Information Structure Of Sentence Research Articles

Text Linguistics and the Use of Linguistic Data in Modern Technologies: Prospects for Development

This study explores text linguistics as a branch of linguistics that analyses the structure, meaning, and other aspects of texts. The paper aims to analyse the use of linguistic data in modern technologies, in particular, to develop applications that can understand and generate linguistic content. To achieve this goal, the research uses the methodology of qualitative analysis and is based on the work of textual theorists. The study is based on a qualitative analysis of examples collected from the BNC corpus. The instructions for obtaining data are to use textual forms located at specific positions in the co-text. The use of qualitative analysis for data acquisition is useful for studying phonology, morphology, morphosyntax, and general linguistic facts. The results confirm the promising possibilities of text linguistics and the use of language data in technology, in particular the growth in the volume and availability of language data and the application of new methods of text analysis. The conclusions point to the connection of text linguistics with other fields and the expansion of the capabilities of semantic search engines and automatic text processing systems. In addition, the article emphasises the importance of digital resources and the study of phrases as effective tools for linguistic analysis. The analysis of three illustrative examples taken from the British linguistic corpus is carried out with the aim of studying textual and discourse phenomena in the use of language data. A certain inconsistency between the factors has been revealed, which leads to a blurring of the linguistic facts that the authors of the article tried to investigate. It should be noted that the selected examples, which were created to support the theory, are artificial, which makes it difficult to analyse the context. This makes it difficult for native English speakers to evaluate these examples. This is especially true for the first example, where the syntactic constructions do not match the context. This deviation was observed at the level of the sentence's information structure. As for the second example, the discomfort observed can be explained by the lack of motivation to use the referent that was introduced into the context as a reference marker that is independently associated with it in the place where the phrase appears in the text. There is also a clear polyphonic inconsistency in the origin of the point of view that characterises each segment of the sentence. This inconsistency is related to the choice of the reference marker.

Вариативное падежное маркирование посессивных именных групп в позиции прямого дополнения в тувинском языке

Considering the phenomenon of differential object marking of the direct object in possessive nominal phrases (NPs) has revealed two varieties of differential case marking in the Tuvan language: of the direct object and of the possessor. Thus, it was interesting to check the correlation between the factors influencing variation in both cases. The choice in favor of the genitive marking of the possessor is found to be determined by definiteness, animacy of the referent of some NPs, the linear remoteness of the possessive construction components, and additional definitions. Genitive marking of a possessor with an indefinite or non-referential status is due to the sentence information structure. The same set of factors is relevant for choosing accusative direct object labeling. Thus, the obligatory accusative marking of possessive NPs with a genitive possessor in the position of a direct object is associated with the same factors in the structure of relations between components that determined the choice of the genitive form of the possessor. Accusative marking of the direct object of possessive NPs without a genitive is determined by the definiteness of the possessor, the presence of identifying definitions, the presupposition of the singularity of the referent, the sentence information structure, with different communicative status of the object and the predicate. Possessive NPs without a genitive in the direct object position are used in the nominative: if their referent has an indefinite or non-referential status, they are in the utterance rheme with a contact arrange-ment to the control verb and have no other determinants.

Characterizing the Typical Information Curves of Diverse Languages.

Optimal coding theories of language predict that speakers will keep the amount of information in their utterances relatively uniform under the constraints imposed by their language, but how much do these constraints influence information structure, and how does this influence vary across languages? We present a novel method for characterizing the information structure of sentences across a diverse set of languages. While the structure of English is broadly consistent with the shape predicted by optimal coding, many languages are not consistent with this prediction. We proceed to show that the characteristic information curves of languages are partly related to a variety of typological features from phonology to word order. These results present an important step in the direction of exploring upper bounds for the extent to which linguistic codes can be optimal for communication.

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ ДАВНЬОАНГЛІЙСЬКОГО СИНТАКСИСУ ЯК ПЕРЕДУМОВА ГРАМАТИКАЛІЗАЦІЇ ФОКУСУВАЛЬНИХ АДВЕРБІВ

The article deals with the preconditions of focusing adverbs grammaticalization in Old English, which function as one of the markers of sentence information structure in Modern English. With major strategies of highlighting the components of information structure in the language of VII-XI cen. being analyzed, the study found that the order of arranging the elements in the sentence was, namely, most sensitive to old/new information allotment, as well as, sentence topic and focus marking, which explains the word order variations in the clause. Adverbs as a class in this period were represented by temporal, VP- and sentential ones. All these types have relevance for the current study given that they may serve as one of the sources of grammaticalization for focusing adverbs in further periods of the English language development. The other source for the highlighted adverbs formation were adverbial suffixes -ly or -e added to adjectives, nouns and verbs. It was proved that the major adverbial discourse markers in Old English are temporal adverbs þa/thonne, her and nu. Therefore, this class presumably served the basis for the formation of new focusing adverbs at further stages of the language evolution.

Information-structural transformations of additive adverb EVEN (a case study of the English language written records and corpora of the XII-XVII с.)

The paper presents the study of the adverb even in Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse and Early English Books Online, which texts and digital solutions help investigate the impact of sentence information structure on adverbial development. Corpus and semantic analysis of the XII-XVII c. written records have been the basis for singling out even as a focusing adverb outlining its distinctive features as an additive. The author proposes a new methodology to annotate information structure of the sentences with the adverb retrieved from the corpora taking into account the word-order change over the span of the 1150s-1690s of the English language development and introduces its corpus annotation. There has also been tested the elaborated scheme of tagging given / new information in multi-layer corpora based on Discourse Representation Theory (1st layer) as well as sentence Topic / Focus (2nd layer). It has been assumed that as a result of changes of the underlying word order in Middle English, the language requires the emergence of such new sentence information structure markers as a ‘therapy’, viz. additive even. It has been discovered that it functions as the degree and manner adverb in Old English, while in Middle English it operates as a restrictive (either exclusive or particularizer) or scalar additive adverb. The study specifies that when carrying out the latter function, it marks the sentence component which exemplifies mirative Focus emphasizing the surprising information in the discourse; this triggers the inverted word order in the clause with X-element left dislocation. Corpus data analysis in the English language through the 2nd half of the XV–XVII c. shows that due to the fixed SVO order in this period there is a considerable increase in the frequency of using even as a focusing adverb that mostly highlights mirative Focus.

Corpus-based studies of Middle English adverb largely: syntax and information-structure

The study aims at exploring the adverb largely in late Middle English based on the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse, in terms of its functioning as a sentence Focus marker. The article considers syntactic changes in English from the language with V2 tendencies to the one with verb-medial order. Such differences make sentence information structure disrupted, and new elements arise in the language as ‘therapy.’ The assumption made in this paper is as follows: the word largely emerging in English in ca. 1200 starts functioning as a focusing adverb in 1400 as a result of the shift in the main word order patterns. Moreover, investigating late Middle English syntactic structure and taking into account different types of foci based on information structure tagging throughout the Corpus, the study found that positional variations of adverb largely are used as a mechanism of marking a peculiar type of Focus and are governed by its position in relation to the word it modifies.

Information Structure of Sentences in English and Persian

The project Information structure in language acquisition studies the linguistic realization of information structure and its acquisition by children and adults in a variety of languages. The project examines the development of the relationship between semantic/pragmatic functions (topic, focus, given, new, contrast) and corresponding formal devices. Among the various means which are typically used to encode information structure, priority will be given to the study of word order, intonation, pronominal, and particles. Although texts produced by (very) advanced Persian learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) may be perfectly grammatical, they often feel distinctly non-native. Persian, as a verb-second language, makes separate positions available for discourse linking and abruptness-topics. A side-effect of this L1 interference is the underuse of special focusing constructions in English, like the stressed-focus itself.

Studying text coherence in Czech – a corpus-based analysis

AbstractThe paper deals with the field of Czech corpus linguistics and represents one of various current studies analysing text coherence through language interactions. It presents a corpusbased analysis of grammatical coreference and sentence information structure (in terms of contextual boundness) in Czech. It focuses on examining the interaction of these two language phenomena and observes where they meet to participate in text structuring. Specifically, the paper analyses contextually bound and non-bound sentence items and examines whether (and how often) they are involved in relations of grammatical coreference in Czech newspaper articles. The analysis is carried out on the language data of the Prague Dependency Treebank (PDT) containing 3,165 Czech texts. The results of the analysis are helpful in automatic text annotation - the paper presents how (or to what extent) the annotation of grammatical coreference may be used in automatic (pre-)annotation of sentence information structure in Czech. It demonstrates how accurately we may (automatically) assume the value of contextual boundness for the antecedent and anaphor (as the two participants of a grammatical coreference relation). The results of the paper demonstrate that the anaphor of grammatical coreference is automatically predictable - it is a non-contrastive contextually bound sentence item in 99.18% of cases. On the other hand, the value of contextual boundness of the antecedent is not so easy to estimate (according to the PDT, the antecedent is contextually non-bound in 37% of cases, non-contrastive contextually bound in 50% and contrastive contextually bound in 13% of cases).

ИСТОРИЯ ИЗУЧЕНИЯ ИНФОРМАЦИОННОЙ СТРУКТУРЫ ПРЕДЛОЖЕНИЯ В СОВРЕМЕННОМ МОНГОЛЬСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ

The article summarizes results achieved by scholars representing different generations and linguistic traditions in studies of Mongolian sentence information structure. The notion of information structure was introduced by M. A. K. Halliday on the grounds of V. Mathesius’s theory of “the actual division of the sentence” (or “thematic-rhematic articulation of the sentence”), but the former developed his own view on this issue. The principal distinction between these two theories is that M. Halliday treats such entities as givenness, focus, topic, etc. as matters of individual cognitive process, whereas V. Mathesius considers them to depend mainly on context and “consituation”. Currently, M. A. K. Halliday’s information structure theory is deemed to be more consistent and, therefore, referred to more frequently. Nevertheless, back in the 1980s when first articles on Mongolian sentence information structure started to appear the views of the Prague Linguistic Circle were more widely accepted among Soviet specialists in Mongolian studies, and the pioneer works on information structure of a Mongolian sentence were written in the mould of structuralism. The first papers written on the subject belonged to Moscow and Leningrad scholars Z. K. Kas’yanenko (1973), M. N. Orlovskaya (1984), Z. V. Shevernina (1984), and the American linguist L. B. Hammar (Indiana University Bloomington) who had presented her Ph. D. thesis under the title “Syntactic and Pragmatic Options in Mongolian: a Study of Bol and N” (1983). Those works by the afore-mentioned linguists mostly concerned word order in a Mongolian sentence from the perspective of the “actual division”, and special particles, which are viewed in modern linguistics as topic, focus, verification, and emphasis markers. A couple of decades later, Mongolian scholars attempted to describe their native language in terms of the latest trends of the world linguistics and their works – those by M. Bazarragcha, Z. Guliranz, G. Jambalsuren, B. Purev-Ochir – have become a valuable source of examples, showing various types of structures, such as thetic sentences, sentences with preposition of rheme and so on. Lately several works on intonation in the contemporary Mongolian language have been published. However, unfortunately, one can hardly find any comprehensive study of the relation between information structure and intonation in modern Mongolian. This subject is likely to be a fruitful field for further research.

Negation Markers in Kalmyk

Focusing on changes to the system of negation in Kalmyk, this paper will discuss the diachronic development of the expression of negation and will examine the results of grammaticalization process in negation system on synchronous level with special attention to innovations occur in colloquial speech. The goal of this paper is to report on a corpus-based study comparing the syntactic form, scope and pragmatic use of negative markers in Kalmyk. I will try to describe patterns of pragmatic language use of negative affixes or full negative copulas in written and spoken Kalmyk and to find explanations to both synchronic variation and to changes in a diachronic perspective.The paper deals with semantic, pragmatic, and morphosyntactic properties of all these negative markers, however, it focuses on the competition of two main markers of sentential negation and its contracted variants in Kalmyk used both in nominal clauses and in declarative sentences. I argue that there is new cycle of development in Kalmyk and the process of specialization goes through ambiguity of new negative marker to the pragmatic and semantic differentiation depending on the scope of negation and the information structure of sentence.

Embedding additive particles in the sentence information structure: How L2 learners find their way through positional and prosodic patterns

Since 1986, Klein pinpointed the 'embedding problem' among the main tasks L2 learners have to cope with in L2 speaking, the term referring to the need of linking the semantic content of a sentence to the information already available in the ongoing discourse. Research in L2 acquisition has shown that, even when the lexical and morphosyntactic structures needed to express specific information configurations are in place, learners can still lack the ability to use them in the ongoing discourse according to target language preferences, thus sticking to their source language preferences (Carroll and Lambert 2003; Dimroth and Lambert 2008; Lambert, Carroll and von Stutterheim 2008). Use of additive particles can pose similar 'embedding' problems, as they typically occur in a peculiar, non-canonical information configuration, in which a given predicate – available in the ongoing discourse – is claimed to hold for a new referent, which is added to other – given, available – referents. Dimroth et al. (2010), comparing native speakers productions on the basis of the same narrative task (the Finite Story retelling), show that speakers of Germanic (Dutch, German) and Romance (French, Italian) languages differ in the way they embed additive particles in the sentence information structure. Our study focuses on the use of additive particles by intermediate learners of two language pairs (Italian L1 > German L2 and viceversa) in the Finite Story retelling. Results show that, in embedding additive particles (IT anche, GE auch) in the sentence structure, intermediate learners tend to adopt patterns that are compatible with the L1 both at positional and at prosodic level, thus partly discarding more target language-specific patterns.

Prosody and language comprehension.

This review provides a summary of the most recent advances on the study of how prosody is used during language comprehension. Prosody is characterized as an abstract structure composed of discrete tonal elements aligned with the segmental composition of the sentence organized in constituents of increasing size, and this structure is influenced by the phonological, syntactic, and informational structures of the sentence. Here, we discuss evidence that listeners are affected by prosody when establishing those linguistic structures. Prosody has been shown to influence the segmentation of the utterance into syllables and words, and, in some cases, whether a syllable or word is judged to be present or not. The literature on how prosody informs the structural relationship between words and phrases is also discussed, contrasting views that assume a direct (albeit probabilistic) link between syntax and prosody with those that posit a complex interface between syntax and prosodic structure. Finally, the role of prosody in conveying important aspects pertaining to the sentence's information structure (i.e., which parts of the sentence's meaning are highlighted and brought forward to the discourse, which ones are presupposed and left in the background, which attitudes are being conveyed about the concepts or propositional content) has long been recognized. Current research focuses on which prosodic elements contribute to marking the dimensions (or semantic primitives) of the information structure.

Information Structure in Sentences: New Information

New information in sentences is theorized as being marked by surface-structure word order and by word stress. Experiment 1 tested these theories by giving subjects active and passive sentences with stress on either the agent or patient of the sentences. Subjects decided what questions the sentences would be replies to. The question-answering element of the sentence is the new information in the sentence. Experiment 2 tested only the word-order theory of new information structure in sentences by giving subjects written active and passive sentences. The results are in agreement with word stress and passivization marking new information, but not with the theory that there is an information ordering in active sentences.