic Review, 20(1), 37-78.

Szendroi, Kriszta (2004a) Introduction: Focus and the interaction between 
syntax and pragmatics. Special issue of Lingua, 114(3), 229-254.

Szendroi, Kriszta & Ad Neeleman (2004b) Superman sentences. Linguistic 
Inquiry 35(1), 149-159.

Wilder, C., H. M. Gaertner & M. Bierwisch, eds. (1996) The role of economy 
principles in Linguistic Theory. Berlin: Akademic Verlag. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Judit Gervain is currently a 3rd year PhD student at the Language, Cognition 
and Development Lab, Cognitive Neuroscience Sector, SISSA, Trieste, Italy 
under the supervision of Prof. Jacques Mehler. Her first degree is in English 
Philology, French Philology and Theoretical Linguistics from the University 
of Szeged, Hungary. She wrote her MA theses in English Philology and in 
Theoretical Linguistics about focus-raising phenomena in Hungarian. She 
has published several papers in this topic. Currently, she is working on 
language acquisition. Her precise research topic is the acquisition of the 
foundations of syntax in the first year of life. At the same time, she 
continues to do research in theoretical linguistics, in the area of left 
peripheral phenomena (focus and wh-raising etc.).





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