Blocking and Anaphora

Blocking and AnaphoraAuthor(s): Edwin WilliamsSource: Linguistic Inquiry, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Autumn, 1997), pp. 577-628Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4178996 .

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Blocking and Anaphora Edwin Williams

Deletion and destressing are shown to obey principal laws of anaphora, and rules are formulated for identifying these and other "nonintrinsic" anaphors. A rule is formulated (the Disanaphora Law) for relating such anaphors to their antecedents; the application of the rule is governed by the Blocking Principle. Focus-presupposition structure is analyzed purely in terms of anaphora. Topic is defined as a Focus subordinated to the main Focus. The existence of coordinate ellipsis rules is demonstrated, and the "coherence" and patterns of obligatoriness of ellipsis are explicated in terms of the Disanaphora Law. LF and PF applications of the anaphora laws suggest that LF = PF.

Keywords: blocking, Focus, Presupposition, destressing, deletion, ellipsis, anaphora

Deleted or destressed material is not instrinsically anaphoric; rather, its context determines that it is. The grammar of nonintrinsic anaphors has a special dimension not found with normal intrinsic anaphors (like he), since there must be rules to identify these anaphors in the first place and rules to find antecedents for them. In this article I will explore the nature of both types of rules and the relation between them, and I will show that the generalized Blocking Principle is a major determinant of the behavior of these two systems.

I begin with a general discussion of the Blocking Principle in syntax (section 1) and then turn to considerations suggesting that deletion and destressing are fundamentally anaphoric (sections 2 and 3). Next I suggest that the rules and laws pertaining to so-called Focus-Presupposition structure can largely be replaced by applications of the laws of anaphora (sections 4 and 5). I show that the notion that "old information is deaccented" must give way to a theory in which the anaphoric commitment of accent patterns is determined holistically. In section 6 I suggest that Topic is likewise a matter of anaphora; destressing anaphora gives rise to a recursive embedding structure, and a Topic is simply an embedded Focus. In section 7 I cite cases where the Disanaphora Law applies to PF; that is, there are meaning-free applications of this law of anaphora, suggesting that LF = PF, and the Disanaphora Law holds of LF = PF using different notions of value (phonetic, referential) and correspondence defined at that level.

In section 8 I argue that the patterns of obligatoriness and coherence that are found in ellipsis structures arise directly from the laws of anaphora developed in section 4. I argue that although the main lines of the theory of deletion follow from the rules of anaphora, ellipsis cannot be eliminated by massive base generation of ellipsis remnants, as some authors have suggested; nor

I wish to thank the students and faculty at the University of Vienna, especially Martin Prinzhorn and Martina Wiltschko, for their help in developing and clarifying the ideas presented here. An early version of my theory of focus and presupposition appears in Williams 1981.

Linguistic Inquiry, Volume 28, Number 4, Fall 1997 577-628 ? 1997 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 577



578 EDWIN WILLIAMS

can it be put aside as a "radical" variant of destressing, a recurring idea in the literature. The arguments here are new, based as they are on the ideas about anaphora put forward in the article.

1 Blocking

Although my chief concern will be anaphora, I will first outline some general notions about blocking, because the widespread effects of blocking in syntax are not recognized. (For more details on the ideas presented in this section, see Williams 1996 and Di Sciullo and Williams 1987.)

Blocking is usually seen as a principle governing the shape of the lexicon: some words do not exist (e.g., *gloriosity) because others do (glory), according to Aronoff (1976). Di Sciullo and Williams (1987) argue that blocking is found throughout syntax as well. In fact, blocking may turn out to be the broadest organizing principle of grammar, and a principle of acquisition as well.

Blocking as Aronoff defines it is delimited by semantics: X blocks Y only if X is a candidate with the same meaning as Y. We might reconstrue blocking as at least in part a "hatred of synonymy": if two forms exist (in syntax or morphology), they must have different meanings; if two forms cannot be assigned different meanings, then one of them cannot exist. In this, the Blocking Principle has structuralist antecedents, including principles offered by Saussure' and Fort2, according to which difference in meaning is perhaps more fundamental than meaning itself.

A significant feature of blocking is the notion of specificity. An underived noun (like glory) is a more specific nominalization of the adjective glorious than a noun derived by a general rule (*gloriosity), and the form blocked is always the less specific form.

Pinker (1984) and I (Williams 1994a) have explored the role that blocking might play in acquisition. When a child building a linguistic paradigm notices that one cell is filled twice, the child is driven to pop out an extra dimension in the paradigm to resolve the conflict with the Blocking Principle, which forbids such double filling.

run

(1) [run, ran] = | present/past

ran

Once the new dimension has been posited, it must be interpreted. Perhaps there is a finite

'"Everything that has been said up to this point boils down to this: in language there are only differences. Even more important: a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system. The idea or phonic substance that a sign contains is of less importance than the other signs that surround it. Proof of this is that the value of a term may be modified without either its meaning or its sound being affected, solely because a neighboring term has been modified." (Saussure 1959:120)

2 "It is our expression that nothing can attempt to be, except by attempting to exclude something else; that that which is commonly called 'being' is a state that is wrought more or less definitely proportionately to the appearance of positive difference between that which is included and that which is excluded." (Fort 1919:8)



BLOCKING AND ANAPHORA 579

list of possible interpretations, perhaps not (I doubt that there is), but at any rate the child knows to seek an interpretation. The Blocking Principle is thus a principle of acquisition.

It is likely that the Blocking Principle functions on another level as well, as one of the "control structures" that govern the applicability of operations in assigning syntactic structure in the grammar, and thus on a par with Chomsky's (1991) economy principles or the principles of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993, Grimshaw 1997).

Let us first consider a simple case of blocking that will widen our understanding of the phenomenon in three significant respects. In English the comparative and the superlative are formed in two different ways: for short words, -er and -est are suffixed in morphology; for long words, more and most are prefixed in syntax.

(2) fat fatter *more fat happy happier *more happy beautiful *beautifuller more beautiful

The complementarity shown here, plus the special condition on one of the forms, is the signature of the blocking relationship. In this case the more construction is the elsewhere case, and the -er construction is the special case.

Of course, one can imagine describing these facts differently. One might place a condition on the -er construction (it applies only to short words) and a different condition on the more construction (e.g., it applies only to polysyllabic roots); but this would miss the point. The two conditions are perfectly complementary: more combines with exactly what -er does not combine with, and that is the most that can be said. "Exceptional" cases make the same point in a way that cannot be missed. The following is a list of cases where the more construction should be impossible, given a restriction to polysyllabic roots; yet these forms are fine:

(3) a. more glad b. more apt c. more done

Why this exceptionality? Exactly because in all of these cases the -er form is ruled out (*gladder, *apter, *doner), perhaps for a different reason in each case (the argument is the same even if there is no reason; in fact, better). More and -er are intricately complementary, but this is the result of a single intricacy, not a pair of matched intricacies.

The first point of interest is that the comparative and superlative paradigms span morphology and syntax; -er suffixation is morphological, but [more AIAP is a syntactic construct. Blocking does not seem to respect this boundary.

The second point of interest concerns interpretation. Suppose that the child has constructed a "paradigm" in which a single cell contains the two forms on the left.

Xer

(4) [more silly, sillier] = - monosyllabicity

more X



580 EDWIN WILLIAMS

When this happens, a new dimension must be popped out; but how is it interpreted? One possibility is to assign it a new meaning. In fact, though, the "interpretation" here is structural: the two forms have different distributions, determined by the length of the adjective. This is not surprising against the background of what we know about paradigms. In general, a paradigmatic dimension need not be semantically interpreted, though it may be; the difference among the first, second, and third persons is obviously semantic, but the difference between the first and second conjugations in, say, a Romance language is not semantic, but formal. An interpretation must be sought for paradigmatic dimensions, but the interpretation might be a structural condition, rather than a difference in meaning.

Since one of the points in the dimension is a word, and the other point is a syntactic phrase, we might expect on general grounds that the word would block the phrase, since words are more "specific" than phrases. Thus, it is no surprise that the "interpretation" (the limit to one syllable) is attached to the suffixation of -er, rather than to the combination with more. In general, blocking is involved in the association of two different dimensions, one the interpretation of the other; and although the association itself is arbitrary, the "polarity" of the association probably is not. Here one dimension is the -erlmore contrast, and the other is the length-restriction/no-restriction contrast; the association of the length restriction with -er is natural, because these are the complicated ends of their respective dimensions. We will see this repeatedly; in the later discussion of markers of specificity, it is always the marked form that denotes specificity, and the unmarked form that denotes nonspecificity.

A final point of interest about (4) is how language-particular it is: the existence of two means of forming the comparative and superlative is language-particular, and the exact condition, having to do with number of syllables, is obviously idiosyncratic. The language acquisition mechanisms must be sufficiently sharp to extract these details from the primary linguistic data, since it seems unlikely that the exact configuration of the resulting paradigm could have been anticipated in any detail by Universal Grammar. It appears that the paradigm-organizing capacity of the linguistic learning ability must be quite gifted at building language-particular structures-all the more need for a principle like the Blocking Principle, one of the engines by which such building is achieved.

Saussure's "arbitrariness of the sign" seems no less applicable to the interpretation of paradigmatic dimensions than it does to the interpretation of words. For example, case marking sometimes denotes specificity (Turkish; Enc 1991), sometimes telicity (Finnish; De Hoop 1992), sometimes animacy (Spanish a marking), and sometimes nothing but a structural dimension (direct object). Likewise, agreement can mark a number of different semantic features, including specificity (French; see below), or again, nothing at all. Movement can be driven by specificity (German scrambling; see Williams 1996) or again by animacy. If we think of these "dimensions" of

3 De Hoop (1992:93) cites the following:

(i) a. Presidentti ambui lintua. president shot bird(PART) ([-tel], [+/-defl) 'The president shot at a/the bird.'

b. Presidentti ambui linnun. president shot bird(Acc) ([+tel], [+/-defl) 'The president shot a/the bird.'




structure (moved/unmoved, agreeing/not-agreeing) as being like words, then we are not surprised at the variety of significations that can be associated with them.

Enc (1991) has shown that case marking determines specificity in a quite straightforward way in Turkish. The following examples are representative:

(5) Iki kiz-i taniyordum. (partitive interpretation) Iki kiz taniyordum. (existential interpretation) two girls(-Acc) I-knew 'I knew two girls.'

The case marker -i means partitivity; and importantly, absence of the case marker means no partitivity.

Deprez (1995) and Obenauer (1994) have found exactly the same semantics in French, but linked to a different signifier. The past participle in French agrees with a displaced object, but never with the object in situ.

(6) a. [Quelles photos] as-tu prises t avec un zoom? which photos(FEM.PL) have you taken(FEM.PL) with a zoom 'Which photos did you take with a zoom?'

b. *Tu as prises [ces photos] avec un zoom? you have taken(FEM.PL) these photos(FEM.PL) with a zoom 'You took these photos with a zoom?'

In some circumstances that agreement is optional, as the following examples show, where the participle may agree (7a) or not (7b) with the moved expression:

(7) a. Combien de fautes a-t-elle faites? how-many of mistakes(FEM.PL) has she made(FEM.PL) 'How many (among a known set of) mistakes has she made?'

b. Combien de fautes a-t-elle fait? how-many of mistakes(FEM.PL) has she made(no agreement) 'What is the number of things that are mistakes which she has made?'

But Obenauer shows that the choice is not without consequences: as the glosses indicate, agreement signals "specificity" of the object, and lack of agreement signals nonspecificity. Of main interest here is that wherever the option of agreement is absent, the signaling of specificity is absent as well. For example, agreement with the subject, including a subject derived from object position, is always obligatory.

(8) Combien de fautes au moins a ete fait*(es)? how-many of mistakes at least have been made 'How many mistakes at least were made?'

Here, au moins requires the nonspecific meaning, but agreement is obligatory nevertheless; looked at the other way round, where agreement is obligatory, it does not exclude the nonspecific meaning.



582 EDWIN WILLIAMS

Likewise, where agreement is impossible (as in the case of an object in situ), the specific meaning is not excluded either.

Definite clitics are intrinsically definite and therefore, we may assume, specific; in that case agreement is forced.

(9) Ces erreurs, je les ai fait*(es) par accident. these errors I them have made by accident 'These errors, I made them by accident.'

It is only where there is a choice that the choice has a meaning. Exactly the same situation arises in Swahili: object agreement is obligatory (or receives a

"structural" interpretation) for animate objects; but for inanimates it signals specificity. ((10) is taken from Keach 1995:114; OM = object marker.)

(10) a. N-a-m-penda Juma. I-TNs-oM-like Juma 'I like Juma.'

b. *Napenda Juma. c. N-a-ki-soma kitabu.

I-TNs-oM-read book 'I read the book.'

d. Nasoma kitabu. 'I read a book.'

As in French, object agreement is available as a signaler of specificity exactly where it does not get "structurally" interpreted; the only difference is that the "structural" interpretation is different in Swahili.

Essentially the connection between agreement and specificity is accidental, that is, language- particular. In other languages, agreement has no meaning (it has perhaps "structural meaning"), and in still other languages, other devices are used to signal specificity (German, movement; Turkish, case). That much is arbitrary and must be learned. However, once the learner tries to associate the agreement with specificity, he knows how to do it: marking will signify presence of specificity, and no marking will signify its absence. Presumably he will know this by virtue of the relatively more "marked" character of case marking and specificity, and the less marked character of absence of case marking and nonspecificity, and in turn he will know to link them in a way that respects this ordering.

For a more general picture of blocking in syntax, see Williams 1996. The diversity of linguistic phenomena that are governed by the Blocking Principle can be seen in the topics discussed there, and in Di Sciullo and Williams 1987; these include choice of anaphors (based on Burzio 1996 and on Montalbetti 1984), French and English adjective positioning, and scrambling in German.

In some cases blocking fails where we might expect it to hold. For example, scrambling




seems connected to specificity in Turkish, as in many languages, scrambled NPs being definite or specific. ((11) and (12) are from Erguvanli 1984:13, (32).)

(11) a. Adam-in oda-sin-da bir lamba yan-iyor. man-GEN room-poss-3Roc one lamp burn-PROG 'A lamp is burning in a man's room.'

b. *Bir lamba adam-in oda-sin-da yan-iyor.

However, it is not the case that unscrambled NPs must be indefinite.

(12) a. Tas-i oglan-a bir adam at-ti. stone-Acc boy-DAT one man throw-PsT 'A man threw the stone at the boy.'

b. Bir adam tas-i oglan-a at-ti.

Here we have two forms for the same meaning, one "marked" with respect to the other. Why should blocking not intervene to prevent the unmarked form from having the marked meaning? In Williams 1996 I speculate that it is because the distinction is ambiguous; it turns out that in Turkish, scrambling is also licensed when the scrambled NP is animate, so that in fact only inanimate indefinites are prevented from scrambling. ((13) is from Erguvanli 1984:17, (42)-(43).)

(13) a. *Bir elma agac-tan duis-tu. one apple tree-ABL fall-PsT

'One apple fell out of the tree.' b. Bir cojiuk agac-tan dus-tui.

one child tree-ABL fall-PsT

'One child fell out of the tree.'

A surely premature speculation about where blocking fails is that it fails where the signaling device is ambiguous.

The Blocking Principle is a "meta-" principle, in that it governs the applicability of other principles and operations. In Williams 1996 I speculate that it might replace economy principles. The basis of economy principles is shortness: of moves, of derivations. The basis of blocking is specificity: one form is more specific for a particular purpose than another. These two notions-shortness and specificity-can be related in the following way.

Consider a movement operation with an ambiguous target, as diagrammed here:

(14) [target1 .. .A target2 ... .NP ... B]

Target, is accessible to everything. Target2 is accessible only to material in region B.

Assume that there is no difference in meaning between the two positions, for in that case the positions are not equally accessible, if meaning defines the set of competing forms in a derivation.

Now, a principle based on "shortest movement" (such as Chomsky's (1993) "Shortest



584 EDWIN WILLIAMS

Movement" Condition) dictates that NP move to target2. But so does the Blocking Principle, via the notion of "specificity." Assume that movement is always upward and that the structure in (14) is left-branching. Anything in region A or in region B is accessible to target1, whereas only items in region B are accessible to target2. Therefore, target2 is more specific for items in region B and must be selected for items in that region (e.g., NP); target1, the more general case, is "blocked."

In the view I take here, there is actually little room for the "Shortest Movement" Condition. This is because the notion "shortest move," if it is relativized to structures with the "same meaning," has little work to do. Generally, if both forms are possible, a different meaning is associated with each, and blocking will have no effect. For example, as Baker (1970) demonstrates, the interpretation of unmoved wh-phrases allows an unmoved wh-phrase to associate with any c-commanding moved wh, giving different interpretations for each choice.

(15) Who wonders who bought what? a. who1, what2 [t1 wonders who3 [t3 bought t2]

b. who1 [t1 wonders who3, what2 [t3 bought t2]

Although the lower [Spec, CP] is "more specific" to t2 than the upper one, since it is associated with a different meaning, it is not blocked by it.

The Blocking Principle has effects only where meaning is neutralized. One case is clitic movement. Presumably no meaning is associated with different landing sites for clitics; the "Short- est Movement" Condition (interpreted as a case of "specificity") would block long clitic movement, as in (16).

(16) *Jean le croit que Pierre X a vole t. Jean it believes that Pierre has stolen 'Jean believes that Pierre has stolen it.'

The clitic position X is more specific to t than the position of le; hence, the movement indicated is ungrammatical.

The principle called Procrastinate in Chomsky's (1991) economy theory can be seen as the Blocking Principle itself, applying in the special case of movement. Movement always involves at least two competing forms, one with movement (17b) and the other without it (17a).

(I17) a. [..X ... XPR . .. b. I... XPi ... ti...]

In the economy theory, movement is triggered by features on the moved item and on the target of movement.

(18) a. [[+F]... +F ...]xp ...]ep c b. [[+F]xp [.. . t ..]]cp

Suppose that [F] is "interpreted" -that is, associated with some feature of meaning (specificity, etc.). In the economy theory, [F] is either strong or weak. If [F] is strong, then movement is




forced, so only the form in (1 8b) will be associated with the meaning; a sentence without [F] will lack that element of meaning. The movement, then, will be uniquely associated with that element of meaning. This is exactly the situation that arises under the Blocking Principle: if the element of meaning can be associated with the movement, then it must be, and the absence of movement must be associated with the absence of the element of meaning. Now suppose that instead the feature is weak. Then in the economy theory the unmoved (or at least the not overtly moved) form is ambiguous, under Procrastinate: if [F] is present in the structure, then the structure without (overt) movement will be associated with the element of meaning, and if [F] is absent, then the same structure will be associated with the absence of that element of meaning. In other words, the unmoved structure is the only structure, and it is ambiguous. In sum, then, the economy theory predicts exactly two possibilities: either there will be two forms, one associated with some element of meaning and the other excluding it; or there will be one ambiguous form (either with or without that element of meaning). But this is exactly the prediction that the Blocking Principle makes in the special case of meaning: either one form is associated with the meaning, in which case the other form cannot have the meaning (blocking); or there is only one form, which is ambiguous. If there are two forms, they must have different meanings; if there is only one form, it is permitted to be ambiguous.

The same principle of blocking applies in the domain of definite anaphora, where movement plays no role; this strengthens the conviction that the economy in question is not an economy of movement.

The issue here is which of two coreferential and c-commanding NPs is the antecedent of a bound pronoun, as in (19).

(19) Johni thinks that hei likes hisi mother.

There is reason to believe that only the closer of the two NPs is the antecedent of the pronoun hisi. The evidence comes from an observation by Dahl (1973) concerning the availability of "sloppy" readings for VP-deletion (see Fiengo and May 1994 for a view somewhat different from the one I am about to give). The observation is illustrated in the following examples:

(20) a. Maxi said hei saw hisi mother, and Oscark did {hei saw hisi mother} too. b. Maxi said hei saw hisi mother, and Oscark did {hek saw hisi mother} too. c. *Maxi said hei saw hisi mother, and Oscark did {hei saw hisk mother} too. d. Maxi said hei saw hisi mother, and Oscark did {hek saw hisk mother} too.

Both pronouns in the ellipsis site (surrounded by curly brackets) can be "sloppy" (as in (20d)), or both strict (as in (20a)), and one mixed reading is allowed (as in (20b)); but the crux of the matter is that in (20c) the second pronoun, his, cannot be sloppy if the first pronoun, he, is strict. This suggests that the first pronoun is the only possible antecedent of the second pronoun, since its interpretation determines the interpretations that the second one can get. In other words, Oscar (or, in the first conjunct, Max) is not directly the antecedent of the second pronoun, since otherwise it should not be expected that the interpretation of the first should limit the interpretation of the second. Structurally this is identical to the movement configurations where the "Shortest



586 EDWIN WILLIAMS

Movement" Condition holds, and the "blocking" rationale carries over to this construction as well: the antecedent closer to x is "more specifically available to x" than any higher antecedent and therefore must be chosen.

We may tentatively arrive at this conclusion even without specifying how the interpretation of the first pronoun limits that of the second. In Williams 1995 I suggest how this might be viewed. A pronoun may take as its value either the "sense" or the "extension" of its antecedent; this gives the "sloppy" and "strict" readings, respectively. A strict reading is one in which the deleted pronoun takes as its value only the extension of its antecedent under deletion; any pronoun dependent on that pronoun will in turn be limited to that extension for its value. Hence, a sloppy pronoun can be the antecedent for a strict one (20b), but the reverse is not possible (20c). (For further examples and discussion, see Williams 1995.)

In subsequent sections I will examine certain varieties of anaphora and the role of blocking in explicating their behavior. Reinhart (1983) was perhaps the first to apply something like a blocking principle to anaphora, though perhaps not to an appropriate case. She sought to explain the presence of Condition C of the binding theory in the following way. Suppose, as she did, that bound pronouns must be c-commanded by their antecedents. Then a speaker uttering a sentence in such a way that two NP positions in it are to be taken as coreferential will use the device of bound anaphora if the first NP c-commands the second, by putting a pronoun in the lower position; if the speaker instead puts a pronoun in the c-commanding position, then he must intend that the two positions not be taken as anaphorically related, since he did not avail himself of the device designed specifically for that purpose. I do not think that this view is correct, and in fact it has had little currency since Lasnik's (1989) arguments against it. But since we have seen the widespread utility of the Blocking Principle, we must inquire why that sort of reasoning does not hold here. I think the answer is that there is no "device" -no specific rules or principles-of bound anaphora in the first place; bound anaphora is instead a phenomenon that arises at the intersection of how an operator determines the interpretation of its scope and how pronouns are interpreted, perhaps among other things. The pronoun must be in the scope of the operator for the phenomenon of bound anaphora to be evident, but there is no c-command restriction that must hold between an operator and a pronoun that is bound by it, as (21a) (discussed by Reinhart herself) shows.

(21) a. Everyone's mother likes him. b. *John's mother likes himself. c. Hisi mother loves Johni.

Reflexives, but not bound pronouns, require c-command (2 la-b). But suppose that Reinhart were right that even in (21 a) the bound anaphora relation were somehow licensed between everyone and him; then (21c) would suffice to show that Reinhart's rationalization of Condition C cannot be right, for then the availability of the bound reading in (21a) should prevent the coreferential reading of (21c), which it does not do. (For further discussion of the view of bound anaphora as epiphenomenal, see Williams 1994b:chap. 2.)




2 Destressing and Deletion Are Anaphoric

In subsequent sections I will show that the properties of the destressing and deletion systems are strongly governed by the Blocking Principle. First, however, I want to establish that these processes are anaphoric, because this fact will determine the form of the theories about them; the theories will consist of principles for identifying, and rules for interpreting, anaphors.

To show that both destressing and deletion are anaphoric, I will show that these two processes share the fundamental structural property of anaphora: an anaphoric element must have an antecedent, and that element must either follow or be in a subordinate environment to the antecedent. In section 3 I will present a more subtle argument based on what I call the Principle of Anaphoric Identification, which applies to anaphors, deleted material, and destressed material alike.

2.1 The General Pattern of Anaphoric Dependence

The general pattern of anaphora can be seen here:

(22) a. Anyone [who has written his term paperi] can turn iti in to me now. b. Anyone [who has written iti] can turn his term paperi in to me now. c. Anyone can turn his term paperi in to me now [who has written iti]. d. *Anyone can turn iti in to me now [who has written his TERM PAPER].

These examples show that there are two ways to license a pronoun by antecedence: either the antecedent precedes, as in (22a) and (22c), or the pronoun is in a subordinate clause with respect to the antecedent, as in (22b). When neither of these conditions is met, antecedence fails (22d). The final NP in (22d) is capitalized to signify that it has main stress. This guarantees that it is not itself anaphoric to some preceding instance of the same NP. If it were, then the pronoun could be dependent on that NP, rather than the intended one. The principle we are investigating governs anaphoric dependence, not referential equality, which is governed by the binding theory (for discussion, see section 2.2.1 and Williams 1994b).

The forward case of dependence is simple: any structural relation is permitted. The backward case is more puzzling. For backward dependence, the anaphor must be in a subordinate clause relative to the antecedent.

(23) a. That hei had won encouraged Johni. b. *Hei won the race and we welcomed home JOHNi.

A relation of true subordination (23a) is required; a coordinate structure (23b) cannot license the backward case. Nor is embedding in an NP subject sufficient.

(24) a. Hisi presence in the museum was enough to convict that art thiefi. b. That hei had been seen in the museum was enough to convict that art thiefi.

The pronoun cannot occur in just any subordinate clause; it must occur in a subordinate clause that is subordinate to the clause containing the antecedent.



588 EDWIN WILLIAMS

(25) a. If he is in NY, John will try to visit Mary. b. If he is in NYi, John will try to visit Mary, and he probably will be therei. c. *If he is therei, John will try to visit Mary, and John will probably be in NYi. d. *[[... there]subord ... Lonjunct, and [.. . anteCthere .. *]conjunct2

In the sense I intend, the if clause is subordinate to the first conjunct in (25c), but not to the second conjunct; hence, the pronoun is in a subordinate clause, but not a clause subordinate to the clause that contains the antecedent (which is the second conjunct), as the structural diagram of (25c) in (25d) shows. Therefore, the antecedence is unacceptable.

In sum, then, the pattern of anaphoric dependence is as follows:

(26) General pattern of anaphoric dependence (GPAD) a. ... pro .. .]subord [... antec .. ]subord

b. N... pro ... ]matrix [... antec ... *]matrix

c. ... antec .. .]matrix [.. . pro . lsubord

d. [. .. antec . . .]subord [. . . pro . . ]matrix

Dependence can be forward, or it can be "backward and down."

2.1.1 Coreference versus Dependence As mentioned earlier, the antecedent in (22d) takes main sentence stress (indicated by capitalization). If the putative antecedent does not have main sentence stress, then the antecedent itself is anaphoric, and this fact in turn implies the existence of yet another antecedent in a previous utterance.

(27) [I assume you recall that this course requires a term paper.] Anyone can turn iti in to me now who has WRITTEN his term paperi.

In (27) term paperi itself is anaphoric, taking the NP in the bracketed context sentence as its antecedent. The pronoun iti is licensed not by the following his term paper but by the preceding a term paper. Thus, the notion of antecedence here is one of referential dependence, not referential identity: a pronoun cannot be dependent on a following, nonsuperordinated antecedent; however, it can be identical to such an NP, as long as it is dependent on some other NP that precedes. The pattern of anaphora is the pattern of permitted dependence, not the pattern of permitted equality.

The laws governing dependence differ from the laws governing permitted coreference: dependence laws are governed by precedence relations (or the GPAD), whereas coreference laws are governed by c-command (see Williams 1994b for elaboration of this view). Essentially, coreference is governed by the binding theory, whose conditions on c-command relations ban coreference between terms in various circumstances. Dependence is governed by linear order and is only tangentially related to coreference. To understand the paradigm in (22), it is not sufficient to bar coreference when the pronoun c-commands its antecedent. (28) shows that c-command is not the relation governing the phenomenon in question.

(28) *Anyone can try [to hand iti in to me]s who has written HIS TERM PAPERi.




Certainly in (28) the pronoun does not command the antecedent in any sense, and still the dependence is barred.

We see, then, that dependence can be barred where coreference would be permitted. In some more complicated cases, the reverse in fact holds as well; that is, coreference is barred where dependence is permitted (see Williams 1994b for full discussion).

(29) Every hospital administrator hates the hospital.

Here, hospital is dependent on every hospital administrator, in the sense that its referents vary according to the values assigned to the variable bound by the universal quantifier (each choice of administrator maps the object onto a different hospital). Coreference is banned (coreference between subject and object), but dependence is allowed (dependence of object on subject). Clearly, the two notions are entirely distinct-either can hold where the other is disallowed.

2.1.2 The Scope of the GPAD The pattern under discussion is found with all anaphora, or all dependence, not just with pronouns. (30) illustrates the same pattern with epithets.

(30) a. *The bastardi's mother loves JOHNi. b. Because the bastardi got lost, we had to go back and find JOHNi.

Quantified NPs also show the backward-and-down pattern with respect to pronouns they bind; this is the traditional weak crossover paradigm.

(31) a. Hisi mother loves every British soldieri. b. *That hei might someday meet the queen inspires every British soldieri.

Note that weak crossover is found with definite antecedents as well, as long as irrelevant antecedents are excluded.

(32) a. *Hisi mother loves JOHNi. b. Hisi mother LOVES Johni.

The dependence of his on John in (32b) is illusory; really, John itself is dependent on something preceding (here implicit), and his is dependent on it as well. If this is so, then the only difference between definite and quantified antecedents is that the illusion of dependence cannot be created in the case of quantificational NPs, since they cannot themselves be dependent.

Under this view (32a) is the normal case and (32b) is a special case. By contrast, Chomsky (1972) instead takes (32b) to be the normal case, and then seeks to explain (32a) in terms of a crossover condition by positing a rule that moves focused constituents. This analysis puts (32a) together with (31a), which presumably also undergoes movement. The two are then ruled out together by a condition that bars the configuration [moved-itemi ... pronouni ... ti].

I am skeptical of this account, for the following two reasons. First, there is the sort of example (33a) discussed in connection with the backward-and-down case of dependence, which should be ungrammatical on Chomsky's proposal, since it should just as much as (32a) be a weak crossover violation. But more importantly, suppose that Focus in an appropriate kind of example could be taken as broad (say, a whole clause) and thereby contain both the antecedent and the



590 EDWIN WILLIAMS

pronoun. In such an example Focus movement would not change the configuration of the antecedent and the pronoun, so the example should be good. However, it is not (33b).

(33) a. Anyone who has written iti can turn HIS TERM PAPERi in to me. =>

HIS TERM PAPERi [anyone who has written iti can turn ti in to me]. b. *John said that [her mother liked MARY]F =n

[that her mother liked MARY]Fj John said ti

So far we have seen that pronouns and epithets observe the GPAD with both quantified and definite antecedents; to this we should add generalized referentially dependent definite NPs, of the sort discussed earlier in connection with (29).

(34) a. Every first-year interni was mistreated by the hospital administrator. b. *The hospital's administrator mistreated every first-year interni. c. Because the hospital needs him so much at night, every first-year interni is always

tired. d. *We would look down on the hospital if each/every first-year interni were mistreated.

Here I have not coindexed the italicized NPs with the subindexed NPs, because there is no question of identity of reference between the two; rather, what is at issue is whether the italicized NP can be understood as covarying in reference with the variable bound in the position of the subindexed NP. This dependence of reference is not permitted to go backward (34b), unless it goes backward and down (34c).

If these definites are "referentially dependent" on the universal quantifier in whose scope they appear, then so are the following indefinites, which also show the GPAD:

(35) a. That an enemy sniper had shot him bothered every soldier in the hospital. b. An enemy sniper shot every soldier in the hospital. ([*every [exist) c. Every soldier was shot by an enemy sniper.

At issue here is whether the indefinite can be subordinate to the universal; (35) shows that it can, when it occurs in the pattern we have already discussed. These examples lead to the notion that an existential's relation to a universal whose scope it resides in is one of binding, not one of interacting A-operators; the A-position of the existential is bound by the A-position of the universal.

The fact that an existential dependent on a universal behaves like an anaphor dependent on an antecedent suggests that existentials and definites are not so different, as suggested in Williams 1994b.

(36) a. Every first-year interni was mistreated by the hospital administrator. b. Every first-year interni was mistreated by a hospital administrator.

The difference between (36a) and (36b) seems to be characterized not so much by "familiarity" as by "identifiability": (36a) suggests that the hearer will be able to identify which hospital administrator is the one who mistreats the intern, in every case; (36b) seems to suggest that he




will not. But in both cases we want to say that the italicized NP is referentially dependent on the universal NP, because (36) and (35) show that both relations observe the GPAD.

As far as I know, the range of cases exhibiting the GPAD exhausts "intrinsic" anaphoric types: pronouns, dependent existentials and definites, epithets. The following section will show that it also includes the nonintrinsic anaphors.

2.2 Deletion and Destressing

I now turn to paradigms that show that deletion and destressing are subject to the GPAD.

(37) a. Anyone who wants to see the doctor can 0. [anyone [... VPantec ... .]] can VP

b. Anyone who wants to 0 can see the doctor. [anyone [... VP ... .]] can VPantec

c. Anyone can see the doctor who wants to 0. [anyone can VPantec [... VP ... *

d. *Anyone can 0 who wants to see the DOCTOR. [anyone can VP I.. . VPantec * * *]]

e. *Anyone can fill out a request to 0 who wants to see the DOCTOR. [anyone can [... VP . . Is I... VPant, .* 1]]

Examples (37a-d) repeat the original paradigm in (26), but this time with a null VP as the antecedent, rather than a pronoun. In complete analogy, the null VP can be linked to a backward antecedent exactly when the VP is backward and down from the antecedent (37b). This confirms the notion that deletion is an instance of anaphora; precisely the basic pattern of anaphora is found. (37e) shows that c-command is again irrelevant to characterizing the pattern. The null VP does not c-command the antecedent VP, but the example is still unacceptable, since it, like (37d), instantiates the backward-and-up pattern. The capitalization in (37d) and (37e) is meant to indicate main sentence stress. As before, if the antecedent is destressed, then the pattern is neutralized, since anaphor and putative antecedent alike depend on some antecedent that precedes them both.

(38) A: Who can see the doctor? B: Anyone can 0 who SIGNED UP to see the doctor.

We saw that for definite pronouns, if the antecedent and anaphor are in different conjuncts, then the antecedent must precede the anaphor. The same holds for deletion anaphors.

(39) a. If he can, John will try to visit Mary. b. If he is in NY, John will try to visit Mary. c. If he is in NY, John will try to visit Mary, and he probably will be. d. *If he is, John will try to visit Mary, and John will probably be in NY. e. * [[ ... OVP]subord . . onjunct and [. . . antecvp . . .]conjunCt2

(39a-b) are matched forward and backward-and-down cases; (39c) is a forward case across conjuncts; and (39d) is the backward case across conjuncts. (39e) is a schematic rendering of



592 EDWIN WILLIAMS

(39d). The null VP must occur in a subordinate clause that is subordinate to the clause containing its antecedent, not just in any subordinate clause.

Finally, even destressing can be shown to conform to the GPAD. The forward cases are easily accounted for.

(40) a. John insulted Mary [because SHE insulted HIM]subord.

b. [Because John insulted Mary]subord, SHE insulted HIM.

Here, the second instance of insult is destressed on the basis of its dependence on the first instance. As in the case of definite anaphors, the forward case is acceptable regardless of the hierarchical relation between the anaphor and antecedent.

As expected, the backward-and-up case is unacceptable.

(41) a. *JOHN had insulted MARY because she INSULTED him. b. *HE had insulted HER because John INSULTED Mary.

However, the unacceptability of the backward-and-down case is surprising.

(42) *Because JOHN had insulted MARY, she INSULTED him.

It turns out, though, that this backward-and-down case is unacceptable because it violates a further principle (Don't Overlook Anaphoric Possibilities (DOAP); see section 4.3.1 for full discussion), which requires that opportunities to anaphorically destress be taken. In (42) the second instance of insulted should be destressed because of its identity to the first instance, yielding (43).

(43) Because HE had insulted HER, MARY insulted JOHN.

Perhaps this case involves both forward and backward destressing; or perhaps both instances of destressing depend on some previous, or even unspoken, antecedent. In any event, (43) is not a clear case of the backward-and-down paradigm, since the intended antecedent of the first instance of insulted is itself anaphoric.

With the kinds of stress-based anaphors we have been considering, DOAP frustrates our efforts to construct the backward-and-down paradigm-the intended antecedent is forced to be anaphoric to the intended anaphor. However, it is possible to neutralize the effects of DOAP, by using an anaphor that is not identical to its antecedent. ((44) is based on examples from Lakoff 1968.)

(44) a. JOHN called Mary a REPUBLICAN and SHE insulted HIM. (Lakoff: to call X a Republican is to insult X)

b. *JOHN insulted MARY and SHE called HIM a Republican.

(44a) shows that the destressed anaphor need not be identical in form to its antecedent, but can instead stand in the "instance of" relation to it: to call X a Republican is one way to insult X.

Example (44b) shows that the relation is not symmetric. When the anaphor and antecedent are both descriptions, the anaphor must be the more general of the two descriptions; the anaphor cannot be an "instance of " the antecedent. In this case to insult X is not a way to call X a




Republican, though the reverse, at least according to Lakoff, may hold. This is the familiar Novelty Condition (Wasow 1972) on anaphora, as demonstrated for definite NP anaphora by (45).

(45) a. A captaini entered the room. The soldieri sat down at the bar. b. *A soldieri entered the room. The captaini sat down at the bar.

A captain is a kind of soldier, but a soldier is not a kind of captain, so the anaphoric dependence works one way, but not the other.

With this in mind, we can now construct a pure backward-and-down case of anaphoric destressing. We will use call a Republican as the antecedent, since it cannot be destressed as a dependent of insult.

(46) a. [Because SHE had insulted HIM]subord, John called Mary a REPUBLICAN. b. *SHE insulted HIM [because John called Mary a REPUBLICAN]subord.

(46a) is backward and down, and (46b), backward and up; and the result concludes the demonstra- tion of the perfect conformity of anaphoric destressing to the GPAD.4

2.3 Presupposition?

The preceding demonstrations locate the destressing phenomena squarely in the realm of anaphora. (Of course, they show that deletion is basically anaphoric as well, but this has always been acknowledged.) What, then, does destressing have to do with Presupposition? Almost nothing; in other uses of the term, Presupposition concerns presumed truths, whereas here, if anything, antecedents are presumed. For example, (47b) presupposes (47c), but (47a) does not.

(47) Mary might have gone there. a. Fine, but if JOHN went there, then ... b. Fine, but if it was JOHN who went there, then ... c. Presupposition: someone went there

4 Although these considerations clearly show that the most general laws of anaphora govern the behavior of destressing, destressing anaphora is different from "lexical" anaphors and ellipsis in one important respect. Lexical anaphors and ellipsis are "incomplete" in a way that goes beyond their minimal information content. For example, (ia) and (ib) are equivalent in information content, but only the second one calls for an antecedent.

(i) a. John bought something green. b. John bought a green one.

Destressed anaphors, on the other hand, although they imply antecedents, are referentially complete in themselves. No doubt related to this is a second difference between destressed anaphors and lexical anaphors: the reference of a destressed anaphor is not determined to the same degree as that of a lexical anaphor.

(ii) a. John bought a duck, and Bill bought one also. b. John bought a duck, and BILL bought a fowl, also.

First, (iia) cannot mean (iib); that is, the pronoun one gets as its value nothing less than the full value of the antecedent duck. It is logically conceivable that one could mean 'something like that', but it does not; it means 'exactly that'. Second, the destressed buy a fowl in (iib), although it takes buy a duck as its antecedent, does not mean 'buy a duck', but simply 'buy a fowl', which includes 'buy a duck' as a special case but is not limited to it. Unlike a lexical anaphor or ellipsis, a destressed anaphor does not take as its value the value of its antecedent.



594 EDWIN WILLIAMS

The cleft construction truly does carry a Presupposition, whereas destressed material does not. Some researchers have sought to connect the two, by positing that there is a Presupposition that the destressed material "occurs in previous discourse (or is in some equivalent way 'salient')"; but this is to say nothing more than that the destressed material is part of the anaphoric system, since this is the "Presupposition," so to speak, of all uses of anaphors-what it means, in fact, to be anaphoric. I will treat destressing strictly as a matter of anaphora and will seek to elucidate its properties in terms of a general theory of anaphora; and likewise for Presupposition's cousin, Focus. However, I will continue to use the terms Presupposition, Focus, and Focus-Presupposition structure, since they are familiar in the study of stress-based anaphora. Presupposition approxi- mates my notion of destressing anaphor, and Focus, my term disanaphor (to be introduced below).

3 Identifying Anaphoric Elements

A pronoun like he is intrinsically a pronoun: wherever it occurs, it has an anaphoric value (putting aside deixis). The same is not true, however, of material that has been anaphorically destressed. Such anaphors are instead contextually defined or identified. Thus, lied to Congress is not intrinsically anaphoric, but it is anaphoric in the italicized position in (48).

(48) John didn't lie to Congress, HIS WIFE lied to Congress.

The context of identification of destressed anaphors might be defined to be in part the following:

(49) [[MAIN STRESS] ]xp

That is, material is identified as anaphorically destressed when its left sister receives the main stress of the constituent. What the context actually is will be explored in detail in section 4; (49) will serve for the present discussion.

The contextual identification of anaphors is quite widespread, and not at all limited to anaphoric destressing. Another case is the phenomenon that has been called ones pronominalization.

(50) a. John saw green cows and Bill saw red ones. b. *John likes books and Bill likes ones too.

(SOb) shows that it is not sufficient to call ones an intrinsic pronoun-if it were, then the unacceptability of (50b) would be puzzling. In fact, ones has a context of identification, or licensing, which is approximately the following:

(51) adjective

Only in this context is ones anaphoric. Similarly, deleted N' is contextually defined as well. (52b) shows that null N"s are not free in distribution, and (52c) shows the identifying context.

(52) a. John saw Sally's house and I saw Bill's. b. *John saw houses and I saw 0 too. c. [NP's __ ]NP




VP-deletion-or generally, predicate XP-deletion-is contextually identified. Not just any predicate XP can delete, or even any tenseless VP; rather, only XPs in the context of various modal verbs are eligible (see (53d)).

(53) a. John saw Mary and then I did 0. b. *John saw Mary leave and I saw her 0 too. (in the relevant meaning) c. *John considers Sally unhealthy, and I consider Bill 0. d. [auxiliary-verb vP]

A peculiar limitation on antecedence arises in all these cases of contextually identified anaphors: the antecedent cannot be contained in the context of the identification. For example, consider the following cases of N'-deletion:

(54) a. John's mother is smarter than Bill's. b. John's mother's mother is smarter than his father's mother. c. John's mother's mother is smarter than his father's 0. d. *John's mother's 0 is very smart. e. [[[John]NP 's [mother]N']NP 's 0]NP is very smart. (0 = mother)

(54a-c) work as expected: the correct context is present, and the anaphor is valid. Unexpectedly, though, the deletion in (54d) (of mother) is unacceptable. Actually, the deletion is not itself unacceptable-(54e) could mean 'John's mother's dog is very smart'- it is simply unacceptable on the intended meaning, 'John's mother's mother is very smart'. Why can the 0 head N' of the matrix NP not take the N' of the NP in the specifier of that NP as its antecedent?

Note that the answer to the last question does not lie in the i-within-i Condition. In this case the putative antecedent and anaphor are distinct elements in the linear string, as (54e) indicates. Whatever the merits of the i-within-i Condition (and it has very few, in my mind, apart from the obvious cases involving circular determination of definite reference), it is not the governing principle here.

I think in fact that this sort of case is not covered by familiar principles, and I therefore propose the following:

(55) The Principle of Anaphoric Identification (PAI) The antecedent of an anaphor cannot be contained in its context of identification.

The PAI applies with full generality to the anaphors that require contextual identification, as far as I can tell. For example, it explains the following gap in ones pronominalization:

(56) *A boss's principal one is usually meaner than the boss himself. (one = boss)

As we shall see, the PAI also applies with full force to anaphoric destressing and VP-deletion and thus confirms the earlier conclusion that anaphoric destressing is principally a matter of anaphora. It also fills an otherwise puzzling gap in the paradigms of both destressing and VP- deletion, to which I now turn.

In ordinary circumstances the repetition of a phrase is obligatorily destressed, as discussed earlier (DOAP).



596 EDWIN WILLIAMS

(57) Who left? a. JOHN left. b. *John LEFT.

But in the following conversation this is not so:

(58) Why is there no one here? a. Because anyone who wanted to leave LEFT. b. *Because anyone who wanted to LEAVE left. c. Because anyone who wanted to leave DID 0. (or, . . . to LEAVE DID) d. *Because anyone who wanted to LEAVE did 0.

Despite the fact that the matrix VP in (58a) is a repetition of the VP in the relative, it cannot be destressed ((58a) vs. (58b)). (58c-d) are completely parallel cases involving VP-deletion.

The PAI dictates this outcome. (58b) has the following structure:

(59) [ ...MAIN STRESS]Np [destressed]vp

By virtue of bearing the main stress of the sentence, the NP subject serves to identify the VP as a destressing anaphor. The PAI then tells us that the antecedent for the destressed VP cannot be in the NP subject; but that is the intended interpretation of (58b). (58a) and (58c) are grammatical simply because they contain no destressing anaphor.

The VP-deletion in (58c) is valid because the context of identification for the deleted VP does not include the matrix subject; rather, it is just the context mentioned earlier.

(60) [auxiliary-verb J]vp

(58d) is unacceptable not because the VP-deletion is, but because did 0 is a destressing anaphor, and so its context of identification does include the subject.

Importantly, the PAI does not rule out the forms (58b) and (58d); it only rules out their interpretation. This can best be seen in connection with (58d), which also involves VP-deletion. (58d) is fully grammatical, as long as the matrix VP is not interpreted as having the VP in the subject relative as its antecedent. (61) sets up a context in which (58d) occurs validly.

(61) Who applied for visas? Anyone who wanted to LEAVE did 0. (0 = apply for visas)

In fact, the deleted VP in (58d) can even be interpreted as leave just as long as it does not take the VP in the subject relative as its antecedent; this will be possible just in case there is another occurrence of leave in the context that can serve as the antecedent in accordance with the PAI. (62) illustrates just such a case.

(62) Who do you think will leave? a. [Anyone who WANTS to leave]NP [will leave]vp. b. [Anyone who WANTS to leave]NP [will O]vP-

Here, as before, the subject has the main stress, so the VP is a destressing anaphor, with the subject as its context of identification. However, here it takes the VP in the question as its




antecedent and so does not violate the PAI. This confirms a detail in the way the PAI is stated: the PAI bars antecedence, not mere equivalence. The destressed VP in (62) is equivalent to the VP in the subject relative, but it does not take it as its antecedent.

Why should there be such a principle as the PAI? I don't know. One approach to this question might in fact take the context of identification of an anaphor to be the anaphor itself, or part of the anaphor. For example, in the case of N'-deletion ([Bill's 0]), it is the possessive itself that is anaphoric, or perhaps the whole NP. We could then say that the anaphor could not contain its own antecedent, a self-evident property of anaphors, antecedent-contained deletion cases aside.

The PAI might be extended to "normal" pronouns like him by setting the context of identification of such pronouns to be the maximal projection (or complete functional complex) that contains them; this would approximate Condition B effects, since the PAI would then dictate that the smallest maximal projection containing the pronoun could not contain an antecedent of the pronoun.

I am not at all convinced of either of the last two points, but I mention them as possible paths to a wider understanding of the PAI.

4 The Identificational Context of Anaphoric Destressing

I will now develop some specific ideas about the identification and interpretation of stress-based Focus and Presupposition. On the one hand, I will argue that the system is more unified than has previously been thought, in that there is a unitary system of anaphora that is responsible for all phenomena that have been identified variously as Topic-Comment, Focus-Presupposition, contrastive stress, and anaphoric destressing. In other words, I will argue that a single set of laws is responsible for all of these effects.

On the other hand, I will suggest that the system itself is modular, consisting of two different sorts of principles. First, there are principles that determine the context of identification of destressing anaphors; these are principles determining the form of the "Normal" stress pattern (and, consequently, the form of the "Special" stress pattern). Second, there are principles determining the anaphoric content of the Special pattern: the rules of anaphoric commitment.

4.1 Focus-Presupposition versus Anaphoric Destressing

Selkirk (1984) has argued that in addition to a stress-based Focus-Presupposition system, there must also be rules of anaphoric destressing. She argues in part from the following remark and response (p. 223, (5.28)):

(63) A: It's hot ... B: Yeah, they SAID it would be hot ...

She observes that the principal accent of the response is on the verb SAID, a noncanonical position, and further, that the response is not "contrastive," in that this verb is not thrown in contrast with other possible verbs here (i.e., no contrast with muttered, screamed, etc., is implied). Therefore, she reasons, the accent on SAID must not indicate a Focus on that verb; instead, it must be a



598 EDWIN WILLIAMS

consequence of destressing the complement of the verb (it would be hot), a destressing that is licensed by the occurrence of a nearly identical expression in the initial remark. Selkirk's theory clearly embraces both stress-based Focus and anaphoric destressing.

I feel that there can be no coherent account that includes both focusing and destressing rules. To see why, consider the following:

(64) It's really hot! A: I thought it would be cold, but Mary said that it would be hot. B: *Well, JOHN said that it would be cold.

(65) a. It is cold b. cold c. said that it would be hot d. that it would be hot e. said f. would be hot

The dialogue in (64) is not well formed, but why not? In a theory with anaphoric destressing, I am not sure there is an answer. The destressed material consists of two parts, each separately underlined; each of these parts occurs in A's initial remark, and so each is licensed to be destressed ((65) is a list of potential destressing antecedents provided by A's remark). However, the cumulative effect of destressing both said and that it would be cold engenders an implication that is unintended, and that is not at all licensed by A's remark: namely, that someone said that it would be cold, and furthermore, that that someone is not John. But this implication is the same as what would result from calling John a Focus here, and the underlined material the Presupposition. It would seem, then, that it is impossible to anaphorically destress material without affecting the Focus-Presupposition structure. In other words, anaphoric destressing is not Focus-neutral, as Selkirk had hoped.

The conclusion I will draw is somewhat stronger than what this example suggests. In fact, I will conclude that Focus-Presupposition structure and anaphoric destressing are one and the same thing, and that there is a unitary principle governing this realm of fact, which I will call the Disanaphora Law.

Returning to Selkirk's original example, (63), we should now ask, is it possible to regard SAID as the Focus of the example? I think so. A's remark contains the proposition "it be hot," and A's relation to this is to assert it. We might imagine other modalities applied to this proposition, some of which are shown in (66).

(66) will(it be hot) should(it be hot) no, but might(it be hot) A: assert:(it be hot) B: John SAID(it be hot)




B's response is to contrast A's assertion of this proposition with they SAID applied to this proposition, and on these grounds the contrastive "focal" stress is warranted. The lesson is that it is impossible to destress one thing without stressing another, and the stress that falls on the other is loaded, not empty.

(64) shows that cumulative destressing yields a "false" Focus. The same point can be made with the following example:

(67) I was eating cookies, waiting for a passenger. a. *Suddenly the queen got in my cab, so I GAVE the queen a cookie. b. The queen had been eyeing my cookies, so I GAVE the queen a cookie. c. f(queen, cookie)

(a)PREsuP: f =??

(b)PRESUP: f = x had been eyeing y

In the second clause of (67a) and (67b), the speaker has destressed both the queen and a cookie; each of these destressings is independently warranted by the phrases' previous occurrence in the monologue. However, the effect in (67a) is odd, whereas in (67b) it is appropriate. Why is there a difference? I think it becomes clear if one regards (67c) as the "Presupposition" that arises from the second clause of (67a) (or (67b)); it says, "There is some function relating queen and cookie (and furthermore, that function is not GIVE)." In (67a) there is no salient function (cookie occurs in one sentence, and queen occurs in an unrelated sentence); however, in (67b) there is a salient function, namely, the one given ((b)PREsuP).

The lesson again is that cumulative destressing is not allowed. One cannot destress one phrase, and then destress its neighbor, with separate licensing for each; rather, stretches of destressed material must cohere in a way to be made precise shortly. I will assume that any theory that fails on this point is on the wrong track.

One may conclude from the above discussion that a free rule of anaphoric destressing is not welcome in a theory of Focus-Presupposition structure, and in developing such a theory, one might seek to explain the phenomena of anaphoric destressing by means of features of the system establishing the Focus-Presupposition structure, rather than by means of a rule of anaphoric destressing. This is not the path I will take; rather, I will take the notion of anaphoric destressing to be basic and then explicate the notions of Focus and Presupposition in terms of it.

First, however, I would like to illustrate a further empirical shortcoming of traditional views of Focus-Presupposition structure. The problem, in short, is that the scope of the Presupposition is too large. If, for example, we follow Chomsky (1972) or Jackendoff (1972), the Focus-Presuppo- sition structure of (68a) is (68b).

(68) a. I saw a convict with a RED shirt yesterday. b. Focus = red

Presupposition: Xx(I saw a convict with a x shirt)

But the Presupposition is too large here. There is no need for a whole proposition to have occurred



600 EDWIN WILLIAMS

or to be entailed by what has occurred in previous conversation; the previous conversation could have simply been

(69) Gee, they don't make brightly colored shirts anymore, do they?

In (69) there is no mention of seeing, or of convicts. On the other hand, it seems impossible for this comment to occur when there has been no mention of shirts. Hence, the Presupposition is Xx(x shirt), which is not what one thinks of as a Presupposition, since it is not propositional. Rather, we might regard Xx(x shirt) as the context of contrast, within which RED is contrastive. As a result, we will want to develop a theory that draws the appropriately narrow context of contrast.

4.2 The Definition of the Normal Pattern

4.2.1 Modularity In the system we will consider here, there are two separate sets of principles. On the one hand, there are the rules determining the form of the Special and the Normal patterns (formal rules). These are the rules that identify the anaphors-that is, give their context of identification. On the other hand, there are the principles governing the anaphoric commitment of these pattems (anaphoric rules).

To put this another way, we might say that there are rules governing the form of representations in which every node is marked as either Special or Normal, and there are rules determining the anaphoric properties of such representations. For example, "ATE small peas" might be annotated by the formal rules as shown in (70a), but it would be assigned anaphoric value as indicated in (70b).

(70) a. Formal rules: [V [adj n]NP(N)]vP(s)

b. Anaphoric rules: NP is anaphoric, V is disanaphoric.

The reason for positing two systems of rules is that although there are a variety of rules governing the Special/Normal distinction, some of them quite idiosyncratic, once that distinction is made, the possibilities of anaphoric interpretation are fixed, not subject to any further variation from case to case. Furthermore, when we turn to deletion, we find a definition of Special/Normal that is not stress-based, although the anaphoric interpretation is the same as in the stress-based system.

The obvious alternative is a system of rules that directly interprets levels of stress in terms of anaphora. But this would lose the generalization locked into the independent interpretation of the Special/Normal contrast: the fact that the interpretation of the contrast is independent of what rule determines the form of the Special and Normal patterns in a given instance. To pose this issue concretely: could there be, for example, a rule requiring, in the case of a weak pronoun and a strong verb, that both the pronoun and the verb be anaphoric? In principle, such a rule could exist, but not in the system envisaged here. The anaphoric commitment of the patterns is set out in advance, so only the identification of a given type of phrase as instantiating one or the other of the two patterns can vary from case to case.




I will assume that the sufficient phonological representation for determining anaphora is the metrical tree theory of Liberman (1975), whereby of the nodes dominated by a branching node, one is Strong (labeled S) and the rest are Weak (labeled W). This is illustrated in (71).

(71) [Yourw FRIENDs]s [is [trying [myw patiences]s]s]w.

We may assume that apart from the requirement that every node dominate one and only one S, the assignment of Ws and Ss is random. The globally most prominent accent will occur on the leaf node dominated completely by Ss, as detailed by Liberman. The calculus I will develop in fact never needs recourse to anything other than the local prominence defined for a set of sisters, since no notion of "Focus of an entire utterance," or any other globally defined entity, is needed.

4.2.2 The Normal Pattern The definition of the Normal pattern involves a number of factors. In what follows I will consider "total anaphorizability" to be diagnostic of the Normal pattern. Total anaphorizability exists when the entire expression can be anaphoric to something that precedes.

(72) a. Did John see Mary? b. Yes, John saw MARY. (N) c. Yes, he SAW her. (N) d. *Yes, HE saw HER. (5)

Responses (72b) and (72c) are totally anaphoric; that is, the clauses in question are fully redundant with preceding material. They therefore represent the Normal pattern (designated by (V)). (72d), on the other hand, is not totally anaphoric (hence is inappropriate as a "yes" answer to (72a)) and therefore represents a Special pattern (designated by (S)). In (72d) the subject and object positions are felt to be contrastive; furthermore, the verb position is obligatorily anaphoric.

In fact, each branching node can be labeled with respect to whether it is Special or Normal. (72d) would accordingly be labeled as follows:

(73) Yes, [HE [saw HER](s)](s).

In section 4.3 we will consider how to calculate the anaphoric commitment entailed by such representations.

Example (72b) shows that the Normal pattern for [V NP] is right-accented. As Schmerling (1976) has proposed (and Selkirk (1984) seconded), in the Normal pattern the verb is weak with respect to the object or, more generally, complements (Weak Head).

When the object is a pronoun, however, the pronoun is destressed with respect to the verb in the Normal pattern. In general, clitics are destressed with respect to their hosts (Weak Clitic), as (74) confirms.

(74) a. Who did you TALK to? (N) b. Who did you talk TO? (S)

The Normal pattern is (74a), not (74b), because to is a clitic here. Now, the rules Weak Head and Weak Clitic are both correct, but in fact give conflicting results for the structure [head clitic]



602 EDWIN WILLIAMS

since it is impossible to make both head and clitic weak when they are sisters. Therefore, we must give one rule priority. Suppose that we give priority to Weak Clitic. Then, faced with a choice, one will choose to fail Weak Head in order to satisfy Weak Clitic. This priority is surely predictable on general grounds: Weak Clitic is more specific than Weak Head and thus, on grounds of the Blocking Principle, takes precedence over it. Prepositions relate to their complements in exactly the same way.

(75) Did you give the money to Mary? a. Yes, I gave the money [TO her]. (N) b. *Yes, I gave the money [to HER]. (S) c. I called up HIM. (N) (pronoun not in clitic position)

In a more idiosyncratic vein, a "predictable" object is weak with respect to its governing head (Weak PO).

(76) a. John is in jail because he killed a MAN. (S) b. John is in jail because he KILLED a man. (N) c. *John is in jail because he KILLED a woman. (S) d. John is in jail because he RAPED a woman. (N)

(76b), not (76a), is the Normal, noncontrastive pattern. Therefore, Weak PO has precedence over Weak Head, again on general grounds. (76c) and (76d) show just how peculiar these rules can be: for whatever reason, man, but not woman, is predictable after kill, but after rape the reverse holds.

Finally, linear order plays a role.

(77) a. a red SHIRT (N) b. a RED shirt (S) c. a shirt that RED (N) d. a SHIRT that red (S)

Here, as the reader may verify, the Normal pattern in each case is the one in which the weak element is on the left, regardless of the [head adjunct] order. Hence, linear order seems to determine the cases for which there is no other Special rule. Hence, Weak Left is given lowest priority. The rules are thus as follows, the priorities among them being determined on general "blocking" grounds (the most specific rule applicable governs):

(78) Weak PO Weak Clitic Weak Head Weak Left

The rules are intrinsically ordered by considerations of specificity. For example, Weak Head applies whenever two sisters are in the complement relation, and Weak Left applies when two sisters instantiate some other relation; therefore, Weak Head takes precedence over Weak Left.




Similarly, Weak Clitic takes precedence over Weak Head, because it holds when two sisters are in the complement relation and the complement is a pronoun.

In compounds, the rule defining the Normal pattern is Weak Right.

(79) a. We bought a POOL table. (N) b. We bought a pool TABLE. (S)

(79b) is not ungrammatical; rather, it is perceived to be contrastive. In some compounds the weak element is on the left, however.

(80) Fifth AVENUE (N)

But the Rhythm Rule, a rule readjusting the stress pattern of prehead modifiers, reverses this perception.

(81) a. FIFTH Avenue ADDRESS (N) b. Fifth AVENUE address (S)

Here, (8 ib) is perceived as contrastive, and hence not Normal, even though in isolation the same pattern on the first two words would instantiate the Normal case. Interestingly, the Rhythm Rule reverses Special/Normal possibilities, rather than eliminating one of them.

4.3 The Disanaphora Law

In this section I will consider the laws that govern the occurrence of the Normal and the Special patterns. In doing so, I will justify the assumptions previously made about interpretation, and the diagnostics used (e.g., the notion of "total anaphoricity" as a diagnostic of the Normal pattern).

I will show that in fact a single rule governs the content of the Special pattern and that the Normal pattern gets its content from being the "elsewhere" case.

4.3.1 Don't Overlook Anaphoric Possibilities The first rule, so obvious as to be missed, is that opportunities to anaphorize text must be acknowledged.

(82) Don't Overlook Anaphoric Possibilities (DOAP) Opportunities to anaphorize text must be seized.

As illustration, consider (83).

(83) A: Did John see MARY? B I: Yes, he SAW her. B2: *Yes, HE saw HER. B3: No, SHE saw HIM.

Response (B 1) is acceptable because, instantiating the Normal pattern as it does, it can be totally anaphoric with A's initial remark. By contrast, (B2) is a Special pattern and calls for contrast with (A) in subject and object position. If he = John and her = Mary, such contrast is unwarranted and violates DOAP. (B3) is a valid response, since both the contrast in subjects (she ? John) and the contrast in objects (him ? Mary) are warranted.



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Importantly, HIM in (B3) is not contrastive in general, that is, distinct from any previous NP. It is understood only as contrastive with the object in (A). Likewise, the destressed her in (B 1) is necessarily coreferential not just with some NP in (A), but specifically with the object in (A). To discuss these sorts of facts further, I will now introduce two terms, coanaphoric and disanaphoric.

(84) X is coanaphoric if X is a grammatical dependent of Y, and X is anaphoric with the dependent of the antecedent of Y. X is disanaphoric if it is not coanaphoric.

Xi X2

Antec A Antec B A B

In (B 1) of (83) her is coanaphoric, since SAW is anaphoric and her is anaphoric with the corresponding grammatical dependent of the antecedent of SAW; in (B2) HER is inappropriately disanaphoric; and in (B3) SHE is appropriately disanaphoric.

4.3.2 The Disanaphora Law The Disanaphora Law, the principal law governing facts in this domain, can now be stated.

(85) The Disanaphora Law In the Special pattern a. the weak element is necessarily anaphoric; b. the strong element is disanaphoric.

For example, since [saw HER] in (B2) of (83) is Special, saw is necessarily anaphoric and HER is disanaphoric, giving the correct result for that case. The important feature of the concept of disanaphora is that it is relational; an item is disanaphoric or not depending on the anaphoricity of its sister, not just on what it is anaphoric to. This feature is what gives the effects we have observed (e.g., the context dependence of contrastive stress).

I have given no rule for interpreting the Normal pattern. This is because the Special and Normal patterns are not simply two different patterns with different rules for interpreting them; rather, they are connected by the Blocking Principle. Let us examine when the two patterns can be used, in connection with a simple example.

(86) a. a red HAT <N> b. a RED hat <S>

In (86a) hat is strong and red is weak, and in (86b) the opposite is true. As stated in (85), the Special pattern, (86b), has two requirements:

(87) The weak element is anaphoric, and the strong element is contrastive (disanaphoric).




Therefore, (86b) can occur in (88a), but not in (88b) or (88c).

(88) a. John bought a blue hat because Bill has a RED hat. b. *John bought a red car because Bill has a RED hat. c. *John bought a red hat because Bill has a RED hat.

In (88a) hat is anaphoric, and RED is disanaphoric, as required. In (88b) hat is not anaphoric. In (88c) hat is anaphoric, but RED is not contrastive.

When a phrase instantiates the Special pattern, an anaphoric commitment is generated in the weak member of the phrase, but this anaphoric commitment does not extend beyond that weak member. Since that weak phrase may be of any syntactic category at all, instances in which the anaphoric commitment amounts to something like a propositional "Presupposition" will be very much the Special case. In (88) the phrase instantiating the Special pattern is RED hat, and the only anaphoric commitment generated is on hat. The rest of the sentence, Bill has a, is therefore free to be anaphoric or not, and in (88) it is not.

Now, what are the conditions under which the Normal pattern is used? They are exactly the complement of the conditions under which the Special pattern is used; since the Special pattern must meet two restrictions, the complement is a complicated disjunction, and it includes the following cases:

(89) a. strong element anaphoric, weak element (co)anaphoric Sam wanted a red hat, so I bought him a [red HAT].

b. strong element not anaphoric, weak element anaphoric Sam wanted a red tie, but I bought him a [red HAT].

c. strong element not anaphoric, weak element not anaphoric Sam wanted a blue tie, but I bought him a [red HAT].

These are simply all of the logical possibilities except of course for the following:

(90) strong element anaphoric, weak element disanaphoric

The reason that this case cannot be instantiated as the Normal pattern is that it is what the Special pattern is meant to cover, but with weak and strong exchanged. That is to say, the Special and Normal patterns are in a blocking relation, with the Special pattern covering exactly the circum- stance in (87), and the Normal pattern covering all other cases. The Normal pattern is thus the elsewhere case.

I will sometimes refer to examples like the one in (89a) (where a weak subordinate to an anaphoric strong is forced to be coanaphoric) as arising from the "Coanaphora Law." It should be understood throughout that there is no explicit coanaphora law, and that the obligatoriness of anaphora for a weak subordinate to an anaphoric strong is simply a consequence of the Disanaphora Law operating under the elsewhere discipline, as just discussed in connection with (89) and (90).

Importantly, there is no direct tie between strong stress and Focus, or between weak stress



606 EDWIN WILLIAMS

and anaphoricity. In the Normal pattern it is possible for the strong element to be anaphoric (89a), and it is possible for the weak element to be nonanaphoric (89c) (though these possibilities are mutually exclusive). This argues strongly for the autonomous view developed here, where stress patterns, not individual stresses, are sorted into Special and Normal cases, and then these cases are assigned anaphoric value.

4.3.3 Violating DOAP In (91) DOAP is obeyed in the local domains delimited by curly brackets.

(91) {When John laughs, MARY laughs} and {when John cries, SHE cries}.

However, in (92) DOAP is violated and yet the expression is valid.

(92) {When John laughs, Mary LAUGHS} and {when John cries, she CRIES}.

Clearly, both (91) and (92) must be available. They are both acceptable; they simply say different things.

Importantly, the second conjunct of (92) in isolation is not acceptable.

(93) *When John cries, she CRIES.

There are in fact two ways to "parse" the string of words underlying (91) so as to satisfy the Disanaphora Law. (91) itself can be parsed as (94) (where An(x) means 'anaphoric to x' and Dis(x) means 'disanaphoric to x').

(94) when John, laughs2 MARYDis(2) laughsAn(2) and when John3 cries4 SHEDis(l) criesAn(2)

(92) can be parsed as (95).

(95) when John laughs1 Mary LAUGHS2 and when John crieSDis(l) she CRIESDis(2) Anaphor: When John X's she Y's.

Both parsings are valid, but they are incompatible. (94) calls for a principal accent on Mary, and (95) calls for one on cries, but these cannot be realized together, since a strong element must have a weak sister.

In fact, though, (94) and (95) correspond to two different ways of organizing the discourse; they make different points about John and Mary. The first makes or supports the point that Mary does everything that John does; the second, that Mary's laughter and tears occur under different conditions.

It is revealing both that the conflict between the two parsings does not lead to ungrammati- cality and that one parsing does not win out over the other, yielding only a single way to say the string. Rather, both ways are possible, because they have different meanings. This suggests that DOAP is really a "higher-order" directive to bind discourse together with anaphora as much as possible. Differently structured discourses will allow different anaphoric relationships, and DOAP is relativized to structured discourse. Given these characteristics, it falls far outside what can be formalized in linguistic terms.




4.3.4 Attraction to Focus In this discussion I have steered clear of assigning the term Focus any theoretical value, though I have used it informally. Clearly, it would be best to explicate the relevant domain of phenomena entirely in terms of the rules of anaphora outlined thus far, without any special rules for Focus. To determine whether such a stance can be maintained, I will recon- sider phenomena previously described in terms of Focus, starting with the consequences the views outlined here have for the analysis of attraction to Focus (Jackendoff 1972, Rooth 1985).

The difference in interpretation between (96a) and (96b) illustrates the phenomenon. ((96a-c) are from Rooth 1985:(27)-(29).)

(96) a. John only introduced BILL to Sue. b. John only introduced Bill to SUE. c. VP[[P{j} & C(P)] -- P = Aintroduce'(b,s)]

Rooth's account of attraction to Focus is as follows:

The translation [(96c)] is the same in the two cases, which does not do justice to our intuitions about the meanings of the sentences. But the right truth conditions can be obtained by supplying different values for C in the two cases. The idea is that in [(96a)], the quantification is restricted to properties of the form 'introduce y to Sue', while in [(96b)] it is restricted to properties of the form 'introduce Bill to y'. (1985:44)

Formula (96c) says that for all properties P true of John and contained in the restriction set C, P is introduce Bill to Sue. C is the collection of "relevant properties" that quantification is restricted to. The restriction to properties is via Focus: the VP with the Focus abstracted out characterizes the form of the properties in the restriction set C. The linguistic determinant of C for (96a) is introduce x to Sue; the determinant for (96b) is introduce Bill to y.

For the cases he discusses, Rooth's system is basically right. But for some further cases, where destressing anaphora is relevant, it goes awry.

(97) I only promised Mary a small sum, and I only promised PETE a small sum, as well.

Under Rooth's system a contradictory interpretation results here, because in the second clause the focusing of PETE means that the restriction set consists of properties of the form prormised y a small sum, and the only one of those true of me is where y = PETE-but the first clause asserts that y = Mary as well. The appropriate restriction set for only in the second clause consists of properties of the form in (98),

(98) promise Pete y

which does not correspond to the anaphor and in fact contains the disanaphor (- Focus). The problem is that Rooth's system must treat Focus as obligatorily determining the restric-

tion set for only. In fact, though, the focusing has a different function in this example: it makes a small sum anaphoric.

I think the best that can be said is that the stress-defined anaphor is a good candidate for



608 EDWIN WILLIAMS

the restriction on quantification, since, as an anaphor, it is already available; however, it may not always be the right set, as in (97).

Assigning to (97) the stress pattern that Rooth's rules would need to assign (98) as the restriction set would yield (99).

(99) *1 only promised Mary a small sum, and I only promised Pete a small SUM, as well.

But this is anomalous, not because of anything having to do with only, but because a basic law of anaphora, DOAP, has been violated: a potential anaphor (give x a small sum) has been overlooked.

The opposite sort of case is one where the stress pattern required by Rooth's rules would imply the existence of an anaphor that has no possible antecedent. Consider (100).

(100) Yesterday, I only saw blue TRUCKS on the road.

Here, the restriction could be to saw blue x's, or to saw x's; but then, how would one express the idea that of all the trucks on the road, I only saw blue ones, which would have a restriction set determined by (101)?

(101) saw x trucks

It cannot be (102).

(102) *Yesterday, I only saw BLUE trucks on the road.

This would give the right restriction set by Rooth's rules, but at the same time it makes trucks anaphoric, which is not appropriate (hence the *), unless (102) has been preceded in discourse by the mention of trucks, or something tantamount to it.

(103) I see all kinds of trucks usually, but yesterday, I only saw BLUE trucks on the road.

In cases like (97) and (103), the rules of anaphora seem to hold in full force. The best cases are ones where the restriction set corresponds to the anaphor, as would be natural, since anaphors are "present in the discourse" anyway. Where the appropriate restriction set cannot be determined by a stress-based anaphor, it seems to be available anyway.

I think there is no special rule assigning the restriction set in terms of Focus; rather, a stress- based anaphor is nothing more than a very natural determinant of the restriction set, though others are available as well, if the laws of anaphora dictate a stress pattern whose defined anaphor does not determine the desired restriction set.

Another way to construe the matter is that there is a Focus-Presupposition structure in (99), for example, that is relevant to only, but it is subordinated to the structure required by DOAP. Here, the Disanaphora Law has broader scope than the rule governing only, since the former connects the two conjuncts, whereas the latter has only a single conjunct as its domain; in such




a case the superordinate relation determines the form, as we saw in connection with (91) and (92). In the next section I will treat the general matter of Focus subordination.

5 The Syntax of Focus and Topic

Now, how might the theory just outlined be embedded in a more complete theory of language, including a theory of syntax? In particular, are the previously noted sound-meaning correlations between the placement of accent and the anaphoric properties of the constituents reflected in the syntactic structure of utterances? I will show that Focus-Presupposition structure exhibits a recursive embedding structure. In section 6 1 will develop the notion that Topic is simply an embedded Focus.

Various syntactic constructions have been identified as topicalizing or focusing. For example, the subvariant of wh-movement called topicalization has been identified with the notion of Topic as discussed here, and the cleft and pseudocleft constructions have been identified as having a focusing effect of the kind discussed in connection with accent placement. Can these identifications be maintained?

At first, the identification looks correct. The most "natural" way to pronounce (104a) is with main accent on the clefted constituent.

(104) a. It was JOHN who bought the books. b. F = John, P = Xx(x bought the books) c. JOHN bought the books. d. It was John who bought the BOOKS. e. F = BOOKS, P = Xx(F = John, P = Xy(x bought y)) f. It was John who bought the records. g. It wasn't JOHN who bought the books. > Someone bought the books. h. JOHN bought the books. >? Someone bought the books.

With Focus on John, (104a) can serve the same conversational function as, for example, (104c), where John has been accent-focused, but not syntactically clefted. Either answers Who bought the books?, as the analysis in (104b) would suggest.

However, (104d) shows that it is possible for syntactic Focus and accent Focus to diverge. (104d) has a very special "meaning," or restriction on its use. In most discussions of focusing, examples like (104d) are set aside as special, implicitly dismissed as part of the initial idealization. However, much can be learned by looking at exactly what the "meaning" of (104d) is.

(104d) has a "metalinguistic" flavor. It is in fact very restricted in its use, perhaps occurring uniquely as a rejoinder to an utterance like (104f). Why should this be? Suppose that we apply the rules for determining the accent-based Focus-Presupposition structure; we then obtain (104e). The Presupposition of (104e) is interesting in itself containing a Focus-Presupposition structure. I think this feature of (104e) captures exactly the metalinguistic character of (104d): it presupposes one Focus-Presupposition structure, but puts forward another. The Presupposition of a Focus-



610 EDWIN WILLIAMS

Presupposition structure entails the prior occurrence of a very "linguistic" object, something more than a mere proposition, something with a particular Focus-Presupposition structure; only something like (104f) could satisfy that requirement. If this is correct, then these examples are not outside the range of the ordinary rules for calculating Focus-Presupposition structure, but in fact reconfirm their essential correctness, since those rules, combined with the observations about the "meaning" of presupposing a Focus-Presupposition structure, predict the examples' special details of interpretation.

A significant asymmetry obtains in (104d). It is the syntactic Focus that is presupposed, and the accent Focus that is a part of the utterer (of (104d))'s utterance. Strictly speaking, there is no reason why the interpretation could not have been reversed, with the accent Focus presupposed and the syntactic Focus asserted. In that case (104d) could be used as a rejoinder to (105).

(105) Bill bought the BOOKS.

But this is impossible. What this result means is that syntactic focusing and accent focusing are not on a par; syntactic focusing is either "embedded within" accent focusing or subordinate to it, and thus is not available when calculating the top-level discourse functioning of the sentence.

From the last observation we can immediately conclude that it would not be appropriate to supply syntax with a feature [ + Focus] assigned to focused constituents, where that feature would have the obvious semantic, syntactic, and phonological interpretations. In fact, a phonological accent Focus subordinates a syntactic Focus, in that the syntactic Focus becomes a part of the Presupposition of the accent Focus. Ordinarily syntactic and accent Focus are aligned, but when they are not, their divergence takes a particular shape.

The fact that Focus-Presupposition structures can be embedded within other Focus-Presuppo- sition structures suggests that a feature [ + Focus], or set of features [ + Focusi], is not an appropriate mechanism for representing Focus-Presupposition structure at any level. A single feature is obviously inadequate if there is more than one level of Focus; nor will a set of features do, since n [Focusi]s could only represent that there were n Focuses, not the embedding relation that held among them.

When we turn to topicalization, we find much the same thing. Syntax and phonology generally coincide, but when they do not, the divergence takes a particular shape. In (106) they coincide: John has been syntactically topicalized, and it has been assigned Topic accent.

(106) JOHN, Mary LIKES t.

In section 6 I will consider the idea that Topic accent is simply a subordinated focal accent, but for the time being we may take Topic accent to be the accent that falls on syntactically topicalized constituents; in any case, it is a weaker accent than the focal accent, as the notation in (106) is meant to show (in this example and similar ones, capitalization represents the secondary accent and capitalization plus boldface the primary accent).

A pressing question in syntax these days is, Are rules obligatory? At least insofar as certain assumptions about the lexicon hold, the Minimalist Program submits to what I would call the Katz- Postal discipline, whereby every meaningful element of a sentence is represented as a morpheme in




its deep structure, and syntactic operations that correspond to meaningful aspects of sentence structure are keyed to these morphemes. I am not in general sympathetic to this approach, which I regard as highly artificial and capable of promoting a false sense of the presence of explanation, but my limited aim here will be to consider the question, Is syntactic topicalization obligatory? In the minimalist framework one is tempted to propose a Topic node projecting the structure shown in (107), and obligatorily triggered feature-seeking movement of NPs to [Spec, TopicP].

(107) [[Spec, Topic] [Topic [ ... .NP + topic... .]CP]Topic']TopicP

The relevant semantics and phonology could be keyed to this structure as well: Topic accent is assigned to [Spec, TopicP], and theme-rheme structure is read off TopicP itself. Topic would then be said to bear an interpreted feature. This proposal would be incorrect, or at least suspiciously incomplete, in two respects: first, the syntactic structure we are calling the topicalization structure does not always host a Topic-Comment structure; second, Topic-Comment structures are not always realized in this structure. And as in the case of Focus, the divergences are revealing.

To begin with, Topic position does not always house a Topic.

(108) a. Slowly, everyone left. (slowly [everyone) b. So slowly did everyone leave that ... (everyone [slowly) c. *Every dayi John wants to spend iti sailing. d. XTone Group I STone Group2

e. TG1 TG2 is <Normal> (TG = tone group)

The ordinary use of (108a) would not be to express 'As for slowness, everyone left that way'; that is, slowly is not the Topic, even though it occupies Topic position, and even though it receives Topic intonation (and demoted accent relative to the Focus). Further, it is unlikely that the adverb appears in that position by virtue of movement; the scope of slowly relative to the quantified subject is strictly slowly > everyone, so that the sentence means 'It slowly came about that everyone left'. Other constructions, such as the so X construction in (108b), are more arguably instances of movement in that they allow for a "reconstructed" scope interpretation (here, ever-y- one > slowly); (108b) can mean 'For each person, that person left so slowly that...'.

Thus, it is probably a mistake to call this sentence-initial position the Topic position. But why has it been called that? Because Topics do appear there. Why do Topics appear there? I think an examination of the construction itself, apart from considerations of Topic, shows why. The construction consists of a sequence of two phrases, X and S, which constitute distinct intonation groups (thus the comma). As will be discussed in section 6, the "Normal" accent for a sequence of tone groups is for the rightmost to be the most prominent one; hence, the Normal pattern for this construction is as indicated in (108e). But this is ideal for Topic structures, since the Topic is, if it is anything, not the primary stress-bearing element of the sentence, but in fact exactly the secondary one. Hence, (108d), with accent pattern (108e), will naturally house Topics in the X position-though, as we have seen, this position is not restricted to Topics alone.

The other side of the coin is that there are Topics that do not occur in Topic position. The most pathological case is one where an element has been topicalized but is focused as well.



612 EDWIN WILLIAMS

(109) a. No, CABBAGEi he wouldn't eat ti. b. F = cabbage, P = xi he wouldn't eat ti

As in the examination of Focus, we may suppose that phonology embeds syntax and that the analysis of (109a) looks like (109b); in (109b) the Presupposition itself contains a Topic-Comment structure. As before, this forces a "metalinguistic" interpretation, one in which the Presupposition has an antecedent that itself contains a Topic structure, implying the existence of a particularly linguistic object. Thus, (109) can only be used where topicalization has already occurred in a conversation, for example, as a rebuttal to (110).

(1 10) John would eat beans and corn, but BROCCOLI he WOULDN'T EAT.

A number of languages-Hungarian, for example-have positionally defined Topic and Focus constituents. Whether the ideas presented here regarding intonational Topic and Focus can be extended to them remains an open question. If they have the anaphoric content that I have identified as the significance of intonational Focus, then we would expect the ideas presented here to apply. My hesitance stems from the observations just made about English: intonational Topic cannot be identified with positional Topic, nor can the positional Focus of cleft and pseudocleft constructions be identified with intonational Focus.

6 Multiple Tone Groups and Focus Subordination

Thus far I have considered cases with only one tone group. A tone group is a series of three tones, the middle tone being situated over the main accent of the sentence, and the last tone applying to all subsequent syllables. An ordinary declarative contour consists of LHL tones, where H designates the accented syllable.

(111) L H L I saw the postmaster GENeral.

But the HL portion can be repeated in successive units in an utterance, with the H on the main accent of each respective unit.

( 112) L [H L] [H L] A friend of BILL's saw the postmaster GENeral.

The rightmost tone group is perceived as the most prominent. From this fact we may conclude that the Normal order for two tone groups in succession is for the second to be the stronger.

(1 13) [TGl TG2]Normal

Often, as in (114), a kind of parallelism holds between a series of tone groups and their antecedents.

(114) A: I heard that some sensitive papers were missing. Did the Secret Service arrest the president?




L H L H L H L

B: No-instead, [the FBI]TG [CANED]TG [the VICE president]TG.

Clearly, in this case B is setting up a three-point contrast with A's remark, and the use of the three tone groups is tied to this purpose. The general frame of both remarks is something like (115).

(1 15) [a law enforcement agency] [applied some punishment] [to an executive]

We might call the three bracketed constituents co-Focuses, and (115) would then be the Presuppo- sition.

But multiple tone groups do not always signify multiple points of contrast. It is possible for the tone groups in an utterance to be quite numerous and narrow without changing the overall anaphoric commitment of the sentence. (116), for example, can be intoned in several different ways, among them the one indicated.

HL HL

(1 16) Sam wanted a red hat, so I bought him a RED I HAT.

The "I" indicates a tone group boundary, so (116) has two tone groups, one ending in RED, and the other ending in HAT. Why a speaker would choose the form in (116) over the form in (89a) is beyond the scope of this article; (116) is emphatic speech, but not deviant in regard to anaphora. In (117) the various patterns of (116) involving multiple instead of single foci are laid out.

(1 17) Sam wanted a red hat, so I bought him a a. RED I HAT. b. *BLUE I HAT. c. BLUE CAR. d. RED I CAR.

At first glance, (1 17a) might seem highly "contrastive," since it has focal accent on both red and hat; in fact, though, it is perfectly anaphoric with the direct object of the first conjunct. This is not surprising, since ( 17a) represents the Normal pattern, where two tone groups stand in the Normal relation to one another, so long as the second is perceived as at least as accented as the first, as discussed earlier; and the Normal pattern is consistent with full anaphora of both elements. (117b) is ungrammatical because it violates DOAP. Here the weak nonhead is disanaphoric and the strong head is anaphoric; since this is precisely the recipe for the Special pattern, the Normal pattern should be blocked, and the judgment of oddness is consistent with this prediction. In (117c) CAR is disanaphoric, and so is BLUE, an anaphora pattern consistent with the Normal accent pattem. Finally, in (I 17d) the strong head is disanaphoric, with a coanaphoric nonhead, another of the patterns subsumed by the Normal case.

Now, consider the case where the leftmost of two tone groups is the stronger.

(1 18) Sam wanted a red hat, so I bought him a a. BLUE I HAT. b. *RED I HAT.



614 EDWIN WILLIAMS

If the examples in (117) instantiate the Normal pattern, then these instantiate the Special pattem, and, as expected, the only grammatical case is the one where the combination of an anaphoric weak element and a disanaphoric strong element is appropriate.

These examples show that the same Special/Normal rules that were applicable within single tone groups also govern how tone groups relate to each other. All that is new is the specification of the Normal pattern (113).

I have discussed these examples purely in terms of anaphora and disanaphora, avoiding the terms Focus and Presupposition; it would in fact not make much sense to speak of HAT in (1 17a), for example, as "presupposed," since it is not propositional. Now, however, I turn to cases where the terms Focus and Presupposition are more appropriate. Consider Jackendoff 's (1972) examples.

(119) a. What about the BEANS? Who ate them? b. JOHN ate the BEANS.

F = John, P = {F = beans, P = x ate y} anaphor: x ate the BEANS

anaphor: x ate the y disanaphor: BEANS

disanaphor: JOHN c. JOHN ate the BEANS.

TG1 TG2 d. TG1 TG2 is (Special)

e. S

Focus Presup

John Focus Presup

beans x ate y

Let us consider how this example might be analyzed in the system developed so far. (1 19b) consists of two tone groups, the left one of which is dominant, as indicated in (1 19c); this is the Special pattern, which forces anaphora of TG2 and contrastive Focus on TGI, by the Disanaphora Law. Beans is the Focus of the context sentence (1 19a). What status does beans have in (1 19b)? According to Jackendoff, it carries a Special accent pattern that marks it as a Topic. What is a Topic?

Briefly, I will take a Topic to be a "subordinated" Focus. It is subordinated in the following sense. John is clearly the Focus of the entire sentence, and x ate the beans is the Presupposition;




or, in the terns used here, ate the beans is an anaphor, and John is disanaphoric with it. But in fact the Presupposition itself contains a full tone group, and itself has a Focus-Presupposition structure: x ate y is the Presupposition, and beans is the Focus. Beans then is a Focus, but a Focus embedded in the Presupposition of another ("higher") Focus, as the diagram (119e) suggests. But that is what a Topic is.

Perhaps the notion "Topic" can be explicated entirely in these terms. Why is the Topic accentually subordinate to the Focus? Because it is in fact by definition a secondary Focus. Why is the Topic used to tie the sentence to previous discourse by means of identifying what the conversation is about? Because it is a "presupposed" Focus, in other words, a Focus that has gone before; this would naturally be the current Topic of conversation.

Embedded Focuses occur in the reverse situation as well, with a strong tone group to the right of a weak tone group, as illustrated in (120a), which instantiates the Normal accent pattern for a sequence of tone groups.

(120) a. What about John? What did he eat? b. JOHN ate the BEANS. c. F = John, beans P = {x ate y} d. F = beans, P = {F = John, P = x ate y} e. Who ate what? f. TGI TG2 is <Normal>

g. S

Focus Presup

beans Focus Presup

John x ate y

h. S

Focus Focus Presup

(120b) can receive two interpretations, both predicted. Since (120b) instantiates the Normal pattern, the Focus on John is not necessarily subordinated to the Focus on beans. They can be co- Focuses, as in (120c) (diagrammed in (120g)), an interpretation that would be appropriate if (120b) were used in answering (120e). But as an answer for (120a), (120b) requires a different



616 EDWIN WILLIAMS

structure, under the dictum to anaphorize as much as possible; namely, it requires the structure in (120d) (diagrammed in (120h)), in which John is a "subordinated Focus" again, or Topic. On this second interpretation, then, (120) is completely analogous to (119).

Example (120) makes me strongly doubt Jackendoff 's judgment that two different tone contours are used (his "A" and "B") for Focus and Topic. In my speech, (120b) pronounced one and the same way can answer either (120a) or (120e). But the notion of Topic is relevant only for (120a); John would not be a Topic when (120b) is used to answer (120e), since in (120e) John has not been previously mentioned at all. All that is required in the present theory to explicate the two possible uses of (1 20b) is that (1 20b) be in the Normal pattern, for in that case there is an automatic choice whether the secondary Focus will be understood as subordinate to the first or not.

As mentioned in section 5, a [+ Topic] or [ + Focus] feature would mesh awkwardly with the insights put forward here. Presumably, Focus structures may embed indefinitely, human pro- cessing capacity being the only limitation; but then no binary feature, nor any pair or set of them, will suffice to represent all the structures that are possible.

7 Shared Value and Correspondence

The following paradigm presents a paradox for a certain view of what destressing anaphora is all about:

(121) a. John hit MARY because MARY hit JOHN. b. SHE hit HIM. c. HE was hit by HER. d. *he was HIT by her. e. *JOHN was hit by MARY.

(121 a) and (121 b) are not surprising; both have focal accents on the arguments in the second conjunct, because those arguments are contrastive, and whether they are expressed by NPs or by pronouns does not seem to matter. (121c) is grammatical for a similar reason; since the verb in the second clause is the passive of the verb in the first clause, we would expect the points of contrast to be reversed, so that subject contrasts with object, and by-NP with subject. If those contrasts are not made, oddness results, as in (121d). (121d) is not actually ungrammatical. Rather, it has a special interpretation: here the word HIT must be contrastive, and thus the sentence can be used only in a context in which Mary might have done something to John other than hit him. This is a case of a Normal-to-Special conversion already discussed in connection with (91) and (92). In sum, then, (121a-d) behave as expected. (121e), however, is truly unexpected. It is parallel to (121c) in the same way that (12 1b) is parallel to (121 a); nevertheless, it is distinctly odd.

I think (121d) illustrates something about the notion of value that destressing anaphora is based on. For any sort of anaphora, there is an anaphor, and an antecedent, and the anaphor gets its value from its antecedent, or some notion of shared value serves as the basis of identification of anaphors and antecedent. Furthermore, there seem to be constant laws of anaphora, as exempli-




fied by the PAI and the GPAD. But in fact the value that the anaphor inherits from the antecedent is different from one type of anaphora to another. In the case of definite anaphora, the value is definite reference. In the case of VP-deletion, it is some semantic notion of predicate that is inherited or shared. What value, then, is destressing anaphora based on? There is another side to this question: what is the notion of distinctness that must obtain for material that is not anaphorically destressed?

On the basis of (121a-d), we might say that the destressing system was based on reference, at least insofar as noun phrases are concemed. What is required in (121c), for example, is that the reference of HER be different from the reference of John, and that the reference of HE be different from the reference of MARY. Furthermore, if we substitute identically referring names for the pronouns, as in (121 a), the requirement seems to be met in the same way as in (121 b) or (121c). In other words, whether an argument is expressed as a pronoun or a name does not seem to affect the way the distinctness requirements are met, but what the arguments refer to does.

One choice we have made, then, is that the value at stake in anaphoric destressing is reference as shared value. However, we have also made another, related, arbitrary choice: namely, one regarding a notion of correspondence. The notion of correspondence that we have used is 0- theoretic.5

(122) 0-Theoretic Correspondence a in SI corresponds to a in S2 if ot bears 0-relation n to the verb of S and l bears 0-relation n to the verb of S2.

The just-mentioned similarity between (121b) and (121c) is a 0-theoretic similarity, and the proposed account of these two examples was phrased in 0-theoretic terms: HER in (121c) corresponds to John in that both are the patient of hit, and HE corresponds to Mary in that both are the agent.

The choice of 0-Theoretic Correspondence is arbitrary, and we should consider alternatives. A perhaps simpler notion of correspondence might be based on the linear sequence of words, phrases, or intonation groups. For example, we might consider a correspondence based on Focuses.

(123) Focal Correspondence at in Si corresponds to l in S2 if at is Focus n-from-the-left in SI and l is Focus n- from-the-left in S2.

Focal Correspondence does not work straightforwardly for (121a-d); if it were the sole basis of anaphoric destressing, then we might expect (121c) to be ungrammatical, because coreferential NPs occur in corresponding focal positions. However, suppose that the value of the anaphora was grounded not in reference but in phonetics. In that case (121c) would be valid, because corresponding Focuses are not phonetically identical: John is different from HE (phonetically)

5Thematic relation is used here in an overly broad sense to mean 'any meaningful semantic relation', as in (i), for example.

(i) JOHN pretended to spit on MARY's grandmother's grave, and so SHE insulted HIM.



618 EDWIN WILLIAMS

and MARY is different from HER (phonetically). If we were going to use Focal Correspondence, then, we would want to identify the values as phonetic.

Now, Focal Correspondence is correct for (121e), and it correctly distinguishes (121e) from (121c). In (121c) corresponding Focuses are phonetically distinct, but in (121e) they are not, so only (121e) passes the Focal Correspondence version of the Disanaphora Law.

But Focal Correspondence, with phonetic values, is still not correct for (12la-d), though some further examples are needed to establish this. Focal Correspondence will not distinguish (124a) and (124b).

(124) a. *John hit Mary, and then SHE hit HIM (again). b. John hit Mary, and then SHE was hit by HIM.

From the point of view of Focal Correspondence, these are identical cases, since corresponding Focuses are phonetically distinct.

We have found, then, that some examples-(121c) and (121e)-require that disanaphora be based on Focal Correspondence (with anaphora based on phonetic identity), whereas others-(124a) and (124b)-require that it be based on 0-Theoretic Correspondence (with anaphora based on referential identity). How can this paradox be resolved? Quite simply, perhaps, by recognizing that there is in fact no paradox. That is, there is no obstacle to using both Focal Correspondence and 0-Theoretic Correspondence; they are not incompatible with one another, exactly because they operate in different realms. Each corresponds to a different way that sentences are organized. 0-Theoretic Correspondence pertains to the argument structure of a sentence, and Focal Correspondence to its organization into intonational groups. From this point of view, it would be quite natural that the value or dimension at stake in the former would be reference (arguments have reference), and in the latter, phonetics. To claim that both are needed is simply to say that the Disanaphora Law operates in both of these realms simultaneously. The paradigm in (121) is not symmetrical (a:b:: c:*e) because the same law is operating differently at different levels.

The exact behavior of the Disanaphora Law at the phonetic level needs to be explored further. I will not undertake this here, but will conclude with a couple of examples. On the basis of the slight oddness of (125), I argued in Williams 1981 that the condition was literally phonetic identity, and not, for example, word identity.

(125) ?John does not usually give advice to his SON, but he did recently tell him not to look at the SUN.

In its baldest form, the Disanaphora Law for destressing seems to be a kind of antirhyming law. The oddness of (125) is attenuated somewhat if the two units end differently.

(126) John does not usually give advice to his SON-in-law, but he did recently tell him not to look at the SUN too long.

This suggests that the sentence is broken into intonation groups (as partially indicated above) and that identity of these groups is what is at stake.




I think the weakness of the effect in (125) probably has to do with the fact that it is overridden, somewhat, by other factors. For example, if the stress pattern in the last VP of (125) were shifted to LOOK at the sun, disanaphora laws would require at the sun to be anaphoric not just at the phonetic level, but also at other levels, where it would in fact not be anaphoric.

Mark Liberman has brought to my attention a domain in which the effects of phonetically based disanaphora can be isolated from those of 0-theoretically based disanaphora: the pronuncia- tion of series of digits (telephone numbers, for example). Consider the following cases (large type on a digit indicates focal stress):

(127) a. 924-1237

b. 924-64,24

c. *924-64,28

d. 924-64,68

e. *924-64,24

f. 924-642,4

(127a) shows the "Normal" stress-final pattern that arises when no digits are repeated. The Normal pattern is rightmost accent within a group of digits. (127b) shows a "Special" pattern that arises when the last four digits are grouped in twos (as indicated by the comma), and each group ends with the same digit. (127c) shows that this pattern is impossible when the groups do not end with the same digit; it identifies a false anaphor, implying that 8 = 4. (127d) shows that if the repeating digit is the first element, instead of the second, then the pattern is Normal. (127e) violates DOAP: the two groups end with the same digit, so the Special pattern should be used, not the Normal right-accented pattern. Finally, (127f) shows that if the grouping of the digits is different, then the anaphoric commitments are different. (127f) is identical to (127e) apart from grouping, so the Normal pattern can be used, since no two groups end with the same digits. In this case no notion of reference or corresponding 0-theoretic argument seems relevant, so only the Focal Correspondence version of the Disanaphora Law applies.

I have identified two sorts of disanaphora (referentially based and phonetically based) and have tried to disentangle them by illustrating their effects in isolation. Actually, though, the distinction was rather crudely drawn. Further effort to specify more exactly the nature of the shared values involved in the examples discussed might lead to the conclusion that in fact a variety of shared values serve as the basis for disanaphora requirements. For example, there may be disanaphora sensitive to word sense, but neither reference nor phonetic identity. Each relevant notion of identity would need an appropriate associated notion of correspondence. Perhaps any significant sort of linguistic organization of a sentence would define some sort of value that stress- based disanaphora would be sensitive to.

8 Deletion

In a binary-branching structure, if one branch is phonetically zero, then there can be no stress- based opposition between a Normal and a Special pattern; the nonzero element must bear the



620 EDWIN WILLIAMS

stress. From this observation, we might conclude that the Disanaphora Law plays no role in such cases, but in fact it does. The Special/Normal distinction simply constitutes itself differently. I will first identify the dimension of the Special/Normal distinction in the case where the head is phonetically empty and then show that in that dimension the rules of anaphora-specifically, the Disanaphora Law-hold exactly as expected, with the Special form blocking the Normal form. Along the way I will outline a theory of ellipsis. One result established in passing is that there must be some rule of coordinate ellipsis-in other words, that no scheme of direct generation can account for the form of coordinate structures.

8.1 Coordinate Ellipsis

I will first assume, and later demonstrate, that there is a rule of coordinate ellipsis; and I will establish some of its elementary properties.

The first property is that coordinate ellipsis always includes, and is sometimes limited to, the head of the second conjunct.

(128) a. John [gave Mary a record] and [Ov Bill a book]. b. *John [mailed Mary a record] and [handed ONP a book].

Given this limitation, I will take the deletion of the head of the second conjunct as the central case of coordinate ellipsis, the ellipsis licensed by the coordinate structure itself.

The special role of the head arises through projection: the phrase bears the signature of the head. I would suggest an extreme version of this view: that instead of NP, VP, and so on, the grammar generates items like the following (see Williams 1994b for further discussion):

(129) tableP, runP, fromP, OP

TableP is a phrase built around table. A tableP is an NP, because table is an N, so any rule that applies to NPs will apply to tablePs as well; therefore, generalizations about NPs are not lost. Now, a head with very special properties is the "zero" head, or phonetically empty head, 0. Under the proposal just made, this head projects a "OP" -that is, a phrase built around a phonetically null head.

I have suggested in earlier work (Williams 1994b) that coordinate structures are double- headed, in that they arise from the projection of a binary lexical item by the following sort of rule:

(130) [X, X]P -a XP and XP

Other instances of this type of projection are binary PPs and clause structure itself.

(131) a. [from, to]P - [from NP]pp [to NP]pp b. [nominative, tense] NPnominative VPtense

Now, the variant of (130) where the second N is 0 yields the primary cases of coordinate ellipsis.




(132) a. [V, O]P - VP and OP b. [give the book to Mary]vp and [Ov the record to Sue]vp

The Ov is understood as identical to the V with which it forms the complex projection: in [X, 0], O = X.

This scheme explains simultaneously why it is heads that are targeted in ellipsis (because heads project) and why the antecedent for the missing head must be local (the antecedent must be the head of the paired conjunct).

(133) *John [thought Mary liked beets for lunch]vp, and [Ov carrots for dinner]vp. (Ov = liked) 'John thought Mary liked beets for lunch and he liked carrots for dinner'

In the classical scheme, the rule of coordinate ellipsis (which my proposal, 0-projection, is intended to replace) deleted material in the second conjunct, from left to right, under identity. When the second conjunct is head-initial, of course the two proposals coincide. But when the second conjunct is not head-initial, I think that the more general rule of coordinate ellipsis yields some strange results, as many have noted over the past 25 years.

(134) a. a man and [a] woman X a man and woman

b. Some men opened the door and [some men] left. ? Some men opened the door and left.

c. John quickly taped up Mary, and Bill [quickly] taped up Sue. ? John quickly taped up Mary, and Bill taped up Sue.

Bracketed material represents potential deletion sites. A man and woman came in means that a couple came in together, whereas A man and a woman came in could describe two independent events. In general, nonhead ellipsis yields arbitrary semantic results. But all of these cases can be handled nonarbitrarily by direct coordination: of Ns for (134a), of VPs for (134b), and of Ss for (134c), with no ellipsis. Then the Special interpretation that arises with a man and woman = a couple will derive from the coordination of Ns as opposed to NPs, and similarly for the other cases.

In sum, then, there appears to be a limited rule of coordinate ellipsis, which consists of projecting a 0 head for the second conjunct. A more general rule of left-to-right deletion goes awry when nonhead material is being deleted, and in fact is not needed if the general scheme is adopted of projecting coordinate structures for all categories.

In fact, though, as long as the head of the second conjunct is deleted, further material can be deleted as well.

(135) a. John gave Mary a book today and ?v 0NP a record yesterday. b. *John gave Mary a book today and gave 0NP a record yesterday.



622 EDWIN WILLIAMS

The direct object is deletable, under identity with the corresponding direct object in the first conjunct, as long as the V of the second conjunct is deleted as well. (135) shows that this deletion is licensed most directly by the Ov that governs it, not by the coordinate structure itself.

In general, a 0 head can license 0 complements, and this licensing is in fact independent of coordinate structures, as I will show shortly.

If a head is 0, there are two choices for its complement: 0, or not.

(136) a. [saw Bill yesterday] and [Ov Mary today] b. [saw Bill yesterday] and [Ov ONP today]

Two questions arise. First, why is the deletion of the NP related to the deletion of the head, and not independent of it? The second question concerns the locality of the identification of the antecedent of the 0 nonhead: in (136b), why must the ONP be identified as Bill, no other identification being possible?

I think we can answer both questions by identifying the 0 complement of a 0 head as a Normal pattern. Recall the earlier observation that when one member of a binary node is deleted, there can be no stress-based distinction between a Normal and a Special pattern. But there can be a distinction based on whether the other member of the constituent is 0 or not.

(137) [OV ONPI Normal

[Ov lexicalNp] Special

As shown in the case of stress-based anaphora, the interpretation of the Normal pattern entails that if the head element is anaphoric, then the nonhead must be coanaphoric. This immediately answers both of the questions just raised. First, the nonhead is licensed by the deleted head by virtue of the fact that an antecedent is licensed for the nonhead by the anaphoric impositions of the Normal pattern, and an antecedent will give the 0 complement an interpretation. Second; the locality of the anaphora is explained because the coanaphora relation narrows the antecedent of the null complement to the "parallel" dependent of the antecedent of the Ov.

But there are further consequences: if the complement is not null, then-by the anaphoric impositions of the Special pattern-it must be disanaphoric. This seems to be robustly true.

(138) *John gave to Billi a book today and Ov to himi a record yesterday.

Here, to himi cannot be interpreted as coreferential with to Bill. This is because it is lexical, and so the form [Ov [to him]] is a Special pattern, where Ov is anaphoric and to him obligatorily disanaphoric. Note that the deviance of (138) has nothing to do with the status of the pronoun as a clitic pronoun; since it is a complement of a P, it is fully cliticizable to P. Therefore, the deviance must rest in the relation of the PP to the Ov

The necessity of disanaphora in (138) constitutes a strong argument for ellipsis. In general, as (139) shows, there is no requirement that parallel elements in conjuncts not be anaphorically related.

(139) a. John's mother and his brother b. I saw John and greeted him.




The requirement of disanaphora arises only in the presence of a 0 element, as in (138). But in a theory that attempts to achieve the full range of coordinate structures through projection alone, without ellipsis, the difference between cases like (138) and (139) is mysterious. If the disanaphora effects shown by (138) arise only in the presence of deletion, then coordinate structures must involve ellipsis.

If we take seriously the notion that a Ox projects a OxP, then we might rewrite (137) to read as follows:

(140) [OV ONP] Normal

[Ov lexicalNP] Special

Recall that a OP is not necessarily fully null-only its head is null. This will permit the generation of "nonconstituent" ellipsis constructions like (141).

(141) John saw pictures of Mary on Tuesday and [Ov [0N of Sue]op on Wednesday].

Here, Ov licenses the OP [ON of Sue]0p, yielding the nonconstituent deletion Ov ON; but since each O is licensed separately, the appearance of nonconstituency is just an appearance.

In fact, a 0 form licensed by (140) can itself license a OP as its complement, yielding a recursive chain of licensing, of indefinite length.

(142) a. John wants to decapitate Fred, and Bill wants to hamstring Pierre. b. John wants to decapitate Fred, and Bill 0 to hamstring Pierre. c. John wants to decapitate Fred, and Bill 0 0 0 Pierre. d. *John wants to decapitate Fred, and Bill wants to 0 Pierre. e. *John wants to decapitate Fred, and Bill wants 0 hamstring Pierre.

In (142b) only the 0 head of the conjunct is projected; in (142c) it licenses toP as a OP; and in (142c) ?to also licenses hamstringP as a OP. In (142d) hamstringP is a OP, but there is no licensing head for it, and similarly for O,OP in (142e). Thus, the simple rules given above provide for a cascade of licensing, resulting in potentially nonconstituent, but cohering, deletion sites of unbounded size.

8.2 Other Cases of Ellipsis

The rules of coanaphora and disanaphora pertain to deletion in general, not just to coordinate ellipsis. The special feature of coordinate ellipsis is the projection of the 0 head in the second conjunct-this is the seed crystal, around which a larger deletion site can grow through the action of the anaphora laws. But these anaphora laws are applicable wherever there is a 0 form, however it arises.

For example, a wh-trace can give rise to a 0, which in turn can license other Os and which enforces disanaphora.

(143) How many did you buy t of these booksi and give t (*of themi) to Mary?

Here, across-the-board wh-movement sets up a 0 form in the second conjunct; an overt dependent of the trace in the second conjunct (of them) cannot be anaphoric to the corresponding dependent



624 EDWIN WILLIAMS

of the trace in the first conjunct (of these books), by the Disanaphora Law. Correspondingly, a covert dependent (a OP in place of of them) will be obligatorily anaphoric to of these books, by the Coanaphora Law. If the dependent is distinct, then it need not be null, again as the anaphora laws would predict.

(144) How many did you buy t of these books, and sell t of those books?

Subject-aux inversion works the same way.

(145) a. John can open the door and he can leave. b. *Can Johni open the door and hei 0 leave? c. Can John open the door and Bill leave? d. Can John open the door and ONP Ocan leave?

The subject is a dependent of Tense; hence, if Tense is a OP, then the anaphora laws will require the subject to be disanaphoric if lexical, and coanaphoric if not. (145b) shows that disanaphora is forced on a lexical subject, and (145d) shows that coanaphora is forced on a null subject (though (145d) actually has another derivation, with conjoined VPs, which does not involve ellipsis).

Finally, VP-deletion can provide a licensing head as well. Normally VP-deletion must delete a whole VP; however, it can delete just the head verb, with marginal results.

(146) ?John waved to Bill because Sue did 0 to Peter.

When this happens, the anaphora laws constrain the result, as (147) shows.

(147) *John waved to Bill- because Sue did 0 to himi.

8.3 Obligatoriness

It is worthwhile to consider how the classical system of left-peripheral ellipsis (LPE) would treat these paradigms. Again, since the head normally appears on the left, many cases will not distinguish the classical system from the present one. However, if we look at cases where the head is not on the left, a difference emerges. For example:

(148) *John gave Bill color photographs of Mary and Sam Ov OAP slides of Bill.

Here, the object in the second conjunct cannot be interpreted as color slides, but only as slides, because color is not a head, and can be licensed only by the head that governs it. When the governing head is 0, that interpretation is indeed possible, as (149) shows.

(149) *John gave Bill color photographs of Mary and Sam Ov OAP ON of Bill.

The classical system might treat the facts I have cited to illustrate disanaphora by making the rule of LPE obligatory ("Obligatorily delete the maximal left prefix of the second conjunct that is identical to a prefix of the right conjunct"). But this is only partially successful. In fact, often the deletion of material contiguous to the deletion site is not obligatory, even when it is identical to corresponding material contiguous to the antecedent. To repeat an earlier example:




(150) a. John wants to decapitate Fred, and Bill Owants to hamstring Pierre. b. John wants to decapitate Fred, and Bill Owants Oto hamstring Pierre.

The deletion of to is not obligatory here, even though it is contiguous to 0wants, The reason is that not deleting to is consistent with the Disanaphora Law, which says that a OP complement to a null head must be distinct from the corresponding complement of the antecedent of the head; in this case, to hamstring Pierre must be distinct from to decapitate Fred, a condition that is satisfied.

It is not enough to make the rule obligatory, or not. The obligatoriness of deletion is keyed to the head-complement relation in a very particular way: if the head of a phrase is deleted, then the deletion of identical complements is obligatory; the deletion of the head of a complement that is identical (to the corresponding head of the complement to the antecedent) is optional. But this is exactly what the anaphora laws predict, if [0 OP] is recognized as the Normal pattern, and [O lexP] as the Special pattern. Deletion is "quantally" obligatory: if the head of a phrase is deleted, then any nonheads that qualify for deletion must be deleted as well. The theory under consideration here predicts precisely this arrangement.

It is well known that coordinate ellipsis can effect not only nonconstituent ellipsis, as just discussed, but also noncontiguous ellipsis.

(151) John saw the movie today, and Bill Ov the play OAdVP-

What is perhaps not so well known is that the combination of noncontiguous and nonconstituent ellipsis is not possible.

(152) a. I talked to Bill about Mary today, and Ov Opp Op Sally yesterday. b. I talked to Bill about Mary today, and Ov to Pete Opp yesterday. c. *1 talked to Bill about Mary today, and Ov to Pete Op Sue yesterday.

(152c) attempts to combine the nonconstituent ellipsis of (152a) with the noncontiguous ellipsis of (152b). Why is this not allowed?

Suppose we take seriously the notion that the Normal and Special patterns are defined for binary constituents. Then, in fact, (152b) is misleadingly analyzed. Its structure is actually as follows:

(153) I talked to Bill about Mary today, and Ov Opp to Pete yesterday.

That is, noncontiguous ellipsis really is contiguous ellipsis, if "scrambling" of the elided material is allowed. But now (152c) is not generable, since Op is not contiguous to Ov, and could not be "scrambled" next to Ov except as a part of the PP that it heads.

8.4 Blocking

I have thus far stipulated that [Ox O]xp is the Normal form and that [Ox lexP] is the Special form. But need this be stipulated? I think not, from the following consideration. A 0 form differs from a lexical form in that the 0 form must have an antecedent.



626 EDWIN WILLIAMS

In the following configuration, the direct object in the second VP can be realized as lexical or as null:

(154) [V NP]vp ... [Ov NP]vp [V NP]vp ... [OV ONP]VP

[V NP]vp ... [Ov lexNP]vp

If null, then it is necessarily coreferential with NP; in other words, 0 realization is restricted to the case where the object is anaphoric. A lexical head does not require special licensing through anaphora. Hence, it is an elsewhere case with respect to the null case: there are no particular conditions on lexical realization. However, now that we have these two possibilities in this relation, the Blocking Principle effect tells us that the lexical realization cannot be used where coreference holds-because there is a form uniquely fit for that possibility, which therefore takes priority under the Blocking Principle.

Suppose that the head is lexical, but the complement is null. Is there then a Normal pattern and a Special pattern? Generally this situation does not arise, but when it does, [Lexhead Ocomplementl

acts like a Normal form. For example, in cases of null complement anaphora, it is possible for the head to be anaphoric, as long as the complement is coanaphoric.

(155) John tried to leave and Mary tried 0 too.

Here, the second tried is anaphoric to the first, and its complement is coanaphoric, therefore strictly interpreted as to leave. This would be impossible if the configuration were Special. In that case one of the two elements would have to be anaphoric (presumably the complement), and the other would of necessity be disanaphoric; (155) would then be ungrammatical, since it would imply that tried ? tried.

It is occasionally suggested that deletion is simply radical destressing. We have already seen some circumstantial evidence for this "reduction": in both realms the possibilities are governed by the opposition of a Special to a Normal form, with identical anaphoric commitment of the two forms in both realms. However, I think this says something about anaphora in general, rather than arguing for a reduction of one kind of anaphora to another.

Although both destressing and deletion use the Special/Normal distinction, they diverge in their identification of the Special/Normal forms. For example, (156a) and (156b) are interpreted differently.

(156) John can swim well, and a. I will tell Mary that he CAN 0. b. ?I will tell Mary that he CAN swim.

In both cases CAN takes the main stress, but with different consequences. In (156a) CAN takes the main stress because there is no choice: 0 cannot take a stress. This establishes [CAN 0] as the Normal form, as we have seen, meaning that no contrast is forced. This seems correct; CAN is in fact anaphoric with the modal of the first clause. In (156b), on the other hand, the stress on




CAN is simply an alternative to the Normal pattern [can SWIM] and therefore does imply contrast, which is why (1 56b) is odd-no contrast is warranted.

Thus, it would be a mistake to say that one can simply delete what is destressed; in fact, the two operations have different consequences, and only by looking at how the Special/Normal contrast plays out in each domain can these consequences be understood.

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Blocking and Anaphora