TY - CHAP A1 - Jannedy, Stefanie T1 - Prosodic focus in Vietnamese N2 - 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. KW - Information Structure KW - Vietnamese KW - Focus KW - Perception KW - (Statement-Question Matching) Y1 - 2007 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19478 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kügler, Frank A1 - Skopeteas, Stavros A1 - Verhoeven, Elisabeth T1 - Encoding information structure in Yucatec Maya BT - on the interplay of prosody and syntax N2 - The aim of this paper is to outline the means for encoding information structure in Yucatec Maya. Yucatec Maya is a tone language, displaying a three-fold opposition in the tonal realization of syllables. From the morpho-syntactic point of view, the grammar of Yucatec Maya contains morphological (topic affixes, morphological marking of out-of-focus predicates) and syntactic (designated positions) means to uniquely specify syntactic constructions for their information structure. After a descriptive overview of these phenomena, we present experimental evidence which reveals the impact of the nonavailability of prosodic alternatives on the choice of syntactic constructions in language production. KW - cleft constructions KW - lexical tone KW - topic affixes KW - verb-initial cleft constructions KW - verb-initial Y1 - 2007 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19469 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hellmuth, Sam A1 - Skopeteas, Stavros T1 - Information structure in linguistic theory and in speech production : validation of a Cross-Linguistic data set N2 - The aim of this paper is to validate a dataset collected by means of production experiments which are part of the Questionnaire on Information Structure. The experiments generate a range of information structure contexts that have been observed in the literature to induce specific constructions. This paper compares the speech production results from a subset of these experiments with specific claims about the reflexes of information structure in four different languages. The results allow us to evaluate and in most cases validate the efficacy of our elicitation paradigms, to identify potentially fruitful avenues of future research, and to highlight issues involved in interpreting speech production data of this kind. KW - cleft constructions KW - clitic doubling KW - de-accenting KW - focus position KW - presentational constructions KW - scrambling KW - topicalization Y1 - 2007 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19450 SN - 978-3-939469-72-8 SN - 1866-4725 SN - 1614-4708 SP - 141 EP - 186 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schwarz, Anne T1 - The particles lé and lá in the grammar of Konkomba N2 - The paper investigates focus marking devices in the scarcely documented North-Ghanaian Gur language Konkomba. The two particles lé and lá occur under specific focus conditions and are therefore regarded as focus markers in the sparse literature. Comparing the distribution and obligatoriness of both alleged focus markers however, I show that one of the particles, lé, is better analyzed as a connective particle, i.e. as a syntactic rather than as a genuine pragmatic marker, and that comparable syntactic focus marking strategies for sentence-initial constituents are also known from related languages. KW - morphological focus marking KW - syntactic focus marking KW - conjunction KW - topic-comment KW - Konkomba Y1 - 2007 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19449 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Fiedler, Ines T1 - Focus expressions in Foodo N2 - This paper aims at presenting different ways of expressing focus in Foodo, a Guang language. We can differentiate between marked and unmarked focus strategies. The marked focus expressions are first syntactically characterized: the focused constituent is in sentence-initial position and is second always marked obligatorily by a focus marker, which is nɩ for non-subjects and N for subjects. Complementary to these structures, Foodo knows an elliptic form consisting of the focused constituent and a predication marker gɛ́. It will be shown that the two focus markers can be analyzed as having developed out of the homophone conjunction nɩ and that the constraints on the use of the focus markers can be best explained by this fact. KW - focus constructions KW - scope of focus KW - focus types KW - Foodo Y1 - 2007 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19428 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hinterwimmer, Stefan T1 - The interpretation of Universally Quantified DPs and singular definites in adverbially quantified sentences N2 - This paper deals with the conditions under which singular definites, on the one hand, and universally quantified DPs, on the other hand, receive interpretations according to which the sets denoted by the NP-complements of the respective determiner vary with the situations quantified over by a Q-adverb. I show that in both cases such interpretations depend on the availability of situation predicates that are compatible with the presuppositions associated with the respective determiner, as co-variation in both cases comes about via the binding of a covert situation variable that is contained within the NP-complement of the respective determiner. Secondly, I offer an account for the observation that the availability of a co-varying interpretation is more constrained in the case of universally quantified DPs than in the case of singular definites, as far as word order is concerned. This is shown to follow from the fact that co-varying definites in contrast to universally quantified DPs are inherently focus-marked. KW - adverbial quantification KW - definites KW - universal quantifiers KW - situation variables KW - reconstruction Y1 - 2007 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19401 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Krifka, Manfred T1 - Functional similarities between bimanual coordination and topic/comment structure N2 - Human manual action exhibits a differential use of a non-dominant (typically, left) and a dominant (typically, right) hand. Human communication exhibits a pervasive structuring of utterances into topic and comment. I will point out striking similarities between the coordination of hands in bimanual actions, and the structuring of utterances in topics and comments. I will also show how principles of bimanual coordination influence the expression of topic/comment structure in sign languages and in gestures accompanying spoken language, and suggest that bimanual coordination might have been a preadaptation of the development of information structure in human communication. KW - Topic/Comment KW - Handedness KW - Evolution of Language Y1 - 2007 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19416 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Asher, Nicholas A1 - Reese, Brian T1 - Intonation and discourse BT - biased questions N2 - This paper surveys a range of constructions in which prosody affects discourse function and discourse structure.We discuss English tag questions, negative polar questions, and what we call “focus” questions. We postulate that these question types are complex speech acts and outline an analysis in Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT) to account for the interactions between prosody and discourse. KW - Bias KW - Intonation KW - Prosody KW - Complex Speech Acts KW - Negative KW - Polar Questions KW - Tag Questions KW - SDRT Y1 - 2007 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19399 ER -