Comparative and Contrastive Studies of Information Structure PDF Download

Author: Carsten Breul
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027255482
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
"The present book contains a selection of articles based on papers presented at the conference on 'Contrastive Information Structure Analysis' organised by Carsten Breul at the University of Wuppertal in March 2008"--Pref.

Author: Carsten Breul
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027287848
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
This volume presents original comparative and contrastive research into various aspects of information structure (topic, focus, contrastivity, givenness, anaphoricity) as well as into forms and structures whose realisation depends on information-structural factors (clefts, dislocations, reflexives, null subjects, prosodic features, interrogatives) in a number of different languages (Catalan, English, French, Georgian, German, Hebrew, Hungarian). Each contribution emphasises differences or commonalities between the languages under investigation with respect to the realisation of information structural categories or with respect to the information structural implications of a given form or structure. The specific comparative-contrastive perspective of the volume makes a substantial contribution towards a better understanding of language specific and universal aspects of information structure. It raises significant questions and provides solutions for the formal representation and the functional properties of information structural categories.

Author: María de los Ángeles Gómez González
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027290520
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description
This volume explores various hitherto under-researched relationships between languages and their discourse-cultural settings. The first two sections analyze the complex interplay between lexico-grammatical organization and communicative contexts. Part I focuses on structural options in syntax, deepening the analysis of information-packaging strategies. Part II turns to lexical studies, covering such matters as human perception and emotion, the psychological understanding of ‘home’ and ‘abroad’, the development of children’s emotional life and the relation between lexical choice and sexual orientation. The final chapters consider how new techniques of contrastive linguistics and pragmatics are contributing to the primary field of application for contrastive analysis, language teaching and learning. The book will be of special interest to scholars and students of linguistics, discourse analysis and cultural studies and to those entrusted with teaching European languages and cultures. The major languages covered are Akan, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish and Swedish.

Author: Jorina Brysbaert
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110986590
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
In research on Information Structure, there is an ongoing discussion about the role of contrast. While most linguists consider contrast to be compatible with both focus and topic, some argue that it is an autonomous IS category. Contrast has been shown to be encoded by different linguistic means, such as specific morphemes, adverbials, clefts, prosodic cues. Hence, this concept is also related to other domains, in particular morphosyntax and prosody. The precise way in which they interact is however not yet entirely clear. Moreover, from a methodological point of view, the identification and annotation of contrast in corpora is not straightforward. This volume provides a selection of articles discussing the definition of contrast, the importance of distinguishing different types of contrast, the use of several encoding strategies, and the annotation of contrast in corpora using the Question Under Discussion Model. The contributions offer data on English, French, French Belgian Sign Language, German, Hindi, Italian and Spanish.

Author: Caroline Féry
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019100541X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1133

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Book Description
This book provides linguists with a clear, critical, and comprehensive overview of theoretical and experimental work on information structure. Leading researchers survey the main theories of information structure in syntax, phonology, and semantics as well as perspectives from psycholinguistics and other relevant fields. Following the editors' introduction the book is divided into four parts. The first, on theories of and theoretical perspectives on information structure, includes chapters on focus, topic, and givenness. Part 2 covers a range of current issues in the field, including quantification, dislocation, and intonation, while Part 3 is concerned with experimental approaches to information structure, including language processing and acquisition. The final part contains a series of linguistic case studies drawn from a wide variety of the world's language families. This volume will be the standard guide to current work in information structure and a major point of departure for future research.

Author: Manfred Krifka
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 311026160X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description
Information structure deals with the linguistic forms and techniques that support the integration of what is said into the current informational and attentional state of the addressee. This shows in categories like topic-comment structuring, focus to highlight expressions, marking of givenness and of presupposed information, and ways to indicate that the information provided is restricted. The book relates infor-mation structure to theoretical models of grammar, to computation and modelling and brings together what is known about the expression of information structure in human language with regard to its empirical investigation, its psycholinguistic aspects and the acquisition of information structure. Since the need to integrate what is said into the informational and attentional state of the addressee is central to all human communication, it is not surprising that all natural languages have developed devices to express information structural cate-gories. To illustrate this, the book also provides concrete and theory independent descriptions of the information structural encoding strategies of individual languages of different types . The book can be used as a textbook appropriate for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses; it also provides information for linguists that are not specialists in the field.

Author: Sam Wolfe
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198804679
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
This volume provides the first book-length study of the controversial topic of Verb Second and related properties in a range of Medieval Romance varieties. The findings have widespread implications for the understanding of both the key typological property of Verb Second and the development of Latin into the modern Romance languages.

Author: Caroline Féry
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199642672
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 993

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Book Description
This book provides linguists with a clear, critical, and comprehensive overview of theoretical and experimental work on information structure. Leading researchers survey the main theories of information structure in syntax, phonology, and semantics as well as perspectives from psycholinguistics and other relevant fields. Following the editors' introduction the book is divided into four parts. The first, on theories of and theoretical perspectives on information structure, includes chapters on topic, prosody, and implicature. Part 2 covers a range of current issues in the field, including focus, quantification, and sign languages, while Part 3 is concerned with experimental approaches to information structure, including processes involved in its acquisition and comprehension. The final part contains a series of linguistic case studies drawn from a wide variety of the world's language families. This volume will be the standard guide to current work in information structure and a major point of departure for future research.

Author: C. Jan-Wouter Zwart
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027255474
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
"Structure is at the rock-bottom of all explanatory sciences" (Jan Koster). Forty years ago, the hypothesis that underlying the bewildering variety of syntactic phenomena are general and unified structural patterns of unexpected beauty and simplicity gave rise to major advancements in the study of Dutch and Germanic syntax, with important implications for the theory of grammar as a whole. Jan Koster was one of the central figures in this development, and he has continued to explore the structure preserving hypothesis throughout his illustrious career. This collection of articles by over forty syntacticians celebrates the advancements made in the study of syntax over the past forty years, reflecting on the structural principles underlying syntactic phenomena and emulating the approach to syntactic analysis embodied in Jan Koster's teaching and research.

Author: Maia Duguine
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027255415
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
The topic of this collection is argument structure. The fourteen chapters in this book are divided into four parts: Semantic and Syntactic Properties of Event Structure; A Cartographic View on Argument Structure; Syntactic Heads Involved in Argument Structure; and Argument Structure in Language Acquisition. Rigorous theoretical analyses are combined with empirical work on specific aspects of argument structure. The book brings together authors working in different linguistic fields (semantics, syntax, and language acquisition), who explore new findings as well as more established data, but then from new theoretical perspectives. The contributions propose cartographic views of argument structure, as opposed to minimalistic proposals of a binary template model for argument structure, in order to optimally account for various syntactic and semantic facts, as well as data derived from wider cross-linguistic perspectives. "Argument structure plays a central role in the articulation of syntax. Yet whether this contribution is primordial or derivative, derivational or representational, minimalist or cartographic, is entirely up for grabs. This is what makes a book like the present one equivalent to a murder thriller: one cannot finish one chapter without wanting to read the next. While the solution to the underlying mystery remains as open as it ever was, the clues offered here seem just impossible to ignore."