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On Linkhood, Topicalization and Clitic Left Dislocation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 September 2002

THEODORA ALEXOPOULOU
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
DIMITRA KOLLIAKOU
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle upon Tyne

Abstract

This paper focuses on the Information Packaging notion of linkhood and provides a structural definition of this notion for Greek. We show that a combination of structural resources – syntactic (left dislocation), morphological (clitic duplication) and phonological (absence of nuclear accent) – are simultaneously exploited to realize linkhood in Greek, a generalization that can be captured in a constraint-based grammar such as HPSG, which permits the expression of interface constraints. We assume Vallduví's (1992) approach to Information Packaging, and Engdahl & Vallduví's (1996) implementation of the latter in HPSG, but deviate from Vallduví's work in adopting Hendriks & Dekker's (1996) revised definition of linkhood that relies on non-monotone anaphora. From an empirical point of view, our approach directly accounts for the invariable association of Clitic Left Dislocated NPs with wide scope readings, as well as a number of systematic differences in felicity conditions between Clitic Left Dislocation and other apparently related phenomena (Topicalization and Clitic Doubling). From a theoretical perspective, our analysis departs from syntax-based notions of topichood or discourse-linking and supports a definition that unifies linkhood with other anaphora phenomena. As such, it arguably overcomes previously noted problems for Vallduví's treatment of links as the current-locus-of-update in a Heim-style file-card system.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2002 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

The order of the authors is alphabetical.
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at IATL-15, at the 6th International Conference on HPSG, at the third Paris Syntax and Semantics Conference, at the Linguistics Colloquium at the University of Tübingen, in York and in Athens. Many thanks to the participants in these events for their useful comments and inspiring discussion. In particular, we would like to thank Ronnie Cann, Jonathan Ginzburg, Claire Grover, Caroline Heycock, Ivan Sag, Dimitra Theophanopoulou-Kontou, George Tsoulas and three anonymous Journal of Linguistics referees for providing detailed and stimulating comments that helped us to improve this work. The alphabetically first author gratefully acknowledges the support of Leverhulme Trust Grant No. R35028, and thanks Richard Coates at the University of Sussex for arranging a visiting fellowship for the summer of 1999. The research of the alphabetically second author was partly supported by an Israel Academy of Sciences grant (project no. 755.97/2), entitled Verbal Projection and Focus, to Nomi Erteschik-Shir and Tova R. Rapoport, whom she thanks.