Terms Of Information Structure Research Articles

현대중국어 ‘是…的’ 분열구문과 ‘是’ 초점구문의 정보구조 대조 분석

Through corpus-based and theoretical analysis, it can be confirmed that the cleft construction ‘Shi…De’ has more restrictions than the focus construction with ‘Shi’. First, the cleft construction is used only for past events, whereas the focus construction can be used for past, present and future events. Second, in terms of information structure, the argument that follows the focus marker ‘Shi’ always functions as a unique focus in a cleft construction, while a focus construction with ‘Shi’ can have an argument-focus structure, a predicate-focus structure, or a sentence-focus structure. Third, an indefinite noun phrase cannot follow a verb in a cleft construction, but it can follow a verb in the focus construction with ‘Shi’. Fourth, there are restrictions on the situational types of verbs used in the cleft construction, but there are few restrictions on those of verbs in the focus construction with ‘Shi’. This study shows that the pragmatic functions of the cleft construction and the focus construction are totally different, and the view that the information structure of the two constructions is the same is not appropriate.

The Information Structure–prosody interface in text-to-speech technologies. An empirical perspective

Abstract The correspondence between the communicative intention of a speaker in terms of Information Structure and the way this speaker reflects communicative aspects by means of prosody have been a fruitful field of study in Linguistics. However, text-to-speech applications still lack the variability and richness found in human speech in terms of how humans display their communication skills. Some attempts were made in the past to model one aspect of Information Structure, namely thematicity for its application to intonation generation in text-to-speech technologies. Yet, these applications suffer from two limitations: (i) they draw upon a small number of made-up simple question-answer pairs rather than on real (spoken or written) corpus material; and (ii) they do not explore whether any other interpretation would better suit a wider range of textual genres beyond dialogs. In this paper, two different interpretations of thematicity in the field of speech technologies are examined: the state-of-art binary (and flat) theme-rheme, and the hierarchical thematicity defined by Igor Mel’čuk within the Meaning-Text Theory. The outcome of the experiments on a corpus of native speakers of US English suggests that the latter interpretation of thematicity has a versatile implementation potential for text-to-speech applications of the Information Structure–prosody interface.

Causal inference or conventionalized meaning? A corpus study of the German connector nachdem ‘after’ in regional standard varieties

AbstractDrawing on a corpus study using German and Austrian parliamentary protocols, this paper shows that the originally temporal connectornachdem‘after’ may carry causal meaning in southern German standard varieties. In these varieties,nachdemclauses may occur with individual level predicates, cases which, I will argue, provide unambiguously causal contexts since a temporal succession of events is excluded with individual level predicates. Whilenachdemdisplays polysemy comparable to Englishsincein southern German standard varieties, it is a temporal marker in central and northern German varieties and a causal link may arise only due to a conversational implicature. The observed polysemy coincides with a higher token frequency ofnachdemas well as a higher incidence of present tense use in thenachdemclause in the respective southern German varieties. Remarkably, causalnachdemclauses show a clear tendency to be fronted to the matrix clause despite the overall tendency of causal clauses to be post-posed, both cross-linguistically and in German, which may be explained in terms of information structure and discourse-organizing functions.

Gender agreement alternation in Aqusha Dargwa

AbstractThe article discusses gender agreement alternation in Aqusha Dargwa (Nakh-Daghestanian, the Caucasus, Russian Federation). The phenomenon is observed in periphrastic verbal forms with transitive verbs where gender agreement on the auxiliary can show the gender features of either the ergative subject or the absolutive direct object. Considering existing analyses of the phenomenon in terms of information structure, I argue that agreement alternation cannot be captured by sentence-topic-oriented accounts. I also discuss a structural proposal developed bySumbatova and Lander (2014)and show that their analysis cannot be maintained in full. Instead, I propose a modified analysis according to which only subject agreement, but not object agreement, results from a cross-clausal referential dependency between the ergative subject of the lexical verb and the absolutive subject of the matrix restructuring verb. On this view, agreement alternation may be assimilated to the familiar distinction between ergative and biabsolutive constructions found elsewhere in Nakh-Daghestanian.

On the givenness of OV word order: a (re)examination of OV/VO variation in Old English

OV/VO variation in the history of English has been a long-debated issue. Where earlier approaches were concerned with the grammatical status of the variation (see van Kemenade 1987; Pintzuk 1999 and many others), the debate has shifted more recently to explaining the variation from a pragmatic perspective (see Bech 2001; Taylor & Pintzuk 2012a), focusing on the given-before-new hypothesis (Gundel 1988) and its consequences for OV/VO. While the work by Taylor & Pintzuk (2012a) focuses specifically on the newness of VO orders, the present study is particularly concerned with the givenness of OV word order. It is hypothesized that OV orders are the result of leftward movement from VO orders, triggered by givenness. A corpus study on a database of subclauses with two verbs and a direct object, collected from the YCOE (Tayloret al.2003) corpus, and subsequent multinomial regression analysis within a generalized linear mixed model shows that OV word order is reserved for given objects, while VO objects are much more mixed in terms of information structure. We argue that these results are more in line with an analysis which derives all occurring word orders from a VO base than an analysis which proposes the opposite.

Anatomy of a Counterexample: Extraction from Relative Clauses

Relative clauses (RCs) are considered islands for extraction, yet acceptable cases of overt extraction from RCs have been attested over the years in a variety of languages: Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Japanese, Hebrew, English, Italian, Spanish, French, and also in Lebanese Arabic and Mandarin Chinese, where covert extraction from an RC is observed. The possibility for extraction has often been presented as evidence against a syntactic theory of locality, and in favor of constraints defined in terms of information structure, or processing limitations and constraints on working memory. Another possibility, still hardly explored, is that locality is determined syntactically, combined with a more fine-grained structure for RCs and a theory of how extraction from this structure interacts with the theory of locality. I argue in favor of the latter approach. I assume the structural ambiguity of RCs and argue that while externally headed RCs do block extraction, extraction is possible, under certain conditions, from a raising RC, and is formally similar to extraction from an embedded interrogative.

Demarcating the Border between Information Units in Korean

There has been different traditions in analysing Korean sentences in terms of information structure, and the basic terms of a name have been used differently depending on the different assumptions about their syntactic statuses. In this paper, I offer a perspective of viewing information structure as formal phenomena in the level of discourse and thus define the basic terms of information structure in Korean systematically. On the other hand, information units in a sentence have their own information statuses in their textual or situational contexts. In this research, I review the preceding approaches of similar perspectives and reclassify the expressional instantiations of the Korean information units. In this approach, I argue that in analysing sentences in terms of information structure it is desirable to see them function as constraints to the information structure in general, because they are not encoded formally and affect distributional realizations of topic and focus separately. On the basis of the system above, I discuss the four issues in demarcating the border between information units in Korean: the linguistic encoding of topic and focus each, interactions between the scope of information structure, which is the same as the one of speech act, and the ones of other functional categories, and lastly, the interrelation between the case-markers ellipsis and focus realization. Meanwhile, I suggested that, firstly, the ratified topic in Korean can be realized only by word order without the topic marker neun, secondly, neun-marked nominals preceding a verb can be interpreted as an event topic, together with the verb as a whole and it has [+verum] feature as its matching focus unseen. Thirdly, I showed that the scopes of foci separate them from the presuppositions of the utterances they are in and, therefore, the semantic interpretation of each sentence should be interpreted as the dynamic conjointness of its presupposition and its assertion(the speech act). Finally, I made a counterargument to the pervasive idea that case-markers in Korean mark focus and pointed out that we need to see the same data with a different angle, that is to say, the case-markers within a focus is difficult to be omitted.

A pragmatic account of scrambling and topicalization in Japanese

The purpose of this study is to explore the interactions between word orders and particles in Japanese transitive sentences in terms of information structure. To this end, a series of corpus analyses within the framework of the Givónian approach were conducted. Based on the present corpus analyses, I propose that scrambling is chosen when the scrambled object is anaphorically prominent but cataphorically non-prominent, and that topicalization is selected when the direct object is anaphorically and cataphorically prominent. Additionally, I arrive at the conclusion that word order permutations in Japanese are applied to intermediately accessible referents. In other words, word order changes are neither used with highly accessible referents, nor completely new information.

Three types of negation in Brazilian Portuguese

Sentential negation in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) may be accomplished through three different kinds of structures: Neg1 [Neg VP], Neg2 [Neg VP Neg] and Neg3 [VP Neg]. This distribution is quite rare in natural languages, which usually feature only one structure to express sentential negation, with an optional structure to convey a discourse function. In the linguistic literature, it is frequently claimed that the Neg1 structure is the only one devoid of syntactic restrictions. This idea has been presented as an argument for its status as the standard negation form in BP. Schwenter (2005) has explained the other two constructions in terms of information structure. However, he also recognizes some differences between the informational status of Neg2 and Neg3. In this study, I aim to describe the occurrence of these structures in BP in an attempt to formulate an analysis that considers both distributive characteristics and possible interpretations of these structures.

Null Direct Objects in Spanish Conversation

The occurrence of Spanish ambitransitive verbs without an explicit object has been accounted for in previous studies by appealing to the semantic and pragmatic properties of the inferable referent of the empty object structural slot. In this line, null objects have been characterized within the category of low transitive objects because they display a low degree of individuation, specificity, and animacy. In addition, in terms of information structure, null objects have also been shown to display a low degree of topicality. An analysis of the null direct objects we find in a corpus of casual conversation of Iberian Spanish, however, shows that these semantic and informational properties can only account for over one-third of all the examples. A larger portion of null direct objects in casual conversation occurs in constructions that are undergoing a process of grammaticalization. Among these, we identify two main types: hendiadic constructions with the verb coger 'take', and constructions with a perception verb that have a turn-regulatory function. These are, by far, the most frequent usage pattern of null direct objects we find in the corpus.

Object Shift in spoken Mainland Scandinavian: A corpus study of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish

Recent work on Object Shift (OS) suggests that this is not as uniform an operation as traditionally assumed. In this paper, we examine OS in the spontaneous speech of adults in large Danish, Norwegian and Swedish child language corpora in order to explore variation with respect to OS across these three languages. We evaluate our results against three recent strands of accounts of OS, namely a prosodic/phonological account, an account in terms of cognitive status, and an account in terms of information structure. Our investigation shows that there is both within-language and across-language variation in the application of OS, and that the three accounts can explain some of our data. However, all accounts are faced with challenges, especially when explaining exceptional cases.

Differential object marking and information structure: on the function of two different pronominal accusatives in Komi and Khanty dialects

The present contribution calls attention to a marginal but interesting phenomenon of variation in grammar, namely the employment of two different accusative markings for pronominal objects encountered (i) in dialect texts from the Komi varieties of Upper Vym’ and Luza, and (ii) in varieties of Kazym-Khanty, i.e. in two different branches of Uralic (Permic and Ugric). Based on contextual observations an explanation in terms of information structure is achieved: as will be argued, in both language varieties, additional accusative forms of pronominal object expressions signal their focality resp. non-focality. The study contributes to the theory of differential object marking by establishing focality as one of its parameters

Prenominal and postnominal position of adjective attributes in Old Russian

This paper presents a survey of syntactic contexts that favor a prenominal/postnominal placement of adjective attributes in Old Russian (focusing on possessives). The placement can be seen as being conditioned by adjacent words or by constructions in which a noun phrase participates (including prepositional phrases). Yet such analysis by no means excludes more traditional motivation in terms of information structure, but rather calls for further refinement of this motivation.

Variable “subject” presence in Australian Sign Language and New Zealand Sign Language

AbstractThis article reports the findings of parallel studies of variable subject presence in two closely related sign language varieties, Australian Sign Language (Auslan) and New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL). The studies expand upon research in American Sign Language (ASL) (Wulf, Dudis, Bayley, & Lucas, 2002) that found subject pronouns with noninflecting verbs to be more frequently unexpressed than expressed. The ASL study reported that null subject use correlates with both social and linguistic factors, the strongest of which is referential congruence with an antecedent in a preceding clause. Findings from the Auslan and NZSL studies also indicated that chains of reference play a stronger role in subject presence than either morphological factors (e.g., verb type), or social factors of age, gender, ethnicity, and language background. Overall results are consistent with the view that this feature of syntactic variation may be better accounted for in terms of information structure than sociolinguistic effects.

On the Emergent and Interactive Character of Grammatical Resources in Interaction: a Single-Case Analysis of a Left Dislocation in Spoken French

This article examines the left dislocation in naturally-occurring French interaction from a sequential and interactional perspective. Drawing on the single case of an incomplete left dislocation, it shows that, whilst topic promotion, a jUnction generally advanced by the discourse functionalist literature, cannot be rejected for the case under consideration, a characterisation of this structure purely in terms of information structure underspecifies our understanding of what it is used to accomplished. The analysis shows that a sequential trajectory characterised by resistance contributes to the situated deployment of the left dislocation that is used to manage resistance and cross-cutting preference structures and to accomplish identity work and orient to disaffiliation and disagreement, to which the incompleteness of the turn is also sensitive. In this way, the analysis emphasises the emergent and interactive character of the left dislocation and calls into question a sentence topic understanding of the structure.

도서관 모바일 웹사이트의 인포메이션 아키텍처에 관한 연구

본 연구는 도서관 모바일 웹사이트의 구조를 분석하여 특징과 문제점을 살펴보고 이를 통해 올바른 인포메이션 아키텍처 방향에 대해 제시하고자 한다. 이를 위해 미국과 캐나다 8개 대학도서관의 모바일 웹사이트를 조사하였고 정보구조와 내비게이션 체계, 레이블링 체계를 기준으로 분석하였다. 연구결과 첫째, 연구대상 도서관들의 모바일 웹사이트의 정보구조는 선형구조였다. 조사대상 각 도서관에서는 메인화면에서 4~15개의 메뉴를 제공하고 있었으며, 공통적인 메뉴는 자료검색과 도서관안내 메뉴이며, 대부분의 도서관에서 PC용 웹사이트의 연결, 문의, 뉴스 등을 제공하고 있었다. 둘째, 도서관의 모바일 웹사이트들은 대부분 서브도메인이나 서브디렉토리에 'm'이나 'mobile' 같이 모바일을 나타내는 표현을 사용해서 웹페이지의 URL을 구성하고 있었다. 마지막으로, 각 도서관 모바일 페이지의 메인레이블과 세부레이블을 표현하는 데 일관성이 없는 것으로 나타났다. In this study, we analyzed the academic library websites in terms of information structure, navigation, and labeling system. The study showed that the information structure was linear. In analyzing 8 library sites, we found many common top-level categories but ultimately, the number of main menu ranged from 4 to 15 categories. Also, the results showed that the sites used a sub-domain such as mobile, or just m to keep it short. It seemed to keep the mobile site part of the library site without creating confusion. Finally, Labeling in some mobile sites was not clear and consistent.

Topicality and differential object marking

The present paper investigates the relationship between dislocation and differential object marking in some Romance languages. As in many languages that have a DOM system, it is usually also assumed that in Romance languages the phenomenon is regulated by the semantic features of the referents, such as animacy, definiteness, and specificity. In the languages under investigation, though, these features cannot explain the distribution and the emergence of DOM. After discussing the main theoretical approaches to the phenomenon, I will analyse DOM in four Romance languages. I will argue that DOM emerges in pragmatically and semantically marked contexts, namely with personal pronouns in dislocations. I will then show that in these languages the use of the DOM system is mainly motivated by the need to signal the markedness of these direct objects as a consequence of being used in (mainly left) dislocation as topics (cf. English “As for him, we didn’t see him”). Finally, the examination of comparative data from Persian and Amazonian languages lends further support to the advocated approach in terms of information structure

Clause Order and Information Structure in Cheke Holo

Cheke Holo (Northwest Solomonic, Solomon Islands) displays considerable clause order variation, with SVO, OVS, VSO, and VOS all attested. In addition, arguments are frequently not overtly expressed, while some arguments may be marked with the preposed particle si . This paper investigates these issues in terms of information structure by examining each in its discourse context. It concludes that the pragmatically neutral order in Cheke Holo is VSO; that a single preverbal topic position exists, accounting for SVO and OVS; and that focused arguments are located in clause-final position, accounting for VOS. It finds that continued topics are always expressed by topic-drop (that is, elision), and that preverbal position is reserved for contrastive topics and switch topics, although in certain specific contexts, switch topics may instead be dropped. The paper concludes that preposed si is confined to main clauses and is a focus marker for arguments and adjuncts in clause-final position, but that another particle si , with a variant sini , occurs following, not preceding, a sentence-initial focused constituent that can range in size from an argument to an entire clause. On the basis of the analysis presented, Cheke Holo demonstrates that focused arguments need not be new information, as often assumed, but merely need to be unpredictable in the discourse context, allowing for discourse-given or context-given arguments in contrastive focus.

Differential Function Marking, Case, and Information Structure: Evidence from Korean

The central goal of this article is to propose a systematic description of differental function marking (DM) in Korean, a language in which both subject and object markers may fail to be spelled out. Taking Aissen’s theory of DM (Aissen 2003) as a starting point, we show that although its predictions seem mostly consistent with the statistical results of corpus-based research on Korean (and Japanese), this model does not accurately account for the Korean data. We argue that subject and object bareness (the lack of a functional particle) regularly correlates with interpretive effects that should be captured in terms of information structure (focus structure). Adapting Erteschik-Shir’s (1997, 2007) framework to represent f(ocus)-structure, we argue that bare subjects and objects in Korean fail to be visible at this level. Consequently, they may be construed neither as active topics nor as foci, and thus must either be left out of f-structure or incorporated within larger f-structure constituents in order to be interpreted. We show that bare objects are never construed as topics or foci and always exhibit a form of semantic incorporation, while leul -marked objects always stand as f-structure constituents construed as focused at some level. Bare subjects, unlike neun -marked topical subjects and ga -marked subjects, can be construed neither as active topics nor as foci, and always occur in tense-deficient clauses construed as thetic and anchored to speech time. We argue that our assumptions correctly predict the results of corpus studies, and we suggest that as regards nominal arguments, f - structure visibility might ultimately stand as the crucial interpretive correlate of functional positions in syntax.

NP-anaphora and focused possessors in parallel architecture

The Persian counterparts to English noun phrases like John's and mine involve the anaphoric element mal (lit. ‘property’). This element can form a possessive construction in combination with common noun phrases, proper names, or pronouns but can never co-occur with the otherwise ubiquitous pronominal enclitics in its anaphoric function. In this article an account of this co-occurrence restriction is given in terms of information structure. Specifically, mal, as an anaphoric element, is argued to be “topical” while its possessor constitutes the focus of the larger possessive construction. The non-occurrence of the pronominal enclitics with mal is proposed to be the consequence of a broader constraint that prohibits these elements from occurring in focused positions. The article presents a lexical entry for mal capturing its syntactic and semantic properties within the parallel architecture framework of Jackendoff (1997, 2002).