Jong-Bok Kim. 2003. Focus Projections in English, Korean, and Greek and Their Topological Implications. Studies in Modern Grammar 32, 1-23. One of the important issues in information packaging theory is how to capture the projection of focus at sentence level. This paper shows that in three typological different languages (English: SVO, Korean: SOV, Greek: VSO), the order in argument structure (rather than linear order) plays an important role in determining various possibilities of inheritance of focus. This paper proposes that what is relevant for determining the possibility of VP focus in such cases is the argument structure ordered not in terms of theta-roles but in terms of grammatical relations. The need for such a level of argument structure gets strong motivations from phenomena such as binding, control, relativization, and so forth. Following this line, we assume that the argument structure with grammatical functions is ordered as SUBJ-OBJ-OBJ2-OBLIQUE in which if A precedes B in the argument-structure, A has a higher rank than (i. e. outranks) B. This comparative study among three typologically different languages reveals that the variations in the ordering of grammatical functions induce the differences in focus projections. In addition, the focus projections in the three languages support the view that the argument structure hierarchy is the locus of focus projection.

• 김종복 | Jong Bok Kim