@article{Krifka2007, author = {Krifka, Manfred}, title = {Basic notions of information structure}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam}, address = {Potsdam}, isbn = {978-3-939469-88-9}, issn = {1614-4708}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19603}, pages = {13 -- 55}, year = {2007}, abstract = {This article takes stock of the basic notions of Information Structure (IS). It first provides a general characterization of IS — following Chafe (1976) — within a communicative model of Common Ground(CG), which distinguishes between CG content and CG management. IS is concerned with those features of language that concern the local CG. Second, this paper defines and discusses the notions of Focus (as indicating alternatives) and its various uses, Givenness (as indicating that a denotation is already present in the CG), and Topic (as specifying what a statement is about). It also proposes a new notion, Delimitation, which comprises contrastive topics and frame setters, and indicates that the current conversational move does not entirely satisfy the local communicative needs. It also points out that rhetorical structuring partly belongs to IS.}, language = {en} } @article{Kubozono2007, author = {Kubozono, Haruo}, title = {Focus and intonation in Japanese}, series = {Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632}, volume = {9}, journal = {Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632}, editor = {Ishihara, Shinichiro and Petrova, Svetlana and Schwarz, Anne}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam}, address = {Potsdam}, issn = {1866-4725}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-24472}, pages = {1 -- 27}, year = {2007}, abstract = {This paper discusses how focus changes prosodic structure in Tokyo Japanese. It is generally believed that focus blocks the intonational process of downstep and causes a pitch reset. This paper presents experimental evidence against this traditional view by looking at the prosodic behavior of Wh words, which receive focus lexically in Japanese as in other languages. It is demonstrated, specifically, that the focused Wh element does not block downstep although it receives a much higher pitch than its preceding element. This suggests that presence of lexical focus does not trigger pitch reset in Japanese.}, language = {en} } @article{SkopeteasFanselow2011, author = {Skopeteas, Stavros and Fanselow, Gisbert}, title = {Focus and the exclusion of alternatives on the interaction of syntactic structure with pragmatic inference}, series = {Lingua : international review of general linguistics}, volume = {121}, journal = {Lingua : international review of general linguistics}, number = {11}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0024-3841}, doi = {10.1016/j.lingua.2011.05.005}, pages = {1693 -- 1706}, year = {2011}, abstract = {The claim that focus evokes a set of alternatives is a central issue in several accounts of the effects of focus on interpretation. This article presents two empirical studies that examine whether this property of focus is independent of contextual conditions. The syntactic operation at issue is object-fronting in German, Spanish, Greek, and Hungarian licensed by contexts involving focus on the object constituent. This operation evokes the intuition that the fronted referent excludes some or all relevant alternatives. The presented experiments deal with the question whether this interpretative property obligatorily accompanies the operation at issue or not. The empirical findings show that in German, Spanish, and Greek this intuition depends on properties of the context and is sensitive to the interaction with further discourse factors (in particular, the predictability of the referent). Hungarian displays a different data pattern: our data does not provide evidence that the syntactic operation at issue depends on the context or interacts with further discourse factors. This finding is in line with the view that evoking alternatives is inherent part of constituent-fronting in this language.}, language = {en} } @article{ZimmermannOnea2011, author = {Zimmermann, Malte and Onea, Edgar}, title = {Focus marking and focus interpretation}, series = {LINGUA}, volume = {121}, journal = {LINGUA}, number = {11}, publisher = {ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV}, address = {AMSTERDAM}, issn = {0024-3841}, doi = {10.1016/j.lingua.2011.06.002}, pages = {1651 -- 1670}, year = {2011}, abstract = {The languages of the world exhibit a range of formal phenomena (e.g. accenting, syntactic reordering and morphological marking) that are commonly linked to the information-structural notion of focus. Crucially, there does not seem to be a one-to-one mapping between particular formal features (focus marking devices) and focus, neither from a cross-linguistic perspective, nor within individual languages. This raises the question of what is actually being expressed if we say that a constituent is focused in a particular language, and whether, or to what extent, the same semantic or pragmatic content is formally expressed by focus-marking across languages. This special issue addresses the question of focus and its grammatical realization from a number of theoretical and empirical perspectives. In this introductory article we elaborate on this question by making an explicit proposal about what we take to be the correct way of thinking about the information-structural category of focus and its formal realization. In the first part, we introduce a unified semantico-pragmatic perspective on focus in terms of alternatives and possible worlds. In the second part, we present a cursory cross-linguistic overview of focus marking strategies as found in the languages of the world. Finally, in the third part, we discuss the connection between the notion of focus, different pragmatic uses of focus and different focus marking strategies employed in the grammars of natural languages. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.}, language = {en} } @article{HartmannZimmermann2012, author = {Hartmann, Katharina and Zimmermann, Malte}, title = {Focus marking in Bura - semantic uniformity matches syntactic heterogeneity}, series = {Natural language \& linguistic theory}, volume = {30}, journal = {Natural language \& linguistic theory}, number = {4}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Dordrecht}, issn = {0167-806X}, doi = {10.1007/s11049-012-9174-4}, pages = {1061 -- 1108}, year = {2012}, abstract = {The present article introduces a theory of (morpho-)syntactic focus marking on nominal categories in Bura, a Central Chadic SVO language spoken in the northeast of Nigeria. Our central claim is that the particle an plays a crucial role in the marking of subject and non-subject focus. We put forward a uniform analysis of an as a focus copula that selects for syntactic predicates of type < e,t > and a focused constituent of type < e >. This uniform semantic representation is transparently mapped onto different syntactic structures: In a clause with a focused subject, the focus copula appears between the subject in SpecTP and the predicative VP. On the other hand, syntactically focused non-subjects are fronted and appear in a bi-clausal cleft structure that contains the focus copula and a relative cleft-remnant. The non-uniform analysis of focus marking is further supported by the structure of predicative constructions, in which the focus copula separates the focused subject and the adjectival or nominal predicate. It is also shown that alternative unified analyses fail to account for the full range of Bura data. The latter part of the article provides an analysis of the Bura cleft construction. Based on syntactic and semantic evidence, we come to the conclusion that the clefted constituent is base-generated in its initial surface position, and that an empty operator moves within the relative clause. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the potential conceptual reasons behind the observed subject/non-subject asymmetry in Bura.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{KarvovskayaKimmelmanRoehretal.2013, author = {Karvovskaya, Lena and Kimmelman, Vadim and R{\"o}hr, Christine Tanja and Stavropoulou, Pepi and Titov, Elena and van Putten, Saskia}, title = {Information structure : empirical perspectives on theory}, editor = {Balbach, Maria and Benz, Lena and Genzel, Susanne and Grubic, Mira and Renans, Agata and Schalowski, S{\"o}ren and Stegenwallner, Maja and Zeldes, Amir}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-64804}, year = {2013}, abstract = {The papers collected in this volume were presented at a Graduate/Postgraduate Student Conference with the title Information Structure: Empirical Perspectives on Theory held on December 2 and 3, 2011 at Potsdam-Griebnitzsee. The main goal of the conference was to connect young researchers working on information structure (IS) related topics and to discuss various IS categories such as givenness, focus, topic, and contrast. The aim of the conference was to find at least partial answers to the following questions: What IS categories are necessary? Are they gradient/continuous? How can one deal with optionality or redundancy? How are IS categories encoded grammatically? How do different empirical methods contribute to distinguishing between the influence of different IS categories on language comprehension and production? To answer these questions, a range of languages (Avatime, Chinese, German, Ishkashimi, Modern Greek, Old Saxon, Russian, Russian Sign Language and Sign Language of the Netherlands) and a range of phenomena from phonology, semantics, and syntax were investigated. The presented theories and data were based on different kinds of linguistic evidence: syntactic and semantic fieldwork, corpus studies, and phonological experiments. The six papers presented in this volume discuss a variety of IS categories, such as emphasis and contrast (Stavropoulous, Titov), association with focus and topics (van Putten, Karvovskaya), and givenness and backgrounding (Kimmelmann, R{\"o}hr).}, language = {en} } @article{Tomioka2007, author = {Tomioka, Satoshi}, title = {Intervention effects in focus}, series = {Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632}, volume = {9}, journal = {Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632}, editor = {Ishihara, Shinichiro and Petrova, Svetlana and Schwarz, Anne}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam}, address = {Potsdam}, issn = {1866-4725}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-24502}, pages = {97 -- 118}, year = {2007}, abstract = {The most recent trend in the studies of LF intervention effects makes crucial reference to focusing effects on the interveners, and this paper critically examines the representative analyses of the focus-based approach. While each analysis has its own merits and shortcomings, I argue that a pragmatic analysis that does not make appeal to syntactic configurations is better equipped to deal with many of the complex and delicate facts surrounding intervention effects.}, language = {en} } @misc{FanselowLenertova2010, author = {Fanselow, Gisbert and Lenertov{\´a}, Denisa}, title = {Left peripheral focus}, series = {Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {596}, issn = {1866-8364}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-42819}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-428198}, pages = {43}, year = {2010}, abstract = {In Czech, German, and many other languages, part of the semantic focus of the utterance can be moved to the left periphery of the clause. The main generalization is that only the leftmost accented part of the semantic focus can be moved. We propose that movement to the left periphery is generally triggered by an unspecific edge feature of C (Chomsky 2008) and its restrictions can be attributed to requirements of cyclic linearization, modifying the theory of cyclic linearization developed by Fox and Pesetsky (2005). The crucial assumption is that structural accent is a direct consequence of being linearized at merge, thus it is indirectly relevant for (locality restrictions on) movement. The absence of structural accent correlates with given-ness. Given elements may later receive (topic or contrastive) accents, which accounts for fronting in multiple focus/contrastive topic constructions. Without any additional assumptions, the model can account for movement of pragmatically unmarked elements to the left periphery ('formal fronting', Frey 2005). Crucially, the analysis makes no reference at all to concepts of information structure in the syntax, in line with the claim of Chomsky (2008) that UG specifies no direct link between syntax and information structure.}, language = {en} } @article{FanselowLenertova2011, author = {Fanselow, Gisbert and Lenertova, Denisa}, title = {Left peripheral focus mismatches between syntax and information structure}, series = {Natural language \& linguistic theory}, volume = {29}, journal = {Natural language \& linguistic theory}, number = {1}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Dordrecht}, issn = {0167-806X}, doi = {10.1007/s11049-010-9109-x}, pages = {169 -- 209}, year = {2011}, abstract = {In Czech, German, and many other languages, part of the semantic focus of the utterance can be moved to the left periphery of the clause. The main generalization is that only the leftmost accented part of the semantic focus can be moved. We propose that movement to the left periphery is generally triggered by an unspecific edge feature of C (Chomsky 2008) and its restrictions can be attributed to requirements of cyclic linearization, modifying the theory of cyclic linearization developed by Fox and Pesetsky (2005). The crucial assumption is that structural accent is a direct consequence of being linearized at merge, thus it is indirectly relevant for (locality restrictions on) movement. The absence of structural accent correlates with givenness. Given elements may later receive (topic or contrastive) accents, which accounts for fronting in multiple focus/contrastive topic constructions. Without any additional assumptions, the model can account for movement of pragmatically unmarked elements to the left periphery ('formal fronting', Frey 2005). Crucially, the analysis makes no reference at all to concepts of information structure in the syntax, in line with the claim of Chomsky (2008) that UG specifies no direct link between syntax and information structure.}, language = {en} } @article{BacskaiAtkari2018, author = {Bacskai-Atkari, Julia}, title = {Marking Finiteness and Low Peripheries}, series = {Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics}, volume = {94}, journal = {Boundaries Crossed, at the Interfaces of Morphosyntax, Phonology, Pragmatics and Semantics}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Cham}, isbn = {978-3-319-90710-9}, issn = {0924-4670}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-90710-9_12}, pages = {183 -- 198}, year = {2018}, abstract = {The article takes up on the observations made byKenesei (1994) regarding the position of the Hungarian interrogative marker -e in the clause and its distribution across clause types. Specifically, there are three crucial points: (i) the marker -e is related to the CP-domain, where clause typing is encoded; (ii) -e is obligatory in embedded clauses and optional in main clauses; (iii) -e is licensed in finite clauses only. I argue that certain clause-typing properties are reflected in the Hungarian clause in a lower functional domain, FP. In particular, finiteness and the interrogative nature of the clause are encoded here, as also indicated by focussing in non-interrogative clauses and by constituent questions, respectively. The marker -e is base-generated in the F head, as opposed to a designated FocP or TP/IP, allowing it to fulfil its clause-typing functions. Base-generation is crucial (as opposed to lowering from C) since it is able to capture the relatedness between -e and finiteness: -e is specified as [fin] and while the FP may be generated to host focussed constituents (including wh-elements) in non-finite clauses, a lexically [fin] head cannot be inserted.}, language = {en} }