P-Doubling in Split PPs and Information Structure

1 Introduction

The goal of this squib is to provide new empirical evidence in support of the view that there is more than one type of split construction (see (1)) and that the types should be distinguished on the basis of their Information Structure (IS). (Unless otherwise noted, examples are from Russian.)

1. 1. Iz č  aški     ja pila     (iz)    krasnoj .

   from cup.f.gen I  drank    from red.f.sg.gen

   ‘I drank from a red cup.’

The evidence is based on a reinterpretation of the observation that P(reposition)-doubling is possible (or even obligatory) in some split PPs and infelicitous in others. These facts are reported in Fanselow and Ćavar 2002 for Croatian and German and in Féry, Paslawska, and Fanselow 2007 for Ukrainian. I show that similar observations can be made about Russian and argue that the (un)availability of P-doubling at least in Russian correlates with different ISs and does not directly depend on the order of split parts (contrary to what is proposed in Fanselow and Ćavar 2002) or their prosody (contrary to what is proposed in Féry, Paslawska, and Fanselow 2007).

The squib is organized as follows. In section 2, I identify two types of split constructions—contrastive splits (c-splits) and topicalization splits (t-splits)—and show that they have distinct ISs, intonation patterns, and syntactic behavior. In section 3, I present new data concerning P-doubling in discontinuous PPs in Russian. The generalization that emerges is that c-splits disallow P-doubling, whereas in t-splits, P-doubling is possible (and in some cases, obligatory). In section 4, I argue that the two previous accounts of P-doubling in split constructions in Slavic that I am aware of—in Fanselow and Ćavar 2002 and Féry, Paslawska, and Fanselow 2007—cannot accommodate the Russian facts. In section 5, I offer some concluding remarks.

2 C-Splits vs. T-Splits

The goal of this section is to show that c-splits and t-splits differ from the IS point of view and have distinct prosody and syntactic behavior. A c-split is a construction in which one of the split parts has contrastive interpretation (contrastive focus or contrastive topic).¹ A t-split is a construction in which the two split parts have different information status: one is a topic, the other is a new information focus.² In addition, the data below show that c-splits and t-splits can have both preserved and inverted word order, which will be important for the later discussion.

(2) is an example of a c-split in which the adjective (here, malinovogo ‘raspberry.n.sg.gen’) is preposed and bears contrastive stress; that is to say, it is marked with a falling intonational contour, dubbed IK-2 in the traditional literature on Russian (e.g., Bryzgunova 1981). In the examples, the split parts are underlined and each prosody mark follows the word to which it applies.³ Words that bear contrastive stress appear in capital letters in the translation.

1. 2. Malinovogo \₂    ona  mne  prislala   varen’ja     (a  ne

   raspberry.n.sg.gen  she  to.me  sent    jam.n.gen and  not

   klubničnogo).

   strawberry.n.sg.gen

   ‘She sent me RASPBERRY jam (and not strawberry).’

   (Pereltsvaig 2008:21)

A noun also can be contrastively focused, as shown in (3). In (3), djadja ‘uncle.nom’ is contrasted with other members of the family who tried to reason with the person.

1. 3. Djadja \₂  staralsja moj       ukrotit’  ee.

   uncle.nom tried      my.m.sg.nom to.reason her

   ‘My UNCLE (as opposed to other family members) tried to reason with her.’

   (Zemskaja 1973:387)

An important syntactic property of c-splits is that splitting is not necessary. As correctly noted in Zubatow and Junghanns 1995 and Pereltsvaig 2008, the contrastive interpretation can be achieved by stress alone or by preposing the adjective to different positions; see (4) for the example in (2).

1. 4. (✓ Malinovogo \₂)      ona  (✓ malinovogo \₂)      mne

   raspberry.n.sg.gen she      raspberry.n.sg.gen to.me

   (✓ malinovogo \₂)    prislala ✓ malinovogo \₂

   raspberry.n...