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to allow for a switch that would put it into correspondence with the underlying one; thus, such English sentences as (8)(b) more often are stylistically more neutral than their Czech counterparts. With a contrastive topic, it is typical that both the subject and the predicate nouns bear pitch accents, one of which (exhibited by the focus) has the character of Bolingerʼs A accent (falling, denoted here by capitals), the other one (contrastive topic) having the shape of the B accent (rising, denoted by italics):
(8) (c) Fred ate the BEANS. (d) FRED ate the beans.
These examples are taken over from Jackendoff (1972: 261f) who points out the different contexts in which either of these sentences can be used; this difference corresponds to the division of the sentence into “presupposition” and “focus” (these terms, introduced by Chomsky 1971, can well be compared to our “topic” and “focus,” respectively). These features of the sentence prosody have been further studied in relation with the information structure (topic-focus articulation) of the sentence (understood as an aspect of sentence syntax) by Steedman (1991), who takes over Pierrehumberťs (1980) classification of intonational contours (more recently see Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg 1990). In this notation, the A accent is denoted by H*L, the B one by L+H*, and also further phenomena from the domain of prosody (boundary tones, etc.) are analyzed; a compositional approach to tune interpretation is formulated on this basis, which is helpful for an inquiry into the relationships between prosody and information structure. Féry (1993:130, ex. 23; cf. similar examples discussed by Höhle 1991) presents sentences such as those in (9) as a support for the view that differences in intonation contours have their impact on the semantic interpretation of the given sentences. (9) (a) BEIDE Theaterstücke sind nicht gespielt worden H*L (H*L) (b) BEIDE Theaterstücke sind NICHT gespielt worden. L*H H*L If Féryʼs parentheses are understood as indicating that the pitch accent on gespielt in (9)(a) is essentially weaker than that on beide (as is confirmed by the contour in the corresponding figure, representing the recording), then (9)(a) and (b) illustrate very well how the semantic interpretation of negation is related to the topic/focus articulation. Our approach to these phenomena was originally presented in Hajičová (1973); for a more detailed formulation in Czech, see Hajičová (1975), in English, Hajičová (1984); the alleged ambiguity of negation is discussed in Hajičová (1989). The topic/ focus articulation of the two examples in (9) can be schematically represented as (a’) and (b’), where the subscript T stands for topic and F for focus:
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(9) (a’) (plays were not played)T (both)F (b’) (both plays played)T (not)F
In (a’), the negation is included in the topic and the sentence (9)(a) asserts about the plays which were not played that this concerns the two of them. In (b’), the negative modality is the only part of the focus; the interpretation of the sentence (9)(b) is weaker in the sense that it just asserts about two plays that they were not played (although one of them might have been). 5. An interesting example illustrating the impact of topic/focus articulation on the semantic interpretation of sentences is the different interpretation of coordinated structure in topic and in focus (the examples are taken over from Lakoff 1970, who, of course, does not relate the difference to TFA).
(10) (a) John saw an explosion. (b) Max saw an explosion.
The coordination of (10)(a) and (b) results in the sentence (11), which has a reading on which different explosions can be referred to. (11) John and Max saw an explosion. This is not the case if “an explosion” is in the topic position of the simple sentences which are coordinated: (13) refers to the same explosion.
(12) (a) An explosion was seen by John. (b) An explosion was seen by Max. (13) An explosion was seen by John and Max.
However, if the intonation centre is placed on “explosion,” as in (14), the shift of intonation center reflects a change in TFA and influences the interpretation: the interpretation of (14) then equals the interpretation of (11). (I owe this observation to the late Professor Poldauf.) (14) An EXPLOSION was seen by John and Max. The sentence (14) exhibits a non-prototypical surface order of topic and focus, namely focus preceding topic (see above on Mathesiusʼ “subjective order”).
(15) (a) TÁTA přišel. (b) Přišel táta. (c) FATHER came. (d) Itʼs FATHER who came.
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As we have mentioned, the markedness of “subjective order” in Czech follows from the fact that there are no grammatical barriers there to place the bearer of intonation centre in the surface at the end of the sentence as in (b). The translation of (15)(a) and (b) can be realized in English either as (c), by the means of the placement of the intonation centre, or as (d), by means of a specific syntactic construction to mark the focus.4 (15)(c) can hardly be understood as a marked case; the grammatically determined surface word order does not allow to construct sentences with intransitive verbs in an “objective order”. Similar difficulties arise when the sentence includes a transitive verb but the actor of the action identified by the verb is general, as in (16). (16) Several EXPERIMENTS were carried out and the hypothesis was confirmed. Experiments as the most communicatively dynamic element of the first conjunct of (16) belong to the focus of this conjunct, the verb carried out being less dynamic. In the underlying order then experiments follow the verb while in the surface the order can only be subject – verb. Similar situation obtains also in other cases where the grammatically fixed order does not allow a rearrangement of lexical items in the surface, as in (17): (17) My neighbour dug a HOLE with a hoe. In a context where digging a hole with a hoe (rather than pruning the trees, or mowing the lawn etc.) is the information delivered about the neighbour, i.e. with the partition of the sentence into (my neighbour)T (dug with a hoe a hole)F, the most dynamic element of the sentence is the Objective (see below in Section 8 for a substantiation of this claim). However, it cannot be placed at the end of the sentence, after the prepositional group rendering the Instrument. The result is the placement of the intonation centre at some other position in the sentence. The question to be studied is whether in such cases as (16) and (17) the position of the intonation centre is not neutralized in favour of the unmarked position at the end of the sentence. 6. An explicit specification of communicative dynamism (CD) as the “underlying” order was given by Sgall et al. (1986, pp. 185f). Working with a dependency based representation on the level of meaning and with a primary notion of contextual boundness, communicative dynamism can be specified as follows: (i) a word is less dynamic than its governing word iff the dependent word is contextually bound, (ii) the degrees of CD of the contextually non-bound nodes are determined by the systemic ordering (see below, Sect.8),
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The two Czech sentences are synonymous, either of them having two readings: (i) without any topic (with the two parts both belonging to the focus), and (ii) with the verb in the topic (triggering a presupposition that someone came). In the English equivalents, (c) shares these properties of the Czech sentences, whereas (d) has only the interpretation (ii).
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