Advances in Role and Reference Grammar

A SYNOPSIS OF ROLE AND REFERENCE GRAMMAR 97

in which inverted "subjects" tend strongly to occur in Italian. As discussed
in section 2.3, the prototypical case involving inverted word order is the
sentence focus construction, as in (79b), and the most common kind of sen­
tence focus constructions is presentational, as in the English examples in
(13). It is here that the restrictions on verb classes emerge. Lambrecht
(1987) comments on the verbs that typically occur in sentence focus con­
structions.
Another argument in favor of the interpretation of SF [sentence focus-
RW] structures as presentational in a broad sense can be seen in the con­
straints imposed in many languages on the kinds of predicates which SF
structures may contain...[T]he predicates most commonly permitted in SF
sentences involve "presenting" verbs, i.e. intransitive verbs expressing
appearance or disappearance of some referent in the internal or external
discourse setting, or the beginning or end of some state involving the refe­
rent. (373)
The verbs which Lambrecht describes are the prototypical "unaccusative"
verbs in Italian, and thus there is a fundamental relationship between verb
type, on the one hand, and sentence focus constructions, on the other;
Kuno (1972a) makes a similar argument. Since the prototypical cases of
inverted word order are sentence focus constructions, the restriction to
intransitive achievement and accomplishment verbs follows naturally.^54 The
correlation of the inverted "subject" with focus also provides a real expla­
nation for the "definiteness effect" reported in Beletti (1988) and for the
fact that when a definite NP appears in that position it may receive a con­
trastive, i.e. narrow focus, reading. Thus an explanatory account of ne
involves both semantics and pragmatics, but, in stark contrast to generative
accounts, no reference to purely syntactic grammatical relations.

5.4.2 Focus structure and questions

We now turn to the interaction of focus structure with the formation of

questions, especially WH-questions, and we will examine question forma­

tion in simple sentences in Lakhota and English.

5.4.2.1 Lakhota

Question formation in Lakhota involves no change in the syntactic form of

clauses, unlike in English; rather, questions are signalled by the addition of

the particle he to the end of the clause, as illustrated in (87).