Familiarity & focus in English VP-fronting∗ Bern Samko University of California, Santa Cruz SFB 632 (Information Structure), University of Potsdam [email protected] 13 June 2014 FEST, KU Leuven

1

Introduction

In this talk, I focus on two types of inversion in English. • In both, a verb phrase may appear at the left edge of the sentence. • The verb phrase is displaced from its usual position following the subject. • In participle preposing, the verb phrase appears to take the place of the subject: (1)

“On-line services and CD-ROM software will be the guiding light until the information highway is in place.” These two bridge technologies, then, were the focus of the debate and discussion at the three-day conference, which ended Tuesday night. And that debate was at least as likely to take place in the gym or on the tennis courts of the Phoneician, a sprawling luxury resort, as it is in the formal seminar sessions. Drawing perhaps the most attention among representatives of the on-line services industry was Stephen Case, the president of America Online Inc.1

• In verb-phrase preposing, the verb phrase appears even farther to the left. • The fronted verb phrase precedes the subject in its usual position: (2)

If people don’t find what they are looking for, they usually stumble upon something better. And stumble they did.

Though both require a discourse antecedent, each is appropriate only in certain contexts of use. • These contexts are in fact surprisingly different. • The differences center on: – The relevant notion of familiarity. – The category of the familiar constituent. – The category of the sentence-final focused constituent.

∗ Alphabetically-arranged thanks are due to Pranav Anand, Nate Arnett, Amy Rose Deal, Gisbert Fanselow, Jim McCloskey, Line Mikkelsen, Anie Thompson, Matt Tucker, Luis Vicente, and Malte Zimmermann for their advice on various aspects of this project. Chronologically-arranged thanks are also due to audiences at LASC (University of California, Santa Cruz), S-Circle (University of California, Santa Cruz), WCCFL (Arizona State University), the LSA (Minneapolis), Syntax-Semantics Colloquium (Universit¨ at Potsdam), and SFB 632 PhD Day (Humboldt Universit¨ at zu Berlin) for helpful discussion. Any and all errors are my own. 1 Unless otherwise noted, all examples are take from the New York Times portion of the English Gigaword corpus (Graff and Cieri, 2003). Infelicitous and ungrammatical examples are adapted from this corpus as well. Throughout the handout, the fronted verb phrase is underlined.

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Familiarity & focus in English VP-fronting

1.1

Roadmap

• Participle preposing – Discourse-familiarity is relative. – Familiarity refers to subconstituents of the preposed verb phrase. – Focus falls on the sentence-final subject. • Verb-phrase preposing – Discourse-familiarity is absolute, but can be accommodated. – Familiarity refers to the entire preposed verb phrase. – Focus falls on the sentence-final auxiliary. – An emphatic implicature also arises. • Conclusion – The two constructions look similar, but have very different use conditions. – Each relates its own sentence to the discourse context in a particular way.

2

Participle preposing

2.1

The phenomenon

In participle preposing, a participial verb and its arguments appear to the left of an auxiliary verb. • The preposed verb phrase may be progressive (3a) or passive (4a). • The subject always appears to the right of the auxiliary, in contrast to the canonical word order. (3)

Dozens of media trucks and satellite dishes lined Broadway or were parked across the street at the closed Hall of Justice. Ropes of cable snaked down from the top of the 18-story Criminal Courts Building to the first floor. a. Watching all this was Sam Woidke, who was on her lunch break from jury duty. b. Sam Woidke, who was on her lunch break from jury duty was watching all this.

(4)

The prospects are much better for legislation now before a House-Senate conference committee that would tighten the laws on registration and disclosure by lobbyists and restrict the gifts and other favors lawmakers could accept. A bill passed by the Senate would prohibit members of Congress and their staff assistants from accepting gifts, meals, and entertainment from anyone except legitimate friends and relatives. a. Included in the ban would be subsidized travel for events like charity golf tournaments. b. Subsidized travel for events like charity golf tournaments would be included in the ban.

Progressive and passive participles may co-occur in a single sentence. • Only the larger, progressive participial phrase may be fronted.

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(5)

“I’ve indicated that I’m not a candidate, and I took my name out of circulation Sunday,” Cisneros said. He added, however, “that’s my present position,” and he plans to consider the idea more thoroughly. The Los Angeles district, one of the largest in the country with more than 700,000 students, has been plagued by management troubles, low test scores and a monumental scandal over what was to have been the country’s most expensive high school, the Belmont Learning Center. The $200 million Belmont project was abandoned, half-finished, because it was built on an old, toxic oil field. Being considered with Cisneros are former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer; Los Angeles Mayor a. Richard Riordan; Liam McGee, president of Bank of America in Southern California; Houston school Superintendent Rod Page; and Adam Urbanski, the head of the Federation of Teachers in Rochester, N.Y. b. * Considered with Cisneros are being former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer; Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan; Liam McGee, president of Bank of America in Southern California; Houston school Superintendent Rod Page; and Adam Urbanski, the head of the Federation of Teachers in Rochester, N.Y.

Perfect participles following have may not be preposed: (6)

2.2

Expectations for Phillips’ chance for success are fueled by the formidable resources of the man bankrolling it: Bernard Arnault, the chairman of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, a $40 billion behemoth. He bought Phillips last November for a bargain price of $121.5 million and hopes to sieze a chunk of Sotheby’s and Christie’s turf. Together, Sotheby’s and Christie’s control most of the $5 billion global fine art auction business. Igniting Arnault’s efforts is his noted rivalry with Francois Pinault, a French department a. store manager who triumphed over Arnault last year for control of Gucci and who bought Christie’s in 1998 for $1.2 billion. b. * Ignited Arnault’s efforts has his noted rivalry with Francois Pinault, a French department store manager who triumphed over Arnault last year for control of Gucci and who bought Christie’s in 1998 for $1.2 billion.

Familiarity of the fronted verb phrase

In general, participle preposing cannot be used in out-of-the-blue contexts: (7)

# Guess what? Contributing to Reston’s growth as an internet center is the fact that it is crisscrossed by fiber-optic cable installed to serve national intelligence agencies and America Online, whose headquarters is just north of the airport.

• It can, however, appear discourse-initially in scene-setting contexts. (8)

Living in a little white house were two rabbits.

(Adapted from Green’s (1980) (15a))

The preposed verb phrase may not introduce new information when the rest of sentence is familiar: (9)

# As the number of immigrants to the United States from Muslim countries has risen in the past decade, so has the number of mosques. Tucked among the office towers of Manhattan are about 10 mosques, mostly operating out of rented quarters and serving overflow crowds of workers from the surrounding neighborhoods at the noon prayer on Fridays, the one time during the week when Muslims are obligated to worship as a congregation.

But it is not the case that the preposed verb phrase be strictly familiar: (10)

Overlooked in the chaos and excitement of the Patriots’ final drive last Sunday and Drew Bledsoe again putting his name to a signature game with a broken index finger was what happened in the next-to-last drive.

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Familiarity & focus in English VP-fronting

Instead, participle preposing is possible only when relative familiarity conditions are met. Birner’s generalization The material in the preposed verb phrase must be at least as familiar aas the material in the logical subject. (Birner, 1992, 1994) • The entire fronted verb phrase is not necessarily familiar. • Neither is the entire subject. • Instead, Birner’s generalization refers to subparts of these constituents. (11)

a.

Negotiations resumed in Boston Thursday between the two sides in the seven-week-old labor dispute. Joining the talks on behalf of management was Cliff Fletcher, the president and general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs. b. # Cliff Fletcher is the president and general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Joining a negotiating session Thursday was Mr. Fletcher, who argued on behalf of management.

• The relevant notion of discourse-familiarity is taken from Prince (1981). • Discourse-familiar material may be either overtly mentioned or inferable. • Ties in discourse-familiarity are possible. – The more recently mentioned material is taken to be more salient and so more familiar (12) (12)

Frost is in a tight race against the more liberal Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut to replace retiring caucus Chairman Vic Fazio of California. If he pulls it off, the moderate Texan would be in position to help shape the Democratic legislative agenda for the next two years and communicate the party’s message as it heads toward the presidential elections of 2000. “Right now, I couldn’t tell you whether Martin or Rosa has it locked up,” said one Democratic aide. “I think the conference is pretty much split because they both have a lot to offer and have done well in the jobs they hold.” a. Working for DeLauro is the fact that she is a liberal in a Democratic conference that has traditionally elected more liberal members to high-profile leadership positions. b. #? Working for the liberal is the fact that DeLauro is in a Democratic conference that has traditionally elected more liberal members to high-profile leadership positions.

I conducted a small corpus investigation to confirm Birner’s generalization. • The study examined only preposed progressive participial phrases. • The 910-million-word NYT corpus yielded 3,577 examples.2 • 100 of these were sampled at random. Material was classified as familiar if: • The relevant phrase or a synonymous one was included in the preceding four sentences (13), or • The material in the phrase was recoverable from the preceding four sentences (14). (13)

In a single stroke, the site list was narrowed to seven cities. Towns like Phoenix, Las Vegas, Albuquerque and more than a dozen others fell out of consideration due to Lindstrom-Foster’s preference for seaside communities. “I’m not stupid,” McMunn said. “The first consideration is where the CEO wants to be.” Remaining on the list were Houston, Texas; Mobile, Ala.; Savannah, Ga.; Charlestown, S.C.; Brevard County, Fla.; Salisbury, Md.; and Norfolk, Va.

2 I found an additional 5,570 examples in a search for preposed passive participial phrases. Due to the way the corpus is annotated, however, many of these are not in fact instances of participle preposing. The search also captured examples like the following:

(1)

Called Triana, the satellite would be a resource for scientific, educational, and weather research, said Gore, who must first persuade Congress to fund the project.

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(14)

Instead, what has raised alarms here and abroad is a plan by Attiko Metro that many feel could threaten one of the city’s best-known and thoroughly excavated sites—the Kerameikos cemetery, where the dead were buried from the third millennium B.C. to Roman times. Underlying the debate is the inexorable logic and pressure of the $3 billion, 11.4-mile subway itself, now well behind schedule.

Familiar verb phrase Unfamiliar verb phrase

Familiar subject 30 1

verb phrase more salient 17

Unfamiliar subject 64 5

Subject more salient 3

Table 1: Relative familiarity in 100 participle preposings The results are compatible with Birner’s generalization: • In most cases, there was familiar material in the participle but not in the canonical subject: (15)

“We came here to defend the right of our parliamentarians to enter their own house,” said Guillermo Arocha, 34, a lawyer and sympathizer of Accion Democratica, the more left-leaning of the two parties. “We elected them with our votes, and no one has the right to remove them through a coup.” Standing next to Arocha was Manuel Contreras, a member of Copei, the center-right Social Christian party.

• In only one case was there familiar material in the canonical subject but not in the participle: (16)

Unfamiliar vP, familiar subject The deputy attorney general whom Salinas put in charge of the case, Ruiz Massieu’s brother, Mario, said he put his strongest belief in the idea that the crime was motivated by politics. Some Mexicans speculated that Ruiz Massieu, a reform-minded official who was expected to be the PRI’s next leader in the lower house of the Congress if not a key official in Zedillo’s Cabinet, had been killed because he was a major proponent of steps to democratize the political system and an important negotiator with opposition parties. But other aspects of Ruiz Massieu’s background pointed in different directions. He had earned a reputation for toughness during a term as the governor of the Pacific Coast state of Guerrero, where a handful of leftist activists were killed in struggles with the governing party or the police and drug trafficking interests entrenched themselves in the resort city of Acapulco. Adding to suspicions about a personal vendetta was the fact that another main suspect in the case, Abraham Rubio Canales, was a onetime aide to Ruiz Massieu in Guerrero who had been jailed on corruption charges and was said to have blamed the former governor for failing to protect him.

• Five examples contained no familiar material at all: (17)

He hopes his showing can narrow the coaches’ options some. Last week against the Lions, he had six carries for 60 yards. “I want them to think of me as the man behind the man,” Murrell said. “I want them to know that when the first guy gets tired or has to come out that I’m ready to go in and pick up where he left off.” Making his debut for the Jets was Tony Meola, the goalkeeper for the U.S. soccer team in the World Cup, who handled the kickoffs in the second half.

• There was familiar material in both constituents in 30 examples: (18)

The Peace Corps, long synonomous with grass-roots volunteerism, is today placing greater emphasis on business and economic development. Promoting the business agenda is Mark D. Gearan, director of the Peace Corps, former White House aide and long a figure in Massachusetts and national Democratic politics.

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Familiarity & focus in English VP-fronting

• Of these, the material in the preposed participle was mentioned more recently in 17 of 30: (19)

The time-tested flip side is that such setbacks often set up Tim Lester-like opportunities. In one room at the Cowboys’ Valley Ranch headquarters, there sat the 10-year veteran Johnston, explaining the frustrations of another season-ending neck injury that possibly could end his career. Talking to Cowboys coaches in another room sat the newly signed Lester, who was at home in Miami preparing to coach Pop Warner football when the Cowboys called Wednesday night and asked him if he wanted a job.

• In only three cases was the material in the subject more recently mentioned: (20)

The advantage Immelt will have, as a chief executive in his mid-40s, is that he is much more familiar with the latest technological developments than older executives like Welch. “He grew up with a laptop on his desk,” Gariano said. “Jack and I grew up with slide rules.” Making Immelt’s succession more complicated is Welch’s decision to stay until the end of next year.

• The determination was impossible to make in 10 cases. • In these examples, the familiar material was the same in both constituents.

2.3

Focus on the sentence-final subject

The sentence-final subject is not necessarily new information. • The information must, however, be at least as new as the information in the preposed verb phrase. • A focus accent naturally falls on the subject. • The most natural continuations go on to talk about this subject. (21)

UCLA, then No. 2 in the country and a 28-point favorite, was headed for defeat against Stanford two years ago when Cardinal receiver Jeff Allen caught a pass over the middle and headed for the go-ahead touchdown. Coming to the rescue was Marques Anderson, whom Allen had beaten on the play. a. Anderson tracked down Allen and raked the ball loose just before he reached the end zone. b. #? UCLA teammate Larry Atkins recovered [Allen’s] fumble and the Bruins hung on 28-24.

Participle preposing is, roughly, a way of switching topics. • The old topic is contained in the preposed verb phrase. • The new one is focused at the end of the sentence. • The speaker can point to discourse-old information and add new material.

3

Verb-phrase preposing

3.1

The phenomenon

Verb-phrase preposing3 is a distinct type of verb-phrase fronting. • A lexical verb and its objects (if any) appears at the left edge of the sentence. • The subject appears in its canonical position. • A functional element is stranded sentence-finally. – This stranded element may be an auxiliary (22), a modal (23), or emphatic do (24). 3 Previous

literature has also referred to this construction as VP topicalization or VP fronting.

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(22)

Not since television’s minute-by-minute coverage of man’s first steps on the moon almost 28 years ago have people been able to follow a scientific odyssey so closely. And follow it they have.

(23)

“In the past year, I have traveled across this great country,” said Sen. John Ashcroft as he stood before the assemblage, “And what I hear about taxes over and over is this: It is time to spell ‘reform’ R-E-D-U-C-E.” And reduce it he would.

(24)

His father urged him to play. And play he did.

In contrast to participle preposing, the fronted verb appears in its base form.4

3.2

Familiarity of the fronted verb phrase

Previous work has claimed that the preposed verb phrase requires a linguistic antecedent. • This antecedent must correspond to the proposition expressed by the sentence with preposing. • Ward (1990) identifies two types of “proposition affirmation”: Independent proposition affirmation Affirmation of an explicitly evoked proposition that is neither semantically entailed nor presupposed in the prior discourse (25)

At the end of the term I took my first schools; it was necessary to pass, if I was to stay at Oxford, and pass I did, after a week in which I forbade Sebastian by rooms and sat up to a late hour, with iced black coffee and charcoal biscuits, cramming myself with the neglected texts. (Ward 1990, (1))

Concessive affirmation Affirmation of a proposition in the context of some countervailing consideration conceded in the prior discourse • The proposition may be entailed or presupposed in the discourse (26). • But this entailment/presupposition relation is not necessary (27) (26)

While he and his mother had often talked about writing her story, he went on, ‘the mundane things we do with our lives’ had prevented them. It was ironic, he continued, that he eventually learned more from his mother’s papers and tapes than he had directly from her. But learn her story he did, and the article is not only her story, about what she and other Jews endured, it is also his story, about the fragile process by which memory is kept alive. (Ward 1990, (3b))

(27)

Waiting in long lines can be infuriating. Waiting in long lines to pay someone else money seems unconscionable. Waiting in long lines to pay someone else more money than they seem to be entitled to is lunacy. But wait in line they did Monday in Chicago and the Cook County suburbs, partaking in the semi-annual ritual of settling up property taxes by the 6 p.m. deadline. (Ward 1990, (3a))

4 This

(1)

is true even when it would appear in a past participial form in the uninverted word order, as in (22):

*? Not since television’s minute-by-minute coverage of man’s first steps on the moon almost 28 years ago have people been able to follow a scientific odyssey so closely. And followed it they have.

Verb-phrase preposing of progressive participles is unattested in the corpus and is only marginally grammatical: (2)

?? Not since televisions’ minute-by-minute coverage of man’s first steps on the moon almost 28 years ago have people been able to follow a scientific odyssey so closely. And following it they are.

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Familiarity & focus in English VP-fronting

In general, an overt linguistic antecedent for the preposed verb phrase is required. • Verb-phrase preposing is infelicitous out of the blue: (28)

# Guess what? Keep it together they did (the Reds, like the Tigers, won the World Series).

• It is also infelicitous in the absence of a suitable antecedent: (29)

# His father, a housepainter, was a silent figure who liked to take the young Kazin for walks. His mother was a stammerer, as was Kazin until he began writing. One day she brought home 12 volumes of John Ruskin. And use them he did.

However, Ward’s characterization as affirmation of an explicitly evoked proposition is insufficient. • The sentence with preposing may negate an evoked proposition. (30)

It would be their responsibility to produce, not simply oppose. And produce they could not.

• The explicitly evoked material need not be a proposition. • A morphologically related noun is sufficient to serve as an antecedent.5 (31)

That, he and Kovacs believe, set off an entirely new review under new rules, which took effect in August, that gave veto powers to the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, and several intelligence agencies. And veto they did.

• Explicit mention of an antecedent proposition is not necessary.6 • It is sufficient for the antecedent to be inferable in the discourse (Prince, 1981).7 • That is, a pragmatically plausible antecedent may be accommodated. (32)

This is muscadet country, and Sauvion is one of the best-known producers of that pale, invigorating wine. Within minutes after arriving at his estate here, the Chateau du Cleray, I was in a laboratory confronted by 25 examples of Sauvion wines, most of them muscadet. To someone who had been asleep in Paris a few hours earlier, it was a formidable sight. But taste them we did, reaffirming that muscadet at its best is still one of the most underestimated of the world’s fine wines.

This accommodation process is supported by evidence from the NYT corpus. • A search of the corpus yielded 108 instance of verb-phrase preposing.8 • Of these, thirteen have a non-propositional antecedent. • Seven have a synonymous or morphologically identical antecedent. • In five cases, an antecedent must be accommodated. 5 The

nouns that can serve as antecedents are generally either deverbal nouns or gerunds. (2007) makes a similar observation, but does not pursue it. 7 While it is difficult to determine what “inferable” means for a VP or a proposition, note that the more predictable the information conveyed by a VPP-sentence is, the easier it is to accommodate a suitable antecedent: 6 Landau

(1)

As he grieved for his friend, Blocker said he decided “something had to be done about it.” So Blocker spent about 16 hours on the streets asking question, trying to get information on the shooting of the 30-year-old replacement player. a. And help he did. b. # And hire a lawyer he did.

8 There are actually 110 examples, but two are unsuitable for present purposes because their preceding contexts are missing due to errors in the corpus.

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A pilot experiment tentatively confirms that the accommodation is productive. • 33 participants were asked to rate 10 short paragraphs on a scale from 1 to 7. • They were asked to imagine reading newspaper articles. • The task was to think about the final sentences’ contribution to the coherence of the paragraphs. • The items were of three categories:9 1. The preposed verb phrase phrase had an identical antecedent. 2. The preposed verb phrase required accommodation of an antecedent. 3. There was no relation between the preposed verb phrase and the preceding context. The accommodated antecedents were rated worse (4.4) than the identical antecedents (5.7). • But they were rated more highly than the unrelated cases (2.9).

3.3

Focus on the sentence-final auxiliary

A VPP-sentence has an antecedent (overt or not) in the discourse. • In some cases, the propositional content is entailed in that discourse (see also (26)): (33)

Instead, the Lakers coach lectured the only people allowed to listen: reporters. And lecture he did, apparently in the hope his team reads the morning paper.

Yet even in these cases, the use of the construction is not redundant. • Preposing must make an additional meaning contribution. • I have argued (Samko, 2014) that this contribution is verum focus. • In this section, I also discuss a scalar component of the meaning arrived at by pragmatic reasoning. Verum focus is traditionally defined as focus on the truth value of a proposition (H¨ohle, 1992). • Emphasis is placed on the polarity (positive or negative) of the sentence. • Focus is contributed by a covert verum operator (H¨ohle, 1992; Romero and Han, 2004).10 For many instances of preposing, the traditional conception of verum focus is appropriate. • When the antecedent has not already been asserted: – The sentence with preposing asserts the proposition it expresses. – There is additional focus on the truth or falsity of that proposition: (34)

As a result, Brazilians could depend on a stable currency for the first time in decades, allowing them to buy cars and other big consumer items by making monthly installments. And buy they did.

9 See

Appendix A for a complete list of the items. effects of this operator have been characterized in a number of ways. Romero and Han (2004) claim that verum is a conversational epistemic operator that conveys the speaker’s certainty about the proposition p, namely that she is sure that it should be added to the common ground (But Gutzmann and Castroviejo Mir´ o (2011); AnderBois (2011) point out problems with this analysis, including the fact that it makes incorrect predictions about the interaction between verum and negation and about yes/no answers to questions containing verum.). Gutzmann and Castroviejo Mir´ o (2011) claim that verum is a use-conditional operator that downdates ?p from the question under discussion (Roberts, 1996; B¨ uring, 2003). AnderBois (2011) argues that VF suppresses inquisitive content and prevents issues from being projected as future topics of conversation. Today, I take no stance in this debate. 10 The

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Familiarity & focus in English VP-fronting

For other instances of preposing, however, focus on polarity is not sufficient. • The stranded sentence-final element may be a modal (35) or a tense expression (36): (35)

It helps sidestep the unadorned thinking required to decide tough issues. But decide we must, and in a larger sense the main issue is how to heal, rather than further divide, the nation.

(36)

“All three—price, technology and consumer interest—have to come together for interactive communication to take off,” Reddersen says. But come together they will, Reddersen thinks.

The definition of VF should be expanded to account for these examples. • This can be done using the standard approach to focus alternatives (Rooth, 1985, 1992). • The alternatives include not only affirmation and negation. • The set also contains other ways of relating the propositional content to the context. (37)

Scully was given a script, but was allowed to improvise. And improvise he did. a. {he did improvise, he did not improvise, he will improvise, he will not improvise, he could improvise, he could not improvise. . . }

The expanded alternative set results in a uniform analysis of the focus properties of preposing. • Focus alternatives are generated in the same way as focus alternatives for lexical material. But when the antecedent is entailed in the preceding context: • Verum focus emphasizes the polarity of the proposition. • There must be yet another meaning contribution that prevents infelicitous redundancy. (38)

Frank and Suzanne Chandler had a beautiful wedding—a wedding that went off so perfectly, it was impossible to imagine the disasters that would follow. But follow they did.

Some VPP-sentences also convey a scalar inference. • The term scalar is due to Ward (1990). Scalar affirmation contains a predicate construable as a scale. – The subject is assigned a high value on that scale. (39)

Led by police cars with flashing lights and trailed by other vehicles and more police, the seven cyclists were carefully watched for about the first three weeks of their journey [across the Soviet Union]. Neither the Soviets nor the Americans knew how to get rid of the police “shadows.” “They stopped when we hit the mud,” Jenkins said. And hit mud they did. And swamps. And paths so small they could barely be followed. (Ward 1990, (15))

Unlike verum focus, the scalar interpretation is entirely pragmatic. • The availability of the scalar inference depends on the discourse context, not the predicate. • The same sentence may have it in one context (a) but not in another (b): • It is also available when the preposed verb phrase is not entailed.

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(40)

a. “I like to stay active,” he says. “I keep moving. If you sit too much, time passes too slowly. I like to work.” So work he does, every day from 2 a.m. to 9 p.m. b. “I like to stay active,” he says. “I keep moving. If you sit too much, time passes too slowly. I like to work.” So work he does, every day from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

• The scales themselves are also contextually determined. – Possibilities include: ∗ duration (41) ∗ extent (42) ∗ frequency (43) ∗ number of events (44) ∗ number of subjects (45) ∗ general emphasis (46) (41)

“This is good. I can lay down to talk.” And talk she does. When you’re the reigning queen of gospel, a 61-year-old dynamo who delivers the truth as song, you’ve got stories to tell.

(42)

But without a bottom, there’s nowhere to rise. And rise he did, from volunteer staff at the White House to trip coordinator in the travel office, to the president’s aide and assistant press secretary. Engskov’s job was to make sure the president was reading from the right script.

(43)

During a timeout, Sonics coach George Karl instructed his team to run at every opportunity—it was their only chance. And run they did. Before they were done running, they had pulled within two late in the half. Included in their 18-2 run was a stretch of more than five scoreless minutes for the Lakers, who combined cold shooting with poor ball movement.

(44)

Newsome knew it too, and so did Bryant, because he always said of Newsome, “He can catch a BB in the dark.” Let alone footballs. Catch them he did, in big games at Alabama and then in big ones in the National Football League. Newsome would play 13 Cleveland Browns seasons, catch more passes (662) than any other tight end in pro football history, play in 198 professional games and become a Browns team captain in a career that ended in 1990. At 6 feet 2 inches and 225 pounds, he helped reinvent the position by showing how tight ends could not only block but also catch the ball frequently and as a deep threat.

(45)

“That’s a pretty good stage on which to tap dance no matter what you are selling,” said Dick Smith, managing director and new issues specialist at Montgomery Securities, in San Francisco. And sell they did. So far this year, 541 companies sold stock to the public for the first time, second only to 1993 when 666 companies sold stock for the first time to rais $34 billion, according to Securities Data Corp. Among this year’s most stunning IPOs was that of Netscape. Sold to investors in August for 28 a share, it first traded at 71.

(46)

Still, for the session, the attitude was “Buy ’em,” as Alfred Goldman, a market strategist at A.G. Edwards Inc. in St. Louis, headlined a fax sent out yesterday. And buy they did. Of the Dow’s 30 component stocks, 29 gained Tuesday, led by Proctor & Gamble, up 4 a share, to 138; J.P. Morgan, up 4 5/16, to 111 13/16; Merck, up 3, to 95 11/16; and GE, up 3 to 66 3/16.

The scales in (45) and (46) are counterexamples to Ward’s (1990) claim. • The predicate does not form a scale on which the subject ranks highly.

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Familiarity & focus in English VP-fronting

The scalar inference is a manner implicature (Grice, 1975).11 • If the speaker wanted to convey only verum focus, she could have used the canonical word order. • Preposing the VP introduces additional complexity. – This signals to the hearer that the speaker intends to convey additional (scalar) meaning. • The implicature is cancelable. – When it is canceled, the basic verum focus interpretation remains. (47)

“It sells,” Lapham said. “And the glossier magazines are just taking the tabloid notion and dressing it up in better product.” a. Sell it does. When Outside magazine published a long-hyped article by Jon Krakauer about the deaths on Mount Everest, the magazine doubled its average newsstand sales. b. Sell it does, but no more than other stories. When Outside magazine published a long-hyped article by Jon Krakauer about the deaths on Mount Everest, newsstand sales remained flat.

This implicature is not a property of verum focus in general. • Verum focus can be expressed by stressing the auxiliary in the canonical word order. • This auxiliary focus also requires a linguistic antecedent (Wilder, 2013).12 (48)

# Guess what? He did run, across the room and out the door to his car.13

• The scalar interpretation is unavailable in sentences with auxiliary focus. – Again, this is expected. – The scalar inference is an implicature that arises in addition to verum focus. (49)

Before the game, they saw a brief video with Strawberry pointing his finger at the camera and commanding, “Do it!” a. And they did do it. b. And do it they did.

Nor is it a property of preposing in general. • The scalar interpretation is entirely absent from participle preposing. (50)

George Steinbrenner’s $ 3.35 million offer to pitch for the Yankees for five years, which included a $1 million signing bonus and various insurance policies and annuities, was the most appealing. Included in the financial package were $25,000 payments for annuities for college tuition for his two children, Todd, then 5, and Kimberly, 2.

The scalar interpretation, then, arises from the focus structure of verb-phrase preposing. • Preposing points to a familiar proposition and emphasizes its relation to the context. 11 Ward

(1990) also claims that scalar affirmation results from a Gricean implicature. For Ward, this is a quantity implicature that comes about when the speaker makes a “prima facie redundant” assertion. In the analysis presented here, the scalar inference arises in addition to verum focus, which can also be expressed in the canonical word order. 12 Apparently Richter (1993) makes a similar observation, although I have not had access to this paper. 13 Surprisingly, an antecedent cannot be accommodated from the discourse context: (1)

# The Rev. Peter Colapietro woke on Wednesday sniffling, sneezing, wheezing and unable to sing. But he did rise, since there are no sick days for a priest at Christmas.

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Bern Samko

4

Conclusion

We have seen that participle preposing and verb-phrase preposing both: • Involve placing a verb phrase at the left edge of the sentence. • Make reference to a discourse-familiar constituent. • Add additional information about that familiar constituent. Several differences have also emerged: • Participle preposing can be used only when conditions of relative familiarity are met. • The familiar material is a subconstituent of the preposed verb phrase. • Focus on the sentence-final subject often changes topic. • Verb-phrase preposing requires a single familiar constituent. • The discourse antecedent corresponds to the entire preposed phrase. • Focus on the sentence-final auxiliary results in verum focus. In general, preposing a large constituent: • Serves as a pointer to some previous element in the discourse. • Relates that element to the focus of the sentence with preposing. • The nature of the relationship depends on the construction.

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Familiarity & focus in English VP-fronting

References AnderBois, Scott. 2011. Issues and alternatives. Doctoral Dissertation, University of California, Santa Cruz. Birner, Betty J. 1992. The discourse function of inversion in English. Doctoral Dissertation, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. Birner, Betty J. 1994. Information status and word order: An analysis of English inversion. Language 70:233–259. B¨ uring, Daniel. 2003. On D-trees, beans, and B-accents. Linguistics and Philosophy 26:511–545. Graff, David, and Christopher Cieri. 2003. English Gigaword . Philadelphia: Linguistic Data Consortium. Green, Georgia M. 1980. Some wherefores of English inversion. Language 56:582–601. Grice, H. P. 1975. Logic and conversation. In Speech acts, ed. Peter Cole and Jerry Morgan, volume 3 of Syntax and Semantics, 41–58. New York: Academic Press. Gutzmann, Daniel, and Elena Castroviejo Mir´o. 2011. The dimensions of verum. In Empirical issues in syntax and semantics 8 , ed. Olivier Bonami and Patricia Cabredo Hofherr, 143–165. Paris: Colloque de syntaxe et s´emantique ` a Paris. ¨ H¨ ohle, Tilman N. 1992. Uber Verum-Fokus im Deutschen. In Informationsstruktur und Grammatik , ed. Joachim Jacobs. Westdeutscher Verlag. Landau, Idan. 2007. Constraints on partial VP-fronting. Syntax 10:127–164. Prince, Ellen F. 1981. Toward a taxonomy of given/new information. In Radical pragmatics, ed. Peter Cole, 223–255. New York: Academic Press. Richter, Frank. 1993. Settling the truth. Ms., University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Roberts, Craige. 1996. Information structure in discourse: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. In Papers in semantics, ed. J. H. Yoon and Andreas Kathol, number 49 in OSU Working Papers in Linguistics. Columbus: The Ohio State University. Romero, Maribel, and Chung-Hye Han. 2004. On negative Yes/No questions. Linguistics and Philosophy 27:609–658. Rooth, Mats. 1985. Association with focus. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Rooth, Mats. 1992. A theory of focus interpretation. Natural Language Semantics 1. Samko, Bern. 2014. Verb-phrase preposing as verum focus. Paper presented at the 88th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, January 2014. Ward, Gregory L. 1990. The discourse functions of VP preposing. Language 66:742–763. Wilder, Chris. 2013. English ‘emphatic do’. Lingua 128:142–171.

A

Experimental items

(51) Identical antecedent: a. This would obviously hurt the president’s prospects for re-election. But it wouldn’t be such a good thing for the Republicans either. Their obstructionism, now concealed behind more-orless believable policy arguments, would be out in the open. It would be their responsibility to produce, not simply oppose. And produce they could not. b. That way, they figured, each project would be run by someone with a vested interest. As Cali grew, it hired its own architects, leasing agents, accountants, lawyers. Only two things stayed the same: It insisted that project managers act as equity partners. And it held its focus to northern and central New Jersey, a market the partners felt they could monitor. And monitor they did. (52)

Accommodated antecedent: a. The Rev. Peter Colapietro woke on Wednesday sniffling, sneezing, wheezing and unable to sing. But rise he did, since there are no sick days for a priest at Christmas. b. “I think we had to carry it a bit further. You could dwell into the characters, and take their passion to conclusion.” How much is a life worth? Merely posing the question offends most people. But answer it they must and answer it they do, says Kip Viscusi, an economist at Duke University. 14

Bern Samko

c. Ah, desecration for the public benefit. Mancera called the company’s chopping-block mode of marketing “product innovation.” She offered a splendid assurance that if this were the last game-used Ruth bat left, the company would not cut it up. The company’s research found that 50 to 100 Ruth bats are still around. So, chop the company must, as long as there is a remaining supply. d. Also included in the sale was a pair of Canalettos, “Views of Venice From the Piazza San Marco,” which went to Richard Green, the London dealer, for $4.5 million, more than twice its $2 million high estimate. The Canalettos were among 24 paintings being sold from the collection of the British Rail Pension Fund. The pension fund, which has had three successful Old Master sales at Sotheby’s in London over the last few years, was trying the New York market because many of the works had been on loan to American institutions and were on the pretty side, more to American tastes. And buy they did. e. Leave Gare Montparnasse at 7:50 a.m., read a newspaper, have coffee, watch the fields rocket by, and step out on the platform at Nantes at 9:59 a.m. I did just that last week to be able to spend a day with Jean-Ernest Sauvion, a wine maker in this town in the vineyards 20 miles southeast of Nantes itself. This is muscadet country, and Sauvion is one of the best-known producers of that pale, invigorating wine. Within minutes after arriving at his estate here, the Chateau du Cleray, I was in a laboratory confronted by 25 examples of Sauvion wines, most of them muscadet. To someone who had been asleep in Paris a few hours earlier, it was a formidable sight. But taste them we did, reaffirming that muscadet at its best is still one of the most underestimated of the world’s fine wines. f. “That made me feel good, because it wasn’t just about self, it was about family. He wanted them to have things they’d never had before.” As he grieved for his friend, Blocker said he decided “something had to be done about it.” So Blocker spent about 16 hours on the streets asking questions, trying to get information on the shooting of the 30-year-old replacement player. And help he did. (53)

No relation: a. Some medical professionals complained that they no longer had the ear of the administration. That’s because the number of medical people in management was reduced as the hospital streamlined its operation. “A lot of us feel we’re being reorganized into oblivion,” said Al Schmidt, past national president of the National Federation of Federal Employees. “Years ago, professional staff was looked at as part of management, but now management looks at professional staff as a cost factor.” But criticize him his co-workers did. b. “Or is this going to be like always, just something to pacify us?” But fit they did, and that mission marked the start of America’s continuous presence aboard the Mir.

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