Givenness marking in a mixed system : constituent order vs. determiners

This paper investigates the interaction between constituent order and the use of determiners as means of marking givenness, understood here as a non-presuppositional existential inference that arises as a result of interpreting a predicate with respect to a context-specified situation, in light of (a version of) *New ≻ Given principle of Kučerová (2012). We attribute the principle to how situation binding operates in clauses, instead of postulating a presupposition-introducing operator and test it on new quantitative data from Medieval French, a system employing both determiners and constituent order for information structuring. Our results show that the constraint in question is respected across the board except for the cases when it is obviated by the presence of a morphological trigger of existential presupposition. We also show that a game-theoretic simulation incorporating this constraint matches very closely historical French data.

ISBN:9783961102655

Jaar van publicatie:2020

Toegankelijkheid:Open