Focus in Georgian and the expression of contrast

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of contrastive focus in Georgian syntax. In a semi-naturalistic production study, we elicited spontaneous answers to questions which have shown that contexts involving contrastive focus induce placement of the focused constituent at the immediately preverbal position more frequently than other contexts. Based on this observation we investigate the properties of Georgian grammar which may account for the different impact of contrastive vs. non-contrastive contexts on word order. We first examine the involved syntactic structures and present evidence that preverbal focus is a result of movement to the specifier position of a functional projection whose head attracts the finite verb. We then address the question whether there is evidence for an association between contrast and movement to this position and we provide evidence that the correlation between context and order in the behavioral data does not result from a biunique form-function association of the kind 'contrast $ movemovement to the specifier position', but from an asymmetry at a discourse level such that contexts involving contrast induce answers in which focused constituents occupy the stressed position in the clause more often than contexts that do not. #

Effects of givenness and constraints on free word order

“…Object preposing may, but need not be, accompanied by a change in verb position, as observed above (see Skopeteas & Fanselow 2008 for detailed discussion). Skopeteas & Fanselow (2008) argue that the base order is SOV and that V medial orders result through an optional V fronting operation.…”

“…Skopeteas & Fanselow (2008) argue that the base order is SOV and that V medial orders result through an optional V fronting operation. 7 The medial placement of the verb then allows an analysis similar to the one for German, in which the verb moves to a higher functional head position.…”

Cross-linguistic comparison of prosody, syntax and information structure in a production experiment on localising expressions

“…Sentences involving a scrambled PP over the subject (hence, the locative expression precedes the locatum, and the locatum is final) are very frequent in these three languages. The crucial point is that the alternation between canonical and scrambled sentences in these languages is a fairly free operation selected in discourse to fulfil A lign‐ F ocus ‐R (see extensive discussion for Georgian in Skopeteas & Fanselow 2010 and Skopeteas & Féry 2010, albeit in a different theoretical framework).…”

“…In terms of syntax, all the examined languages have in common that in the unmarked word order the subject precedes the object, whereby the canonical order of English, French, Finnish and Chinese is SVO and the canonical order of Georgian is SOV with considerable freedom in V placement within the predicate (see Apridonidze 1986: 136–43; Skopeteas & Fanselow 2010). German represents a special case, because the basic order of the syntactic derivation is V‐final, but the unmarked order in declarative main clauses is SVO (resulting from V‐movement to an earlier position: see Thiersch 1978 and den Besten 1989).…”

Case Inversion in Georgian: Syntactic Properties and Sentence Processing

“…Actors precede undergoers in the canonical word order but deviations from this order are possible -though contextually restricted (see in particular Harris 1981, Apridonidze 1986, Asatiani 2007, 2008, Skopeteas and Fanselow 2009and 2010. Notably, undergoer constituents may scramble over actor constituents, when the former but not the latter are discourse-anaphoric.…”