Information Structure Within Interfaces

Consequences for the Phrase Structure

Asli Gürer

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781501505560
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistic Semantics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The realization of information structural units has been intriguing as information packaging has reflections in the semantic, pragmatic, syntactic and prosodic domains. This book extends the investigation by bringing data from all these domains and presenting an analysis for the model of grammar.
Based on three-way classification for information packaging, semantic investigation presents insights on compositionality and positional restrictions for topic, focus and discourse anaphoric phrases. The prosodic experimental studies reveal how focus shapes prosody and how diverse languages encode such information packaging. Drawing on the findings of experimental studies reflecting the interaction of information structure with quantifier scope, negation and aspectual markers, clause internal functional projections and scope domains are proposed in the syntactic analysis. The analysis offers new perspectives for movement operations, functional categories, phases which are central themes for the Minimalist Program.
Building on the investigation of information structure within semantic, prosodic, syntactic perspectives, the book will appeal to researchers working on either of these domains or their interfaces.

Chapter 1 Information structure within interfaces

1.1 Introduction

The investigation of information structural units has been a central issue in understanding the structure of grammar. Semantic, pragmatic, syntactic and prosodic factors are intertwined in the expression of information packaging, which in turn provides insight, not only, into the interfaces of these components, but also, into how diverse languages encode such information. The present work establishes a three-way classification for information structural units as (i) topic, which is further classified as aboutness topic and contrastive topic, (ii) focus, which is realized as discourse-new and contrastive focus and (iii) discourse anaphoric, given constituents. The investigation of information packaging becomes more complex but all the more intriguing, as some languages encode information structural units in several domains, use the same tools in the expression of further linguistic operations or do not mark them at all.

Gungbe (Aboh 2007), Chickasaw (Büring 2009), West Chadic languages Bole, Hausa and Tangale (Zimmerman 2011), Somali (Frascarelli 2012) mark focus with overt morphological markers. However, variation is observed even within a single language. In Gungbe, there is a difference between subject and object focus phrases in that in-situ object phrases are not marked overtly (1b).

(1)

a.

Étɛ́	wɛ̀	Kòfí	ɖù?
what	FOC	Kofi	eat

‘What did Kofi eat?’

b.

É	ɖù	lɛ́sì
3SG	eat	rice

‘He ate rice.’

c.

Lɛ́sì	wɛ̀	é	ɖù	(bò	bɛ́	àwútù)
rice	FOC	3SG	eat	and	start	sickness

‘He ate rice (and became sick).’

(adapted from Aboh 2007: 291)

Some languages encode information structure through prosodic strategies. In English, the distinction between discourse-new constituents and contrastive focus is reflected in prosody in that contrastive focus has a higher pitch height and duration than discourse-new constituents (Katz and Selkirk 2011). In Italian, if a constituent in a sentence is marked with [F], it restructures and enlarges its phonological phrase but this is not the case in constructions with all-new sentences (Frascarelli 1997). In Japanese and German, focus and givenness have an effect on pitch register while syntactic structure has an effect on prosodic structure (Féry and Ishihara 2009). In Tangale, a phrase boundary is inserted before the focused phrase (Zimmerman 2011).

Syntactic reordering is another strategy used to mark information packaging. In Italian, shifting (aboutness), contrastive and familiar topic phrases surface in a sentence in this hierarchical order (Frascarelli and Hinterhölzl 2007). In Romanian, Catalan and Hungarian, the immediately preverbal position has been suggested to be the identificational, contrastive focus position (Kiss 1998).

(2)

a.

Tegnap	este	Marinak	mutattam	be	Pétert.
last	night	Mary.DAT	introduced.I	PERF	Peter.ACC

‘It was to Mary that I introduced Peter last night.’

b.

Tegnap

este

be

mutattam

Pétert

Marinak.

‘Last night I introduced Peter to Mary.’

(adapted from Kiss 1998: 247)

In (2a), the preverbal dative marked constituent bears identificational focus in Hungarian. It is the sentence final position that is reserved for this purpose in Russian (Dyakonova 2009) and Spanish (Zubizarretta 1998) or sentence initial position in Finnish (Vallduví and Vilkuna 1998) and Hausa (Zimmermann 2011). In Bole, a Bantu language, focused subjects undergo movement to the postverbal position and in that case, morphological marking becomes optional (Zimmermann 2011).

A language can also use mixed strategies and encode the information status of the constituent in different domains ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Chapter 1 Information structure within interfaces
• Chapter 2 Semantic and pragmatic marking of information structure
• Chapter 3 Prosodic marking of focus
• Chapter 4 Syntactic marking of information structural units
• Chapter 5 Revisiting the phrase structure of Turkish
• Appendix A Samples from the first study on the prosody of focus phrases
• Appendix B Samples from the second study on the prosody of focus phrases
• Appendix C Samples from the study on the interaction of information structural units with quantifier scope
• Bibliography
• Index