Object Agreement, Grammatical Relations, and Information Structure

Abstract

Northern Ostyak (Uralic) has optional object agreement. This paper analyzes the grammatical behavior of objects that trigger agreement and objects that do not, and demonstrates that while the former participate in certain syntactic processes, the latter are syntactically inert. The asymmetry cannot be explained with reference to semantics or argument status, as both objects bear an identical argument relationship to the predicate. Following the functional approach to language, under which the clause has three independent representational levels (syntax, semantics, and informa tion structure), I suggest that the two objects differ in their information structure status. The object that does not trigger agreement bears the focus function, and systematically corresponds to the focus position. It is further argued that virtually all grammatical relations in Ostyak demonstrate reduced syntactic activity when they are in focus. This leads to a search for an information structure-driven motivation for certain behavioral properties.

Introduction

“…Topical, however, amounts to the status of secondary topic, since the primary topic is always encoded as a subject (of an active or a passive construction). The paper adds to the results of earlier studies on the morphosyntactic encoding of patients in Ob-Ugric (Skribnik 2001, Nikolaeva 1999, which pointed out the essential role of discourse pragmatics in the argument encoding of these languages.…”

Reflexivity without reflexives?

“…Objects associated with agreement on the verb usually have a special status with respect to the information structure of the sentence and differ in their syntactic behavior from objects that are not associated with agreement. Marked objects tend to be associated with old information, secondary topic, while unmarked objects tend to express new information (see Nikolaeva 1999a, Nikolaeva 1999b, Nikolaeva 2001 for detailed discussion). According to Nikolaeva (1999a), objects triggering agreement are characterized by a relatively free position in the sentence, while objects that do not trigger agreement are usually situated in the immediately preverbal position.…”

When agreement is for number and gender but not person

“…(Vinokurova 2005:361) In Northern Ostyak the verb shows number agreement but not person agreement even with a single object (Nikolaeva 1999, Nikolaeva 2001):…”

“…In (50a), the transitive verb has the same 1sS marking that the intransitive verb has (see (47a)), with no indication that there is an object present. Nikolaeva (1999Nikolaeva ( , 2001 discusses at length the pragmatic, semantic, and syntactic aspects of this alternation. She concludes that the (50b) form is the result of moving the object out of VP, so that it receives a strong reading, as in Diesing 1992 and related work.…”