Keywords
Prosody
Information structure
How to Cite
Abstract
This contribution is part of the Debate section that dialogues with the two-part paper "The Syntax of Existential Constructions" by Shlomo Izre'el from Tel-Aviv University published in Volume 11 in 2022. This letter is a reply to Rivka Halevy in the same section and published in Volume 11 in 2022 and to Pavel Ozerov in the same section and published in Volume 12 in 2023. First, I will refer to Rivka Halevy’s rejoinder, where she mainly addressed typological issues, among which the syntactical status of the pivot is especially intriguing. I will then deal with Pavel Ozerov’s rejoinder, who addressed the theoretical framework upon which my analysis of the existential-presentative constructions was based. Here I will deal with the complexities in defining and analyzing a syntactic predicate and its relations to the pragmatic notion of comment. In guise of a conclusion, I will touch upon some general observations on the study of language.
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