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

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...