When focus goes wild: An empirical study of two syntactic positions for information focus

My goal in the present paper is to carry out an analysis of the syntactic and discourse properties of Information Focus (IF) in Southern Peninsular Spanish (SPS) and Standard Spanish (SS) varieties. Generally, it has been argued that IF tends to occur last in a sentence since new information is placed in final position, following the End-Focus Principle as well as the Nuclear Stress Principle (Zubizarreta 1998). Focus fronting has been hence reserved for those cases in which a clear contrast between two alternatives is established, namely Contrastive Focus (CF) and Mirative Focus (MF) (cf. Cruschina 2012). The starting hypothesis here is that IF can appear as a fronted element in a sentence and that SPS speakers show a higher degree of acceptability and grammaticality towards such constructions, as opposed to SS speakers. This points toward a certain degree of microparametric variation in Spanish syntax (an understudied area), which will be tested by means of a grammaticality judgement task run among both SPS and SS speakers.

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Acoustic properties of word and phrasal prominence in Uzbek

Proceedings of the Workshop on Turkic and Languages in Contact with Turkic ◽

10.3765/ptu.v5i1.4796 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 1

Author(s):

Angeliki Athanasopoulou ◽

Irene Vogel ◽

Hossep Dolatian

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Acoustic Properties ◽

Contrastive Focus ◽

New Information ◽

Final Stress ◽

Boundary Properties ◽

Baseline Information ◽

Final Syllable ◽

Dialogue Types ◽

Information Focus

Based on a large-scale corpus of experimental data produced by 8 native speakers of Tashkent Uzbek, we assess the presence of canonical word-final stress in real words spoken in three dialogue types: without focus, with contrastive focus, and with new information focus on the target. The first context provides baseline information regarding the manifestation of stress, in the absence of additional focus properties. By comparing the latter two contexts with the former, we are also able to assess the acoustic manifestation of the two types of focus. The most noteworthy properties of the final syllable are its relatively long duration and sharp falling contour, potentially serving as the cues to lexical stress, and enhanced by both types of focus. Due to the word-final position of stress, however, the patterns we observe could also be consistent with boundary properties, a possibility we consider as well. In addition, we briefly compare the prosodic patterns we observe in Uzbek with similarly collected data in Turkish. We find that the prominence patterns in Uzbek, while not particularly strong, are nevertheless stronger than those in Turkish, and also exhibit crucial differences. Implications for Turkic prosody more generally are also suggested.

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The prosodic properties of narrow information focus in Central Mexican Spanish: Pitch accents, de-emphasis and phrasing

Loquens ◽

10.3989/loquens.2020.069 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

pp. e069

Author(s):

Érika Mendoza Vázquez ◽

Rodrigo Gutiérrez-Bravo ◽

Pedro Martín Butragueño

Keyword(s):

Pitch Accent ◽

Primary Factor ◽

Final Position ◽

Mexican Spanish ◽

Properties Of Information ◽

Information Focus ◽

Pitch Accents ◽

Flat Pattern

This paper investigates the different prosodic strategies used for the marking of information focus in Central Mexican Spanish. For this purpose, we carried out a study of the prosodic properties of information focus both in clause final position and in situ. Our results show important differences when compared to other varieties of Spanish. Specifically, we observe that the most frequent accent signaling information focus is a monotonal pitch accent (L* or !H*) and not L+H*. Furthermore, in many cases we observe that the pitch accent is not the only mechanism used to signal the focus: this is because we observe the presence of prosodic edges to the left of the focus, presumably functioning as an additional prosodic cue to identify it. Additionally, while we do not observe deaccenting of post-focal material, we do observe a sequence of non-rising forms (a flat pattern or “de-emphasis”) following the pitch accent that signals an in situ information focus forced by the test. With respect to phonological phrasing, our results confirm the analysis in Prieto (2006), where it is proposed that syntactic constituency is not the primary factor that regulates phrasing in Spanish.

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Processing subject focus across two Spanish varieties

Probus ◽

10.1515/probus-2019-0004 ◽

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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The innovative personal potential: the content of the concept and empirical study

SHS Web of Conferences ◽

10.1051/shsconf/20196900057 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 69 ◽

pp. 00057

Author(s):

Valeriia Kapustina ◽

Eugenia Bykova

Keyword(s):

Theoretical Analysis ◽

Empirical Study ◽

Personality Traits ◽

Real World ◽

Self Esteem ◽

State Technical ◽

Behavioral Component ◽

Simple Idea ◽

Cognitive Component ◽

New Information

The article is devoted to the theoretical analysis of an innovative personal potential as a psychological construct. Well-known definitions of an innovative personal potential have such characteristics as openness to new information and experience (cognitive component), a desire to change/willingness to create something new (motivational component), innovative activity (behavioral component) and value-semantic system (axiological component). The empirical study of an innovative personal potential of student was held in Novosibirsk State Technical University. Authors used psychological tests (KTS by D. Keirsey, TAS by S. Badner; Tests by F. Williams, the scale of self-esteem of an innovative personality traits by N.M. Lebedeva, A.N. Tatarko, “Problems of the real world” by R. Sternberg). The sample included 177 students. The correlational analysis showed that students, who consider themselves innovative persons, show interest, plays with ideas, reflects on the hidden meaning. They are tolerant to new situations, to the emergence of possible difficulties, they tend to be open, relaxed, free, mobile, trendwatching and are able to deviate from obvious and generally accepted things and develop a simple idea to make it more interesting. Also, it is found that Rational and Idealist types have more apparent characteristics of an innovative personal potential.

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Believability of evidence matters for correcting social impressions

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.1903222116 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 116 (20) ◽

pp. 9802-9807 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Jeremy Cone ◽

Kathryn Flaharty ◽

Melissa J. Ferguson

Keyword(s):

It Impacts ◽

Contradictory Information ◽

New Information ◽

Subjective Assessments ◽

Truth Value ◽

Properties Of Information ◽

Implicit And Explicit ◽

New Evidence

To what extent are we beholden to the information we encounter about others? Are there aspects of cognition that are unduly influenced by gossip or outright disinformation, even when we deem it unlikely to be true? Research has shown that implicit impressions of others are often insensitive to the truth value of the evidence. We examined whether the believability of new, contradictory information about others influenced whether people corrected their implicit and explicit impressions. Contrary to previous work, we found that across seven studies, the perceived believability of new evidence predicted whether people corrected their implicit impressions. Subjective assessments of truth value also uniquely predicted correction beyond other properties of information such as diagnosticity/extremity. This evidence shows that the degree to which someone thinks new information is true influences whether it impacts implicit impressions.

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Prosodic Structure Shapes the Temporal Realization of Intonation and Manual Gesture Movements

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/1092-4388(2012/12-0049) ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 56 (3) ◽

pp. 850-864 ◽

Cited By ~ 27

Author(s):

Núria Esteve-Gibert ◽

Pilar Prieto

Keyword(s):

Target Word ◽

Prosodic Structure ◽

Final Position ◽

Prosodic Phrasing ◽

Temporal Coordination ◽

Contrastive Focus ◽

Focus Condition ◽

Manual Gesture ◽

Prosodic Boundary ◽

Pointing Gesture

Purpose Previous work on the temporal coordination between gesture and speech found that the prominence in gesture coordinates with speech prominence. In this study, the authors investigated the anchoring regions in speech and pointing gesture that align with each other. The authors hypothesized that (a) in contrastive focus conditions, the gesture apex is anchored in the intonation peak and (b) the upcoming prosodic boundary influences the timing of gesture and intonation movements. Method Fifteen Catalan speakers pointed at a screen while pronouncing a target word with different metrical patterns in a contrastive focus condition and followed by a phrase boundary. A total of 702 co-speech deictic gestures were acoustically and gesturally analyzed. Results Intonation peaks and gesture apexes showed parallel behavior with respect to their position within the accented syllable: They occurred at the end of the accented syllable in non–phrase-final position, whereas they occurred well before the end of the accented syllable in phrase-final position. Crucially, the position of intonation peaks and gesture apexes was correlated and was bound by prosodic structure. Conclusions The results refine the phonological synchronization rule (McNeill, 1992), showing that gesture apexes are anchored in intonation peaks and that gesture and prosodic movements are bound by prosodic phrasing.

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Interpreters’ Perception of Linguistic and Non-Linguistic Factors Affecting Quality: A Survey through the World Wide Web

Meta Journal des traducteurs ◽

10.7202/009351ar ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 49 (2) ◽

pp. 278-293 ◽

Cited By ~ 21

Author(s):

Delia Chiaro ◽

Giuseppe Nocella

Keyword(s):

Information Technology ◽

World Wide Web ◽

Empirical Study ◽

Multidimensional Scaling ◽

World Wide ◽

Factors Affecting ◽

New Information ◽

Traditional Research ◽

The World ◽

Perception Of Quality

Abstract This paper will present and discuss the results of an empirical study on perception of quality in interpretation carried out on a sample of 286 interpreters across five continents. Since the 1980’s the field of Interpreting Studies has been witnessing an ever growing interest in the issue of quality in interpretation both in academia and in professional circles, but research undertaken so far is surprisingly lacking in methodological rigour. This survey is an attempt to revise previous studies on interpreters’ perception of quality through the implementation of new Information Technology which allowed us to administer a traditional research tool such as a questionnaire, in a highly innovative way; i.e., through the World Wide Web. Using multidimensional scaling, a perceptual map based upon the results of the manner in which interpreters ranked a list of linguistic and non-linguistic criteria according to their perception of importance in the interpretative process, was devised.

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The Context of the Aisles of the Abbey Church at Cluny

Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians ◽

10.1525/jsah.2015.74.1.63 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 74 (1) ◽

pp. 63-86 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

C. Edson Armi

Keyword(s):

Empirical Study ◽

Eleventh Century ◽

Peripheral Part ◽

New Information ◽

Structure And Design

In The Context of the Aisles of the Abbey Church at Cluny, C. Edson Armi examines the construction, structure, and design of the ruined aisles of the abbey church at Cluny, the largest Christian basilica in the eleventh century. The empirical study of a peripheral part of the mother church of the Cluniac Order reveals new information about the context of creation, the synthesis of masonry traditions, and the originality of architectural ideas at the abbey.

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Discourse-structuring functions of initial adverbials in English and Norwegian news and fiction

Languages in Contrast ◽

10.1075/lic.14.1.05has ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 14 (1) ◽

pp. 73-92 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Hilde Hasselgård

Keyword(s):

Information Management ◽

Initial Position ◽

The Other ◽

Lower Degree ◽

Corpus Study ◽

Contrastive Focus ◽

Other Hand ◽

New Information ◽

Initial Placement ◽

Discourse Functions

This paper explores the discourse-structuring functions of initial adverbial adjuncts in English and Norwegian news and fiction. Such discourse functions have to do with discourse linking and information management. The corpus study reveals frequency differences in the use of initial adjuncts across the languages, which are to some extent connected with an overall greater frequency of adjuncts in Norwegian. While initial adjuncts in fiction often signal cohesive relations, those in news are more typically due to backgrounding of less important information or to framing/scene-setting for the clause message. Norwegian initial adjuncts are even less likely than English ones to convey new information; on the other hand, initial position is to a lesser extent associated with contrastive focus in Norwegian. This, together with the higher frequency of initial adjuncts in Norwegian, suggests that initial placement of adjuncts carries a lower degree of markedness in Norwegian than in English.

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Information focus, syntactic weight and postverbal constituent order in Spanish

Borealis – An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics ◽

10.7557/1.2.2.2742 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 2 (2) ◽

pp. 159 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Steffen Heidinger

Keyword(s):

Direct Object ◽

Final Position ◽

Order Information ◽

Font Size ◽

Similar Extent ◽

Two Factors ◽

Constituent Order ◽

Information Focus

In Spanish, postverbal constituents – such as direct object, locative adjunct or depicitive – can be ordered in different ways (e.g. Juan bailó desnudo en su casa vs. Juan bailó en su casa desnudo). The present paper examines two possible factors for postverbal constituent order: information focus and syntactic weight. Based on data from a perception experiment it will be shown that information focus and syntactic weight indeed influence in postverbal constituent order in Spanish: both the focalization of a constituent and the increase of the weight of a constituent increase the frequency with which the respective constituent takes up the sentence final position. As concerns the strength of the two factors, our results suggest that information focus and syntactic weight influence in postverbal constituent order to a similar extent. As concerns the syntatic position of narrow information focus in Spanish, our results show that the sentence final position is the preferred position for narrowly focused constituents, but such constituents are not limited to the sentence final position.

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