scholarly journals How focus particles and accents affect attachment

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katy Carlson ◽  
David Potter
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Focus Particles ◽  
Focus Particle ◽  
Discourse Coherence ◽  
Prosodic Boundaries ◽  
Focus Marking ◽  
Pitch Accents

This project shows that focus and information structure, as indicated by the focus particle “only” and pitch accents, influence syntactic attachment, in contrast to the well-known effects of prosodic boundaries on attachment. One written questionnaire, one completion study, and several auditory questionnaires show that the position of “only” strongly affects attachment preferences in ambiguous sentences, while contrastive pitch accents have smaller effects. The two types of focus marking do not interact but independently impact attachment. These results support a modified version of the Focus Attraction Hypothesis, with ambiguous material drawn to attach to the most important information in a sentence. This research shows that information structure can affect sentence structure as well as discourse coherence.

Focus Attracts Attachment

2021 ◽  
pp. 002383092110333
Author(s):  
Katy Carlson ◽  
David Potter
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Focus Position ◽  
Auditory Comprehension ◽  
Perceptual Salience ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Prosodic Boundaries ◽  
Sentence Interpretation ◽  
Pitch Accents

There is growing evidence that pitch accents as well as prosodic boundaries can affect syntactic attachment. But is this an effect of their perceptual salience (the Salience Hypothesis), or is it because accents mark the position of focus (the Focus Attraction Hypothesis)? A pair of auditory comprehension experiments shows that focus position, as indicated by preceding wh-questions instead of by pitch accents, affects attachment by drawing the ambiguous phrase to the focus. This supports the Focus Attraction Hypothesis (or a pragmatic version of salience) for both these results and previous results of accents on attachment. These experiments show that information structure, as indicated with prosody or other means, influences sentence interpretation, and suggests a view on which modifiers are drawn to the most important information in a sentence.

scholarly journals Accents, Not Just Prosodic Boundaries, Influence Syntactic Attachment

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 246-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katy Carlson ◽  
Joseph C. Tyler
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Prepositional Phrase ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Attachment Sites ◽  
Prosodic Boundaries ◽  
Fourth Experiment ◽  
Adverbial Phrase ◽  
Pitch Accents ◽  
Different Levels

Traditionally, pitch accents are understood to relate to the information structure of a sentence and its discourse connections, while prosodic boundaries indicate groupings of words and affect how constituents attach into a syntactic structure. Here, we show that accents also affect syntactic attachment in multiple different syntactic structures. Three auditory questionnaires on ambiguous attachment sentences (such as Tom reported that Bill was bribed [last May]) find that accenting the higher or lower verb ( reported or bribed) increases the attachment of the final adverbial phrase as a modifier of the accented verb. A fourth experiment shows that accents on verbs or object nouns (in sentences like Jenny sketched a child [with crayons]) also increase the attachment of the final prepositional phrase to the accented head (sketched with crayons versus a child with crayons). Accent effects were small but consistent across sentences with different levels of bias and did not depend on prosodic boundaries. The results suggest that focused elements are important to the main assertion of the sentence and therefore draw the attachment of upcoming material (though the salience of attachment sites may also be important). The results also demonstrate that both prosodic phrasing and pitch accents can affect basic syntactic structure.

scholarly journals Information Structure Preferences in Focus-Sensitive Ellipsis: How Defaults Persist

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 480-512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse A. Harris ◽  
Katy Carlson
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Processing ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Pitch Accent ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Focus Structure ◽  
Non Local ◽  
Default Position ◽  
Focus Marking ◽  
Pitch Accents

We compare the roles of overt accent and default focus marking in processing ellipsis structures headed by focus-sensitive coordinators (such as Danielle couldn’t pass the quiz, let alone the final/Kayla). In a small auditory corpus study of radio transcripts, we establish that such structures overwhelmingly occur with contrastive pitch accents on the correlate and remnant ( the quiz and the final, or Danielle and Kayla), and that there is a strong bias to pair the remnant with the most local plausible correlate in production. In two auditory naturalness ratings experiments, we observe that marking a non-local correlate with contrastive pitch accent moderates, but does not fully overturn, the bias for local correlates in comprehension. We propose that the locality preference is due to a sentence-final default position for sentence accent, and that auditory processing is subject to “enduring focus,” in which default positions for focus continue to influence the focus structure of the sentence even in the presence of overt accents. The importance of these results for models of auditory processing and of the processing of remnants in ellipsis structures is discussed.

scholarly journals The Role of Prosodic Breaks and Pitch Accents in Grouping Words during On-line Sentence Processing

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (9) ◽  
pp. 2447-2467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Bögels ◽  
Herbert Schriefers ◽  
Wietske Vonk ◽  
Dorothee J. Chwilla
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Pitch Accent ◽  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
N400 Effect ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
On Line ◽  
Group Words ◽  
Pitch Accents

The present study addresses the question whether accentuation and prosodic phrasing can have a similar function, namely, to group words in a sentence together. Participants listened to locally ambiguous sentences containing object- and subject-control verbs while ERPs were measured. In Experiment 1, these sentences contained a prosodic break, which can create a certain syntactic grouping of words, or no prosodic break. At the disambiguation, an N400 effect occurred when the disambiguation was in conflict with the syntactic grouping created by the break. We found a similar N400 effect without the break, indicating that the break did not strengthen an already existing preference. This pattern held for both object- and subject-control items. In Experiment 2, the same sentences contained a break and a pitch accent on the noun following the break. We argue that the pitch accent indicates a broad focus covering two words [see Gussenhoven, C. On the limits of focus projection in English. In P. Bosch & R. van der Sandt (Eds.), Focus: Linguistic, cognitive, and computational perspectives. Cambridge: University Press, 1999], thus grouping these words together. For object-control items, this was semantically possible, which led to a “good-enough” interpretation of the sentence. Therefore, both sentences were interpreted equally well and the N400 effect found in Experiment 1 was absent. In contrast, for subject-control items, a corresponding grouping of the words was impossible, both semantically and syntactically, leading to processing difficulty in the form of an N400 effect and a late positivity. In conclusion, accentuation can group words together on the level of information structure, leading to either a semantically “good-enough” interpretation or a processing problem when such a semantic interpretation is not possible.

‘Only’ in Nguni: A Phrase-Final Particle Meets Antisymmetry Theory

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vicki Carstens ◽  
Jochen Zeller
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Complex Topography ◽  
Focus Particles ◽  
Final Particle ◽  
English Only ◽  
Final Particles

This article investigates the syntax of the phrase-final focus particles kuphela and qha ‘only’ in Zulu and Xhosa (Nguni; Bantu). We show that kuphela’s and qha’s associations with a focused constituent respect the complex topography of information structure in Nguni and, like English only, a surface c-command requirement. However, unlike English only, the Zulu and Xhosa particles typically follow the focus associate they c-command, a fact that poses a serious challenge for Kayne’s (1994) antisymmetry theory. We demonstrate that the Nguni facts are incompatible with recent Linear Correspondence Axiom–inspired approaches to phrase-final particles in other languages and, after weighing the merits of several approaches, we conclude that kuphela is an adjunct and that syntax is only weakly antisymmetric: adjuncts are not subject to the LCA.

Ergativity in Tibeto-Burman

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shobhana Chelliah
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Contrastive Focus ◽  
Contrastive Topic ◽  
Alignment Analysis ◽  
Focus Marking

A number of Tibeto-Burman languages exhibit morphological ergative alignment, while others clearly do not. In these languages, matters of information structure determine core argument marking. Specifically, both A and S marking may be used to indicate topic, contrastive topic, broad focus, and/or contrastive focus. It is most often A or S, not P, that is assigned such status and between A and S, it is most often A that takes marking. Preference for topic or focus marking on A creates the impression of ergative alignment, but an ergative alignment analysis is untenable as S may be marked under the same conditions and with the same morpheme as A. Considerations of discourse-level clause interpretation in Tibetan, Meitei, and Burmese show that information structure not transitivity determines A and S marking. The presence or absence of marking based on information structure is characterized as “unique differential marking”, distinguishing it from the differential marking observed in ergative and accusative alignment systems.

Information Structure and Presupposition

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kjell Johan Sæbø
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
The Core ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Focus Marking ◽  
Core Points ◽  
The Relationship

This article surveys and discusses the core points of contact between notions of information structure and notions of presupposition. Section 1 is devoted to the ‘weak’ presuppositional semantics for focus developed by Mats Rooth, describing its properties with regard to verification and accommodation and showing that it can successfully account for a wide range of phenomena. Section 2 examines the stronger thesis that focus–background structures give rise to existential presuppositions, and finds the counterarguments that have been raised to carry considerable weight. Section 3 looks into the relationship between Givenness and run-of-the-mill presuppositions, finding that this relationship is looser than might be expected, mainly because a presupposition may be in need of focus marking instead of givenness marking.

scholarly journals Syntax, Prosody, Discourse and Information Structure: The case for Unipartite clauses — A View from Spoken Israeli Hebrew / Sintaxe, prosódia, discurso e estrutura informacional: o caso das orações unipartidas. Uma visão do hebraico falado em Israel

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 1675
Author(s):  
Shlomo Izre'el
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Integrative Approach ◽  
Clause Structure ◽  
Discourse Context ◽  
Structure Information ◽  
History Of Linguistics ◽  
Prosodic Boundaries ◽  
History Of ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient

Abstract: The canonical view of clause requires that it include predication. Utterances that do not fit into this view because they lack a subject are usually regarded as elliptical or as non-sentential utterances. Adopting an integrative approach to the analysis of spoken language that includes syntax, prosody, discourse structure, and information structure, it is suggested that the only necessary and sufficient component constituting a clause is a predicate domain, carrying the informational load of the clause within the discourse context, including a “new” element in the discourse, carrying modality, and focused. Utterances that have not been hitherto analyzed as consisting of full clauses or sentences will be reevaluated. The utterance, being a discourse unit defined by prosodic boundaries, can thus be viewed as the default domain of a clause or a sentence, when the latter are determined according to the suggested integrative approach.Keywords: syntax; clause structure; information structure; discourse; context; prosody; utterance; history of linguistics; spoken Israeli Hebrew.Resumo: A posição canônica sobre as orações requer que elas contenham uma predição. Enunciados que não se encaixem nessa visão porque não possuem um sujeito são usualmente considerados elípticos ou como enunciados não-oracionais. Adotando uma visão integrativa para a análise da língua falada, que inclui a sintaxe, a prosódia, a estrutura discursiva e a estrutura informacional, sugere-se que o único componente constituinte necessário e suficiente para uma oração é um domínio predicativo, o qual carregue a carga informacional da oração no contexto do discurso, incluindo-se um “novo” elemento no discurso, que carregue modalidade e foco. Enunciados que até então foram classificados como não sendo orações ou sentenças completas serão reavaliados. O enunciado, sendo uma unidade discursiva definida por fronteiras prosódicas, pode assim ser visto como o domínio de uma oração ou sentença por excelência, quando estas são determinadas através da abordagem integrativa sugerida.Palavras-chave: sintaxe; estrutura oracional; estrutura informacional; discurso; contexto; prosódia; enunciado; história da Linguística; hebraico israelense falado.

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