TY - JOUR A1 - Krifka, Manfred T1 - Basic notions of information structure N2 - 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. KW - Information Structure KW - Focus KW - Topic KW - Givenness KW - Contrast Y1 - 2007 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19603 SN - 978-3-939469-88-9 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 SP - 13 EP - 55 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Kimmelmann, Vadim T1 - Doubling in RSL and NGT : a pragmatic account0F* N2 - In this paper, doubling in Russian Sign Language and Sign Language of the Netherlands is discussed. In both sign languages different constituents (including verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and whole clauses) can be doubled. It is shown that doubling in both languages has common functions and exhibits a similar structure, despite some differences. On this basis, a unified pragmatic explanation for many doubling phenomena on both the discourse and the clause-internal levels is provided, namely that the main function of doubling both in RSL and NGT is foregrounding of the doubled information. KW - Russian Sign Language KW - Sign Language of the Netherlands KW - doubling KW - Information Structure KW - foregrounding Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-66102 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Pfeil, Simone A1 - Genzel, Susanne A1 - Kügler, Frank T1 - Empirical investigation of focus and exhaustivity in Akan JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - It has been observed for many African languages that focussed subjects have to appear outside of their syntactic base position, as opposed to focussed objects, which can remain in-situ. This is known as subjectobject asymmetry of focus marking, which Fiedler et al. (2010) claim to hold also for Akan. Genzel (2013), on the other hand, argues that Akan does not exhibit a subject-object focus asymmetry. A questionnaire study and a production experiment were carried out to investigate whether focussed subjects may indeed be realized in-situ in Akan. The results suggest that (i) focussed subjects do not have to be obligatorily realized ex-situ, and that (ii) the syntactic preference for the realization of a focussed subject highly depends on exhaustivity. KW - Akan KW - focus KW - subjects KW - exhaustivity KW - in-situ Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-83774 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 IS - 19 SP - 87 EP - 109 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Akuoko Duah, Reginald T1 - Exhaustive Focus Marking in Akan JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - This paper reopens the discussion on focus marking in Akan (Kwa, Niger-Congo) by examining the semantics of the so-called focus marker in the language. It is shown that the so-called focus marker expresses exhaustivity when it occurs in a sentence with narrow focus. The study employs four standard tests for exhaustivity proposed in the literature to examine the semantics of Akan focus constructions (Szabolsci 1981, 1994; É. Kiss 1998; Hartmann and Zimmermann 2007). It is shown that although a focused entity with the so-called focus marker nà is interpreted to mean ‘only X and nothing/nobody else,’ this meaning appears to be pragmatic. KW - Akan KW - focus marker KW - cleft KW - exhaustivity KW - ex situ KW - in situ KW - subject/non-subject asymmetry Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-83748 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 IS - 19 SP - 1 EP - 28 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Genzel, Susanne A1 - Kügler, Frank T1 - How to elicit semi-spontaneous focus realizations with specific tonal patterns JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - This article presents a situation description production experiment investigating the interaction between syntax and information structure in Akan, a tone language that belongs to the Kwa branch of the Niger- Congo family spoken in Ghana. Information structure was elicited via context questions that put the object in narrow informational focus or narrow corrective focus while controlling for the tonal structure of the target word. Contrary to the prediction that corrective focus is marked by fronting and morphological marking of the focused constituent the data suggest that the in-situ strategy is the preferred one. KW - Akan KW - information structure KW - syntax Y1 - 2011 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-49749 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 IS - 13 SP - 77 EP - 102 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Röhr, Christine Tanja T1 - Information status and prosody : production and perception in German0F* N2 - In a production experiment and two follow-up perception experiments on read German we investigated the (de-)coding of discourse-new, inferentially and textually accessible and given discourse referents by prosodic means. Results reveal that a decrease in the referent’s level of givenness is reflected by an increase in its prosodic prominence (expressed by differences in the status and type of accent used) providing evidence for the relevance of different intermediate types of information status between the poles given and new. Furthermore, perception data indicate that the degree of prosodic prominence can serve as the decisive cue for decoding a referent’s level of givenness. KW - prosody KW - information status KW - discourse referent KW - degree of givenness KW - cognitive activation KW - prominence KW - pitch accent KW - perception Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-66116 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Karvovskaya, Lena A1 - Kimmelman, Vadim A1 - Röhr, Christine Tanja A1 - Stavropoulou, Pepi A1 - Titov, Elena A1 - van Putten, Saskia ED - Balbach, Maria ED - Benz, Lena ED - Genzel, Susanne ED - Grubic, Mira ED - Renans, Agata ED - Schalowski, Sören ED - Stegenwallner, Maja ED - Zeldes, Amir T1 - Information structure : empirical perspectives on theory N2 - 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, Röhr). T3 - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 - 17 KW - Fokus KW - Topik KW - Informationsstruktur KW - Fokussensitivität KW - Givenness KW - Backgrounding KW - Focus KW - Topic KW - Information Structure KW - Focus-sensitivity KW - Givenness KW - Backgrounding Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-64804 ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Wiese, Heike A1 - Freywald, Ulrike A1 - Mayr, Katharina T1 - Kiezdeutsch as a test case for the interaction between grammar and information structure N2 - This paper deals with Kiezdeutsch, a way of speaking that emerged among adolescents in multiethnic urban neighbourhoods of Germany. We show that, in Kiezdeutsch, we find evidence for both grammatical reduction and new developments in the domain of information structure, and hypothesise that this points to a systematic interaction between grammar and information structure, between weakened grammatical constraints and a more liberal realisation of information-structural preferences. We show that Kiezdeutsch can serve as an interesting test case for such an interaction, that this youth language is a multiethnolect, that is, a new variety that is spoken by speakers from a multitude of ethnic backgrounds, including German, and forms a dynamic linguistic system of its own, thus allowing for systematic developments on grammatical levels and their interfaces with extragrammatical domains. T3 - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 - 12 KW - interface between grammar and information structure KW - focus particle KW - left periphery KW - multiethnolect KW - acceptability study Y1 - 2009 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-38376 ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Grubic, Mira A1 - Genzel, Susanne A1 - Kügler, Frank T1 - Linguistic Fieldnotes I: Information Structure in different African Languages N2 - This is the 13th issue of the working paper series Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure (ISIS) of the Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) 632. It is the first part of a series of Linguistic Fieldnote issues which present data collected by members of different projects of the SFB during fieldwork on various languages or dialects spoken worldwide. This part of the Fieldnote Series is dedicated to data from African languages. It contains contributions by Mira Grubic (A5) on Ngizim, and Susanne Genzel & Frank Kügler (D5) on Akan. The papers allow insights into various aspects of the elicitation of formal correlates of focus and related phenomena in different African languages investigated by the SFB in the second funding phase, especially in the period between 2007 and 2010. T3 - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 - 13 KW - Ngizim KW - Akan KW - information structure KW - syntax Y1 - 2010 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-49684 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Freywald, Ulrike A1 - Mayr, Katharina A1 - Schalowski, Sören A1 - Wiese, Heike T1 - Linguistic Fieldnotes II: Information structure in different variants of written German JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - Dieser Band versammelt Originaldaten aus einer Erhebung, die im Rahmen des SFB-Teilprojekts B6 „Kiezdeutsch“ im Frühjahr 2010 in Berlin und İzmir, Türkei, durchgeführt wurde. Sämtliche hier dokumentierten Daten wurden schriftlich produziert; sie stammen von drei verschiedenen Sprechergruppen: Jugendliche aus einem multiethnischen Berliner Wohngebiet, die untereinander Kiezdeutsch sprechen, Jugendliche aus einem monoethnischen Berliner Wohngebiet, in dem der traditionelle Berliner Dialekt vorherrscht, und türkische Jugendliche in İzmir, die Deutsch als Fremdsprache gesteuert erworben haben. T3 - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 - 14 KW - Kiezdeutsch KW - Jugendsprache KW - Berlinisch KW - DaF KW - L1 Türkisch Y1 - 2010 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-36830 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 VL - 14 SP - 1 EP - 80 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Schwarz, Anne A1 - Fiedler, Ines T1 - Linguistic Fieldnotes III: Information Structure in Gur and Kwa Languages N2 - This is the 16th issue of the working paper series Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure (ISIS) of the Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) 632. The present issue continues the series on Linguistic Fieldnotes providing data elicited and documented by different members of the Sonderforschungsbereich 632. Here, the focus is placed on primary linguistic data from Gur and Kwa languages, collected and prepared by Anne Schwarz, former investigator in Project B1 and D2, and Ines Fiedler, former investigator in Project B1 and D2 and current member of Project B7 at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. T3 - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 - 16 Y1 - 2011 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-51094 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Valle, Daniel T1 - Modality in Kakataibo JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - This paper explores the semantic space of modality in Kakataibo (Panoan). It is found that Kakataibo makes a distinction in the modal space based on the modality type. Circumstantial modality is encoded by a construction while the epistemic space is conveyed by the second position enclitics =dapi ‘inferential’, =id ‘second-hand information’ and =kuni ‘contrastive assertion’. However, none of these strategies to encode modality restricts the quantificational force, leaving it underspecified. These facts are consistent with the predictions of current typologies of modal systems. KW - modality KW - conversational background KW - quantificational force KW - Kakataibo Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-83784 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 IS - 19 SP - 111 EP - 137 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Duah, Reginald Akuoko A1 - Fominyam, Henry Z. A1 - Klose, Claudius A1 - Pfeil, Simone A1 - Genzel, Susanne A1 - Kügler, Frank A1 - Valle, Daniel ED - Grubic, Mira ED - Bildhauer, Felix T1 - Mood, Exhaustivity & Focus Marking in non-European Languages N2 - This is the 19th — and final — issue of the working paper series Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure (ISIS) of the Collaborative Research Center 632. In this issue, we present cross-linguistic work on Mood, Exhaustivity, and Focus Marking, on African languages and American languages. T3 - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 - 19 Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-81200 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Grubic, Mira T1 - Ngizim fieldnotes JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - This chapter presents field notes of the West Chadic language Ngizim, spoken in North-East Nigeria. In Ngizim, subject focus is indicated by subject inversion, whereas the word order of sentences with focused non-subjects can remain unchanged. The goal of the field work was to find out more about focus marking in Ngizim. KW - information structure KW - Ngizim Y1 - 2011 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-49738 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 IS - 13 SP - 1 EP - 76 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Stavropoulou, Pepi T1 - On the status of contrast : evidence from the prosodic domain N2 - Recent models of Information Structure (IS) identify a low level contrast feature that functions within the topic and focus of the utterance. This study investigates the exact nature of this feature based on empirical evidence from a controlled read speech experiment on the prosodic realization of different levels of contrast in Modern Greek. Results indicate that only correction is truly contrastive, and that it is similarly realized in both topic and focus, suggesting that contrast is an independent IS dimension. Non default focus position is further identified as a parameter that triggers a prosodically marked rendition, similar to correction. KW - Information Structure KW - Prosody KW - Contrast KW - Correction KW - Markedness Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-66066 ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Renans, Agata A1 - Zimmermann, Malte A1 - Greif, Markus T1 - Questionnaire on focus semantics N2 - This is the 15th issue of the working paper series Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure (ISIS) of the Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) 632. This online version contains the Questionnaire on Focus Semantics contributed by Agata Renans, Malte Zimmermann and Markus Greif, members of Project D2 investigating information structural phenomena from a typological perspective. The present issue provides a tool for collecting and analyzing natural data with respect to relevant linguistic questions concerning focus types, focus sensitive particles, and the effects of quantificational adverbs and presupposition on focus semantics. This volume is a supplementation to the Reference manual of the Questionnaire on Information Structure, issued by Project D2 in ISIS 4 (2006). T3 - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 - 15 KW - focus sensitive expressions KW - semantic fieldwork KW - methodology Y1 - 2010 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-36826 ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Renans, Agata A1 - Zimmermann, Malte A1 - Greif, Markus T1 - Questionnaire on focus semantics. - 2nd edition N2 - This is the 15th issue of the working paper series Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure (ISIS) of the Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) 632. This online version contains the Questionnaire on Focus Semantics contributed by Agata Renans, Malte Zimmermann and Markus Greif, members of Project D2 investigating information structural phenomena from a typological perspective. The present issue provides a tool for collecting and analyzing natural data with respect to relevant linguistic questions concerning focus types, focus sensitive particles, and the effects of quantificational adverbs and presupposition on focus semantics. This volume is a supplementation to the Reference manual of the Questionnaire on Information Structure, issued by Project D2 in ISIS 4 (2006). T3 - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 - 15, 2nd E. KW - focus sensitive expressions KW - semantic fieldwork KW - methodology Y1 - 2011 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-50359 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schwarz, Anne T1 - QUIS data from Buli, Kɔnni and Baatɔnum with notes on the comparative approach JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - Contents: 1. Introduction 2. Selection of QUIS Data for Comparative Goals 2.1 Fairy Tale (Topic and Focus in Coherent Discourse) 2.2 Focus Translation Extract 3. On the Presentation and Comparison of the Data 4. Buli 4.1 Tomatoes Fairy Tale in Buli 4.2 Focus Translation Extract in Buli 5. Kɔnni 5.1 Tomatoes Fairy Tale in Kɔnni 5.2 Focus Translation Extract 6. Baatɔnum 6.1 Tomatoes Fairy Tale in Baatɔnum 6.2 Focus Translation Extract in Baatɔnum Y1 - 2011 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-51415 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 IS - 16 SP - 1 EP - 48 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Fiedler, Ines T1 - QUIS data from Yom, Aja, Anii and Foodo BT - with notes on genetic and areal relations JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - This is the second part of the presentation of data elicited by means of QUIS within the project on information structure in Gur and Kwa languages. Whereas the first part (Anne Schwarz) introduces the project and the rationals behind the development of the focus translation task, this part provides some comparative remarks gained from the data presented in both parts. Y1 - 2011 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-51420 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 IS - 16 SP - 49 EP - 96 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Titov, Elena T1 - Scrambling and interfaces N2 - This paper proposes a novel analysis of the Russian OVS construction and argues that the parametric variation in the availability of OVS cross-linguistically depends on the type of relative interpretative argument prominence that a language encodes via syntactic structure. When thematic and information-structural prominence relations do not coincide, only one of them can be structurally/linearly represented. The relation that is not structurally/linearly encoded must be made visible at the PF interface either via prosody or morphology. KW - Information Structure KW - Russian Scrambling KW - PF Interface Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-66073 ER -