scholarly journals El foco, la estructura informativa y ser focalizador en el español cibaeño

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Gupton
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Experimental Results ◽  
Syntactic Analysis ◽  
Contrastive Focus ◽  
Dominican Spanish ◽  
Information Focus

In this manuscript, I examine information focus and contrastive focus in Cibaeño Dominican Spanish (CDS), in an attempt to test the predictions of Zubizarreta (1998) as well as claims of rigid word order (e.g. Cameron, 1993; Toribio, 2000). Analysis of the experimental results from 34 monolingual CDS speakers suggests that CDS does not behave according to Zubizarreta's proposal, nor does it have rigid word order. Additionally, the preference for in situ contrastive-corrective focus bears a potential for information-structure-related ambiguities. I suggest that the ser focalizador structure, which is exhaustive in CDS, is made available to resolve such cases of ambiguity. Novel ser focalizador data informs a revised syntactic analysis of the structure based on Toribio (1993).

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 ).

scholarly journals Emphatic Italics in English Translations: Stylistic Failure or Motivated Stylistic Resources?

2011 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 424-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriela Saldanha
Keyword(s):  
Characteristic Feature ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Implicit Association ◽  
Common Features ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Consistent Feature ◽  
Stylistic Function ◽  
Information Focus

This article argues that emphatic italics, a typographic feature regularly ignored by linguists and associated with poor style, have an important stylistic function in English, often working in implicit association with prosodic patterns in spoken language to signal marked information focus, thus fulfilling an important role in information structure and adding a conversational and involved tone to written texts. Emphatic italics are more common in English than in other languages because tonic prominence is the preferred means of marking information focus in English, while other languages use purely linguistic devices, such as word order. Thus arises the question of what happens in English translations from and into other languages. The study presented here looks at results obtained from a bidirectional English-Portuguese corpus (COMPARA) which suggest that italics may be less common in English translations from Portuguese than in non-translated English texts. This trend could potentially be explained by the use of common features of translated language, in particular explicitation and conservatism (also known as normalization). However, a closer look at the work of particular translators shows that the avoidance or use of italics is not a consistent feature of translations and may be a characteristic feature of the stylistic profile of certain translators.

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 Effects of Focus Type and Argument Length on the Dative Alternation

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 14
Author(s):  
Mary Byram ◽  
Maria Luisa Zubizarreta
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Double Object ◽  
Contrastive Focus ◽  
Dative Alternation ◽  
Word Order Variation ◽  
Production Study ◽  
Order Variation ◽  
Focus Type ◽  
Information Focus

The arguments of English double object verbs appear in the dative form (ex: “Give the sailor the cup.”) or the PP-frame (ex: “Give the cup to the sailor.”). We conducted a production study to test (i) whether information focus or contrastive focus drives this word order variation, and (ii) whether focus interacts with weight. The study found that heavy themes and information focused constituents appear sentence finally, but contrastive focus does not effect the word order. Furthermore, information focus was a stronger motivator than weight. This suggests that at least two types of focus need to be considered in any theory of word in addition to weight.

Subject inversion in transitive sentences from Classical to Modern European Portuguese

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Galves ◽  
Alba Gibrail
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Clause Structure ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
High Position ◽  
European Portuguese ◽  
Constituent Order ◽  
Tycho Brahe ◽  
Information Focus

This chapter focuses on Classical Portuguese and its change to Modern European Portuguese, bringing to the debate new data concerning transitive sentences. The data are drawn from the Tycho Brahe Parsed Corpus of Historical Portuguese (texts written by Portuguese authors born 1502–1836). It is argued that both constituent order syntax and the information structure functions of word order in transitive sentences (SVO, VSO, VOS) support the characterization of Classical Portuguese as a verb-second language: the verb occupies a high position in clause structure, which makes a high position for post-verbal subjects available as well. This explains why post-verbal subjects in Classical Portuguese are not obligatorily associated with an information focus interpretation, but very frequently receive a familiar topic interpretation. The empirical evidence discussed in this chapter supports the claim that there was a syntactic change from Classical to Modern European Portuguese, rather than a discursive reinterpretation of the same syntax.

Specificational sentences and the influence of information structure on (anti-)connectivity effects

2009 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
KAREN LAHOUSSE
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Syntactic Analysis ◽  
Independent Evidence ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Copular Sentences ◽  
Specificational Sentences

This paper argues that the difference between connectivity and anti-connectivity effects in specificational copular sentences is heavily influenced by semantics and information structure. It shows that anti-connectivity effects with respect to binding disappear when the influence of information structure is neutralized, whereas anti-connectivity effects with respect to scope result from the semantics of specificational sentences. These data lead to the conclusion that anti-connectivity effects cannot be used as evidence against a syntax-based approach to specificational sentences and binding, that the analysis of specificational sentences should include both a syntactic and a semantic device, and that the syntactic analysis of specificational sentences should rely crucially on their information structure. I present and adopt Heycock & Kroch's (2002) analysis for specificational sentences, in which connectivity effects result from the assembling of ground and focus. The fact that connectivity effects are also exhibited by verb–object–subject word order in French and Spanish, which is marked for the ground-focus partition, is presented as an important piece of independent evidence in favor of this analysis.

scholarly journals Verb Second and Verb Third in Modern Eastern Armenian

2020 ◽  
pp. 642-664
Author(s):  
Alessandra Giorgi ◽  
Sona Haroutyunian
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Question Answering ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Contrastive Focus ◽  
Information Focus

Modern Eastern Armenian is a SOV language. In some sentences, the inflected verb can also occupy the second position, according to the well-known V2 typology. In these cases, the interpretation of the phrase preceding the verb is obligatorily a focused one. The V2 word order is found both with corrective/contrastive focus and information focus, for instance in question-answering contexts. V3, V4, etc. orders are also possible, provided that the phrases preceding the focused one are base-generated in the left periphery of the clause. This chapter also briefly discusses the properties of long-distance focus and the interaction of focus with indefinites.

scholarly journals information structure of discontinuous NPs in German

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kordula De Kuthy
Keyword(s):  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Previous Literature ◽  
Syntactic Analysis ◽  
Structure Component ◽  
Syntactic Restrictions

This paper investigates a particular word order phenomenon in German, the occurrence of discontinuous NPs (which we refer to as the NP-PP split construction) in order to probe the division of labor between the syntactic analysis and discourse constraints on this construction. We argue that some of the factors which previous literature has tried to explain in terms of syntactic restrictions are in fact derivable from discourse factors. Building on these insights, we show how an information structure component can be integrated into an HPSG account of the phenomenon.

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.

Processing subject focus across two Spanish varieties

Probus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-127
Author(s):  
Bradley Hoot ◽  
Tania Leal
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Spanish Speakers ◽  
Experimental Results ◽  
Final Position ◽  
Reading Task ◽  
New Information ◽  
Basic Facts

AbstractLinguists have keenly studied the realization of focus – the part of the sentence introducing new information – because it involves the interaction of different linguistic modules. Syntacticians have argued that Spanish uses word order for information-structural purposes, marking focused constituents via rightmost movement. However, recent studies have challenged this claim. To contribute sentence-processing evidence, we conducted a self-paced reading task and a judgment task with Mexican and Catalonian Spanish speakers. We found that movement to final position can signal focus in Spanish, in contrast to the aforementioned work. We contextualize our results within the literature, identifying three basic facts that theories of Spanish focus and theories of language processing should explain, and advance a fourth: that mismatches in information-structural expectations can induce processing delays. Finally, we propose that some differences in the existing experimental results may stem from methodological differences.

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