The Syntax Of Topic Focus And Contrast
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| 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.
| Author | : Reader in Linguistics Ad Neeleman |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 307 |
| Release | : 2013-03-08 |
| Genre | : |
| ISBN | : 9781614511465 |
Main description: This book addresses how core notions of information structure (topic, focus and contrast) are expressed in syntax. We propose that the syntactic effects of information structure come about as a result of mapping rules 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. We discuss syntactic and semantic evidence from a range of languages. This book is of interest to professional linguists as well as advanced students.
| Author | : Liliana Sánchez |
| Publisher | : John Benjamins Publishing |
| Total Pages | : 261 |
| Release | : 2010 |
| Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
| ISBN | : 9027255520 |
This book presents an innovative analysis that relates informational structure, syntax and morphology in Quechua. It provides a minimalist account of the relationship between focus, topic, evidentiality and other left-peripheral features and sentence-internal constituents marked with suffixes that have been previously considered of a pragmatic nature. Intervention effects show that these relationships are also of a syntactic nature. The analysis is extended to morphological markers that appear on polarity sensitive items and wh-words. The book also provides a brief overview of the main characteristics of Quechua syntax as well as additional bibliographical information.
| 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.
| 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.
| Author | : Knud Lambrecht |
| Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
| Total Pages | : 406 |
| Release | : 1996-11-13 |
| Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
| ISBN | : 1316582418 |
Why do speakers of all languages use different grammatical structures under different communicative circumstances to express the same idea? Professor Lambrecht explores the relationship between the structure of the sentence and the linguistic and extra-linguistic context in which it is used. His analysis is based on the observation that the structure of a sentence reflects a speaker's assumption about the hearer's state of knowledge and consciousness at the time of the utterance. This relationship between speaker assumptions and formal sentence structure is governed by rules and conventions of grammar, in a component called 'information structure'. Four independent but interrelated categories are analysed: presupposition and assertion, identifiability and activation, topic, and focus.
| Author | : Elisa Di Domenico |
| Publisher | : John Benjamins Publishing Company |
| Total Pages | : 449 |
| Release | : 2015-08-15 |
| Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
| ISBN | : 9027268460 |
The volume contains 18 contributions from senior and junior scholars covering core issues within the theoretical investigation of the architecture and the mechanisms of the faculty of language, with particular emphasis on the computational component. They all pursue a comparative approach, investigating and comparing different languages and dialects or comparing different modes of acquisition, as in Adriana Belletti’s work, to whom the volume is dedicated. The papers in the first part (by Chomsky, Rizzi, Bianchi & Chesi, Cinque, Costa, Calabrese) deal with theoretical issues such as labeling, the cartography of structures and the locality of derivations in a broad sense. The papers in the second part (by Haegeman & Lohndal, Delfitto & Fiorin, Cruschina, Lahousse, Di Domenico and Contemori, Dal Pozzo & Matteini) concentrate on the realization of structure relative to discourse, particularly on topic and focus positions in the vP periphery, and on referential dependencies. The third part collects papers (by Cardinaletti & Volpato, Friedmann, Yachini & Szterman, Snyder & Hyams, Hamann & Tuller, Cecchetto & Donati, Grewendorf & Poletto) that specifically target intervention effects in relative clauses as apparent in different structures, different languages, and different populations.
| Author | : Jorunn Hetland |
| Publisher | : Walter de Gruyter |
| Total Pages | : 272 |
| Release | : 2013-02-06 |
| Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
| ISBN | : 3110949482 |
The seven articles of this volume take up crucial aspects of information structure and grammatical form. Special attention is paid to the definition of topic, focus and contrast, to the language specific devices for expressing different types of these information structural notions, and to the typological characterisation of languages as to discourse configurationality. The investigation of grammatical relations includes the interplay between syntactic functions, morphological case and thematic structure, and the study of the functional and formal complexity of passive in Germanic languages.
| Author | : Raffaella Folli |
| Publisher | : Oxford University Press, USA |
| Total Pages | : 479 |
| Release | : 2013-12 |
| Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
| ISBN | : 0199683239 |
In this book, leading linguists explore the empirical scope of syntactic theory, by concentrating on a set of phenomena for which both syntactic and nonsyntactic analyses appear plausible. The volume is organized into four thematic sections: architectures; syntax and information structure; syntax and the lexicon; and lexical items at the interfaces
| Author | : Martine Coene |
| Publisher | : John Benjamins Publishing |
| Total Pages | : 374 |
| Release | : 2003-01-01 |
| Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
| ISBN | : 9789027227768 |
This is the first of a two-volume selection of refereed and revised papers, originally presented at the international conference "From NP to DP" at the University of Antwerp. The papers address issues in the syntax and semantics of the noun phrase, in particular the so-called DP-hypothesis which takes noun phrases to be headed by a functional head D(eterminer). The major concerns can be grouped around 3 subthemes: the internal syntax of noun phrases, the syntax and semantics of bare nouns and indefinites and the expression of measurement in noun phrases. The wealth of data coming from over 40 different languages combined with a thorough introduction to the current issues in the field of NPs/DPs and some alternative syntactic and semantic analyses, provide a comprehensive reference work from both a descriptive and a theoretical point of view. The second volume is concerned exclusively with the expression of possession in noun phrases.
