Information structure, argument structure, and typological variation

2003 ◽  
pp. 223-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Márta Maleczki
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Typological Variation

scholarly journals The information structure of subject extraposition in Early New High German

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caitlin Light
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Structural Characteristics ◽  
Structural Effect ◽  
Narrow Focus ◽  
Early New High German ◽  
To Receive ◽  
The Relationship

This paper investigates the information-structural characteristics of extraposed subjects in Early New High German (ENHG). Based on new quantitative data from a parsed corpus of ENHG, I will argue that unlike objects, subjects in ENHG have two motivations for extraposing. First, subjects may extrapose in order to receive narrow focus, which is the pattern Bies (1996) has shown for object extraposition in ENHG. Secondly, however, subjects may extrapose in order to receive a default sentence accent, which is most visible in the case of presentational constructions. This motivation does not affect objects, which may achieve the same prosodic goal without having to extrapose. The study has two major consequences: (1) subject extraposition in ENHG demonstrates that there is not necessarily a one-to-one correspondence between syntactic structure and information structural effect (cf. Féry 2007); and (2) the overall phenomenon of DP extraposition in ENHG fits into a broader set of crosslinguistic focus phenomena which demonstrate a subject-object asymmetry (cf. Hartmann and Zimmermann 2007, Skopeteas and Fanselow 2010), raising important questions about the relationship between argument structure and information structural notions.

North Africa and the Middle East

2020 ◽  
pp. 194-206
Author(s):  
Sam Hellmuth ◽  
Mary Pearce
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Arabian Peninsula ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Horn Of Africa ◽  
Prosodic Phrasing ◽  
Word Prosody ◽  
Typological Variation

This chapter provides an overview of the prosodic systems of languages spoken in North Africa and the Middle East, taking in North Africa and the Horn of Africa, plus the Arabian Peninsula, and the Middle East (but excluding Kurdish). The survey sketches the nature and scope of typological variation—in respect to prosody—across the whole of the Afro-Asiatic and Nilo-Saharan language families, addressing, within the limits of the existing literature: word prosody, prosodic phrasing, melodic structure, and prosodic expression of meaning (sentence modality, focus, and information structure). The survey is organized around language sub-families, reporting what is known about the different aspects of prosody for each sub-family, together with a brief discussion of priorities for future research.

The Inter-Nordic Study of Language Acquisition

1995 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sven Strömqvist ◽  
Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdóttir ◽  
Olle Engstrand ◽  
Helga Jonsdóttir ◽  
Elizabeth Lanza ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
First Language ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
Specific Effects ◽  
Grammatical Morphemes ◽  
Relational Concepts ◽  
Typological Variation ◽  
The Impact

The typological variation between the Nordic languages offers a “natural laboratory” for the cross-linguistic study of first language acquisition. Based on an on-going inter-Nordic project, the present article discusses research designs for the exploration of this laboratory together with pilot analyses of acquisition data across Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish. On the basis of evidence from longitudinal case studies, from narrative tasks, and from morphological and phonetic experiments, the project aims at producing an integrated picture of the development of grammatical morphology and its interaction with (a) the semantic domains of spatial and temporal relations and (b) the prosodic domains of tonal word accents and duration. In the present article the focus is on spatial relations and prosody. Comparisons of developmental data between languages that show considerable typological differences (Finnish vs Icelandic vs the Mainland Scandinavian languages) allow us to establish broad cross-linguistic commonalities in acquisition structure. It is shown that, across all five languages, very similar relational concepts are encoded by the first grammatical morphemes emerging in the field of spatial relations. The impact of linguistic details on acquisition structure can be explored with greater precision through comparisons between languages that show minimal typological differences (the internal differences between the Mainland Scandinavian languages: Danish vs Norwegian vs Swedish). Here, the early development of the Verb + particle construction in two Danish and two Swedish children is analysed. Language-specific effects on acquisition structure of syntactical and prosodic traits are demonstrated. Further, language-specific effects on the development of verb argument structure in spatial descriptions are discussed.

The Oxford Reference Guide to Lexical Functional Grammar

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Dalrymple ◽  
John J. Lowe ◽  
Louise Mycock
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Semantic Representation ◽  
Morphological Structure ◽  
Functional Grammar ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Linguistic Structure ◽  
Structure Information ◽  
Lexical Functional Grammar

This is the most comprehensive reference work on Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), which will be of interest to graduate and advanced undergraduate students, academics, and researchers in linguistics and in related fields. Covering the analysis of syntax, semantics, morphology, prosody, and information structure, and how these aspects of linguistic structure interact in the nontransformational framework of LFG, this book will appeal to readers working in a variety of sub-fields, including researchers involved in the description and documentation of languages, whose work continues to be an important part of the LFG literature The book consists of three parts. The first part examines the syntactic theory and formal architecture of LFG, with detailed explanation and comprehensive illustration, providing an unparalleled introduction to the fundamentals of the theory. The second part of the book explores nonsyntactic levels of linguistic structure, including the syntax-semantics interface and semantic representation, argument structure, information structure, prosodic structure, and morphological structure, and how these are related in the projection architecture of LFG. The third part of the book illustrates the theory more explicitly by presenting explorations of the syntax and semantics of a range of representative linguistic phenomena: modification, anaphora, control, coordination, and long-distance dependencies. The final chapter discusses LFG-based work not covered elsewhere in the book, as well as new developments in the theory.

Modular Design of Grammar

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Modular Design ◽  
Modular Architecture ◽  
Lexical Functional Grammar ◽  
Linguistic System ◽  
Semantics And Pragmatics ◽  
Multiple Question ◽  
Linguistic Structures

Modular design of grammar: Linguistics on the edge presents the cutting edge of research on linguistic modules and interfaces in Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG). LFG has a highly modular design that models the linguistic system as a set of discreet submodules that include, among others, constituent structure, functional structure, argument structure, semantic structure, and prosodic structure, with each module having its coherent properties and being related to each other by correspondence functions. Following a detailed introduction, Part I scrutinises the nature of linguistic structures, interfaces and representations in LFG’s architecture and ontology. Parts II and III are concerned with problems, analyses and generalisations associated with linguistic phenomena which are of long-standing theoretical significance, including agreement, reciprocals, possessives, reflexives, raising, subjecthood, and relativisation, demonstrating how these phenomena can be naturally accounted for within LFG’s modular architecture. Part IV explores issues of the synchronic and diachronic dynamics of syntactic categories in grammar, such as unlike category coordination, fuzzy categorial edges, and consequences of decategorialization, providing explicit LFG solutions to such problems including those which result from language change in progress. The final part re-examines and refines the precise representations and interfaces of syntax with morphology, semantics and pragmatics to account for challenging facts such as suspended affixation, prosody in multiple question word interrogatives and information structure, anaphoric dependencies, and idioms.

Information Structure and Production Planning

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Production Process ◽  
Production Planning ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Phonological Information ◽  
Structural Effects ◽  
Grammatical Encoding ◽  
Form Part

Utterances are planned and realized incrementally. Which information is salient or attended to prior to initiating an utterance has influences on choices in argument structure and word order, and affects the prosodic prominence of the constituents involved. Many phenomena that the linguistic literature usually treats as reflexes of the grammatical encoding of information structure, such as the early ordering of topics, or the prosodic reduction of old information, are treated in the production literature as a consequence of how contextual salience interacts with production planning. This article reviews information structural effects that arise as a consequence of how syntactic and phonological information is incrementally encoded in the production process, and how we can tell these effects apart from grammatically encoded aspects of information structure that form part of the message.

A Political Economy Model of a Research University

2009 ◽  
pp. 132-143
Author(s):  
K. Sonin ◽  
I. Khovanskaya
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Research University ◽  
Hiring Decisions ◽  
Voting Rules ◽  
Economy Model ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Optimal Incentives

Hiring decisions are typically made by committees members of which have different capacity to estimate the quality of candidates. Organizational structure and voting rules in the committees determine the incentives and strategies of applicants; thus, construction of a modern university requires a political structure that provides committee members and applicants with optimal incentives. The existing political-economic model of informative voting typically lacks any degree of variance in the organizational structure, while political-economic models of organization typically assume a parsimonious information structure. In this paper, we propose a simple framework to analyze trade-offs in optimal subdivision of universities into departments and subdepartments, and allocation of political power.

On the Information Structure of the Hungarian Sentence

2005 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ferenc Kiefer
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure
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