Information Structure in Slavic

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katja Jasinskaja
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Focus Particles ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
Concise Overview ◽  
Narrow Focus ◽  
Free Word ◽  
Linguistic Means ◽  
Focus Projection

This chapter presents a concise overview of the linguistic means that express categories of information structure (IS) in Slavic languages. Concentrating especially on (a) the realization of broad vs narrow focus (focus projection); and (b) the expression of given information, topic, and delimitation, the chapter covers intonation and ‘free’ word order—the two most widely discussed ways of IS encoding. It further presents less well studied IS-sensitive devices and phenomena in Slavic: clefts, predicate doubling, topic and focus particles, as well as the interaction of IS with the Slavic clitic systems, in particular, in the expression of positive and negative polarity (or verum) focus.

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.

Pragmatics for Latin

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. M. Devine ◽  
Laurence D. Stephens
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
Informational Content ◽  
Compositional Process ◽  
Association With Focus ◽  
Narrow Scope ◽  
Order Language ◽  
Free Word

Latin is often described as a free word order language, but in general each word order encodes a particular information structure: in that sense, each word order has a different meaning. This book provides a descriptive analysis of Latin information structure based on detailed philological evidence and elaborates a syntax-pragmatics interface that formalizes the informational content of the various different word orders. The book covers a wide ranges of issues including broad scope focus, narrow scope focus, double focus, topicalization, tails, focus alternates, association with focus, scrambling, informational structure inside the noun phrase and hyperbaton (discontinuous constituency). Using a slightly adjusted version of the structured meanings theory, the book shows how the pragmatic meanings matching the different word orders arise naturally and spontaneously out of the compositional process as an integral part of a single semantic derivation covering denotational and informational meaning at one and the same time.

scholarly journals Word order in Latin locative constructions: a corpus study in Caesar’s De bello gallico

2011 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stavros Skopeteas
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Motion Verbs ◽  
Structural Domains ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
First Order ◽  
Order Language ◽  
Free Word

AbstractClassical Latin is a free word order language, i.e., the order of the constituents is determined by information structure rather than by syntactic rules. This article presents a corpus study on the word order of locative constructions and shows that the choice between a Theme-first and a Locative-first order is influenced by the discourse status of the referents. Furthermore, the corpus findings reveal a striking impact of the syntactic construction: complements of motion verbs do not have the same ordering preferences with complements of static verbs and adjuncts. This finding supports the view that the influence of discourse status on word order is indirect, i.e., it is mediated by information structural domains.

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.

scholarly journals How to start a V2 declarative clause: Transfer of syntax vs. information structure in L2 German

Nordlyd ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ute Bohnacker ◽  
Christina Rosén
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Production Data ◽  
Control Data ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
L1 Transfer ◽  
Text Corpora ◽  
Discourse Pragmatics ◽  
Linguistic Means

This paper discusses V2 word order and information structure in Swedish, German and non-native German. Concentrating on the clause-initial position of V2 declaratives, the ‘prefield’, we investigate the extent of L1 transfer in a closely related L2. The prefield anchors the clause in discourse, and although almost any type of element can occur in this position, naturalistic text corpora of native Swedish and native German show distinct language-specific patterns. Certain types of elements are more common than others in clause-initial position, and their frequencies in Swedish differ substantially from German (subjects, fronted objects, certain adverbs). Nonnative cross-sectional production data from Swedish learners of German at beginner, intermediate and advanced levels are compared with native control data, matched for age and genre (Bohnacker 2005, 2006, Rosén 2006). The learners’ V2 syntax is largely targetlike, but their beginnings of sentences are unidiomatic. They have problems with the language-specific linguistic means that have an impact on information structure: They overapply the Swedish principle of “rheme later” in their L2 German, indicating L1 transfer at the interface of syntax and discourse pragmatics, especially for structures that are frequent in the L1 (subject-initial and expletive-initial clauses, and constructions with <em>så</em> (‘so’) and object <em>det</em> (‘it/that’)).

scholarly journals The secret life of focus exponents, and what it tells us about fronted verbal projections

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kordula De Kuthy ◽  
W. Detmar Meurers
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Natural Explanation ◽  
Complex Word ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Definiteness Effect ◽  
Focus Projection

The paper investigates a complex word order phenomenon in German and the interaction of syntax and information structure it exemplifies: the occurrence of subjects as part of a fronted non-finite constituent and particularly the so-called definiteness effect excluding (many) definite subjects from this position. We explore the connection between focus projection and the partial fronting cases and show that it is the subject of those verbs which allow their subject to be the focus exponent that can be included as part of a fronted verbal constituent. In combination with the observation by Webelhuth (1990) that fronted verbal constituents need to be focused, this provides a natural explanation of the definiteness effect in terms of the information structure requirements in these sentences. Interestingly, the generally ignored exceptions to the definiteness effect are predicted by our analysis; we show that they involve definite noun phrases which can bear focus, which allows them to be part of a fronted verbal constituent. Finally, building on the integrated grammatical architecture provided in De Kuthy (2002), we formulate an HPSG theory which captures the interaction of constraints from syntax, information structure and intonation.

scholarly journals Word Order and Information Structure

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ad Neeleman ◽  
Hans van de Koot
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Language Faculty ◽  
Human Psychology ◽  
Free Word ◽  
As Effects

This chapter is concerned with the question to what extent free word order phenomena are regulated by information-structural (IS) constraints. Progress on this question must combine detailed empirical study with bold theoretical work that aims to test restrictive hypotheses about available syntactic operations, available IS-primitives, and their mapping. The present chapter evaluates four cross-cutting word order generalizations on the basis of a rough classification of syntactic operations and IS-primitives. Operations will be divided into those that are A-related (A-scrambling, passive), those that are A′-related (A′-scrambling), those that involve doubling with a pronoun or clitic, and finally those that involve extraposition, and it is assumed that IS-primitives are restricted to topic, focus, contrast, and givenness. Some discussion is offered of how the four generalizations identified here might emerge as effects of deeper properties of the language faculty or human psychology.

scholarly journals When discourse matches syntax: On meta-informative centering theory and discourse coherence in the recent history of English

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Ana Elina Martínez Insua
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Recent History ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Discourse Coherence ◽  
Order Language ◽  
History Of ◽  
Centering Theory ◽  
Free Word

This paper is concerned with how <em>there</em>-constructions may have helped to achieve discourse coherence in the recent history of English. From the theoretical framework of Meta-Informative Centering Theory (MIC) the paper explores the possibility to establish a relation between the syntactic structures under analysis and the distinction between 'smooth-shift' and 'rough-shift' transitions from one centre of attention to another (Brennan, Friedman &amp; Pollard, 1987). This will help, ultimately, to investigate the interaction between centering and MIC theories, word order and information structure in a 'non-free' word order language such as English. A corpus- driven analysis of the behaviour of spoken and written <em>there</em>-constructions from late Middle English to Present Day English will show their capacity to function either as highly coherent structures that continue with the same local topic as the previous utterance(s), or as means to shift the local focus of attention.

Towards A Comprehensive Model For Interpreting Word Order In Classical Biblical Hebrew

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 347-390
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Khan ◽  
Christo H.J. Van Der Merwe
Keyword(s):  
Functional Properties ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Biblical Hebrew ◽  
Comprehensive Model ◽  
Narrow Focus ◽  
Innovative Idea ◽  
1 Samuel ◽  
Topic Constructions ◽  
Discourse Organization

Abstract In this paper we examine the function of fronting constructions in verbal clauses in Classical Biblical Hebrew, i.e. constructions that involve the placement of a clause constituent before the verb. We present a model that accommodates the vast majority of cases of fronting in a sample corpus of 1 Samuel. A key feature of our model is the recognition that fronting constructions include both categorical sentences, which make a predication about a base of predication, and also thetic sentences, which present a unitary situation. We classify fronting constructions into three types: (i) narrow constituent focus constructions, (ii) selecting topic constructions, (iii) thetic constructions. An innovative idea that is developed in the paper is that constructions (i) and (iii), although exhibiting different configurations of information structure, nevertheless share various functional properties on the level of discourse organization. On account of these shared properties, we argue that thetic constructions (iii) can be regarded as functional extensions of narrow focus constructions (i). Recognition of these various types of fronting and their interrelationship contributes to a better understanding of the phenomenon.

scholarly journals An initial description of syntactic extensions in spoken Czech

Pragmatics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florence Oloff ◽  
Martin Havlík
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Interactional Linguistics ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
Strong Case ◽  
Case Morphology ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Initial Description ◽  
Free Word

Abstract This paper aims to describe different patterns of syntactic extensions of turns-at-talk in mundane conversations in Czech. Within interactional linguistics, same-speaker continuations of possibly complete syntactic structures have been described for typologically diverse languages, but have not yet been investigated for Slavic languages. Based on previously established descriptions of various types of extensions (Vorreiter 2003; Couper-Kuhlen & Ono 2007), our initial description shall therefore contribute to the cross-linguistic exploration of this phenomenon. While all previously described forms for continuing a turn-constructional unit seem to exist in Czech, some grammatical features of this language (especially free word order and strong case morphology) may lead to problems in distinguishing specific types of syntactic extensions. Consequently, this type of language allows for critically evaluating the cross-linguistic validity of the different categories and underlines the necessity of analysing syntactic phenomena within their specific action contexts.

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