scholarly journals The morphosyntax and prosody of topic and focus in Juba Arabic

2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 319-351
Author(s):  
Stefano Manfredi ◽  
Mauro Tosco
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
Complex Interaction ◽  
Focus Particles ◽  
Contrastive Focus ◽  
Left Dislocation

The article discusses the information structure of Juba Arabic, an Arabic-based pidgincreole of South Sudan, showing how the expression of topic and focus is the result of a complex interaction of morphosyntactic and prosodic means. While the lexical elements used in the expression of topic and focus are Arabic-derived, no such influence can be found in the prosody. Both topic- and focus-marked utterances can be opposed to neutral ones. Topics are marked syntactically through left dislocation as well as prosodically. Morphosyntactic means include the use of the ‘almost-dedicated’ marker zátu for marking contrastive focus and the two dedicated particles yáwu and yawú, both derived from the multifunctional element ya. The articles further explores the grammaticalization path leading to the dedicated focus particles of Juba Arabic.

‘Only’ in Nguni: A Phrase-Final Particle Meets Antisymmetry Theory

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vicki Carstens ◽  
Jochen Zeller
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Complex Topography ◽  
Focus Particles ◽  
Final Particle ◽  
English Only ◽  
Final Particles

This article investigates the syntax of the phrase-final focus particles kuphela and qha ‘only’ in Zulu and Xhosa (Nguni; Bantu). We show that kuphela’s and qha’s associations with a focused constituent respect the complex topography of information structure in Nguni and, like English only, a surface c-command requirement. However, unlike English only, the Zulu and Xhosa particles typically follow the focus associate they c-command, a fact that poses a serious challenge for Kayne’s (1994) antisymmetry theory. We demonstrate that the Nguni facts are incompatible with recent Linear Correspondence Axiom–inspired approaches to phrase-final particles in other languages and, after weighing the merits of several approaches, we conclude that kuphela is an adjunct and that syntax is only weakly antisymmetric: adjuncts are not subject to the LCA.

Ergativity in Tibeto-Burman

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shobhana Chelliah
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Contrastive Focus ◽  
Contrastive Topic ◽  
Alignment Analysis ◽  
Focus Marking

A number of Tibeto-Burman languages exhibit morphological ergative alignment, while others clearly do not. In these languages, matters of information structure determine core argument marking. Specifically, both A and S marking may be used to indicate topic, contrastive topic, broad focus, and/or contrastive focus. It is most often A or S, not P, that is assigned such status and between A and S, it is most often A that takes marking. Preference for topic or focus marking on A creates the impression of ergative alignment, but an ergative alignment analysis is untenable as S may be marked under the same conditions and with the same morpheme as A. Considerations of discourse-level clause interpretation in Tibetan, Meitei, and Burmese show that information structure not transitivity determines A and S marking. The presence or absence of marking based on information structure is characterized as “unique differential marking”, distinguishing it from the differential marking observed in ergative and accusative alignment systems.

scholarly journals Topicality and differential object marking

2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giorgio Iemmolo
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Comparative Data ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Left Dislocation ◽  
Object Marking ◽  
The Relationship

The present paper investigates the relationship between dislocation and differential object marking in some Romance languages. As in many languages that have a DOM system, it is usually also assumed that in Romance languages the phenomenon is regulated by the semantic features of the referents, such as animacy, definiteness, and specificity. In the languages under investigation, though, these features cannot explain the distribution and the emergence of DOM. After discussing the main theoretical approaches to the phenomenon, I will analyse DOM in four Romance languages. I will argue that DOM emerges in pragmatically and semantically marked contexts, namely with personal pronouns in dislocations. I will then show that in these languages the use of the DOM system is mainly motivated by the need to signal the markedness of these direct objects as a consequence of being used in (mainly left) dislocation as topics (cf. English “As for him, we didn’t see him”). Finally, the examination of comparative data from Persian and Amazonian languages lends further support to the advocated approach in terms of information structure

Information Structure in First Language Acquisition

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Höhle ◽  
Frauke Berger ◽  
Antje Sauermann
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
First Language ◽  
First Language Acquisition ◽  
Focus Particles ◽  
Comprehension Skills ◽  
Early Production ◽  
Linguistic Means

So far, research on the acquisition of information structure (IS) is still relatively sparse compared to other areas of first language acquisition research. A growing interest in this area has emerged with an increasing number of results indicating an asymmetry of an early production but late comprehension of linguistic means related to IS—which contrasts common findings in other areas of acquisition with comprehension skills typically being in advance to production skills and thus provides a challenge for theories of language acquisition. This chapter will give a review on recent findings on the acquisition of linguistic means to mark IS in first language acquisition focusing on studies looking at the production and comprehension of accentuation and word order. A further part will look at children’s production and comprehension of sentences with focus particles.

Focus on Russian Scope: An Experimental Investigation of the Relationship between Quantifier Scope, Prosody, and Information Structure

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 741-779 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tania Ionin ◽  
Tatiana Luchkina
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Investigation ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Syntactic Analysis ◽  
Quantifier Scope ◽  
Contrastive Focus ◽  
Russian Speakers ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Scope Reading ◽  
The Relationship

An experimental investigation of quantifier scope in Russian SVO and OVS sentences, in which the factors of word order, prosody, information structure, and indefinite form are manipulated, shows that native Russian speakers have a preference for surface scope under neutral prosody, though this preference is more pronounced with odin ‘one’ indefinites than with dva ‘two’ indefinites. Furthermore, contrastive focus on the fronted object QP in OVS order is found to facilitate the inverse scope reading, but contrastive focus on the subject in SVO order is not. These findings have implications for the syntactic analysis of noncanonical word order in Russian ( Bailyn 2011 , Slioussar 2013 ) and support the link between contrastive focus and scope reconstruction in Russian ( Ionin 2003 , Neeleman and Titov 2009 ).

Fronting, dislocation, and the syntactic role of discourse-related features

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvio Cruschina
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Linguistic Variation ◽  
Contrastive Focus ◽  
Syntactic Features

This paper focuses on the syntactic role of the features related to discourse and information structure. It is argued that information-structure notions are encoded in syntax as syntactic features projecting their own phrase structure, and are fundamental in accounting for cross-linguistic variation. The word order alternations and syntactic operations which are strictly dependent on the discourse/informational properties of the sentence, as well as the different grammatical properties characterizing different information-structure categories, can all be related to the syntactic role of discourse-related features, the functional projections with which they are associated, and the type of movement that these features trigger. Under this view, this paper offers an analysis of fronting and dislocation phenomena in Romance, which entails that variation with respect to these processes is correlated to the activation and to the attraction properties of the functional projections encoding information-structure distinctions. Keywords: discourse-related features; information structure; functional projections; topic; informational focus; contrastive focus; Romance; Sicilian

scholarly journals Reference tracking mechanisms and automatic annotation based on Ob-Ugric information structure

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 (96) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gwen Eva Janda ◽  
Axel Wisiorek ◽  
Stefanie Eckmann
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Complex Interaction ◽  
Automatic Annotation ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Passive Voice ◽  
Reference Tracking ◽  
Interaction System ◽  
Dative Shift

The following paper is concerned with information structure in the Ob-Ugric languages and its manifestation in reference tracking and its mechanisms. We will show how both knowledge on information structure and on reference tracking mechanisms can be used to develop a system for a (semi-)automatic annotation of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic functions. We assume that the principles of information structure, i.e., the balancing of the content of an utterance, are indicated by the use of anaphoric devices to mark participants in an on-going discourse. This process in which participants are encoded by the speaker and decoded by the hearer is called reference tracking. Our model distinguishes four important factors that play a role in reference tracking: inherent (linguistic) features of a referent, information structure, referential devices and referential strategies. The interaction between these factors we call reference tracking mechanisms. Here, the passive voice and the dative shift are used to exemplify this complex interaction system. Drawing conclusions from this, rules are developed to annotate both syntactic, semantic and pragmatic roles of discourse participants (semi-)automatically.

scholarly journals Clitic left dislocation and focus projection in Spanish

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Bildhauer
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Thematic Roles ◽  
Thematic Role ◽  
Left Dislocation ◽  
Clitic Left Dislocation ◽  
Focus Projection

The information-structural status of clitic left dislocated arguments in Spanish has been argued to depend crucially on their thematic role. Earlier HPSG analyses of related phenomena in other languages do not take into account this sort of information. A formalization will be presented which can handle differences in information-structure arising from different thematic roles of clitic left dislocated phrases.

scholarly journals Information structure and intonation in Andean Spanish

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 10
Author(s):  
Antje Gerda Muntendam
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Peak Height ◽  
Stressed Syllable ◽  
Peak Alignment ◽  
Andean Spanish ◽  
Contrastive Focus ◽  
Picture Story ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Spanish Bilinguals

This study examines information structure and intonation in Andean Spanish. The data come from picture-story tasks and an elicitation task with 22 Quechua-Spanish bilinguals from Peru. The target sentences were sentences with broad focus, (contrastive) focus on the subject, on the object, and on the VP. The duration of the stressed syllable/word, peak height, peak alignment, and intensity were measured. The results showed that in Andean Spanish pre-nuclear peaks are aligned early and there are fewer prominence-lending features than in non-Andean Spanish, possibly indicating a Quechua influence. The study contributes to research on intonation, bilingualism and language contact.

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