Postposing: Information Structure and Word Order Variation

1
PostposingInformation Structure and Word Order
Variation

• LSA.323
• 10 July 2007

2
Postposing

• Preposing the marked constituent represents
  information that is given in the sense of being
  discourse-old.
• Postposing the marked constituent represents
  information that is new in some sense, varying
  by type of postposing construction.
• Two types of postposing constructions
• Existential there-sentences
• Presentational there-sentences
• The felicity of there-sentences is sensitive to
  the information status of the postverbal NP
  (PVNP).

3
Previous Studies

• Most previous studies have focused on
  there-sentences with be as the main verb.
• Some have argued that there are two (structurally
  distinct?) types of there-sentences (Levin 1993)
  
• Existential there, restricted to main-verb be
• Presentational there, restricted to verbs of
  appearance or emergence.

4
Existential there

• I would like to concentrate on Florida more than
  anything else to show you what we see there now.
  Between 1981 and 1983, there were nine bombings
  and seven attempted bombings and one kidnapping
  carried out by terrorist groups or alleged
  terrorist groups in the Florida area. All 17 of
  these incidents were in Miami, Florida.
• Challenger Commission transcripts, 2/7/86

5
Presentational there

• Daniel told me that shortly after Grumman arrived
  at Wideview Chalet there arrived also a man named
  Sleeman.
• Upfield 1946246

6
Two Types of there Constructions

• Regardless of any structural differences between
  them, the two types of there-sentences are
  pragmatically distinct with respect to the
  information status of the PVNP.
• That is, whether the information is (taken to be)
  new to the discourse or new to the hearer.

7
Right-Dislocation

• Time permitting, I will contrast these two
  postposing constructions with another one
  involving the noncanonical placement of an NP in
  postverbal position, namely right-dislocation
  (RD).

8
Right-Dislocation

• Cant write much, as Ive been away from here for
  a week and have to keep up appearances, but did
  Diana mention the desk drama? Dad took your old
  desk over to her house to have it sent out, but
  he didnt check to see what was in it, and forgot
  that I had been keeping all my vital documents in
  there like my tax returns and paystubs and bank
  statements. Luckily Diana thought that stuff
  looked important so she took it out before
  giving the desk over to the movers. Phew! Shes a
  smart cookie, that Diana.

9
Right-Dislocation

• The marked NP in an RD represents information
  that is familiar within the discourse.
• The information-structural difference between RD
  and there-sentences is due to the presence of the
  anaphoric pronoun with which the marked
  constituent is coreferential.

10
Existential there

• Existential there-sentences are sensitive to
  hearer-familiarity as opposed to
  discourse-familiarity.
• The PVNP in an existential there-sentence is
  required to represent information that the
  speaker believes is not already familiar to the
  hearer.

11
Existential there

• Theres a warm relationship, a great respect and
  trust between United Air Liness chairman,
  Stephen M. Wolf, and Sir Colin Marshall, British
  Airs chief executive officer, according to a
  person familiar with both sides. Wall Street
  Journal, 8/23/89
• The referent of the PVNP a warm relationship...
  is being presented to the reader as new
  information.

12
Existential there

• What can happen is a hangup such as Rocky Smith
  ran into, as the independent hauler was
  traversing Chicago with a load of machinery that
  just had to get to a factory by morning. There
  was this truck in front of me carrying giant
  steel coils, and potholes all over the place, he
  remembers. This guy swerves all of a sudden to
  avoid a big hole. He hit it anyway. Wall Street
  Journal, 8/30/89
• Similarly, the truck mentioned in this PVNP is
  new to the hearer for this reason, despite the
  fact that the PVNP is morphologically definite,
  it is nonetheless felicitous in the existential.

13
Existential there

• If the PVNP represents hearer-old information, on
  the other hand, the use of existential there is
  infelicitous
• I have some interesting news for you. At todays
  press conference there was Hillary Clinton.
• President Bush appeared at the podium accompanied
  by three senators and Tony Blair. Behind him
  there was the Vice President.
• These PVNPs represent entities that are new to
  the discourse yet presumably familiar to the
  hearer.

14
Existential there

• Similarly, there-sentences with discourse-old
  PVNPs are infelicitous, given that discourse old
  entities are necessarily also hearer-old
• A Hey, have you heard from Jim Alterman lately?
  
• I havent seen him for years.
• B Yes, actually. On the panel
  today there was
• Jim Alterman.
• Thus, whenever an NP represents a hearer-old
  entity, regardless of its discourse status, it
  may not be felicitously postposed in an
  existential there-sentence.

15
Existential there

• A Im home. Anything interesting happen
  today?
• B Not really. Theres a dog running
  loose
• somewhere in the neighborhood.
• A Have you seen the dog or the cat around?
• B Not lately. Theres the dog running
  
• loose somewhere in the
  neighborhood.
• A Have you seen the dog or the cat around?
• B Not lately. The dog is running loose
  somewhere
• in the neighborhood.
• When the dog being referred to is hearer-new, the
  use of the existential is acceptable
• However, where the dog is hearer-old, the use of
  the existential is infelicitous.

16
Constraints on the PVNP Syntactic or Pragmatic?

• So, is it really, as we have argued, the
  hearer-old information status of the PVNP thats
  responsible for the infelicity?
• Or is it, as others have argued, the
  morpho-syntactic definiteness of the PVNP?
• A Im home. Anything interesting happen today?
• B Not really. Theres the
  funniest-looking dog running
• loose somewhere in the neighborhood.
• Here a definite PVNP is being used to refer to an
  entity that, is nonetheless hearer-new.
• That is, the funniest-looking dog is not used to
  refer to a particular dog with which the hearer
  is expected to be familiar.

17
Constraints on the PVNP Syntactic or Pragmatic?

• We would argue that it is not definiteness per se
  that is responsible for the infelicity of
  sentences with definite PVNPs, but rather the
  fact that definite PVNPs typically, but not
  necessarily, represent hearer-old information.
• It is this tendency that has led to the illusion
  that definite PVNPs are themselves disallowed in
  existentials.
• Note that it is hearer-status, and not
  discourse-status, that is relevant for the
  felicity of existential there-sentences.
• That is, information that is new to the discourse
  is nonetheless infelicitous as the PVNP of an
  existential there-sentence if it is known to the
  hearer.

18
Constraints on the PVNP Syntactic or Pragmatic?

• President Bush appeared at the podium accompanied
  by three senators and Speaker Pelosi. Behind
  him there was the Vice President.
• At the New Hampshire town hall meeting last
  week there was Hillary Clinton.
• The felicity of such hearer-old PVNPs in
  existentials does not improve when they represent
  discourse-old information if anything, they
  become worse
• President Bush appeared at the podium accompanied
  by three senators and Speaker Pelosi. Behind
  him there was Pelosi. cf. Pelosi was behind
  him.
• Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama have been
  travelling extensively over the past few months.
  At the NAACP convention last week there was
  Hillary Clinton.
• cf. Hillary Clinton was at the
  NAACP convention last week.

19
Summary

• Both hearer-old/discourse-new PVNPs and
  hearer-old/discourse-old PVNPs are infelicitous
  in existential there-sentences.
• Thus, it is newness with respect to the hearers
  knowledge that is required for the felicitous use
  of existential there-sentences.

20
Presentational there-sentences

• The central difference between existential there
  and presentational there is the verb
• Presentational there-sentences contain a main
  verb other than be.
• The two sentence-types are also subject to
  distinct pragmatic constraints on the information
  status of the PVNP.
• Presentational there differs from existential
  there in being sensitive to the discourse-status,
  rather than the hearer-status, of the PVNP.
• Specifically, the felicitous use of a
  presentational there-sentence requires that its
  PVNP represent information that is new to the
  discourse.

21
Presentational there-sentences

• In the vast majority of cases, the PVNP in a
  presentational there-sentence is both hearer-new
  and discourse-new
• After they had travelled on for weeks and weeks
  past more bays and headlands and rivers and
  villages than Shasta could remember, there came a
  moonlit night when they started their journey at
  evening, having slept during the day. They had
  left the downs behind them and were crossing a
  wide plain with a forest about half a mile away
  on their left.
• Lewis 195423

22
Presentational there-sentences

• The volume of engine sound became louder and
  louder. Motorcycle police, a whole battalion (or
  whatever unit they come in) neared took over
  the road there must have been twenty of them.
  Behind them there appeared police vans and police
  buses, one, two, four, six, eight of each. And
  then, at last, behind these, the American
  military vehicles began to appear. Wakefield
  199194
• Why would Honda locate in Alliston? Why did
  Toyota pick Cambridge? Why did GM-Suzuki pick
  Ingersoll? The answer is, first, that the
  Canadian labour force is well educated and
  capable of operating the sophisticated equipment
  of modern industry. Second, in the Province of
  Ontario and in the communities of Alliston, in
  Waterloo Region and Oxford County, there exists a
  tremendous work ethic. We recognize it. The
  workers recognize it. More important, industry
  recognizes it, too.
• token provided by D. Yarowsky, ATT Bell
  Laboratories

23
Presentational there-sentences

• The main verbs in these examples came,
  appeared, and exists are prototypical verbs of
  appearance and emergence (Levin 1993), and thus
  are also prototypical in presentational
  there-sentences.
• Moreover, in each case the PVNP represents
  information that is new to the discourse.
• However, in each of these examples the entity
  represented by the PVNP is new to the hearer as
  well as to the discourse -- i.e., it is
  hearer-new as well as discourse-new.

24
Presentational there-sentences

• So, we need to look at examples that distinguish
  between the two, specifically those tokens
  involving information that is new to the
  discourse yet presumably known to the hearer
• There only lacked the moon but a growing pallor
  in the sky suggested the moon might soon be
  coming.
• adapted from Erdmann 1976138
• Famous men came --- engineers, scientists,
  industrialists and eventually, in their turn,
  there came Jimmy the Screwsman and Napoleon
  Bonaparte.
• Upfield 19502

25
Presentational there-sentences

• While both types of there-sentences allow
  hearer-new, discourse-new PVNPs, they do so for
  different reasons
• Existential there-sentences, being sensitive to
  hearer-status, require the PVNP to represent
  hearer-new information.
• Presentational there-sentences, being sensitive
  to discourse-status, require the PVNP to
  represent discourse-new information.

26
Presentational there-sentences

• If the PVNP in a presentational there-sentence
  represents information that is discourse-old (and
  therefore also hearer-old), the utterance is
  infelicitous
• For a brief moment we could see among the trees a
  man and a woman picking flowers. Suddenly there
  ran out of the woods the man we had seen.
• cf. The man we had seen suddenly ran out
  of the woods.
• Suddenly there ran out of the woods the man we
  had seen at the picnic.
• Aissen 19752, ex. 12
• Thus, it is the referents status as
  discourse-old information that renders the
  utterance infelicitous (a), not its status as
  hearer-old information, since the corresponding
  example of a hearer-old but discourse-new entity
  is felicitous (b). Note that CWO in (a) is fine.

27
Presentational there-sentences

• While both constructions permit hearer-new PVNP,
  both disallow discourse-old PVNPs
• A Hey, have you heard from Jim Alterman lately?
• I havent seen him for years.
• B Yes, actually. Before the committee
  today there
• was/appeared Jim Alterman.
• President Bush appeared at the podium accompanied
  by three senators and Tony Blair. Behind him
  there was/stood Blair.
• The PVNPs in these examples represent information
  that is discourse-old, and therefore also
  hearer-old, and hence are infelicitous in either
  presentational or existential there-sentences.

28
Presentational there-sentences

• Where discourse-status and hearer-status diverge,
  however, different distributions are found for
  existential and presentational there-sentences
• Discourse-new, hearer-old PVNPs disallowed in
  existential there, but not presentational there
• I have some interesting news for you. At todays
  press conference there appeared President Bush.
• I have some interesting news for you. At todays
  press conference there was President Bush.

29
Presentational there-sentences

• President Bush appeared at the podium accompanied
  by three senators and Tony Blair. Behind him
  there stood the Vice President.
• President Bush appeared at the podium accompanied
  by three senators and Tony Blair. Behind him
  there was the Vice President.
• Here, the PVNPs represent hearer-old, discourse
  new information.
• As such, they are felicitous in presentational
  there-sentences but disallowed in existential
  there-sentences.

30
The so-called Definiteness Effect

• Definiteness
• A morpho-syntactic property of determiners/
  DPs/NPs (a formal property)?
• Or a pragmatic/IS property of referents (a
  conceptual category)?
• We assume the latter and argue that any
  limitations on the appearance of definite PVNPs
  in there-sentences is epiphenomenal, the result
  of an imperfect correlation between the cognitive
  status to which definiteness is sensitive and
  that to which postverbal position in
  there-sentences is sensitive.

31
The so-called Definiteness Effect

• Our analysis of definiteness and there-sentences
  is based on a corpus of several hundred tokens of
  existential there-sentences with definite PVNPs.
• We found that, indeed, the entity represented by
  the PVNP in an existential there-sentence always
  constitutes hearer-new information.
• However, in certain circumstances this entity may
  nonetheless be realized by a definite, due to a
  mismatch between hearer-new status and the
  constraint on felicitous use of the definite.

32
Our View of Definiteness

• Under many accounts of definiteness, a speakers
  choice of definite description must render the
  intended refer uniquely identifiable for the
  hearer.
• The term uniquely identifiable, however, is
  misleading, suggesting that a hearer must be able
  to identify the actual object in the world.
• Instead, we argue that what is required for
  felicitous use of the definite article is that
  the speaker must believe that the hearer is able
  to individuate the referent in question from all
  others within the discourse model, or
  individuable within the discourse model.

33
Definiteness An Example

• the man sitting next to me on the train
• For this NP to be felicitous in context, what is
  required is not that the hearer be able to
  actually identify this man (e.g., provide his
  name, or pick him out of a lineup), but rather
  that the hearer be able, on the basis of this NP,
  to individuate this man from all other entities
  in the discourse model.
• That is, the utterance of this NP in context must
  provide enough information for the hearer to
  distinguish this individual from all others in
  the discourse model.

34
Our View of Definiteness

• Thus, an empirical study of existential
  there-sentences in context not only provides
  evidence against the notion of a definiteness
  effect, but also helps to clarify the pragmatic
  constraints on both definiteness and
  existentials.
• We have identified five distinct cases in which
  formally definite yet hearer-new PVNPs may
  felicitously occur in there-sentences.
• In each case, the definiteness of the NP is
  licensed by the individuability of the referent,
  while the existential is licensed by its status
  as hearer-new information.

35
Our View of Definiteness

• We have identified five classes of definite
  PVNPs, categorized by the relationship holding
  between the referent of the PVNP and its context
  (Ward Birner 1995)
• Hearer-old entities treated as hearer-new
• Hearer-new tokens of hearer-old types
• Hearer-old entities newly instantiating a
  variable
• Hearer-new entities with individuating
  descriptions
• False definites
• These classes, while not necessarily exhaustive,
  illustrate the variety of ways in which a
  definite NP may represent a hearer-new entity and
  thus satisfy the constraint on existentials.
• In the interest of time, well discuss only two
  of them.

36
Hearer-Old Entities Treated as Hearer-New

• Certain entities that have been evoked earlier in
  the discourse may nonetheless be treated by a
  speaker as hearer-new if the speaker has grounds
  to believe the entity may have been forgotten.
• Almanzo liked haying-time. From dawn till long
  after dark every day he was busy, always doing
  different things. It was like play, and morning
  and afternoon there was the cold egg-nog.
• Wilder 1933232

37
Hearer-Old Entities Treated as Hearer-New

• Although the cold egg-nog is evoked two pages
  earlier, there are sufficient grounds for the
  writer to believe that the entity has been
  (temporarily) forgotten by the reader, thus
  licensing her to reintroduce it and treat it as
  hearer-new.

38
Hearer-Old Entities Treated as Hearer-New

• Like voters everywhere, Montanans are in a
  resentful mood, and Marlenee is adept at
  exploiting that resentment... To add to his
  troubles, Williams used to be chairman of the
  subcommittee overseeing grants to the National
  Endowment for the Arts, and he firmly defended
  the agency against charges that it funded
  obscene art works. Thats what won him the
  support of Keillor, who said, Its a measure of
  the man when hes courageous when its not
  absolutely required of him. But it has inspired
  the opposition of national conservatives,
  including Pat Robertson, who referred to Williams
  as Pornography Pat. Then there is that
  resentment.

39
Hearer-Old Entities Treated as Hearer-New

• Mr. Rummel Well, didnt the designer of the
  orbiter, the manufacturer, develop maintenance
  requirements and documentation as part of the
  design obligation?
• Mr. Collins Yes, sir. And that is what we
  showed in the very first part, before the Pan Am
  study. There were those other orbiter
  maintenance and requirement specifications, which
  not only did processing of the vehicle, but in
  flow testing, pad testing, and what have you, but
  also accomplished or was in lieu of an inspection
  plan.
• Challenger Commission transcripts, 3/31/86

40
Hearer-Old Entities Treated as Hearer-New

• Thus, the use of the existential in conjunction
  with the definite reflects the treatment of the
  referent as simultaneously hearer-new and
  individuable.
• It is this mixed marking that leads the hearer to
  interpret the utterance as a reminder, i.e., to
  infer that even though the entity appears to be
  hearer-new, it nonetheless constitutes assumed
  shared knowledge.
• Note that an indefinite in this context would
  misleadingly instruct the hearer to construct a
  brand-new discourse entity for what is in fact a
  previously evoked referent.

41
Hearer-New Entities with Individuating
Descriptions

• Unlike definite PVNPs that serve as reminders,
  those containing individuating descriptions do
  not depend on the prior context for their
  felicity.
• In fact, such NPs are equally felicitous outside
  of there-sentences in first-mention contexts
• The current stock market fluctuations give rise
  to the added risk that when interest rates fall,
  mortgages will be prepaid, thereby reducing the
  Portfolios future income stream.
• Postponing the investigation will increase the
  chance that well uncover something additional
  that is significant.

42
Hearer-New Entities with Individuating
Descriptions

• Although the referents of the added risk that...
  and the chance that... may be new to the hearer,
  the description provided by the NP in each case
  is sufficient to fully and uniquely individuate
  the chance or risk in question, licensing the use
  of the definite.
• Since such NPs may felicitously represent
  hearer-new entities in non-existential sentences,
  we correctly predict that they may also appear
  felicitously as the PVNP in an existential.

43
Hearer-New Entities with Individuating
Descriptions

• In addition to interest-rate risk, there is the
  added risk that when interest rates fall,
  mortgages will be prepaid, thereby reducing the
  Portfolios future income stream. Vanguard
  Financial Center Newsletter
• In addition, as the review continues, there is
  always the chance that well uncover something
  additional that is significant. Challenger
  Commission transcripts, 3/18/86
• Although the particular risk/chance is assumed to
  constitute new information for the hearer, the
  description provided in the NP is sufficient to
  completely individuate the risk in question,
  hence the felicity of the definite.

44
More Evidence for Individuation

• In Kittredges latest book there is the claim
  that syntactic structure is inferrable from
  pragmatic principles.
• In Kittredges latest book there is the claim
  about the interaction of syntax and pragmatics.
• Since there are many possible claims that could
  be made about the interaction of syntax and
  pragmatics, the PVNP in the first example does
  not represent an individuable claim, and
  therefore is infelicitous as a definite.

45
More Evidence for Individuation

• Other cases in which a PVNP represents an entity
  that is both hearer-new and individuated by this
  NP include superlatives, deictics, and cataphora
• There was the tallest boy in my history class at
  the party last night.
• You can see the runway and the HUD that overlays
  the Edwards runway, and then there is this line
  which comes out to the outer glide slope aim
  point. It is hard to see the PAPIs there because
  of the lights that are here.
• There are the following reasons for this bizarre
  effect...

46
More Evidence for Individuation

• The superlative NP the tallest boy in my history
  class is sufficient to individuate a new entity
  that the hearer is being instructed to add to his
  or her discourse model.
• With the deictic, the speaker refers to a line
  while gesturing toward it the gesture serves to
  individuate the new entity represented by the
  PVNP.
• The following reasons individuates the hearer-new
  set of reasons in question its the set of
  reasons about to be presented.

47
A Final Example of Individuation

• There are those who would claim that computers
  will take over the earth within the next decade.
• Again, the individuation licenses the definite,
  while the hearer-new status of the PVNP licenses
  the existential.
• That is, although the hearer is being instructed
  to add a new entity to his or her model, that
  entity is provided with a sufficiently rich
  description to render it individuable within the
  model.

48
Right-Dislocation

• Like existential and presentational
  there-sentences, right-dislocation (RD) involves
  the noncanonical placement of an argument of the
  verb in postverbal position.
• However, in contrast to both existential and
  presentational there-sentences, RD does not
  require the PVNP to represent new information
• Below the waterfall (and this was the most
  astonishing sight of all), a whole mass of
  enormous glass pipes were dangling down into the
  river from somewhere high up in the ceiling!
  They really were ENORMOUS, those pipes. There
  must have been a dozen of them at least, and they
  were sucking up the brownish muddy water from the
  river and carrying it away to goodness knows
  where.

49
Right-Dislocation

• The sentence-final dislocated constituent
  represents information that has been evoked,
  either explicitly or implicitly, in the prior
  discourse.
• For example, those pipes represent entities that
  have been explicitly evoked in the immediately
  prior discourse.
• Since the relevant information is both hearer-old
  and discourse-old, right-dislocation cannot be
  viewed as marking information that is new, either
  to the discourse or to the hearer, and thus
  differs crucially from existential and
  presentation there-sentences on IS grounds.

50
Right-Dislocation

• An examination of naturally occurring data
  indicates that right-dislocation not only
  permits, but in fact requires, the dislocated NP
  to represent information that is given in some
  sense.
• RD disallows new information in dislocated
  position
• Below the waterfall (and this was the most
  astonishing sight of all), a whole mass of
  enormous glass pipes were dangling down into the
  river from somewhere high up in the ceiling!
  They really were ENORMOUS, some of the boulders
  in the river. Nonetheless, they were sucked up
  into the pipes along with the brownish muddy
  water.
• vs.
• ... Some of the boulders in the river really
  were enormous. Nonetheless, they were sucked up
  into the pipes along with the brownish muddy
  water.

51
Right-Dislocation

• It is not sufficient for felicitous RD that the
  dislocated NP represent hearer-old information.
• Information that is hearer-old yet discourse-new
  is disallowed in right-dislocated position
• I hear that the Art Institute has a new exhibit
  on 19th Century post-Impressionism. He was a
  genius, that Van Gogh.
• cf. That Van Gogh was a genius.
• A What would you like to do for lunch?
• B Im not sure. Its really awful,
  Pizza Hut.
• Lets not go there.
• cf. Pizza Hut is really awful.

52
Right-Dislocation

• When the dislocated constituent represent
  discourse-old information, however, RD becomes
  felicitous
• I just saw the newly discovered Van Gogh painting
  at the Art Institute apparently he painted it
  when he was only 11 years old. He was a genius,
  that Van Gogh.
• Here, the dislocated constituents represent
  information that has been explicitly evoked in
  the discourse, and the RD is felicitous.
• Thus, what is required for felicitous RD is not
  simply that the dislocated constituent represent
  hearer-old information, but that it represent
  information that is discourse-old.

53
A Comparison of Right-Dislocation and Postposing

• Existential there-sentences, presentational
  there-sentences, and RD are subject to distinct
  constraints on the information status of their
  respective PVNPs.
• However, the pragmatic constraints to which these
  constructions are sensitive do show a significant
  pattern
• RD and there-sentences differ crucially in the
  referential status of the lexical item occupying
  the canonical-word-order position of the
  noncanonically positioned constituent.
• In RD, that position is occupied by a referential
  pronoun, whereas in both types of
  there-sentences, it is occupied by
  non-referential expletive there.

54
A Comparison of Right-Dislocation and Postposing

• Corresponding to this morpho-syntactic difference
  between RD and there-sentences is a functional
  difference RD is subject to an entirely
  different pragmatic constraint
• In both types of there-sentences, where no
  element coreferential with the logical subject
  appears in syntactic subject position, the
  postposed subject is constrained to represent
  unfamiliar information.
• However, in RD, containing a pronoun
  coreferential with the dislocated constituent in
  its canonical position, the dislocated
  constituent is constrained to represent familiar,
  and in fact discourse-old, information.

55
A Comparison of Right-Dislocation and Postposing

• Moreover, it is precisely the presence of this
  pronoun that motivates the functional distinction
  between there-sentences and RD.
• In RD, the pronoun is required to represent a
  discourse-old entity, as do referential pronouns
  in general.
• Since it is coreferential with the dislocated NP,
  that NP must also represent discourse-old
  information.
• Thus, it is not accidental that RD does not serve
  to keep unfamiliar information out of subject
  position the presence of the pronoun actually
  rules out such a function.