On the properties of VSO and VOS orders in Greek and Italian: a study on the syntax information structure interface

This paper deals with word order variation that relates to patterns of information structure. The empirical focus of the paper is a comparison of Italian and Greek word order patterns. The paper will address, however, issues of word order typology in general. The main line of argumentation is one according to which syntax directly reflects information structure, and variation is explained on the basis different movement parameters. Introduction The patterns in (1-3) are all found in Greek and Italian, two pro-drop languages known to allow several word order permutations. 1. SV(O) 2. VS (O) 3. VOS In the recent literature a lot of attention has been devoted to the fact that these patterns reflect topic/focus relations. A possible description of the above patterns in terms of information structure is as follows: 1'. SV(O): subject is taken to be old information, i.e. it is a topic. 2'. VS(O): in the unmarked case all information is new. 3'. VOS: the subject is new information. The patterns in 2 and 3 can be further subdivided into a number of sub-types depending on intonation, which will be discussed here in detail. The existence of these patterns raises three questions: (i) how are properties of information structure reflected in syntax? (ii) are all these orders and interpretations equally available in both languages? If not, what explains this variation? (iii) how are the VSO and VOS patterns related to e.g. Celtic VSO and Malagasy VOS? Questions (ii) and (iii) are important for the comparative syntax perspective. First, as we will see immediately, Italian is ITRW on Experimental Linguistics Athens, Greece August 28-30, 2006 ISCA Archive http://www.isca-speech.org/archive