Topic, Focus and Configurationality: Papers from the 6th Groningen Grammar Talks, Groningen, 1984

357 Pages·1986·13.683 MB·English

by  Werner Abraham, Sjaak de Meij

TOPIC, FOCUS, AND CONFIGURATIONALITY
LINGUISTIK AKTUELL (LA)
LINGUISTIK AKTUELL ist ein Forum für Arbeiten zur
Linguistik und Kommunikationswissenschaft mit
interdisziplinärer Ausrichtung. Methodische
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sowie der Entwicklung paradigmensprengender Ansätze
nicht im Wege stehen.
Reihenherausgeber:
Werner Abraham
Germanistisch Instituut
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Grote Rozenstraat 15
9712 TG Groningen
Niederlande
* * *
Band 4
Werner Abraham & Sjaak de Meij (eds.)
Topic, Focus, and Configurationality
TOPIC, FOCUS, AND
CONFIGURATIONALITY
Papers from the 6th Groningen Grammar Talks
Groningen, 1984
edited by
Werner Abraham & Sjaak de Meij
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
1986
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Groningen Grammar Talks (6th: 1984)
Topic, focus, and configurationality.
(Linguistik aktuell, ISSN 0166-0829; v. 4)
Includes bibliographies.
1. Grammar, Comparative and general -- Syntax - Congresses. 2. Generative grammar
-- Congresses. 3. German language -- Syntax - Congresses. I. Abraham, Werner. II.
Meij, Sjaakde. III.. Titel. IV. Series.
P295.G74 1986 415 86-17515
ISBN 90 272 2724 1 (alk. paper)
© Copyright 1986 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Werner Abraham, Laci Marácz, Sjaak de Mey & Wim Scherpenisse 1
Word Order in the Middle Field of the German Sentence
Werner Abraham 15
Configurationality in Disguise: Word Order and the V-2 Property
Hubert Haider 39
Remarks on the Configurationality-Issue
Julia Horvath 65
The Expression of Logical Scope in Hungarian
László Hunyadi 89
The Syntax of Focus and Adverbials in German
Joachim Jacobs 103
Hocus, Focus, and Verb Types in Hungarian Infinitive Constructions
Laszlo Kalman, Gábor Prószéky, Adam Nádasdy and C. György
Kálmán 129
On the Logic of Word Order in Hungarian
István Kenesei 143
Epistemic Possibility and Focus
Ferenc Kiefer 161
The Order and Scope of Operators in the Hungarian Sentence
Katalin É.Kiss 181
Focussing on Focus in Hungarian
András Komlósy 215
Dressed or Naked: the Case of the PP in Hungarian
László Károly Marácz 227
On Question Sentences in Hungarian
Sjaak de Mey and László Károly Marácz 253
Topic, Theme and the German Initial Field
Wim Scherpenisse 277
Some Remarks on Focus Projection
Arnim von Stechow and Susanne Uhmann 295
From the Definiteness Effect to Lexical Integrity
Anna Szabolcsi 321
Contributors to this volume 349
INTRODUCTION
WERNER ABRAHAM, LACI MARÁCZ, SJAAK DE MEY
& WIM SCHERPENISSE
University of Groningen
The Groningen Conference on Topic, Focus and Configurationality, April
1984.
The Groningen Grammar Talks (in German: Groninger Grammatikge­
spräche), were initiated by Werner Abraham and held for the first time in
1976. The aim of these rather informal colloquia has been to get together
grammarians in the Germanic Languages to discuss some preordained issue
(mostly syntactic) in the field of Germanic linguistics. Although discussion is
the principal aim, these conventions resulted in papers which appeared in
pre-publication form in the Groninger Arbeiten zur germanistischen Linguis­
tik (abbreviated: GAGL).
In the spring of 1984, the Institute of General Linguistics, the Finno-
Ugric Department, and the Department of German joined their efforts to
organize the 6th Grammar Talks devoted to "Topic, Focus, and Configura­
tionality". This time we invited a selected group of linguists specialized in the
study of two quite different languages: Hungarian and German. The papers
read at this conference were circulated in highly restricted number through
GAGL24 and 25.
Aim of the conference.
Twentieth century linguistics has been concerned with fundamental
questions regarding sentence structure in natural languages. Here are two
2 ABRAHAM/MARÁCZ/DE MEY/SCHERPENISSE
such questions:
1) Do all languages, at some level of abstraction, have the same struc­
ture?
2) What are the basic categories with which to describe sentence struc­
ture?
As to the former topic, Greenberg (1963) investigated a representative
sample of languages. Rather than claiming that there is one basic syntactic
structure, Greenberg extracted from his material a set of intriguing universais
which may be regarded as the starting point to syntactic typological investiga­
tion. See Hawkins (1983) as one of the most recent links in this chain of
thought, which may be called the 'many languages approach'.
Although we, by no means, question the great value of the typological
work initiated by Greenberg (1963), we principally doubt that the 'many lan­
guages' approach can lead to a satisfactory answer. We rather consider it the
main task of linguistic theory to provide explanations for universais in terms
of a small number of fundamental notions. In doing so we try to provide
answers to the second of our questions. Methodologically, we advocate the
'single language approach' (which might more appropriately be called the
'few languages approach') implying that a minute linguistic investigation,
preferably of two non-related languages, may yield a better understanding of
what universais of language really are about. Compare Coopmans (1985) for
a summary of the debate.
As is apparent from the variety of answers in the literature, however,
there is no consensus on the issue. Different frameworks claim different
notions to be fundamental. Moreover, in spite of the heavy claims which are
made in each particular framework, theoretical linguistics is not advanced far
enough to provide valid proofs of the positions defended. In particular, it
does not seem possible to construct a good 'reductio ad absurdum' proof.
Often the theoretical positions defended are so utterly implausible that one
cannot escape the uncomfortable feeling that almost anything can be
defended. Nevertheless, there is no comfort in despair. The only reasonable
thing to do is to pursue the ongoing investigations and hope that in the end a
number of fundamental positions will emerge which are beyond doubt.
This was the spirit behind the conference. The organizers of the confer­
ence hoped that comparison of German with a typologically rather different
language would shed light on a number of theoretical issues in the field of
Germanic studies. In particular, it was hoped that the discussion with lin-
INTRODUCTION 
guists studying an uncontroversially non-configurational language would
provide an answer to the much debated issue of whether German is or is not
configurational. In other words, the organizers opted for a few languages
approach. There was hope that during the discussion useful answers to
theoretical issues would be advanced and debated, quite irrespective of the
particular theoretical framework into which the answers might seem to fit
best.
A crucial question to be asked in this context is the following. Will adop­
tion of an underlying order of grammatical relations in the sentence as we find
them in a selected number of so-called configurational languages determine
the status of all other languages by way of partial similarity or dissimilarity?
Those who answer this question negatively will favor a syntactic description
that gives linearization within a sentence a derived status (Lexical Functional
grammar, Relational Grammar, Generalized Phrase Structure grammar).
On the other hand, those who do give credit to word order as a fundamental
parametrical property will tend to ask (1) whether configurationality is an all-
or-non property of languages; and (2) what non-configurational languages
provide in terms of identifying characteristics to make up for the loss of word-
order properties.
Since the status of German with respect to the configurationality ques­
tion is still a matter of debate, one main topic of the conference was CON­
FIGURATIONALITY. To be sure, any other non-configurational language
than Hungarian could have been chosen as an object of comparison. How­
ever, Hungarian syntax happened to have been the object of study in the
Department of General Linguistics for some prior time already.
Configurationality was not the only topic, though. There are systematic
relations between configurationality on the one hand, and TOPIC PROMI­
NENCE or FOCUS PROMINENCE on the other. In fact, in light of certain
facts to be discussed in a moment, and particularly the systematic relationship
between topicalization and V-second, the conference was to a large extent an
enquiry into the preverbal (or initial) area of the sentence and, above all, into
possible systematic relations between the structure of this part of the sentence
and word order in both languages.
Two further subsidiary, but certainly not uninteresting or unimportant,
issues dealt with in the congress papers are:
3) Is free word order restricted to non-neutral sentences?,