Knud Lambrecht, Information structure and sentence form: topic focus and the mental representation of discourse referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xvi+388.

1996 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 205-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mira Ariel
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representation ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Sentence Form

INFORMATION STRUCTURE AND SENTENCE FORM: TOPIC, FOCUS, AND THE MENTAL REPRESENTATIONS OF DISCOURSE REFERENTS.Knud Lambrecht. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xvi + 388. $54.95 cloth.

1997 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-405
Author(s):  
William Frawley
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Sentence Form ◽  
Discourse Grammar ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Comprehensive Study

When I saw that this book was a comprehensive study of the relationships across discourse, grammar, and prosody, my spirits sagged. “Oh, no,” I thought. “Not this story again.” But 20 pages into the book I realized that Lambrecht had taken a new and sobering approach to the subject, tackling a very hard subject and giving convincing answers with clear data.

scholarly journals The Role of Prosodic Breaks and Pitch Accents in Grouping Words during On-line Sentence Processing

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (9) ◽  
pp. 2447-2467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Bögels ◽  
Herbert Schriefers ◽  
Wietske Vonk ◽  
Dorothee J. Chwilla
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Pitch Accent ◽  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
N400 Effect ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
On Line ◽  
Group Words ◽  
Pitch Accents

The present study addresses the question whether accentuation and prosodic phrasing can have a similar function, namely, to group words in a sentence together. Participants listened to locally ambiguous sentences containing object- and subject-control verbs while ERPs were measured. In Experiment 1, these sentences contained a prosodic break, which can create a certain syntactic grouping of words, or no prosodic break. At the disambiguation, an N400 effect occurred when the disambiguation was in conflict with the syntactic grouping created by the break. We found a similar N400 effect without the break, indicating that the break did not strengthen an already existing preference. This pattern held for both object- and subject-control items. In Experiment 2, the same sentences contained a break and a pitch accent on the noun following the break. We argue that the pitch accent indicates a broad focus covering two words [see Gussenhoven, C. On the limits of focus projection in English. In P. Bosch & R. van der Sandt (Eds.), Focus: Linguistic, cognitive, and computational perspectives. Cambridge: University Press, 1999], thus grouping these words together. For object-control items, this was semantically possible, which led to a “good-enough” interpretation of the sentence. Therefore, both sentences were interpreted equally well and the N400 effect found in Experiment 1 was absent. In contrast, for subject-control items, a corresponding grouping of the words was impossible, both semantically and syntactically, leading to processing difficulty in the form of an N400 effect and a late positivity. In conclusion, accentuation can group words together on the level of information structure, leading to either a semantically “good-enough” interpretation or a processing problem when such a semantic interpretation is not possible.

Focus, exhaustivity and existence in Akan, Ga and Ngamo

Linguistics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 221-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mira Grubic ◽  
Agata Renans ◽  
Reginald Akuoko Duah
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Academic Press ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
African Languages ◽  
Information Focus ◽  
Focus Marking ◽  
Crosslinguistic Variation ◽  
Background Construction ◽  
Focus Strategies

Abstract This paper discusses the relation between focus marking and focus interpretation in Akan (Kwa), Ga (Kwa), and Ngamo (West Chadic). In all three languages, there is a special morphosyntactically marked focus/background construction, as well as morphosyntactically unmarked focus. We present data stemming from original fieldwork investigating whether marked focus/background constructions in these three languages also have additional interpretative effects apart from standard focus interpretation. Crosslinguistically, different additional inferences have been found for marked focus constructions, e.g. contrast (e.g. Vallduví, Enric & Maria Vilkuna. 1997. On rheme and kontrast. In Peter Culicover & Louise McNally (eds.), The limits of syntax (Syntax and semantics 29), 79–108. New York: Academic Press; Hartmann, Katharina & Malte Zimmermann. 2007b. In place – Out of place: Focus in Hausa. In Kerstin Schwabe & Susanne Winkler (eds.), On information structure, meaning and form, 365–403. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.; Destruel, Emilie & Leah Velleman. 2014. Refining contrast: Empirical evidence from the English it-cleft. In Christopher Piñón (ed.), Empirical issues in syntax and semantics 10, 197–214. Paris: Colloque de syntaxe et sémantique à Paris (CSSP). http://www.cssp.cnrs.fr/eiss10/), exhaustivity (e.g. É. Kiss, Katalin. 1998. Identificational focus versus information focus. Language 74(2). 245–273.; Hartmann, Katharina & Malte Zimmermann. 2007a. Exhaustivity marking in Hausa: A re-evaluation of the particle nee/cee. In Enoch O. Aboh, Katharina Hartmann & Malte Zimmermann (eds.), Focus strategies in African languages: The interaction of focus and grammar in Niger-Congo and Afro-Asiatic (Trends in Linguistics 191), 241–263. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.), and existence (e.g. Rooth, Mats. 1999. Association with focus or association with presupposition? In Peter Bosch & Rob van der Sandt (eds.), Focus: Linguistic, cognitive, and computational perspectives, 232–244. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.; von Fintel, Kai & Lisa Matthewson. 2008. Universals in semantics. The Linguistic Review 25(1–2). 139–201). This paper investigates these three inferences. In Akan and Ga, the marked focus constructions are found to be contrastive, while in Ngamo, no effect of contrast was found. We also show that marked focus constructions in Ga and Akan trigger exhaustivity and existence presuppositions, while the marked construction in Ngamo merely gives rise to an exhaustive conversational implicature and does not trigger an existence presupposition. Instead, the marked construction in Ngamo merely indicates salience of the backgrounded part via a morphological background marker related to the definite determiner (Schuh, Russell G. 2005. Yobe state, Nigeria as a linguistic area. Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 31(2). 77–94; Güldemann, Tom. 2016. Maximal backgrounding=focus without (necessary) focus encoding. Studies in Language 40(3). 551–590). The paper thus contributes to the understanding of the semantics of marked focus constructions across languages and points to the crosslinguistic variation in expressing and interpreting marked focus/background constructions.

scholarly journals Contact-induced changes in cliticization and word order: the Cimbrian dialect of Luserna as a case study

2010 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnes Kolmer
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Local Varieties ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Sentence Form ◽  
Contact Situation ◽  
The One ◽  
Induced Changes ◽  
Mapping Information

AbstractWhich properties of a cliticization system can be borrowed relatively easily and which ones are harder to adapt due to external influence? This article examines the contact situation of the Cimbrian dialect spoken in Luserna as a starting point for a discussion of this question. It presents new data on a German variety which has been exposed to intensive contact with Italian and its local varieties over several generations. The article shows that certain peculiarities of the Cimbrian cliticization system result on the one hand from word order changes and on the other hand from the imitation and integration of the model language’s strategies for mapping information structure onto sentence form.

Papers in Laboratory Phonology V: Acquisition and the lexicon. Michael B. Broe and Janet B. Pierrehumbert (Eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. 414.

2001 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-278
Author(s):  
Marilyn Vihman
Keyword(s):  
Speech Production ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Human Movement ◽  
Physical Models ◽  
Prosodic Structure ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Laboratory Phonology ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
The Relationship

This stimulating volume is the outcome of a 1996 conference, the first in the laboratory phonology series to incorporate psycholinguistic topics, including six chapters addressing acquisition. Here, as in the earlier conferences, the primary focus is on the relationship between phonetics and phonology. For example, in the first section, “Articulation and Mental Representation,” Munhall, Kawato, and Vatikiotis-Bateson provide a lucid account of the state of the art in physical models of articulation; they conclude with a discussion of the difficulty of identifying the interface between phonology and speech production. In a related study, the relevance of overarching prosodic structure (“phrasal signatures”) to low-level articulatory effects is illustrated in some detail by Byrd, Kaun, Narayanan, and Saltzman, who find that “prosodic structure is manifest in the details of articulation. . . . The abstract symbolic representation useful to linguistics [must be integrated] with a dynamical model of human movement useful to speech scientists” (p. 85).

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document