Subject, Topic and Definiteness in Finnish

• Published in: Studia linguistica Vol. 74; no. 2; pp. 360 - 397
• Main Author: Brattico, Pauli
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.08.2020
• Subjects: Agreement (Grammatical); Clauses; Extended projection principle; Finnish language; Hungarian language; Information structure; Noun phrases; Phi features; Predicate; Reference (Semantic); Sentence structure; Topic and comment
• ISSN: 0039-3193; 1467-9582
• DOI: 10.1111/stul.12129

Some languages, such as Hungarian and Finnish, utilize information structure (e.g., topic, focus) in their word ordering. Among such languages, subject behavior is often claimed to be related to topicality. This article argues that contrary to the claims made in the previous literature, Finnish does not grammaticalize topics; instead, the alleged topic behavior results from a definiteness effect, according to which definite DPs are treated as preferred preverbal subjects. This creates an illusion of topicalization. An analysis is provided according to which the finite clause EPP is universally involved in acquiring two nominal features, φ‐features (such as number and person) and D (definiteness), and that, due to the presence of strong phi‐agreement, Finnish has the option of filling in the preverbal subject position by a non‐agreeing nonsubject phrase checking only the D‐feature. In agreement with this hypothesis, verb‐initial clauses are argued to contain an NP‐argument representing a predicate, not a logical DP argument.