Is German discourse-configurational? Experimental evidence for a topic position

Abstract

Frey (2000; 2004) assumes that German is discourse-configurational regarding aboutness topics, namely that there is a special syntactic position for topics within the German middle field, directly above the base position of sentence adverbials. In this paper we will present two acceptability judgment studies and two reading time studies that provide support for a designated topic position in German. Based on assumptions regarding (non-)topicable noun phrases, i.e. phrases that are (not) able to serve as an aboutness topic (see e.g. Frey 2004; Endriss 2009), we manipulated the subject type (referential, quantified, non-referential) and the position of the subject (preceding and following a sentence adverbial). In a further experiment, we varied whether the referential subject is marked as a topic or not. In sum, we found convincing evidence for a syntactic topic position. We do not think that our results affirm the assumption of a TopP (topic phrase), but they at least suggest the existence of a topic position in a descriptive sense.