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1993, Goldberg 1995). For example, the ditransitive or double object construction requires that its goal be animate, whereas the dative construction does not:

Slight differences in meaning such as this are clearly one factor that distinguishes between alternate argument structure patterns. They allow speakers to choose which pattern to use on the basis of differing semantics, thereby offering speakers of a language more expressive power. Less studied, however, is the role of pragmatics in differentiating among argument structure possibilities.

2 What is Pragmatics?

For present purposes we distinguish two types of pragmatics – nonconventional and conventional.

NON-CONVENTIONAL PRAGMATICS involves the effects of the comprehension or production of sentences in particular contexts of use by actual language users having the type of processing and cognitive abilities and preferences that humans do. These effects are expected to be universal, given that languages are products of human beings. CONVERSATIONAL PRAGMATICS (Grice 1967, Horn 1984a) is perhaps the best known example of non-conventional pragmatics, and the one that is focused on here.

CONVENTIONAL PRAGMATICS is the conventional association of certain formal properties of language with certain constraints on pragmatic contexts. Effects of conventional pragmatics are non-necessary effects, and so we would expect to find some degree of language variation, at least in degree of conventionalization.1 As pertains to clause structure, conventional pragmatics largely corresponds to ways in which languages choose to package INFORMATION STRUCTURE (Halliday 1967, Chafe 1976, Lambrecht 1994, Ward and Birner this volume).

Two notions that play a central role in the packaging of information structure are TOPIC and FOCUS, which we can define as follows (see Gundel and Fretheim (this volume) for a more in-depth discussion): a sentence topic can be defined as a “matter of [already established] current interest which a statement is about and with respect to which a proposition is to be interpreted as relevant” (Lambrecht 1994: 119). On focus, we follow Halliday (1967: 204), who writes: “Information focus is one kind of emphasis, that whereby the speaker marks out a part (which may be the whole) of a message block as that which he wishes to be interpreted as informative.” Similarly Lambrecht (1994: 218) defines the focus relation as relating “the pragmatically non-recoverable to the recoverable component of a proposition [thereby creating] a new state of information in the mind of the addressee.”

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Other notions that are often used in discussions of information structure describe whether particular arguments within a discourse have been previously mentioned: that is, whether the arguments are DISCOURSE-OLD (GIVEN) or DISCOURSE-NEW (Prince 1992). The correlations between focus and topic on the one hand, and discourse-old/given or -new on the other are complicated, but some rough generalizations can be made. Continuing topics are given in that they have to have been mentioned in order to be continuing as topics (e.g. she in (5a) below); even newly established topics tend to be accessible or anchored in the discourse as opposed to brand new, insofar as they appear with a definite determiner or are explicitly related to a discourse-old entity by means of a possessive determiner or relative clause (e.g. her mother in (5b); see Francis et al. 1999). Focal arguments are often discourse-new (a snake in (5d)); discourseold elements can serve as foci only if they are accented (her in (5c)).

Since all of the cells of the matrix are instantiated, it is clear that the notions of topic and focus cannot be reduced to the notions of discourse-old and -new, as is sometimes assumed. Still, it is clear that most commonly, topics are discourse-old (e.g. (5a)), because most topics are continuing topics. Focal elements tend to be discourse-new, since asserting information most commonly occurs via the mention of a new entity (e.g. (5d)). These common correlations are important to keep in mind when we try to relate proposals, such as many of the ones discussed below, that are couched exclusively either in terms of topic vs. focus or in terms of given/old vs. new.

3 Information Structure and Argument Structure

A simple transitive argument structure pattern can appear in a cleft construction, a left-dislocation construction, or a topicalization construction:

It is generally recognized that sentence-level constructions such as those represented in (6)–(8) are associated with their own information structure properties.

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For example, in an extensive analysis of the Switchboard corpus of spoken language, Gregory and Michaelis (to appear) document the functions of the left-dislocation and topicalization constructions, finding subtle distinctions between them. The fronted NPs in the left-dislocation construction are not previously mentioned and yet do persist as topics. The fronted NPs in the topicalization construction display the opposite tendency: the majority are previously mentioned and do not persist as topics. Thus, the left-dislocation construction is topic establishing, whereas the topicalization construction tends to be used for moribund topics.

It is not immediately obvious that argument structure, which has to do with the semantic relation between a verb and its arguments, should have any direct relationship to conventional pragmatics. As Lambrecht (1994: 159) observes, “the independence of semantic and pragmatic roles is an obvious consequence of the fact that information structure has to do with the use of sentences, rather than the meaning of propositions.” Nonetheless, on the view that different syntactic complement arrays reflect different argument structures, we will see below that argument structure patterns are indeed associated with information structure generalizations.

4 Preferred Argument Structure

Du Bois (1987) proposed a Preferred Argument Structure for the way argument structures are actually used in discourse. Assuming Dixon’s (1972) system for classifying core arguments, intransitive clauses have only one core argument, the subject or S, and transitive clauses have two core arguments: the actor or A and the object or O. In English sentences like The vase broke or The boy ran, “the vase” and “the boy” are S’s; in a sentence such as The giraffe spotted the owl, “the giraffe” is an A and “the owl” is an O.

Du Bois (1987) analyzed the distribution of lexical A, S, and O in elicited, ongoing discourse in the ergative language of Sacapultec Maya. The corpus study revealed that only 2.8 percent of transitive clauses involved two lexical NPs. Moreover, only 3.2 percent of A’s represented discourse-new entities, expressed by lexical NPs. On the other hand, 22.5 percent of S’s and 24.7 percent of O’s represented such discourse-new entities. Du Bois posits two constraints: (1) a QUANTITY GENERALIZATION: “avoid more than one new argument per clause” (Du Bois 1987: 819; see also Dixon 1972, Givón 1975, Chafe 1987); and (2) the GIVEN A GENERALIZATION: “avoid new A’s.” These two constraints are jointly taken to define the Preferred Argument Structure cross-linguistically.

These findings have been replicated again and again in many unrelated languages, including English (Iwasaki 1985), German (Schuetze-Coburn 1987), French (Lambrecht 1987), Hebrew (Smith 1996), Mam (England 1983), Malay (Hopper 1988), Quechua (Payne 1987), child Inuktitut speech (Allen and Schroder to appear), Papago (Payne 1987), and Tzeltal (Brown to appear). S and O both easily accommodate discourse-new elements. The A slot is distinct

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in that it strongly prefers old or given elements.2 This split between S and O on one hand and A on the other is what generally defines ergativity, whether it is morphologically marked or syntactically expressed. It is the discourse properties, Du Bois (1987) argues, that form the basis for the categorization that results in all types of ergativity.

It is worth asking whether the Quantity and Given A generalizations are both independently required. One question that arises is whether the Given A generalization is ultimately just an effect of a correlation between animates and topicality. That is, the A argument of transitive clauses strongly favors animate entities, and animates are good candidates for topic status simply because human beings like to talk about other human beings (Osgood 1980). A’s are likely to be topical, and ongoing topics are necessarily given: therefore, A’s are likely to be given – thus, the Given A generalization. There is, however, a consideration that mediates against this idea that the Given A generalization is simply epiphenomenal. Languages strongly favor introducing new animate entities via an intransitive clause whenever new animate entities are introduced. Du Bois (1987: 831) suggests that speakers opt for “intransitive introduction followed by transitive narration.” That is, humans may be likely to make animate entities topics, but that is not sufficient to explain why the A slot is avoided when animates are not topical. Thus it seems that the Given A constraint does not follow directly from the prevalence of animate topics.

A second question that arises is whether the two constraints could possibly be conflated into one. Other than A, there is only one other argument available in the nuclear clause (either S or O), so the Quantity generalization (avoid more than one new argument per clause) would seem to follow from the Given A generalization. But the Quantity generalization may help to motivate why it should be that new animate entities are often introduced via an intransitive rather than transitive clause, which again, is the one aspect of the Given A constraint that does not follow from the discourse frequency of animate topics. Of course the Quantity constraint could be satisfied in one of two ways in discourse contexts in which a new animate participant is introduced: either an intransitive clause could be used or a transitive clause with a given O could be used. In fact, as discussed below, the admittedly rare transitive expressions with nongiven A’s do tend to have given O’s. Thus, there is evidence that the Quantity constraint is not a consequence of the Given A constraint. Moreover, a possibly related type of Quantity generalization seems to be operative in accounting for object omission with normally transitive verbs, as is discussed below.

Can the Given A constraint be derived completely from the Quantity generalization together with the general tendency for animates to be ongoing topics and therefore given? The fact just noted, that languages apparently prefer the intransitive mention of new animates rather than the transitive mention with given O’s, even though the Quantity constraint is satisfied equally well in either way, provides one piece of evidence that the Given A constraint is not simply epiphenomenal. Moreover, languages differ in the degree to which the Given A generalization holds (Van Valin and LaPolla 1997, Lambrecht 2001).

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For example, the constraint is near absolute in spoken French insofar as subject arguments cannot be focal and non-focal subjects tend to be given (Lambrecht 1995), whereas English allows new, focal A’s in certain circumstances (discussed below). Thus it seems that the Quantity and Given A generalizations are both required to describe the data.

The Given A and Quantity generalizations seem to be accurate crosslinguistically, and their existence is likely motivated, if not predicted, by processing and discourse factors. The Quantity generalization may be based on some kind of ease of processing generalization, although the specific explanation has not yet been identified. As noted above, the Given A generalization goes beyond the conversational tendency to make humans topical; still, the motivation for the generalization undoubtedly lies in this tendency. In fact, the tendency for humans to make other animate beings topics results in a tendency for both A and S to be topical more often than O in many languages. Thus, sentences in which the logical subject represents the topic and the predicate represents the comment or assertion about that topic represent the most frequent pattern and can, therefore, be considered the canonical or unmarked construction type (Kuno 1972, Horn 1986, Chafe 1994, Lambrecht 1994).

5 Sentence Focus Constructions

Languages typically have special constructions that allow for non-canonical packaging of information. Lambrecht (1994) defines SENTENCE FOCUS (SF) CONSTRUCTIONS as constructions that are formally marked as expressing a pragmatically structured proposition in which both the subject and the predicate are in focus. As Lambrecht (1995) notes, the function of SF constructions is presentational – namely, to present an entity or an event into the discourse (cf. also Sasse’s (1987) entity-central vs. event-central thetic sentences). An English SF construction that introduces an event into the discourse is characterized by having pitch accent only on the logical subject, and not on the predicate phrase, as in (9).

(9)What happened?

a.Her SON is sick.

b.Her BIKE broke down.

c.My SHOULDER hurts.

d.ZACH called.

e.Her HUSBAND left her.

Lambrecht (1994) observes as well that the subject in this construction is not topical and cannot be pronominal. For example, (10) can only be interpreted with a narrow focus on the subject argument (an ARGUMENT FOCUS reading) and does not permit a sentence focus interpretation:

(10) HE is sick. (possible context: A: Is she sick? B: No, HE is sick)

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The predicate in the SF construction typically has semantics that are compatible with presentation, with SF constructions cross-linguistically favoring certain unaccusative verbs such as arrive, come, die, and disappear. SF expressions are rarely transitive, consistent with the Given A generalization, since the focal intransitive subject is an S and not an A. When SF expressions are transitive (e.g. (9e)), the object nominal strongly tends to be pronominal (Lambrecht 1995), in accord with the Quantity generalization.

In sections 4 and 5, we have seen that information structure properties motivate the existence of a dominant argument structure type cross-linguistically, the specific properties of which are conventionalized differently and to different extents in different languages. The need for a full range of expressive power motivates the existence of marked construction types such as the SF construction.

The ditransitive construction, as seen in (1) above, can be used to illustrate the potentially far-reaching role of information structure in the grammar of argument structure.

6 Information Structure and the Ditransitive

In both corpus and experimental studies, Arnold et al. (2000) found that both newness and heaviness play a role in determining the choice of the ditransitive over the dative construction, where heaviness is determined by number of words, and newness by lack of previous mention in the discourse3 (see also Givón 1979, 1984, Dryer 1986, Thompson 1990). For present purposes, we will interpret these generalizations as implying that the recipient argument must be topical, not focal:

The idea that the ditransitive constrains the recipient argument to be nonfocal may ultimately help account for certain interesting facts about how the ditransitive construction interacts with long-distance dependency constructions and the passive construction in English. In particular, notice that the recipient argument of the ditransitive cannot readily appear in a long-distance dependency relation:

(12)??Who did Chris give the book?

(13)?*It is that girl that Chris gave the book.

whereas the patient argument can appear in such relations:

(14)What did Pat give Chris?

(15)It is that book that Pat gave Chris.

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Conversely, the recipient argument can passivize, as in (16), but the patient argument resists passivization, as in (17):

(16)Pat was given the book by Chris.

(17)??The book was given Pat by Chris.

Erteschik-Shir (1979) suggests that these facts can be explained by appealing to the difference in discourse function of the two arguments and the two types of constructions. Long-distance dependency constructions typically require that the fronted element be focused. Thus the infelicitous sentences (12) and (13) result, she argues, from a clash in information structure: the recipient argument, which is constrained to being topical, cannot appear in the focus position of a long-distance dependency construction. The recipient argument can readily appear as the subject of a passive, however, because subjecthood is compatible with topicality.

This account is quite provocative in that it predicts that the recipient argument can appear as the dependent element in a topicalization construction. As noted above, topicalization tends to be used for elements that have been topical in the discourse (and which are likely to cease continuing to be topics). Therefore, topicalization of the recipient argument of the ditransitive should present no clash. As expected, we find the following acceptable example:4

(18)She had an idea for a project. She’s going to use three groups of mice. One, she’ll feed them mouse chow, just the regular stuff they make for mice. Another she’ll feed them veggies. And the third, she’ll feed junk food. [Prince 1997: 129]

Here “the third” is clearly topical in that it refers to the last of three groups of mice under discussion. It does not, therefore, present a clash of discourse constraints to topicalize this recipient argument, and as predicted, the sentence is acceptable. It remains to be seen whether this type of discourse-based explanation can explain the full range of facts,5 but research on the role of pragmatics in motivating constraints on long-distance dependencies in a general way represents an exciting trend in syntactic theory (e.g. Erteschik-Shir 1998).

7 Discourse-conditioned Argument Omission

Cross-linguistically, focal elements must be expressed. This follows from the fact that they are not predictable: they must be expressed in order to be identified. On the other hand, there is a clear motivation from conversational pragmatics for leaving topical arguments unexpressed, e.g., Horn’s (1984a) R Principle or Grice’s (1967) Maxim of Quantity: say no more than you must. Since topical arguments are fully recoverable, there is no need to utter them.

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While omissibility generalizations are motivated by non-conventional pragmatics in this way, omissibility and non-omissibility of arguments is clearly conventional in that languages differ in whether or not recoverable arguments can be omitted. In Hindi, all continuing topics and backgrounded information can be dropped (Butt and King to appear). In Hebrew, discourse topics, whether subjects or objects, can be omitted, but other recoverable arguments cannot generally be (Uziel-Karl and Berman 2000). In Brazilian Portuguese, a combination of discourse and lexical semantic factors seem to be at play in argument omission: for example, omitted objects must be topics and are predominantly inanimate or third person animate, that is, first or second person objects are not readily omitted, even when they are topical (Farrell 1990). English generally requires all arguments to be overtly expressed, unless lexically specified for object omission (e.g. Fillmore 1986).

Interestingly enough, all languages allow omitted arguments in certain circumstances. An illustrative case comes from English, in which a particular confluence of discourse properties can result in object omission, even for verbs that are normally strictly transitive. The following examples illustrate this phenomenon:

(19)a. The chef-in-training chopped and diced all afternoon.

b.Tigers only kill at night.

c.Pat gave and gave, but Chris just took and took.

As in all cases of argument omission, the semantic requirement of recoverability must be satisfied. In addition, a further discourse condition seems to be necessary to license these examples:

(20)Principle of Omission under Low Discourse Prominence

Omission of the patient argument is possible when the patient argument is construed to be de-emphasized in the discourse vis à vis the action. That is, omission is possible when the patient argument is not topical (or focal) in the discourse, and the action is particularly emphasized. (Goldberg 2000)

“Emphasis” is intended as a cover term for several different ways in which an action is construed to be especially prominent in the discourse. The following examples illustrate the phenomenon with various types of emphasis labeled on the right:6

(22)He was always opposed to the idea of murder, but in the middle of the battlefield, he had no

(25)“She could steal but she could not rob.” (from the Beatles’ song “She Came in Through the

The generalization in (20) is paralleled by Brown’s (to appear) finding that children and adult speakers of Tzeltal realize the O argument lexically less often when the verb is semantically rich than when it is semantically general. For example, object arguments are more often omitted for verbs like k’ux “eat mush stuff” than for verbs like tun “eat (anything).”7 That is, if the verbal predicate is emphasized in some way, the object argument is more likely to be omissible. This finding is reminiscent of the Quantity generalization (only one new mention per clause) proposed independently by Givón (1975), Chafe (1987), and Du Bois (1987): in both cases, there is a trade-off in terms of how much is expressed per clause. However, unlike the facts motivating the Quantity generalization, it is not clear that emphasizing a predicate makes it preferable to omit the object, only that it makes it possible.

7.1Grammatical omissibility hierarchy?

Many have proposed that there is asymmetry in which arguments can be omitted, with subjects being the most likely candidates in both child and adult speech (Bloom 1970, Chomsky 1982a, Hyams 1986, Jaeggli and Hyams 1988, Uziel-Karl and Berman 2000). We have seen that topical arguments are good candidates for ellipsis, and that the subject argument is topical and not focal in the unmarked case. As might be expected, then, many languages allow topical subject arguments to be unexpressed.

On the other hand, among the languages that allow subject arguments to be omitted, many display subject agreement properties on the verb (e.g. ASL, Brazilian, Inuktitut, Italian). It has been proposed that the agreement morphology should be understood to represent the subject argument in these so-called “pro-drop” languages (Bresnan and Mchombo 1986, Lambrecht 1994). On this view, the apparent omission of the subject argument should not be counted as such. Most languages that allow null subjects and that do not have verbal agreement marking on the verb also allow null objects and oblique arguments (when these arguments are topical in the discourse), including Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Mauritian Creole.8 In these languages, objects and oblique arguments can be omitted as well as subjects as long as the omitted argument is recoverable and non-focal (including non-contrastive). Examples from Korean with both subject and object omitted are given in (26) and (27).

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(30)a. The house will be built.

b.The house has been built.

(31)a. The house might be built.

b.The house should be built.

(32)The house wasn’t built.

(33)The house WAS built.

Goldberg and Ackerman (2001) argue that conversational pragmatics accounts for the apparent existence of obligatory adjuncts. Their explanation for the oddness of (28a) is that without a special context, the utterance is not informative in the Gricean sense. That is, a clause with a definite subject presupposes the existence of the subject referent (Strawson 1964b); in this case, the fact that the house exists is presupposed. It is possible to infer, therefore, that, at some point in the past, the house was created. Nothing informative is being said that cannot be calculated by knowing how the lexical meanings of house and build work in conjunction with the presuppositions that are evoked by definite NP subjects. Thus, an utterance asserting that a house is built simply states what is already known to normal participants in a conversation. Moreover, while superficially uninformative utterances can be acceptable because they evoke informative or relevant inferences, no obvious inferences can be drawn simply from the fact that an artifact was created in the usual way.

When a contrastive context is invoked, as in (33) where there is stress on “was,” we assume that what is asserted is that the house was in fact actually built, and no adjunct is required. In this case, there is an implicit contrast with a negative proposition, and the positive polarity of the copula verb provides new information for the clause. For this same reason, contrastive focal stress on the subject argument or on the verb can also, as expected, render bare passives felicitous:

(34)a. The HOUSE was built (not the garage).

b.The house was BUILT (not just designed).

There are various other ways of providing a meaningful assertion in simple sentences. For example, if the method of creation is somehow unusual, then a verb of creation can itself provide a meaningful assertion without emphatic stress or an obligatory adjunct, as in (35) and (36):

(35)This cake was microwaved.

(36)These diamonds were synthesized.

Likewise, various tenses or aspects other than the simple past serve to inform the listener that the creation took place before, after, or during a particular reference time (cf. (30)).

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As for the sentences in (29), the English middle construction, as has frequently been observed, often requires some type of adjunct (e.g. Jackendoff 1972, Ernst 1984, van Oosten 1984, Fellbaum 1985).9 As is evident from (29b), a wide variety of adjuncts can be used to rescue middles from infelicity. Several researchers have observed that negated middles (37) or middles that are overtly emphasized (38) often attenuate the need for an adjunct (Keyser and Roeper 1984, Fellbaum 1985, Dixon 1991, Rosta 1995).

(37)That car doesn’t drive.

(38)These red sports cars DO drive, don’t they? [Dixon 1991: 326].

Suggesting a pragmatic account of obligatory adjuncts with middles, Fellbaum (1985) notes that the negation serves to supply non-given information, and the emphasized verb serves to indicate unexpectedness (see also Iwata 1999). That is, the change in polarity or emphasis makes the expression informative and therefore acceptable. Our default assumption is that cars can be driven, so asserting that they cannot be, as in (37), is informative; in (38), the emphasized auxiliary is used to convey the idea that the cars drive really well or fast or easily.

Positing a pragmatic explanation for obligatory adjuncts allows us to explain why certain middles, like certain short passives with verbs of creation, do not require an adjunct. For example:

(39)A: How do you close this purse?

B:It snaps/It zips/ It buttons.

(40)A: Where do we enter the secret passageway?

B:The bookshelf opens.

In a context in which it is informative to assert that people should be able to perform a given action on the subject argument as in (39) and (40), no adjunct is required.

This discussion raises the question of how to treat cases of “subcategorized” adverbs ( Jackendoff 1972, McConnell-Ginet 1982). Consider the following examples ( judgments of # and * are clarified below):

(41)a. #Pat dresses.

b.Pat dresses stylishly.

(42)a. *Pat behaved to Chris.

b.Pat behaved badly to Chris.

Several researchers have suggested that the adjuncts only appear to be required because the verbs themselves do not normally convey enough information (Dinsmore 1981, Ernst 1984, Iwata 1999). However, only certain of these verbs display the sort of contextual variability that we saw was the hallmark