Referential choice in 3-participant constructions
Stefan Schnell (University of Melbourne) & Nils Schiborr (University of Bamberg)

Since the seminal work by Wallace Chafe and Talmy Givón and others, particular syntactic functions
have regularly been associated with particular types of information status and respective types ofreferring expression. For example, Prince (1981) finds that subjects in English tend to have given,
topical referents and are therefore preferably expressed by pronouns rather than full NPS, which arein run predominant in objects and have new or less accessible referents (see also Chafe 1994). Du
Bois’ (1987, 2003a, b), in his work on Preferred Argument Structure, not only postulates apreference for only transitive (A) subjects to have topical referents expressed by pronouns or zeroform, whereas both S and P arguments, as well as all non-core argument positions, are “free” fornon-activated, new referents expressed by full NPs.
We report here on an investigation of realisation patterns in non-core oblique arguments across 7
languages currently part of the multilingual online corpus Multi-CAST (Haig & Schnell 2016). Overall,we find Du Bois’ generalisations confirmed in our data when contrasting oblique with corearguments. However, we also find significant patterns of preference within oblique arguments, sothat goal arguments (understood here broadly as embracing locational goals, human goals,recipients, addressees) tend to show non-lexical expression when occurring in a 3-participantconstruction, whereas goals in intransitive clauses, as well as other oblique arguments expressing
static locations and other semantic roles, tend to be lexical. Further investigating the motivations forthese patterns of argument expression, we find a strong significant correlation between humanreference and non-lexical forms, which can be explained in terms of the generally high discourse
topicality of human participants. This is similar to motivations for alignment splits in 3-particopant
constructions as identified by Haspelmath (2007:83ff). We conclude, reiterating Haig & Schnell’s(forthcoming) findings, that patterns of argument realisation are merely epiphenomena of basic
considerations of animacy, and that particular syntactic functions are in fact not as such aligned withtypes of information and referential forms.

References
Chafe, Wallace. 1994. Discourse, Consciousness, and Time. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Du Bois, John W. 1987b. The discourse basis of ergativity. Language 63.4, 805-855.
Du Bois, John W. 2003a. Argument structure: grammar in use. In: Du Bois et al (eds.), 1-60.
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Haig, Geoffrey & Stefan Schnell. 2016. Multi-CAST. Multilingual Corpus of Annotated Sppken Texts. URL:
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Haig, Geoffrey & Stefan Schnell. forthcoming. The discourse basis of ergativity revisited. Language.
Haspelmath, Martin. 2007. Ditransitive alignment splits and inverse alignment. Functions of Language 14.1, 79102.
Prince, Ellen. 1981. Towards a new taxonomy of given and new. In: Cole, Peter (ed.). Radical Pragmatics, 223255. New York: Academic Press.