Abstract
In this chapter it is time to put together some of the results of our joint work into a set of hypotheses concerning the relationship of TFA and tripartite structures. We concentrate on two interrelated sets of issues that have been central to this work, in each of which we first present initial hypotheses inspired by the most central cases we have discussed and then discuss problem cases and develop revised hypotheses. The first issue is the recursivity of topic-focus structure, an issue on which we began with the question of whether TFA is itself directly recursive to the same extent as tripartite structures, and as it became clear that the answer to that question must be negative, developed into a pair of questions: in what cases is there an argument for embedded TFA, and to what extent does the hierarchical (rather than linear) view of CD account for the phenomena for which BHP originally felt a need for greater recursivity of TFA? These issues are addressed in the initial hypothesis (Hi) in Section 6.1, the discussion of problematic cases concerning deeply embedded focus in 6.2.1 and of several kinds of cases concerning focalizers (focussensitive operators) occurring within the topic of the sentence in Section 6.3, and in the revised hypothesis (H3) of Section 6.5.1, where we conclude that embedded TFA never happens unless there is an embedded clause. The second issue concerns the relationship between TFA and tripartite structure directly.
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Perhaps in some cases a sentence part belonging to the maximal projection need not belong to the scope of a focalizer, as J. Jacobs (p.c.) illustrates by a German example: Peter hat freiwillig auch GERDA eingeladen [lit. Peter has voluntarily also GERDA invited]. BHP assumes that this sentence is ambiguous, withfreiwillig [voluntarily] either in the scope of the focalizer, or outside it, which could be described more easily in a grammar where syntactic c-command can be directly related to semantic scope; the ‘in situ’ position of auch Gerda [also Gerda] is within the scope offreiwillig, while the raised position of it would be outside the scope. HS believe that it still has to be discussed (a) what are the empirical criteria deciding which sentence parts belong to the scope of a focalizer, and (b) whether the mentioned opposition can be accounted for by a theory postulating different underlying word orders for the different distributions of the scopes. BHP notes that this is also a case for which the issue of NP-attachment of the focalizer is important, since she assumes that “quantifier raising” (in any of the different forms it takes in different theories, whether Quantifying In, an indexing procedure, or whatever) principally applies to NPs.
The focalizers are prototypically less dynamic than all their NB sisters and mothers, but more dynamic than the CB ones.
Slightly different formulations are required for different versions of the formal semantic analysis; in examples (96’a, b) in Section 5.1.2., for instance, which follow the analysis of Rooth (1985), what is in the nuclear scope is actually the focus plus the background. In the structured meaning approach of von Stechow (1991) and Krifka (1992), the types are such that the background part could apply to the focus part by function-argument application, so the formulation in (H2(b)) is correct as given for that approach; cf. Section 2.2 above.
The movement of the NB subject of the embedded clause (accompanied by only) to the left of the verb is understood by HS to be compulsory in English, reflecting an aspect of its grammaticalized word order.
The verb invite is a proxy focus in both (115*) and (116*). We will introduce and discuss proxy focus in Section 6.2.1 below.
HS remark that the ambiguity of the verb in (117) being NB/CB (in topic or in focus) seems rather subtle, since the semantic content of the verb is not specifically rich. BHP remarks that several native English speakers among those who have read drafts of our manuscript expressed agreement with her judgments.
Under the ‘upper subtree’ of the sentence (or of a clause, see example (121) below) we understand the main verb and the complementations (arguments and adjuncts) depending on it directly. Within the formal framework of the Prague approach, the specific situation we characterize here by the notion of proxy focus has been handled by Plátek et al. (1984) and by Petkevič (1987; in press); the latter author also mentions cases in which the embedded part of focus is not the only part of the focus of the sentence. Further empirical investigations are necessary before it can be stated under which conditions such a situation obtains.
Movement rules (cf. footnote 48 in Sect. 4.3) can describe the secondary position of the bearers of the intonation center in these examples, i.e. the most dynamic items; movement rules are needed for the position of an adjective to the left of its less dynamic head noun also in cases such as (Jim was too busy last week.) He was looking for highly qualified COLLABORATORS, in which the noun is NB. In fact, this is the prototypical word order pattern within a noun group in English. See also Krifka (1994; 1996) for a distinction related to the distinction introduced here.
In any case, not only the intonation center is to be taken into account, but also other issues concerning the relation among pitch accent, intonation, syntactic structure, and the extent of focus; see the discussions of ‘focus projection’ in Selkirk (1984;1995), Gussenhoven (1984), and literature cited therein for detailed investigation of these questions. The relevance of the opposition of argument and adjunct in this respect probably can be rendered, in a dependency based framework, by means of the distinction between inner participants and free modifications. An issue important for a further comparison of focus projection theories with the TFA approach concerns examples such as those discused in Section 2. 3. 3 above, e.g. They flew from Chicago to BOSTON, or They went by car to a RIVER, in which on one of the readings the focus includes two noun groups (preposition phrases), but not the verb; especially examples with the subject in the relevant position can be understood as crucial, e.g. A girl damaged a VASE following either a context such as Did one of the children damage something ? (with only a vase in F, a girl being CB, cf. footnote 57 above), or one such as Did someone damage anything? (with the subject in the answer being NB and thus included in F together with the obj ect).
We assume that Mary, as a CB item, may be understood not to belong to ff, although it is included (as a dependent item) in F; the paraphrase for (a’) may be: “What he did concerning Mary was nothing else than to say that she liked the dancer”. The question of whether (123a) also shares a reading with (123c) is being left open here; it relates to the discussion of example (123d) in Section 6.2.4.
Another well known example of a framework for which NP scope disambiguation violates regularities which hold for the rest of the system is GPSG, which is surface compositional except for the Cooper-storage treatment required for NP scope. A decision not to disambiguate NP scope at a linguistic level would then leave that theory with a very clean syntax-semantics relationship.
A difference is that (130) is a simple sentence, so that the distinction between the F of the whole sentence and of an embedded one would not offer a viable solution.
Such clustering probably only occurs in specific contexts; the not quite natural, but acceptable sentence (131) can follow e.g. an utterance such as This time, John will run to several places in Manhattan. Perhaps, He will also run even to Brooklyn is more appropriate than (131).
This would be a revision of (H2)(a)(ii) from Section 6.1; we will discuss this possible revision further in this section, with fmal version(s) to be formulated in 6.5.1.
The issue of the non-adjacency of the verb to the T-F boundary in the presence of a proxy focus was addressed in Section 6.2.1.
This account differs from the elegant formalization by Vlk (1995) of Haj ičová’s (1973) account of focus and negation. That earlier account would not have had success as the ff of NEG, since it was assumed in the earlier work that only the verb is negated when negation occurs inside the topic. The present account is closer to that of Koktová (1986).
The possibility of a focalizer being CB if it accompanies a CB item, although the focalizer itself occurs the first time, is a feature the focalizers have in common with function words and grammatical morphemes.
More generally, especially in longer sentences, the hierarchy of lexical, phrasal and sentence stress certainly can be more complex and express different shades or degrees of TFA, of contrasts and of the distribution of operator scopes; cf. note 75 in Section 6.2.2. We assume that (at least optionally) a phrasal stress (perhaps of different kinds, with variation from one language to another) can indicate (i) wide vs. narrow focus in the sense of E. Selkirk, (ii) contrastive topic, cf. Section 5.3 above, (iii) local focus in an embedded clause, and, perhaps, other points.
The recursivity of TFA is not necessary for a CB focalizer; however, it is necessary e.g. for our handling of negation in embedded clauses.
As pointed out in Section 6.5.1 above, with (H4), point (b2), this generalization has to be restricted in the sense that the scope of a focalizer belonging to the topic does not stretch over the boundary between topic and focus of the sentence.
We are aware of the fact that it is to be further examined in which of these cases the Restrictor or the Nuclear Scope of these structures are complex (exhibiting tripartite structures of their own), where it may be appropriate to work with an implicit operator such as ASSERT, and so on. Only in some specific cases, starting with (131), do we assume that the Nuclear Scope or the Restrictor are complex. Also our use of the operators if and since is simplified; we only want to make perspicuous the points which are most relevant to the present discussion.
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Hajičová, E., Partee, B.H., Sgall, P. (1998). Some Hypotheses Proposed and Examined. In: Hajičová, E., Partee, B.H., Sgall, P. (eds) Topic-Focus Articulation, Tripartite Structures, and Semantic Content. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 71. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9012-9_6
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