24.2998, Review: Syntax: Kucerova & Neeleman (2012)

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Subject: 24.2998, Review: Syntax: Kucerova & Neeleman (2012)

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Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 10:13:32
From: Lengji Danjuma [ldanjuma.danjuma at gmail.com]
Subject: Contrasts and Positions in Information Structure

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/23/23-5024.html

EDITOR: Ivona  Kucerova
EDITOR: Ad  Neeleman
TITLE: Contrasts and Positions in Information Structure
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2012

REVIEWER: Lengji Nudiya Danjuma, University of Jos

SUMMARY

Information structure refers to the different categories (e.g. Topic, Focus,
Background) in which information in a sentence is divided. This book primarily
addresses current issues in the relationship between syntax and information
structure. The fifteen contributors to this book are unanimous in their
opinion that information-structural conditions are derived through word order
and other phenomena related to the interaction of syntax and other
syntax-external systems. This is contrary to the widely held assumption that
designated syntactic positions are associated with specific
information-structural interpretations. The book is divided into twelve
chapters. Chapter One is an introduction, while the remaining chapters are
divided into two parts. Part One consists of six chapters while Part Two
comprises five chapters. The book also contains an impressive bibliography of
eighteen pages, as well as an index.

Ivona Kucerova and Ad Neeleman, who double as the book’s editors, give a clear
introduction to the book in Chapter One by outlining the thrusts of the book.
The book seeks to determine: the interpretive notions that can be considered
information-structural primitives; the relationship between syntax and
information structure; the extent to which information structure and semantics
are integrated or different levels of representation; and the relationship
between information structure and phonology. In line with these objectives,
the editors divided the contributions into: Part One: The architecture of
grammar and the primitives of information structure; and Part Two: Exploring
the interfaces: case studies. Whereas, Part One is meant to  give the various
hypotheses about linguistic theory, while Part Two discusses a wide range of
empirical material regarding information structure and grammar, both parts are
not mutually exclusive, rather, they overlap in some cases. The division is
only one of emphasis.

The relationship between information structure and phonology is the content of
Daniel Büring’s contribution, which is Chapter Two of the book and the first
in Part One. In this chapter, ‘Predicate integration: phrase structure or
argument structure?’, he argues that prosodic prominence is determined by an
abstract notion of ‘structural strength’ by proposing that a syntax-to-prosody
mapping integrates an argument-structure-based treatment of predicate
integration. This proposal follows from the observation that verbs which
follow their arguments often remain unaccented. A similarly asymmetric
relationship is also observed between focused materials which are accented and
background materials which are unaccented.

The understanding of the mapping between syntax and phonology makes it
important to distinguish between intonation assigned to wh-questions and
intonation triggered by information-structural properties such as focus versus
new versus given. This makes it possible to distinguish information-structural
primitives prosodically from other non-information-structural elements. This
is the proposal of Hyun Kyung Hwang in Chapter Three, which examines
‘wh-intonation and information structure in South Kyeongsang and Tokyo
Japanese’. In this analysis, it is observed that the domain of wh-intonation
is the embedded clause including the matrix subject, and not the main clause,
whenever a wh-element is scrambled out of an embedded clause into the matrix
clause.

‘Grammatical marking of givenness’, by Ivona Kucerova, argues that information
structure is not an independent module of grammar, but rather is reducible to
independently required pragmatic principles and independently confirmed
grammatical procedures such as movement and pronominalisation. This assumption
stems from the observation that givenness must have an antecedent when
restrictions on scrambling apply in a language such as Czech. Unlike in
English, which uses definite articles to express presuppositional
requirements, such languages use other tools to achieve the same semantic
effect by which the role of information structure in grammar is reduced.

The contribution by Balaz Suranyi, ‘Interface configurations: identificational
focus and the flexibility of syntax’, argues that there are exact
constructions of Logical Form (LF) mapping rules of identificational focus
other than the widely held assumption that such a mapping is direct between LF
and Phonetic Form  (PF). This assertion is made clear by analyzing data in
Hungarian. The interpretation of constituents, which undergo movement as
identificational focus in Hungarian, is a result of the creation of a context
which serves as input to such a mapping rule. This mapping rule and other
principles of grammar, particularly the Stress-Focus Correspondence
requirement, ensure that the landing site of the moved constituent must be in
overt syntax, making prosodic alignment one of the important factors in the
distribution of foci in Hungarian.

The local alternatives approach to the analysis of focus and givenness is a
unification of other approaches which also seek to give better insight into
the analysis of focus and givenness. This approach, as outlined by Michael
Wagner in his contribution, ‘Focus and givenness: a unified approach’, claims
that “rendition of a constituent may be shorter and less articulated depending
on the degree to which the constituent is accessible in the context; but a
prominence shift encodes the presupposition that there is a salient local
exclusive alternative” (p. 147). This makes other approaches, such as
disanaphora, F-projection and reference set computation, the same as the local
alternative approach.

Chapter Seven is the last contribution in Part One. In this contribution, by
Edwin Willians, entitled ‘The locality of focusing and the coherence of
anaphors’, is the proposal that information structure is more about anaphoric
commitments imposed on syntactic representations, as a result of the reversal
of the normal stress pattern, than on focus. Underlying these anaphoric
commitments is the Disanaphora Law, which is a reversal of the normal stress
pattern between sister nodes, making the now weak node anaphoric and the now
strong node Disanaphoric.

Part Two of the book examines case studies. It begins with Chapter Eight, ‘NP
ellipsis without focus movement/projections: the role of classifiers’, by
Artemis Alexiadou and Kirsten Gengel. The contributors of this chapter claim
that pragmatic interpretation of focus is not tied to specific syntactic
positions designated as information-structural positions. This claim stems
from evidence the contributors are able to adduce, namely that NP ellipsis is
dependent on the presence of a classifier phrase, whereby the focusing effect
is a side-effect of the process that licenses ellipsis. This stance goes
against the widely held position that NP ellipsis is licensed through focus
movement or focus projections.

Theodora Alexopoulou and Mary Baltazani analyze multiple focus sentences in
Greek in their contribution (Chapter Nine), entitled, ‘Focus in Greek
wh-questions’, by focusing on the interaction between prosody, syntax and
information structure. They are able to show in this chapter that, even though
Greek permits sentences that contain multiple focused constituents, it is not
the case that it also permits multiple foci in sentences where one focused
item has moved to the left periphery. Therefore, the contributors are of the
opinion that this phenomenon can only be accounted for if a prosodic
interpretation is allowed as part of the analysis. Toward this end, they
observed that Greek does not permit multiple sentence nuclei; consequently,
the number of foci in certain sentences is restricted, indirectly. This claim
is contrary to what is widely held in the literature.

Chapter Ten is a contribution by Lisa Lai-Shen Cheng and Laura J. Downing
entitled, ‘Against FocusP: arguments from Zulu’. Zulu is a Bantu language, and
like many other Bantu languages, focused elements in Zulu occur in a position
immediately after the verb to their right. This position is also called
‘Immediately After the Verb’ (IAV) position. The contributors point out that
it is misleading to construe the IAV position as the specifier of a focused
projection. Instead, they argue that the IAV effect is as a result of the
interaction between independent prosodic and interpretive conditions because
focused elements in Zulu remain in situ whenever dislocation of non-focused
elements occurs.

Movement is neither triggered by information-structural features nor directly
tied to them in German. This is the radical position of Gisbert Fanselow in
Chapter Eleven, entitled, ‘Scrambling as formal movement’. The author is of
the opinion that if constituents with a single information-structural function
can be split up by A-bar movement, then the trigger of this movement must be
sought elsewhere. This assertion is a rejection of the hypothesis that in
German, givenness, an information-structural feature, triggers A-scrambling.

The contribution entitled, ‘Left-peripheral arguments and discourse interface
strategies in Yucatec Maya’, is the final chapter of the book. The
contributors, Stavros Skopeteas and Elisabeth Verhoeven, are able to show that
in Yucatec Maya, there are two fronting strategies that are underspecified for
information-structural effects. These fronting strategies correlate with
information-structural functions as a result of the interaction of independent
discourse principles with the properties of prosodic phrasing. They argue that
a cartographic analysis is restrictive.

EVALUATION

All eleven chapters that make up the two parts of this book are highly
technical and well-researched. Indeed, the book is aimed at specialists in
generative syntax and/or information structure. Post-graduate students and
other linguists with more than a casual interest in syntax and information
structure will also benefit immensely from the wealth of theoretical and
empirical insights the book provides. This must have informed the wise
decision of the editors to provide an exhaustive and comprehensive
introduction to the book in the first chapter, in order to establish a
foundation for understanding the book as it were.

The objectives of the book as outlined by the editors (p. 17) are all met. For
example, Chapters Three, Four, Six and Seven clearly answer the question,
‘What are the primitives of information structure?’, while Chapters Nine and
Eleven deal with the question, ‘What is the relation between phonology and
information structure?’. Therefore, the book emerges with an outline of the
theory of information structure based on interface conditions.

It is basically a cartographic approach to analyzing information structure
(Rizzi 1997, 2004a&b) that all the contributors rejected in one way or
another. For example, Büring’s Chapter Two, ‘Predicate integration: phrase
structure or argument structure?’, is a complete departure from Rizzi’s
cartographic approach. Instead, Büring draws a parallel between the asymmetry
that verbs that follow their arguments are unaccented (Fuchs 1976, 1984;
Jacobs 1992) and the fact that focused material is accented while background
material is unaccented. This is a case of alignment between prosody and
morphosyntax. Indeed, the different contributors to this book, given their
different points of view, were able to bring new and exciting perspectives to
the relationship between syntax and information structure, as just exemplified
through reference to Büring.

The editors of the book could not have presented the various contributions any
better, even though the contributions may appear rather daunting for a novice
to follow. This is not a minus for the editors, but rather a commendable
effort.

REFERENCES

Fuchs, Anna. 1976. Normaler und kontrastiver akzent. Lingua 38. 293-312

Jacobs, Joachim. 1992. Integration. Technical Report 14. 282. 89-134 Wuppertal
SFB

Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. In Lillian
Haegeman. (ed.),. Elements of Grammar. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Rizzi, Luigi. 2004a.  Locality and the left periphery. In Andriana Balletti
(ed.), The cartography of syntactic structures. Vol. 1, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

Rizzi, Luigi. (ed.). 2004b. The cartography of syntactic structures. Vol. 2:
The structure of CP and IP. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Lengji N. Danjuma teaches linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and
Nigerian Languages, University of Jos, Nigeria. Presently, he is a PhD student
in the Department of Languages and Linguistics, University of Maiduguri,
Nigeria, where his particular research interests include theoretical and
African linguistics. The focus of his current research is ‘Move-alpha, TOP,
and PRO within the Minimalist Program: A Cross-Linguistic Analysis of Ngas,
Hausa, and Fulfulde’. He is also a 2012 American Council of Learned Societies
(ACLS)/ African Humanities Program (AHP) dissertation completion fellow.








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