Cover not available
Part of
Approaches to Hungarian: Volume 16: Papers from the 2017 Budapest Conference
Edited by Veronika Hegedűs and Irene Vogel
[Approaches to Hungarian 16] 2020
► pp. 137–164

Word order effects of givenness in Hungarian:

Syntax or prosody?

| Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
| Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences | Pázmány Péter Catholic University
This pioneering study presents results from a forced choice experiment designed to investigate the favoured linear placement of given constituents within the post-verbal domain of Hungarian. Specifically, the experiment tested the preferred relative position of textually given topical adjunct phrases. The results indicate that speakers prefer to place topical given constituents in the immediately post-verbal position, preceding contextually new items in the clause final position. The paper makes the argument that the results are best explained by an interface approach that sees word order variation as driven by the prosodic marking associated with givenness.
Keywords: word order, post-verbal field, information structure, givenness, prosodic marking
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Givenness
    • 2.1Notions of givenness
    • 2.2The grammatical marking of givenness
  • 3.Background on Hungarian
    • 3.1Free word order in the post-verbal field
    • 3.2Givenness in Hungarian
  • 4.Experimental treatment
    • 4.1Methods and materials
    • 4.2Results
    • 4.3Discussion
  • 5.General discussion
    • 5.1Syntactic approaches
    • 5.2A prosodic approach
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 8 April 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/atoh.16.07sza
References (80)
References
Ariel, Mira. 1990. Accessing noun-phrase antecedents. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 1991. The function of accessability in a theory of grammar. Journal of Pragmatics 16(5). 443–463. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Arnold, Jennifer E. 1998. Reference form and discourse patterns. Stanford University dissertation.
Asher, Nicholas. 2004. Discourse topic. Theoretical Linguistics 30(2–3). 163–201. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bates, Douglas, Martin Mächler, Ben Bolker & Steve Walker. 2015. Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software 67(1). 1–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baumann, Stefan. 2006. The intonation of givenness. Evidence from German. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baumann, Stefan & Martine Grice. 2006. The intonation of accessibility. Journal of Pragmatics 38(10). 1636–1657. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baumann, Stefan & Arndt Riester. 2013. Coreference, lexical givenness and prosody in German. Lingua 136. 16–37. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Behaghel, Otto. 1932. Deutsche syntax IV. Heidelberg: Carl Winters.Google Scholar
Bianchi, Valentina & Mara Frascarelli. 2010. Is topic a root phenomenon? Iberia 2. 43–88.Google Scholar
Bródy, Michael. 1995. Focus and checking theory. In István Kenesei (ed.), Approaches to Hungarian 5, 29–44. Szeged: JATE.Google Scholar
Büring, Daniel. 1997. The meaning of topic and focus: The 59th street bridge accent. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chafe, Wallace. 1974. Language and consciousness. Language 50(1). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1976. Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics and point of view, 25–55. Associated Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert H. & Eve V. Clark. 1977. Psychology and language: Introduction to psycholinguistics. New York: Harcourt Publishers Ltd.Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert H. & Susan E. Haviland. 1977. Comprehension and the given-new contract. In Roy O. Freedle (ed.), Discourse production and comprehension, 1–40. Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex Publishing.Google Scholar
Cowles, H. Wind & Victor S. Ferreira. 2011. The influence of topic status on written and spoken sentence production. Discourse Processes 49(1). 1–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cruttenden, Alan. 1997. Intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Dijk, Teun. 1976. Discourse meaning and memory. Journal of Reading Behaviour 8. 89–110. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1981. Studies in the pragmatics of discourse. The Hague: Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
É. Kiss, Katalin. 1987. Configurationality in Hungarian. Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1994. Sentence structure and word order. In Ferenc Kiefer & Katalin É. Kiss (eds.), The syntactic structure of Hungarian, 1–90. New York: Academic Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1995. Introduction. In Katalin É. Kiss (ed.), Discourse configurational languages, 3–28. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
. 1996. Többszörös fókusz a magyar mondatszerkezetben [Multiple foci in Hungarian syntax]. In T. Mikola, L. Büky, A. Juhász & M. Maleczki (eds.), Néprajz és nyelvtudomány (Acta Universitatis Szegediensis de Attila József Nominatae), 47–66. Szeged: JATE.Google Scholar
. 1998. Multiple topic, one focus? Acta Linguistica Hungarica 45. 3–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2002. The syntax of Hungarian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2008. Free word order, (non)configurationality, and phases. Linguistic Inquiry 39(3). 441–475. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Enc, Müvet. 1991. The semantics of specificity. Linguistic Inquiry 22(1). 51–92.Google Scholar
Erteschik-Shir, Nomi. 2007. Information structure: The syntax-discourse interface. Oxford: Oxford Univerisity Press.Google Scholar
Féry, Caroline & Shinichiro Ishihara. 2010. How focus and givenness shape prosody. In Malte Zimmermann & Caroline Féry (eds.), Information structure: Theoretical, typological, and experimental perspectives, 36–63. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Frascarelli, Mara & Roland Hinterhölzl. 2007. Types of topics in German and Italian. In Susanne Winkler & Kerstin Schwabe (eds.), On information structure, meaning and form, 87–116. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gécseg, Zsuzsanna & Ferenc Kiefer. 2009. A new look at information structure in Hungarian. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 27(3). 583–622. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Genzel, Susanne, Shinichiro Ishihara & Balázs Surányi. 2015. The prosodic expression of focus, contrast and givenness: A production study of Hungarian. Lingua 165. 183–204. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1983. Topic continuity in discourse: A quantitative cross-language study. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1990. Syntax: A functional typological introduction. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Gundel, Jeanette K. 1988. Universals in topic-comment structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gundel, Jeanette K., Nancy Hedberg & Ron Zacharski. 1993. Cognitive status and the form of referring expressions in discourse. Language 69(2). 274–307. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gyuris, Beáta. 2012. The information structure of Hungarian. In Manfre Krifka & Renate Musan (eds.), The expression of information structure, 159–186. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K. 1967. Intonation and grammar in British English. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heim, Irene. 1991. Artikel und Definitheit. In Arnim von Stechow & Dieter Wunderlich (eds.), Semantik: Ein internationales Handbuch des zeitgenossischen Forschung, 487–535. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hunyadi, László. 2002. Hungarian sentence prosody and Universal Grammar. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Ishihara, Shinichiro. 2003. Intonation and interface conditions. Massachusetts Institute of Technology dissertation.
Kaiser, Elsi. 2011. Focusing on pronouns: Consequences of subjecthood, pronominalisation, and contrastive focus. Language and Cognitive Processes 26(10). 1625–1666. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kálmán, László & Ádám Nádasdy. 1994. A hangsúly [Intonation]. In Strukturális Magyar Nyelvtan 2: Fonológia., 393–467. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.Google Scholar
Katz, Jonah & Elisabeth Selkirk. 2011. Contrastive focus vs. discourse-new: Evidence from phonetic prominence in English. Language 87(4). 771–816. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kenesei, István & Irene Vogel. 1989. Prosodic phonology in Hungarian. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 39. 149–193.Google Scholar
Krifka, Manfred. 2008. Basic notions of information structure. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 55(3–4). 243–276. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kučerová, Ivona. 2007. The syntax of givenness. Massachusetts Institute of Technology dissertation.
. 2012. Grammatical marking of givenness. Natural Language Semantics 20(1). 1–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ladd, D. Robert. 1980. The structure of intonational meaning: Evidence from English. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
. 1990. Intonation: Emotion vs. Grammar. Language 66(4). 806–816. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2008. Intonational phonology (2nd edn). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lambrecht, Knut. 1994. Information structure and sentence form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Neeleman, Ad & Tanya Reinhart. 1998. Scrambling and the PF interface. In Miriam Butt & Wilhelm Geuder (eds.), The projection of arguments, 309–353. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Neeleman, Ad & Hans van de Koot. 2008. Dutch scrambling and the nature of discourse templates. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 11(2). 137–189. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2016. Word order and information structure. In Caroline Féry & Shinichiro Ishihara (eds.), The Oxford handbook of information structure, 383–401. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Prince, Ellen. 1981. Towards a taxonomy of given-new information. In Peter Cole (ed.), Radical pragmatics, 223–256. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
. 1992. The zpg letter: Subjects, definitness, and information-status. In S. Thompson & W. Mann (eds.), Radical pragmatics, 295–325. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Puskás, Genovéva. 2000. Word order in Hungarian: The syntax of A’ positions. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
R Core Team. 2013. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing Vienna. [URL].Google Scholar
Reinhart, Tanya. 1981. Pragmatics and linguistics: An analysis of sentence topics. Philosophica 27(1). 53–94.Google Scholar
. 2006. Interface strategies: Optimal and costly computation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. On the fine structure of the le periphery. In Liliane Haegeman (ed.), Elements of grammar, 281–337. Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rochemont, Michael. 2016. Givenness. In Caroline Féry & Shinichiro Ishihara (eds.), The Oxford handbook of information structure, 41–62. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Selkirk, Elisabeth. 2008. Contrastive focus, givenness and the unmarked status of “discourse new”. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 55(3–4). 331–346. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Šimík, Radek & Marta Wierzba. 2015. The role of givenness, presupposition, and prosody in czech word order: An experimental study. Semantics and pragmatics 8(3). 1–103. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2017. Expression of information structure in West Slavic: Modeling the impact of prosodic and word-order factors. Language 93(3). 671–709. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Šimík, Radek, Marta Wierzba & Beste Kamali. 2014. Givenness and the position of the direct object in the Czech clause. In Cassandra Chapman, Olena Kit & Ivona Kučerová (eds.), Formal approaches to slavic linguistics (FASL) 22: The McMaster Meeting 2013. 302–318. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications.Google Scholar
Skopeteas, Stavros & Gisbert Fanselow. 2009. Effects of givenness and constraints on free word order. In Malte Zimmermann & Caroline Féry (eds.), Information structure, 307–331. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Surányi, Balázs. 2006a. Hungarian as a Japanese-type scrambling language. In Christopher Davis, Amy Rose Deal & Youri Zabbal (eds.), NELS 36: Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, 561–574. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, Graduate Linguistic Student Associaton.Google Scholar
. 2006b. Scrambling in Hungarian. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 53(4). 393–432. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. Identificational focus and the flexibility of syntax. In Ad Neeleman & Ivona Kučerová (eds.), Information structure: Contrasts and positions, 87–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Surányi, Balázs, Shinichiro Ishihara & Fabian Schubö. 2012. Syntax-prosody mapping: Topic-comment structure and stress-focus correspondence in Hungarian. In Gorka Elordieta & Pilar Prieto (eds.), Prosody and meaning, 35–72. Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Szabolcsi, Anna. 1997. Strategies for scope taking. In Anna Szabolcsi (ed.), Ways of scope taking, 109–155. Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Szendrői, Kriszta. 2003. A stress-based approach to the syntax of Hungarian focus. The Linguistic Review 20(1). 37–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Varga, László. 1981. A topicról és a fókusz utáni elemek sorrendjéről [On the topic and the order of elements after the focus]. Magyar Nyelv 27.Google Scholar
. 2002. Intonation and stress. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vogel, Irene & István Kenesei. 1987. The interface between phonology and other components of grammar: The case of Hungarian. Phonology Yearbook 4. 243–263. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1990. Syntax and semantics in phonology. In Dragan Zec & Sharon Inkelas (eds.), The Phonolgy - Syntax Connection, 339–363. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Zubizarreta, Maria Luisa. 1998. Prosody, focus and word order. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar