Givenness and Locality

Constituents that encode information that was made salient by prior context often remain unaccented. This paper presents evidence that in order for a constituent to be marked as given by deaccenting, it is not sufficient that it is given, it must be given relative to something else. In particular, I will argue that constituents have to be given relative to their sister. This first section outlines the problem that earlier approaches to givenness face: sometimes, but not always, it appears that the sister of a constituent is relevant in deciding whether it can be marked as given.

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