[LFG] position for local discourse function

[Oleg Belyaev]

Hi Mary,

I describe Ossetic in this way, i.e. the SpecVP position is occupied by
focus. Specifically, by interrogatives; I analyze IS focus proper as being
adjoined to VP, but this is only on the assumption that the specifier
position is filled by a single element; if we allow multiple constituents
in specifier position, both "normal" foci and interrogatives can be placed
in SpecVP. There are good reasons for this analysis (prosody,
coordination). This is the structure that me and Dag use in our LFG14
paper:
http://web.stanford.edu/group/cslipublications/cslipublications/LFG/19/papers/lfg14belyaevhaug.pdf

Clitic placement may call for a flatter structure, as you've suggested at
Saturday's SE-LFG talk, but I'm not sure if all the complexity of Ossetic
word order can be reasonably captured by a flat c-structure without
resorting to additional linear order constraints.

- Oleg

2015-05-18 15:35 GMT+03:00 Mary Dalrymple <mary.dalrymple at ling-phil.ox.ac.uk
>:

>
> Does anyone know of a language that has a specifier position where any
> grammatical function in the clause (but, crucially, not a subordinate
> clause) can appear, as long as it has a discourse function like TOPIC or
> FOCUS?   If we assume that information structure roles are represented as
> TOPIC or FOCUS at f-structure, the relevant specifier node would have an
> annotation that looks like this, where GF stands for any grammatical
> function (SUBJ, OBJ, etc.):
>
> (^ TOPIC) = v
> (^ GF) = v
>
> That is, the phrase would be an information structure TOPIC, and it would
> also bear some grammatical function GF in the same clause, but it does not
> license an unbounded dependency (GF* is not allowed) -- it must bear a
> grammatical function in the same clause, not a lower clause.
>
> Thanks!
>
>  - Mary
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-- 
Oleg Belyaev
Lecturer, Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Lomonosov
Moscow State University
Junior Researcher, Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of
Sciences
Research Fellow, Institute for Modern Linguistic Research, Sholokhov Moscow
State University for the Humanities
http://ossetic-studies.org/obelyaev
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