Information Structure

Theoretical, Typological, and Experimental Perspectives
Erscheinungsjahr 2009
ISBN: 978-0-19-957095-9
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 430 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 807 g

In this book leading scholars provide state-of-the-art overviews of approaches to the formal expression of information structure in natural language and its interaction with general principles of human cognition and communication. They present critical accounts of current understanding of how aspects of grammar, such as prosody, syntax, morphology, semantics, and pragmatics, interact in the packing and unpacking of information in communication. They also look at the psycholinguistics behind the production and perception of information-structural categories. The book reflects the advances in recent research on all central aspects of the subject, including concepts of focus versus background, topic versus comment, and given versus new, and the kinds of inferences required to make sense of different combinations of words, syntax, intonation, and context. The chapters include typological and diachronic perspectives on information structure. Taken as a whole the book demonstrates the productive value of combining
theoretical and experimental approaches.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Zimmermann, Malte

Fery, Caroline

Féry, Caroline

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Psycholinguistik, Neurolinguistik, Kognition
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Grammatik, Syntax, Morphologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- 1: Malte Zimmermann and Caroline Féry: Introduction

- Part I Topic and Focus

- 2: Mats Rooth: Second Occurrence Focus and Relativized Stress F

- 3: Caroline Féry and Shinichiro Ishihara: How Focus and Givenness Shape Prosody

- 4: Katalin É Kiss: Structural Focus and Exhaustivity

- 5: Cornelia Endriss and Stefan Hinterwimmer: The Interpretation of Topical Indefinites as Direct and Indirect Aboutness Topics

- 6: Satoshi Tomioka: Contrastive Topics Operate on Speech Acts

- 7: Brian Reese and Nicholas Asher: Biased Questions, Intonation, and Discourse

- Part II Cross-linguistic Variation and Diachronic Change

- 8: Daniel Büring: Towards a Typology of Focus Realization

- 9: Larry M. Hyman and Maria Polinsky: Focus in Aghem

- 10: Ines Fiedler, Katharina Hartmann, Brigitte Reineke, Anne Schwarz, and Malte Zimmermann: Subject Focus in West African Languaegs

- 11: Thorbjörg Hróarsdóttir: Information Structure and OV Order

- 12: Roland Hinterhölzl: Information Structure and Unmarked Word Order in (Older) Germanic

- Part III Experimental and Psycholinguistic Approaches to Information Structure

- 13: Stavros Skopeteas and Gisbert Fanselow: Effects of Givenness and Constraints on Free Word order

- 14: Elsi Kaiser: Investigating Effects on Structural and Information-Structural Factors on Pronoun Resolution

- 15: Robin Hörnig and Thomas Weskott: Given and New Information in Spatial Statements

Über Autor(innen)

Malte Zimmermann and Caroline Féry are Professors of Linguistics at the University of Potsdam. Professor Zimmermann's research interests are in quantification and focus. His published work includes articles in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory and Natural Language Semantics. Professor Féry has published extensively in all aspects of phonology and phonological theory, including the role of prosody and intonation in information structure. She is the co-editor of Gradience in Grammar (OUP 2006).