The Syntax of Topic, Focus, and Contrast PDF Download

Author: Ad Neeleman
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 1614511454
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
This book addresses how core notions of information structure (topic, focus and contrast) are expressed in syntax. The authors propose that the syntactic effects of information structure come about as a result of mapping rules that are flexible enough to allow topics and foci to be expressed in a variety of positions, but strict enough to capture certain cross-linguistic generalisations about their distribution. In particular, the papers argue that only contrastive topics and contrastive foci undergo movement and that this is because such movement has the function of marking the scope of contrast. Several predications are derived from this proposal: such as that a focus cannot move across a topic – whether the latter is in situ or not. Syntactic and semantic evidence in support of this proposal is presented from a wide range of languages (including Dutch, English, Japanese, Korean and Russian) and theoretical consequences explored. The first chapter not only outlines its theoretical aims, but also provides an introduction to information structure. As a consequence, the book is accessible to advanced students as well as professional linguists.

Author: Christine Dimroth
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027263388
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
The polarity of a sentence is crucial for its meaning. It is thus hardly surprising that languages have developed devices to highlight this meaning component and to contrast statements with negative and positive polarity in discourse. Research on this issue has started from languages like German and Dutch, where prosody and assertive particles are systematically associated with polarity contrast. Recently, the grammatical realization of polarity contrast has been at the center of investigations in a range of other languages as well. Core questions concern the formal repertoire and the exact meaning contribution of the relevant devices, the kind of contrast they evoke, and their relation to information structure and sentence mood. This volume brings together researchers from a theoretical, an empirical, and a typological orientation and enhances our understanding of polarity with the help of in-depth analyses and cross-linguistic comparisons dealing with the syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and/or prosodic aspects of the phenomenon.

Author: Jorina Brysbaert
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110986612
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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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: Jacopo Nori
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331994553X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
This book offers a comprehensive, practical resource entirely devoted to Contrast-Enhanced Digital Mammography (CEDM), a state-of-the-art technique that has emerged as a valuable addition to conventional imaging modalities in the detection of primary and recurrent breast cancer, and as an important preoperative staging tool for women with breast cancer. CEDM is a relatively new breast imaging technique based on dual energy acquisition, combining mammography with iodine-based contrast agents to display contrast uptake in breast lesions. It improves the sensitivity and specificity of breast cancer detection by providing higher foci to breast-gland contrast and better lesion delineation than digital mammography. Preliminary results suggest that CEDM is comparable to breast MRI for evaluating the extent and size of lesions and detecting multifocal lesions, and thus has the potential to become a readily available, fast and cost-effective examination. With a focus on the basic imaging principles of CEDM, this book takes a practical approach to breast imaging. Drawing on the editors’ and authors’ practical experience, it guides the reader through the basics of CEDM, making it especially accessible for beginners. By presenting the key aspects of CEDM in a straightforward manner and supported by clear images, the book represents a valuable guide for all practicing radiologists, in particular those who perform breast imaging and have recently incorporated or plan to incorporate CEDM into their diagnostic arsenal.

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: Bettina Braun
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9783039105663
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Variations in speech melody (intonation) can be used to express different meanings (e.g. question vs. statement, friendliness). Yet, intonational information is hardly used in present-day linguistic models. When intonational information is used, it is mostly based on introspection rather than on empirical investigation; almost exclusively, a one-to-one relation between accent types and semantic function is assumed. This book focuses on an empirical investigation of thematic contrast in German. Thematic contrast has received considerable attention in semantics because sentences with contrastive themes can be used to imply propositions of various kinds without saying them explicitly. In this book, first an acoustic comparison between sentences produced in contrastive and non-contrastive contexts is described. Intonational realisation is quantified in terms of the height and position of tonal targets. The perceptual reality of different productions and the relevance of different acoustic cues are tested by means of rating experiments. Finally, the data are prosodically annotated by a group of linguists to explore the validity and explanatory power of different accent categories for contrastive and non-contrastive themes in German.

Author: Masatoshi Kudo
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 4431659048
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Combining harmonic technology and an ultrasound contrast agent, harmonic imaging now plays a vital role in the diagnosis and treatment of hepatic tumors. Contrast harmonic imaging is especially valuable in cases of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the incidence of which has risen dramatically in Europe, North America, and Asia in recent years. Harmonic imaging is bringing about revolutionary changes in the diagnosis and treatment of HCC, and this book provides the most up-to-date information and guidelines for effective use of this superior technique. Generously illustrated with photographs and diagrams, with accompanying text by a leading expert in the field, this acclaimed book is a valuable state-of-the-art resource for clinicians and researchers in radiology and internal medicine, including hepatology and gastroenterology.

Author: Katarzyna Jaszczolt
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9781588112071
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 510

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Book Description
These volumes contain selected papers from the Second International Conference on Contrastive Semantics and Pragmatics that was held at Newnham College, University of Cambridge, in September 2000. They include papers on negation, temporality, modality, evidentiality, eventualities, grammar and conceptualization, grammaticalization, metaphor, cross-cultural pragmatics and speech acts and the semantics-pragmatics boundary. There are contributions by, amongst many others, Les Bruce, Ilinca Crainiceanu, Thorstein Fretheim, Saeko Fukushima, Ronald Geluykens, Javier Gutierrez-Rexach, Klaus von Heusinger, K. M. Jaszczolt, Susumu Kubo, Akiko Kurosawa, Eva Lavric, Didier Maillat, Marta Maleczki, Steve Nicolle, Sergei Tatevosov, L. M. Tovena, Jacqueline Visconti and Krista Vogelberg.

Author: Jong-Bok Kim
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1394157398
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 391

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Book Description
ENGLISH AND KOREAN IN CONTRAST English and Korean in Contrast: A Linguistic Introduction is the first book of its kind to present a comprehensive yet student-friendly comparative review of the grammars of English and Korean. Author Jong-Bok Kim, an internationally-recognized expert, offers rigorous contrastive analyses of all major aspects of English and Korean while addressing common usage errors made by learners of each language. Designed for both English- and Korean-language classrooms, this unique textbook describes and contrasts the two languages at every level from sound, word, and grammar to figurative language and metaphors. Throughout the text, the author uses an accessible, descriptive-based approach that covers both core and peripheral phenomena of English and Korean. Offering invaluable insights into the major sources of difficulty or ease in learning the two languages, English and Korean in Contrast: A Linguistic Introduction is the perfect undergraduate resource not only for English-speaking students studying Korean language and linguistics, but also for Korean-speaking students studying English language and linguistics.

Author: Karolina Krawczak
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027257450
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
Within cognitive and functional approaches to language structure and grammaticality, analogy and contrast represent two fundamental human cognitive capacities, which, up to now, have mostly been examined separately. This volume seeks to bridge that gap and in doing so it brings together cutting-edge theoretical and empirical research in the field. The chapters in this book examine analogy and contrast across a variety of languages (English, Finnish, Hungarian, Polish, Russian), for different language phenomena (constructions, lexical semantics, morphology, sentence structure, text organization), and with the use of various methods (corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, experimental methods, qualitative analysis, quantitative analysis). This state-of-the-art research presented in the book should be of interest to specialists within Cognitive Linguistics, corpus linguistics, construction grammar, discourse analysis, translation studies, metaphor research, and cross-cultural research.