On Linkhood, Topicalization and Clitic Left Dislocation

This paper focuses on the Information Packaging notion of linkhood and provides a structural definition of this notion for Greek. We show that a combination of structural resources – syntactic (left dislocation), morphological (clitic duplication) and phonological (absence of nuclear accent) – are simultaneously exploited to realize linkhood in Greek, a generalization that can be captured in a constraint-based grammar such as HPSG, which permits the expression of interface constraints. We assume Vallduvı!’s () approach to Information Packaging, and Engdahl & Vallduvı!’s () implementation of the latter in HPSG, but deviate from Vallduvı!’s work in adopting Hendriks & Dekker’s () revised definition of linkhood that relies on non-monotone anaphora. From an empirical point of view, our approach directly accounts for the invariable association of Clitic Left Dislocated NPs with wide scope readings, as well as a number of systematic differences in felicity conditions between Clitic Left Dislocation and other apparently related phenomena (Topicalization and Clitic Doubling). From a theoretical perspective, our analysis departs from syntax-based notions of topichood or discourse-linking and supports a definition that unifies linkhood with other anaphora phenomena. As such, it arguably overcomes previously noted problems for Vallduvı!’s treatment of links as the currentlocus-of-update in a Heim-style file-card system.