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Author: Ad Neeleman
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 1614511454
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
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: Ad Neeleman
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 1614511454
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 316
Get Book
Book Description
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:
ISBN: 9781614511465
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 307
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Book Description
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
ISBN: 902728752X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
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: Vieri Samek-Lodovici
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198737920
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 351
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Book Description
This book provides an in-depth investigation of contrastive focalization in Italian, showing that its syntactic expression is systematically affected by the syntactic expression of discourse-givenness. The proposed analysis disentangles the properties genuinely associated with contrastive focalization from those determined by the most productive operations affecting discourse given phrases at the right periphery, namely right dislocation and marginalization. On this basis, it shows that in the default case contrastive focalization occurs in situ and that instances of left-peripheral focalization only arise when focus obligatorily evacuates a larger right-dislocating phrase, giving rise to a distribution of leftward-moved foci that generalizes well beyond the cases examined in Rizzi (1997) and most literature since. In its final chapter, the book examines the syntax-prosody interface, showing how focalization in situ and other key properties follow from the prosodic constraints governing stress placement, thus reinterpreting and extending Zubizarreta's (1998) analysis of p-movement and the role of prosody in shaping syntax. Overall, this book offers an evidence-backed radical departure from current views of focalization based on a fixed focus projection at the left periphery of the clause. It also provides the most comprehensive study of Italian marginalization and right dislocation available to date.
Author: Caroline Féry
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191005401
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 800
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Book Description
This book provides linguists with a clear, critical, and comprehensive overview of theoretical and experimental work on information structure. Leading researchers survey the main theories of information structure in syntax, phonology, and semantics as well as perspectives from psycholinguistics and other relevant fields. Following the editors' introduction the book is divided into four parts. The first, on theories of and theoretical perspectives on information structure, includes chapters on focus, topic, and givenness. Part 2 covers a range of current issues in the field, including quantification, dislocation, and intonation, while Part 3 is concerned with experimental approaches to information structure, including language processing and acquisition. The final part contains a series of linguistic case studies drawn from a wide variety of the world's language families. This volume will be the standard guide to current work in information structure and a major point of departure for future research.
Author: Valéria Molnár
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1501504487
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 440
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Book Description
This volume contains innovative papers that target the linguistic status of topic at the interface between grammar and discourse. The purpose of the volume is to discuss the universal properties of topics and, at the same time, to document the range of discourse-semantic and grammatical variation within this phenomenon in European languages. The volume is structured accordingly: (i) theoretical foundations of topicality in grammar and discourse; (ii) discourse-semantic correlates of topicality; (iii) variation in the grammatical (external and internal) encoding of topicality; (iv) topics from the diachronic perspective. The articles take different perspectives, including contrastive studies of modern languages, studies on diachronic development, and typological generalizations. They also take into consideration various types of empirical data – introspective data, semi-spontaneously produced data, experimental data and language corpora. The articles in this volume show that the concept of topic is necessary for the description and explanation of a number of discourse-semantic phenomena. They present a state of the art account of the architecture of topic while making recent research on the phenomenon accessible to a wider readership.
Author: Ekkehard König
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134927886
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
Focus particles (words such as even, only, also) play an important role in English, in various syntactic and semantic domains, but their characteristics pose numerous problems for current syntactic frameworks and semantic theories. This book presents a comprehensive analysis of the syntax, meaning and use of focus particles and related function words in English and many other languages. It also provides a historical perspective on their development.
Author: Knud Lambrecht
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521587044
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 412
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Book Description
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: Jeroen van Craenenbroeck
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 311020603X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 385
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Book Description
In the 1980s generative grammar recognized that functional material is able to project syntactic structure in conformity with the X-bar-format. This insight soon led to a considerable increase in the inventory of functional projections. The basic idea behind this line of theorizing, which goes by the name of cartography, is that sentence structure can be represented as a template of linearly ordered positions, each with their own syntactic and semantic import. In recent years, however, a number of problems have been raised for this approach. For example, certain combinations of syntactic elements cannot be linearly ordered. In light of such problems a number of alternative accounts have been explored. Some of them propose a new (often interface-related) trigger for movement, while others seek alternative means of accounting for various word order patterns. These alternatives to cartography do not form a homogeneous group, nor has there thus far been a forum where these ideas could be compared and confronted with one another. This volume fills that gap. It offers a varied and in-depth view on the position taken by a substantial number of researchers in the field today on what is presumably one of the most hotly debated and controversial issues in present-day generative grammar.
Author: Marco García García
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027263485
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 391
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Book Description
What are the linguistic means for expressing different types of foci such as (narrow) information focus and contrastive focus in Romance languages, and why are there such differing views on such a presumably clear-cut research subject? Bringing together original expert work from a variety of linguistic disciplines and perspectives such as language acquisition and language contact, this volume provides a state-of-the-art discussion on central issues of focus realization. These include the interaction between prosody, syntax, and pragmatics, the typology of word order and intonation languages, the differentiation between focus and related notions such as contrast and presupposed modality, and the role of synchronic variation and change. The studies presented in this volume cover a broad range of Romance languages, including French, Italian, Portuguese, and different varieties of Spanish. Moreover, the book also offers new insights into non-Romance languages such as English, German, and Quechua.
