On Information Structure, Meaning and Form

On Information Structure, Meaning and Form
Author: Kerstin Schwabe
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 584
Release: 2007
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9789027233646

This collection of articles offers a new and compelling perspective on the interface connecting syntax, phonology, semantics and pragmatics. At the core of this volume is the hypothesis that information structure represents the common interface of these grammatical components. Information structure is investigated here from different theoretical viewpoints yielding typologically relevant information and structural generalizations. In the volume's introductory chapter, the editors identify two central approaches to information structure: the formal and the interpretive view. The remainder of the book is organized accordingly. The first part examines information structure and grammar, concentrating on generalizations across languages. The second part investigates information structure and pragmatics, concentrating on clause structure and context. Through concrete analyses of topic, focus, and related phenomena across different languages, the contributors add new and convincing evidence to the research on information structure.

Information Structure and its Interfaces

Information Structure and its Interfaces
Author: Lunella Mereu
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 441
Release: 2009-02-26
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110213974

The volume presents recent results in the field of Information Structure based on research on Italian and Italian dialects, and on further studies on several typologically different languages. The central idea is that Information Structure is not an exclusive matter of syntax but an interface issue which involves the interplay of at least the phonological, morpho-syntactic and semantic-pragmatic levels of analysis. In addition, the volume is based on the study of actual language use and it adopts a cross-linguistic point of view.

The Syntax-Information Structure Interface

The Syntax-Information Structure Interface
Author: Eugenia Casielles-Suárez
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2004-08-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 113587669X

In the last decade, the notions of topic and focus have come to play an increasingly relevant role in theoretical linguistics. Although these notions are often taken for granted, they are still poorly understood. This study offers a detailed analysis of the precise definitions of these and related terms (theme, topic, background, given information, focus, contrast, etc.) as well as of their combination into information structures such as the topic-focus and background-focus articulations. It recommends pursuing a feature-based typology of topics and argues against a dual nature of focus (i.e. presentational vs. contrastive). Central questions addressed are the analysis of subjects in Spanish and English (DP vs NP and null vs. preverbal vs. postverbal) and the nature of constructions such as topicalization, left-dislocation, and focus preposing. Further, it is proposed that in Spanish information structure can be read off the syntax: while an overt DP in the preverbal specifier subject position is interpreted as the topic in a topic-focus articulation, one or more left-or right-dislocated phrases are interpreted as part of the background in background-focus/focus-background structures.

The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces

The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces
Author: Gillian Ramchand
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 686
Release: 2007-02-22
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0199247455

'The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces' explores how the core components of the language faculty interact. This book shows how these interactions are reflected in linguistic and cognitive theory, considers what they reveal, and looks at their reflections in expression and communication.

Interfaces and Interface Conditions

Interfaces and Interface Conditions
Author: Andreas Späth
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 405
Release: 2012-02-14
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110926008

The volume contains articles that focus on the interface between linguistic and conceptual knowledge. The issues addressed in the volume include the preconditions of every level of the language system that are required for the transformation of linguistic information into conceptual representations. In accordance with Chomsky’s Minimalist language model, the language system is embedded into the performative systems where language is a part of the cognitive competence of human beings, i.e. system of articulation and perception (A/P) and the conceptual-intentional system (C/I). During the formation of linguistic structures, every performative system obtains well-formed representations as its input information. The articles of the volume show how interface conditions determine the linguistic representations on each level of the linguistic system. Interface conditions result in requirements for the ordering of linguistic elements. The syntactic transformation achieves a point, where the linguistic structure formation branches to two distinct representational levels. Both levels deliver instructions for the systems of performance A/P and C/I. Linearization takes place on the syntactic surface of a sentence. The linearization of linguistic elements is manifest at the derivational point of Spell-out and also on the level of the phonological form (PF). This means that on the one hand, linearization is relevant to the phonetic aspect of linguistic expressions, and on the other hand, the interpretation of linguistic utterances is based on hierarchical structures. On the level of Logical Form (LF) all operations apply which don’t have any influence on the linear order in overt syntax. In addition they affect the generation of hierarchical structures. The structure obtained on LF is the representational format of the semantic form of a sentence.

Morphology and Its Interfaces

Morphology and Its Interfaces
Author: Alexandra Galani
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2011
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 902725561X

One of the most striking trends across linguistic research in recent years has been the examination of the interfaces between the various subcomponents of the language faculty. Yet, approaches to these interfaces across different theoretical frameworks differ substantially. This volume pulls together research into Morphology and its interfaces from researchers employing a variety of different theoretical and methodological perspectives: Morphology is a diverse field, and rather than aiming to collect works sharing a particular approach or framework of assumptions, this collection instead captures the diversity and provides an overview of the state of the research field while also addressing particular empirical phenomena with up-to-date analyses. The articles collected provide case studies from a diverse variety of languages revealing properties of the interfaces that morphology shares with syntax, semantics, phonology, and the lexicon, while the volume's inclusive cross-theoretical approach will serve to introduce readers to the findings of alternative frameworks and methodologies.

Language Change at the Interfaces

Language Change at the Interfaces
Author: Nicholas Catasso
Publisher:
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2022-06-15
Genre:
ISBN: 9789027210975

This volume offers an up-to-date survey of linguistic phenomena at the interfaces between syntax and prosody, information structure and discourse - with a special focus on Germanic and Romance - and their role in language change. The contributions, set within the generative framework, discuss original data and provide new insights into the diachronic development of long-burning issues such as negation, word order, quantifiers, null subjects, aspectuality, the structure of the left periphery, and extraposition. The first part of the volume explores interface phenomena at the intrasentential level, in which only clause-internal factors seem to play a significant role in determining diachronic change. The second part examines developments at the intersentential level involving a rearrangement of categories between at least two clausal domains. The book will be of interest for scholars and students interested in generative accounts of language change phenomena at the interfaces, as well as for theoretical linguists in general.

Beyond Emotions in Language

Beyond Emotions in Language
Author: Bożena Rozwadowska
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2020-12-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027260761

This book sheds new light on the puzzle of psychological predicates in a cross-linguistic perspective by looking at them from a variety of angles at the interfaces between event structure, lexical and viewpoint aspect, syntax and information structure. The individual chapters focus on Polish and Spanish psych verbs, which manifest new overt contrasts that often remain covert in languages such as English, e.g., aspectual distinctions, the peculiarities of dative constructions, or the role of information structure in determining the word order. One of the main contributions of the book lies in positing a new typology of basic event types enriched with the initial boundary events. Moreover, due attention is devoted to dative experiencers as compared to accusative experiencers. Although couched in the generative tradition, the main insights presented in this collection are theory neutral and may be of interest to linguists of all persuasions.

The Syntax of Topic, Focus, and Contrast

The Syntax of Topic, Focus, and Contrast
Author: Ad Neeleman
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1614511454

This book addresses how core notions of information structure (topic, focus and contrast) are expressed in syntax. The authors propose that the syntactic effects of information structure come about as a result of mapping rules that are flexible enough to allow topics and foci to be expressed in a variety of positions, but strict enough to capture certain cross-linguistic generalisations about their distribution. In particular, the papers argue that only contrastive topics and contrastive foci undergo movement and that this is because such movement has the function of marking the scope of contrast. Several predications are derived from this proposal: such as that a focus cannot move across a topic – whether the latter is in situ or not. Syntactic and semantic evidence in support of this proposal is presented from a wide range of languages (including Dutch, English, Japanese, Korean and Russian) and theoretical consequences explored. The first chapter not only outlines its theoretical aims, but also provides an introduction to information structure. As a consequence, the book is accessible to advanced students as well as professional linguists.

The Structure of Words at the Interfaces

The Structure of Words at the Interfaces
Author: Heather Newell
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2017-06-22
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0191084085

This volume takes a variety of approaches to the question 'what is a word?', with particular emphasis on where in the grammar wordhood is determined. Chapters in the book all start from the assumption that structures at, above, and below the 'word' are built in the same derivational system: there is no lexicalist grammatical subsystem dedicated to word-building. This type of framework foregrounds the difficulty in defining wordhood. Questions such as whether there are restrictions on the size of structures that distinguish words from phrases, or whether there are combinatory operations that are specific to one or the other, are central to the debate. In this respect, chapters in the volume do not all agree. Some propose wordhood to be limited to entities defined by syntactic heads, while others propose that phrasal structure can be found within words. Some propose that head-movement and adjunction (and Morphological Merger, as its mirror image) are the manner in which words are built, while others propose that phrasal movements are crucial to determining the order of morphemes word-internally. All chapters point to the conclusion that the phonological domains that we call words are read off of the morphosyntactic structure in particular ways. It is the study of this interface, between the syntactic and phonological modules of Universal Grammar, that underpins the discussion in this volume.