@phdthesis{Fominyam2021,
  author    = {Fominyam, Henry Zamchang},
  title     = {Aspects of Awing grammar and information structure},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-51806},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-518068},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {xi, 391},
  year      = {2021},
  abstract  = {This project describes the nominal, verbal and 'truncation' systems of Awing and explains the syntactic and semantic functions of the multifunctional l<-><-> (LE) morpheme in copular and wh-focused constructions. Awing is a Bantu Grassfields language spoken in the North West region of Cameroon. The work begins with morphological processes viz. deverbals, compounding, reduplication, borrowing and a thorough presentation of the pronominal system and takes on verbal categories viz. tense, aspect, mood, verbal extensions, negation, adverbs and triggers of a homorganic N(asal)-prefix that attaches to the verb and other verbal categories. Awing grammar also has a very unusual phenomenon whereby nouns and verbs take long and short forms. A chapter entitled truncation is dedicated to the phenomenon. It is observed that the truncation process does not apply to bare singular NPs, proper names and nouns derived via morphological processes. On the other hand, with the exception of the 1st person non-emphatic possessive determiner and the class 7 noun prefix, nouns generally take the truncated form with modifiers (i.e., articles, demonstratives and other possessives). It is concluded that nominal truncation depicts movement within the DP system (Abney 1987). Truncation of the verb occurs in three contexts: a mass/plurality conspiracy (or lattice structuring in terms of Link 1983) between the verb and its internal argument (i.e., direct object); a means to align (exhaustive) focus (in terms of Fery's 2013), and a means to form polar questions. The second part of the work focuses on the role of the LE morpheme in copular and wh-focused clauses. Firstly, the syntax of the Awing copular clause is presented and it is shown that copular clauses in Awing have 'subject-focus' vs 'topic-focus' partitions and that the LE morpheme indirectly relates such functions. Semantically, it is shown that LE does not express contrast or exhaustivity in copular clauses. Turning to wh-constructions, the work adheres to Hamblin's (1973) idea that the meaning of a question is the set of its possible answers and based on Rooth's (1985) underspecified semantic notion of alternative focus, concludes that the LE morpheme is not a Focus Marker (FM) in Awing: LE does not generate or indicate the presence of alternatives (Krifka 2007); The LE morpheme can associate with wh-elements as a focus-sensitive operator with semantic import that operates on the focus alternatives by presupposing an exhaustive answer, among other notions. With focalized categories, the project further substantiates the claim in Fominyam \& Šim{\´i}k (2017), namely that exhaustivity is part of the semantics of the LE morpheme and not derived via contextual implicature, via a number of diagnostics. Hence, unlike in copular clauses, the LE morpheme with wh-focused categories is analysed as a morphological exponent of a functional head Exh corresponding to Horvath's (2010) EI (Exhaustive Identification). The work ends with the syntax of verb focus and negation and modifies the idea in Fominyam \& Šim{\´i}k (2017), namely that the focalized verb that associates with the exhaustive (LE) particle is a lower copy of the finite verb that has been moved to Agr. It is argued that the LE-focused verb 'cluster' is an instantiation of adjunction. The conclusion is that verb doubling with verb focus in Awing is neither a realization of two copies of one and the same verb (Fominyam and Šim{\´i}k 2017), nor a result of a copy triggered by a focus marker (Aboh and Dyakonova 2009). Rather, the focalized copy is said to be merged directly as the complement of LE forming a type of adjoining cluster.},
  language  = {en}
}
@inproceedings{Kimmelmann2013,
  author    = {Kimmelmann, Vadim},
  title     = {Doubling in RSL and NGT : a pragmatic account0F*},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-66102},
  year      = {2013},
  abstract  = {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.},
  language  = {en}
}
@inproceedings{Titov2013,
  author    = {Titov, Elena},
  title     = {Scrambling and interfaces},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-66073},
  year      = {2013},
  abstract  = {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.},
  language  = {en}
}
@inproceedings{Stavropoulou2013,
  author    = {Stavropoulou, Pepi},
  title     = {On the status of contrast : evidence from the prosodic domain},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-66066},
  year      = {2013},
  abstract  = {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.},
  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}
}
@misc{Meinhardt2010,
  type      = {Master Thesis},
  author    = {Meinhardt, Miriam},
  title     = {Der Einfluss der Informationsstruktur auf das Verst{\"a}ndnis von Aktiv- und Passivs{\"a}tzen im ungest{\"o}rten Spracherwerb},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-59563},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2010},
  abstract  = {Kinder erwerben Passivstrukturen sp{\"a}ter als die meisten anderen syntaktischen Strukturen. Die vorliegende Studie besch{\"a}ftigt sich mit der Frage, ob dies auf informationsstrukturelle Faktoren zur{\"u}ckzuf{\"u}hren sein k{\"o}nnte. Probleme beim Erwerb von Passivs{\"a}tzen wurden in vorhergehenden Studien unter anderem auf ihre geringe Inputfrequenz oder bestimmte syntaktische Charakteristika von Passivs{\"a}tzen zur{\"u}ckgef{\"u}hrt. Jedoch konnte bisher keiner dieser Ans{\"a}tze ihr sp{\"a}tes Erwerbsalter umfassend erkl{\"a}ren. W{\"a}hrend Aktivs{\"a}tze, die kanonische, unmarkierte Satzstruktur im Deutschen, in jeglichem Diskurskontext verwendet werden k{\"o}nnen, werden Passivs{\"a}tze fast ausschließlich dann verwendet, wenn der Patiens der beschriebenen Handlung schon vorerw{\"a}hnt war und/ oder als Topik eines Satzes fungieren soll. Passivs{\"a}tze sind also nicht in jedem Kontext informationsstrukturell ad{\"a}quat. Kinder haben im Gegensatz zu Erwachsenen aufgrund ihrer geringeren syntaktischen F{\"a}higkeiten Probleme, S{\"a}tze zu verarbeiten, die nicht in einem ad{\"a}quaten Kontext stehen. Der Einfluss dieser Kontextbedingungen auf das Satzverst{\"a}ndnis wurde in der vorliegenden Studie bei deutschsprachigen Kindern untersucht. Kindern zwischen 3;0 und 4;11 Jahren wurden Aktiv- oder Passivs{\"a}tze pr{\"a}sentiert, denen informationsstrukturell ad{\"a}quate, inad{\"a}quate oder neutrale Kontexts{\"a}tze vorangingen. Wie erwartet verstanden die Kinder Aktivs{\"a}tze besser als Passivs{\"a}tze und 4-j{\"a}hrige Kinder zeigten bessere Leistungen als 3-j{\"a}hrige. Es gab Tendenzen, dass die 3-j{\"a}hrigen Kinder Passivs{\"a}tze besser, aber Aktivs{\"a}tze schlechter verstanden, wenn ihr Subjekt vorerw{\"a}hnt wurde. Statistisch signifikante Kontexteffekte fanden sich jedoch im Gegensatz zu einer vergleichbaren Studie mit englischsprachigen Kindern (Gourley und Catlin, 1978) in keiner Testbedingung. Außerdem zeigte sich, dass die Kinder Passivs{\"a}tze insgesamt besser und Aktivs{\"a}tze insgesamt schlechter verstanden als englischsprachige Kinder in anderen Studien. Die Ergebnisse werden mit dem Competition Modell (Mac Whinney und Bates, 1987) und einer Sprachverarbeitungstheorie von Stromswold (2002) erkl{\"a}rt. Außerdem wird diskutiert, warum die deutschsprachigen Kinder in der vorliegenden Studie andere Sprachverst{\"a}ndnisleistungen zeigten als englischsprachige Kinder.},
  language  = {de}
}
@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}
}
@incollection{Jannedy2007,
  author    = {Jannedy, Stefanie},
  title     = {Prosodic focus in Vietnamese},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19478},
  publisher      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2007},
  abstract  = {This paper reports on pilot work on the expression of Information Structure in Vietnamese and argues that Focus in Vietnamese is exclusively expressed prosodically: there are no specific focus markers, and the language uses phonology to express intonational emphasis in similar ways to languages like English or German. The exploratory data indicates that (i) focus is prosodically expressed while word order remains constant, (ii) listeners show good recoverability of the intended focus structure, and (iii) that there is a trading relationship between several phonetic parameters (duration, f0, amplitude) involved to signal prosodic (acoustic) emphasis.},
  language  = {en}
}