Long Head Movement and Information Packaging in Breton

1997 ◽  
Vol 42 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 169-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin J. Schafer
Keyword(s):  
Head Movement ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Semantic Property ◽  
Information Packaging ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Aspect Markers ◽  
Long Head ◽  
Minimality Conditions ◽  
General Economy

This article explores long head movement configurations in Breton. Its purpose is twofold. First it contributes to existing work by demonstrating that Breton long head movement is motivated by information structure. The operation of general economy principles, made sensitive to information structure, determines many of the properties of the Breton construction. Secondly, it is argued that the derivation of the Breton construction does not involve movement per se; minimality conditions on movement are not central to the derivation. Instead, the remaining properties of the construction are attributed to a semantic property of tense-aspect markers which is represented at the LF interface. This work bears on the issue of how to model the interpretive dependency between auxiliaries and main verbs and raises questions concerning the interaction between the stylistic component, information structure, and the LF interface.

Deriving enclisis in ‘V1’ clauses

2021 ◽  
pp. 213-232
Author(s):  
Diego Pescarini
Keyword(s):  
Head Movement ◽  
Focus Position ◽  
Fragment Answers ◽  
Long Head

The chapter deals with the syntax of early Romance clauses exhibiting enclisis, which usually occurs when the verb occupies the first position in the clause (V1) or is immediately preceded by topics. This chapter accounts for enclisis/V1 within languages that exhibit properties of V2 systems. The analysis is based on two hypotheses: (i) V2 results from a Criterion that triggers fronting of an XP to the Operator/Focus position; and (ii) V1 and enclisis result when no XP is fronted and, instead, the inflected verb is merged in the Operator/Focus position via Long Head Movement (Lema and Rivero’s 1991). When the verb performs Long Head Movement, clitics cannot undergo incorporationd into the verb and enclisis results. Besides enclisis, the above analysis provides a better account of other phenomena such as the syntax of focus expletives, Stylistic Fronting, mesoclisis, and fragment answers.

Topic, focus, and discourse structure

2003 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 573-633 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dejan Matić
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Discourse Structure ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Word Order Variation ◽  
Order Variation ◽  
Information Packaging ◽  
One To One ◽  
Free Word ◽  
Free Variation

It is commonly assumed that word order in free word order languages is determined by a simple topic – focus dichotomy. Analysis of data from Ancient Greek, a language with an extreme word order flexibility, reveals that matters are more complex: the parameters of discourse structure and semantics interact with information packaging and are thus indirectly also responsible for word order variation. Furthermore, Ancient Greek displays a number of synonymous word order patterns, which points to the co-existence of pragmatic determinedness and free variation in this language. The strict one-to-one correspondence between word order and information structure, assumed for the languages labelled discourse configurational, thus turns out to be only one of the possible relationships between form and pragmatic content.

Long head movement vs. V2, and null subjects in old Romance

Lingua ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 89 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 217-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
María-Luisa Rivero
Keyword(s):  
Head Movement ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
Long Head

scholarly journals Simple Sentence Information Structure in Teleut: Problem Statement

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 268-277
Author(s):  
D. M. Tokmashev
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Frequency ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Semantic Field ◽  
Simple Sentence ◽  
Problem Statement ◽  
The Core ◽  
Information Packaging ◽  
Turkic Languages ◽  
Types Of Information ◽  
Involved Field

The present research featured the main approaches to the study of the information structure of a simple sentence, as well as their application to the Turkic languages. The paper focuses on the case of the Teleut language. The research objective was to identify and characterize various types of information structure of a simple sentence in their relationship with formalgrammatical and prosodic characteristics. The study involved field, comparative-historical, and descriptive methods, structural and component analysis, methods of modeling semantics and visualization of spectrograms. The information structure of a simple sentence can be modeled as the corresponding functional-semantic field. In Teleut, it is represented mostly by syntagm order and intonation, which make the core of information structure management. The peripheral means are represented by lexemes, particles, and affixes. Syntactically, information structure is expressed by the phrase order. Narrative sentences are characterized by the decrease of the fundamental frequency of the phrase that makes up the focal part. Pragmatically neutral narrative sentences that do not have presuppositions are characterized by a progressive arrangement of topical and focal elements with a predicate in the terminal right position. Since topics and foci are shifter categories, syntax inversions with preservation of the progressive information packaging "topic > focus" are possible, as well as inversion of its components "focus < topic" while retaining the phrase order. The inversion of both linear (syntagms) and non-linear (topics and foci) elements of the sentence is due to various presuppositions. The lexical and grammatical means of information packaging management are on the periphery of the functional-semantic field. Their potential to control the information structure is combined with their other functions, namely the expression of aspectual, modal, evidential, definiteness, and other characteristics. Most Turkic languages share the means of information packaging management.

Long Head Movement

1992 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 37-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Bennis
Keyword(s):  
Head Movement ◽  
Long Head

scholarly journals Information Structure

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enoch Aboh
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Clause Structure ◽  
Linguistic Data ◽  
Structure Sensitive ◽  
Information Packaging ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Formal Features

This chapter discusses the cartographic approach to clause structure according to which information structure directly relates to syntactic heads that project within the clausal left periphery. This view is supported by data from languages in which information-structure-sensitive notions (e.g. topic, focus) are encoded by means of discourse markers that trigger various constituent displacement rules. Such empirical facts are compatible with the cartographic view in which lexical choices condition information packaging and clause structure. Put together, the cross-linguistic data presented in this chapter indicate that [FOCUS], [TOPIC], and [INTERROGATIVE] represent formal features that are properties of lexical elements and may sometimes trigger generalized-piping and snowballing movement.

Grammaticalization of auxiliaries and parametric changes

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriela Alboiu ◽  
Virginia Hill
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Head Movement ◽  
Domain Versus ◽  
Long Head ◽  
T Domain

AbstractThis paper looks at constructions with non-clitic auxiliaries in Old Romanian, which precede the generalized option for clitic auxiliaries in the same language. We argue that non-clitic auxiliaries belong to a grammar with genuine SVO, scrambling to Spec, AspP, and subject-auxiliary inversion (SAI as AUX-to Fin). The generalization of the clitic auxiliary entails the loss of these properties, while triggering a parametric shift in word order to VSO, discourse oriented fronting of constituents (to CP only instead of Spec, AspP), and Long Head Movement (LHM through V-to-Focus) instead of SAI. Implicitly, this analysis supports the distinction between A (AUX-to-Fin) and A-bar (V-to-Focus) head movement of verbal elements, and further refines it by showing that these two types of movement do not concern two specific types of heads (i.e., operator for the C domain versus non-operator for the T domain; Roberts 2001, Head movement. In Mark Baltin & Chris Collins (eds.),

The role of genre in information structuring in English

2012 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 143-159
Author(s):  
Elma Kerz
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Research Article ◽  
Information Packaging ◽  
English Academic Writing

In a recent paper, Biber and Gray (2010) provide empirical evidence for the dramatic increase of compressed structures in English academic writing over the last 100 years. According to their corpus findings, the grammatical complexity of academic writing displays a phrasal rather than clausal character, the corollary of which is a compressed rather than elaborated discourse style (the latter one being typical of spoken registers). Given this finding, the question arises as to how far the traditional view that information structure should be viewed as a single partition of information within a given utterance adequately accounts for genre-specific information packaging strategies. To provide an answer to this question, the current study sets out to explore and compare information structuring within what will be referred to here as ‘compression strategies’, namely the use of adverbial subordinate clauses, -ING constructions, and complex NP constructions across two different genres: the highly compressed genre of research article abstracts, and fiction. The findings reported here suggest that in more compressed discourse styles such as academic writing, there is a higher probability of encountering information structure partition not only at the clausal but also at the phrasal level. The present paper highlights the importance of genre variation as one predictor of variation in information structuring within constructions.

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