@article{StegenwallnerSchuetzAdani2016, author = {Stegenwallner-Sch{\"u}tz, Maja Henny Katherine and Adani, Flavia}, title = {Referential Choices and Specific Language Impairment: Sensitivity to Contrast Levels and Grammatical Role}, series = {Discours : revue de linguistique, psycholinguistique et informatique}, volume = {30}, journal = {Discours : revue de linguistique, psycholinguistique et informatique}, publisher = {Universit{\~A}© de Paris-Sorbonne, Maion Recherche}, address = {Paris}, issn = {1963-1723}, doi = {10.4000/discours.9179}, pages = {1 -- 22}, year = {2016}, abstract = {Speakers' referential choices differ in the degree of explicitness, ranging from very explicit expressions (such as lexical NPs, e.g., the boy) to less explicit expressions (such as pronouns, e.g., he, and null elements). We examine the referential choices of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), in order to differentiate between the linguistic and pragmatic abilities involved in the selection of appropriate referring expressions. Existing findings on referential choices by children with SLI are currently inconsistent and have mainly been reported based on narratives. We used an elicited production task to manipulate the referent's accessibility by means of two factors: (a) contexts that instantiate different levels of contrast (one vs. two contrasts) and (b) the grammatical role of the expression (subject vs. object). We show that children with SLI and typically developing controls produce more explicit expressions for increased contrast levels and for objects than for subjects. Although children with SLI modify the explicitness of their referring expressions according to the accessibility of referents as typically developing children do, we also find varying production rates between the groups. We discuss how these differences in production rates surface as a consequence of language impairment, although the explicitness of referential choices remains otherwise largely unaffected.}, language = {en} } @article{Stede2020, author = {Stede, Manfred}, title = {From connectives to coherence relations}, series = {Revue roumaine de linguistique : RRL = Romanian review of linguistics}, volume = {65}, journal = {Revue roumaine de linguistique : RRL = Romanian review of linguistics}, number = {3}, publisher = {Ed. Academiei Rom{\^a}ne}, address = {Bucure{\c{s}}ti}, issn = {0035-3957}, pages = {213 -- 233}, year = {2020}, abstract = {The notion of coherence relations is quite widely accepted in general, but concrete proposals differ considerably on the questions of how they should be motivated, which relations are to be assumed, and how they should be defined. This paper takes a "bottom-up" perspective by assessing the contribution made by linguistic signals (connectives), using insights from the relevant literature as well as verification by practical text annotation. We work primarily with the German language here and focus on the realm of contrast. Thus, we suggest a new inventory of contrastive connective functions and discuss their relationship to contrastive coherence relations that have been proposed in earlier work.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{Putten2013, author = {Putten, Saskia van}, title = {The meaning of the avatime additive particle tsyɛ}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-66081}, year = {2013}, abstract = {Avatime, a Kwa language of Ghana, has an additive particle tsyɛ that at first sight looks similar to additive particles such as too and also in English. However, on closer inspection, the Avatime particle behaves differently. Contrary to what is usually claimed about additive particles, tsyɛ does not only associate with focused elements. Moreover, unlike its English equivalents, tsyɛ does not come with a requirement of identity between the expressed proposition and an alternative. Instead, it indicates that the proposition it occurs in is similar to or compatible with a presupposed alternative proposition.}, language = {en} } @article{Kasimir2006, author = {Kasimir, Elke}, title = {On 'nicht...sondern...' (contrastive 'not...but...')}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19537}, year = {2006}, abstract = {This article presents an analysis of German nicht...sondern... (contrastive not...but...) which departs from the commonly held view that this construction should be explained by appeal to its alleged corrective function. It will be demonstrated that in nicht A sondern B (not A but B), A and B just behave like stand-alone unmarked answers to a common question Q, and that this property of sondern is presuppositional in character. It is shown that from this general observation many interesting properties of nicht...sondern... follow, among them distributional differences between German 'sondern' and German 'aber' (contrastive but, concessive but), intonational requirements and exhaustivity effects. sondern's presupposition is furthermore argued to be the result of the conventionalization of conversational implicatures.}, language = {en} } @article{GueldemannZerbianZimmermann2015, author = {Gueldemann, Tom and Zerbian, Sabine and Zimmermann, Malte}, title = {Variation in information structure with special reference to Africa}, series = {Annual review of linguistics}, volume = {1}, journal = {Annual review of linguistics}, editor = {Liberman, M and Partee, BH}, publisher = {Annual Reviews}, address = {Palo Alto}, isbn = {978-0-8243-4201-2}, issn = {2333-9691}, doi = {10.1146/annurev-linguist-030514-125134}, pages = {155 -- 178}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Information structure has been one of the central topics of recent linguistic research. This review discusses a wide range of current approaches with particular reference to African languages, as these have been playing a crucial role in advancing our knowledge about the diversity of and recurring patterns in both meaning and form of information structural notions. We focus on cross-linguistic functional frameworks, the investigation of prosody, formal syntactic theories, and relevant effects of semantic interpretation. Information structure is a thriving research domain that promises to yield important advances in our general understanding of human language.}, language = {en} } @article{GrubicRenansDuah2018, author = {Grubic, Mira and Renans, Agata and Duah, Reginald Akuoko}, title = {Focus, exhaustivity and existence in Akan, Ga and Ngamo}, series = {Linguistics : an interdisciplinary journal of the language sciences}, volume = {57}, journal = {Linguistics : an interdisciplinary journal of the language sciences}, number = {1}, publisher = {De Gruyter Mouton}, address = {Berlin}, issn = {0024-3949}, doi = {10.1515/ling-2018-0035}, pages = {221 -- 268}, year = {2018}, abstract = {This paper discusses the relation between focus marking and focus interpretation in Akan (Kwa), Ga (Kwa), and Ngamo (West Chadic). In all three languages, there is a special morphosyntactically marked focus/background construction, as well as morphosyntactically unmarked focus. We present data stemming from original fieldwork investigatingwhether marked focus/background constructions in these three languages also have additional interpretative effects apart from standard focus interpretation. Crosslinguistically, different additional inferences have been found for marked focus constructions, e.g. contrast (e.g. Vallduvi, Enric \& Maria Vilkuna. 1997. On rheme and kontrast. In Peter Culicover \& Louise McNally (eds.), The limits of syntax (Syntax and semantics 29), 79-108. New York: Academic Press; Hartmann, Katharina \& Malte Zimmermann. 2007b. In place -Out of place: Focus in Hausa. In Kerstin Schwabe \& Susanne Winkler (eds.), On information structure, meaning and form, 365-403. Amsterdam \& Philadelphia: John Benjamins.; Destruel, Emilie \& Leah Velleman. 2014. Refining contrast: Empirical evidence from the English it-cleft. In Christopher Pinon (ed.), Empirical issues in syntax and semantics 10, 197-214. Paris: Colloque de syntaxe et semantique a Paris (CSSP). http://www.cssp.cnrs.fr/eiss10/), exhaustivity (e.g. E. Kiss, Katalin. 1998. Identificational focus versus information focus. Language 74(2). 245-273.; Hartmann, Katharina \& Malte Zimmermann. 2007a. Exhaustivity marking in Hausa: A re-evaluation of the particle nee/cee. In Enoch O. Aboh, Katharina Hartmann \& Malte Zimmermann (eds.), Focus strategies in African languages: The interaction of focus and grammar in Niger-Congo and AfroAsiatic (Trends in Linguistics 191), 241-263. Berlin \& New York: Mouton de Gruyter.), and existence (e.g. Rooth, Mats. 1999. Association with focus or association with presupposition? In Peter Bosch \& Rob van der Sandt (eds.), Focus: Linguistic, cognitive, and computational perspectives, 232-244. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.; von Fintel, Kai \& Lisa Matthewson. 2008. Universals in semantics. The Linguistic Review 25(1-2). 139-201). This paper investigates these three inferences. In Akan and Ga, the marked focus constructions are found to be contrastive, while in Ngamo, no effect of contrast was found. We also show that marked focus constructions in Ga and Akan trigger exhaustivity and existence presuppositions, while the marked construction in Ngamo merely gives rise to an exhaustive conversational implicature and does not trigger an existence presupposition. Instead, the marked construction in Ngamo merely indicates salience of the backgrounded part via a morphological background marker related to the definite determiner (Schuh, Russell G. 2005. Yobe state, Nigeria as a linguistic area. Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 31(2). 77-94; Guldemann, Tom. 2016. Maximal backgrounding = focus without (necessary) focus encoding. Studies in Language 40(3). 551590). The paper thus contributes to the understanding of the semantics of marked focus constructions across languages and points to the crosslinguistic variation in expressing and interpreting marked focus/background constructions.}, language = {en} }