Topic And Focus

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Topic and Focus

Author : Chungmin Lee
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 1402047967
Total Pages : 295 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis Topic and Focus by : Chungmin Lee

Download or read book Topic and Focus written by Chungmin Lee and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-12-18 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the 2001 Linguistic Summer Institute at University of California, Santa Barbara, a group of linguists gathered at a workshop to discuss the expression and role of topicalization and focus from a variety of perspectives: phonetic, phonological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic. The workshop was designed to lay the groundwork for collaborative efforts between linguists devoted to the study of meaning and linguists engaged in the quantitative study of intonation. This volume contains papers emerging from the Santa Barbara Workshop on Topic and Focus. A wide variety of methodologies and research interests related to topic and focus are represented in the papers. Some works present results of phonetic studies, either acoustic or perceptual, on the expression of topic and/or focus; others examine semantic or pragmatic features of topic and/or focus, while others are concerned with the interface between intonation and meaning. Data from several different languages are represented in the papers, including several languages with relatively little documentation particularly in the venue of topic and focus, e. g. Basque, Chickasaw, Indonesian, Polish, Taiwanese. The broad sample of languages coupled with the wide variety of research topics addressed by the papers promise to enrich our typological understanding of topic and focus phenomena and provide an impetus for further research. The following paragraphs offer brief summaries of the papers contained in this volume: Gorka Elordieta’s paper describes prosodic conditions governing focus in a dialect of Basque with pitch accents.

Topic-Focus Articulation, Tripartite Structures, and Semantic Content

Author : Eva Hajicová
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 9401590125
Total Pages : 205 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (15 download)

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Book Synopsis Topic-Focus Articulation, Tripartite Structures, and Semantic Content by : Eva Hajicová

Download or read book Topic-Focus Articulation, Tripartite Structures, and Semantic Content written by Eva Hajicová and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1. 1 OBJECTIVES The main objective of this joint work is to bring together some ideas that have played central roles in two disparate theoretical traditions in order to con tribute to a better understanding of the relationship between focus and the syn tactic and semantic structure of sentences. Within the Prague School tradition and the branch of its contemporary development represented by Hajicova and Sgall (HS in the sequel), topic-focus articulation has long been a central object of study, and it has long been a tenet of Prague school linguistics that topic-focus structure has systematic relevance to meaning. Within the formal semantics tradition represented by Partee (BHP in the sequel), focus has much more recently become an area of concerted investigation, but a number of the semantic phenomena to which focus is relevant have been extensively investi gated and given explicit compositional semantic-analyses. The emergence of 'tripartite structures' (see Chapter 2) in formal semantics and the partial simi larities that can be readily observed between some aspects of tripartite structures and some aspects of Praguian topic-focus articulation have led us to expect that a closer investigation of the similarities and differences in these different theoretical constructs would be a rewarding undertaking with mutual benefits for the further development of our respective theories and potential benefit for the study of semantic effects of focus in other theories as well.

The Meaning of Topic and Focus

Author : Daniel Büring
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1134702078
Total Pages : 217 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (347 download)

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Book Synopsis The Meaning of Topic and Focus by : Daniel Büring

Download or read book The Meaning of Topic and Focus written by Daniel Büring and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2012-08-21 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study provides an illuminating and ground-breaking account of the complex interaction of intonational phenomena, semantics and pragmatics. Based on examples from German and English, and centred on an analysis of the fall-rise intonation contour, a semantic interpretation for two different pitch accents - Focus and Topic - is developed. The cross-sentence, as well as the sentence internal semantic effects of these accents, follow from the given treatment. The account is based on Montogovian possible world semantics and Chomskian generative syntax.

The Morphology and Syntax of Topic and Focus

Author : Liliana Sánchez
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9027255520
Total Pages : 261 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (272 download)

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Book Synopsis The Morphology and Syntax of Topic and Focus by : Liliana Sánchez

Download or read book The Morphology and Syntax of Topic and Focus written by Liliana Sánchez and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents an innovative analysis that relates informational structure, syntax and morphology in Quechua. It provides a minimalist account of the relationship between focus, topic, evidentiality and other left-peripheral features and sentence-internal constituents marked with suffixes that have been previously considered of a pragmatic nature. Intervention effects show that these relationships are also of a syntactic nature. The analysis is extended to morphological markers that appear on polarity sensitive items and wh-words. The book also provides a brief overview of the main characteristics of Quechua syntax as well as additional bibliographical information.

The Syntax of Topic, Focus, and Contrast

Author : Ad Neeleman
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
ISBN 13 : 1614511454
Total Pages : 316 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (145 download)

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Book Synopsis The Syntax of Topic, Focus, and Contrast by : Ad Neeleman

Download or read book The Syntax of Topic, Focus, and Contrast written by Ad Neeleman and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Information Structure and Sentence Form

Author : Knud Lambrecht
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1316582418
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (165 download)

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Book Synopsis Information Structure and Sentence Form by : Knud Lambrecht

Download or read book Information Structure and Sentence Form written by Knud Lambrecht and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-11-13 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do speakers of all languages use different grammatical structures under different communicative circumstances to express the same idea? Professor Lambrecht explores the relationship between the structure of the sentence and the linguistic and extra-linguistic context in which it is used. His analysis is based on the observation that the structure of a sentence reflects a speaker's assumption about the hearer's state of knowledge and consciousness at the time of the utterance. This relationship between speaker assumptions and formal sentence structure is governed by rules and conventions of grammar, in a component called 'information structure'. Four independent but interrelated categories are analysed: presupposition and assertion, identifiability and activation, topic, and focus.

Configuring Topic and Focus in Russian

Author : Tracy Holloway King
Publisher : Center for the Study of Language and Information Publications
ISBN 13 : 9781881526629
Total Pages : 287 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (266 download)

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Book Synopsis Configuring Topic and Focus in Russian by : Tracy Holloway King

Download or read book Configuring Topic and Focus in Russian written by Tracy Holloway King and published by Center for the Study of Language and Information Publications. This book was released on 1995-05-26 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work examines word order. More accurately, it is the ordering of constituents that is discussed since prepositional phrases and most noun phrases form syntactic constituents and the encoding of topic and focus in Russian. As has long been observed, word order in Russian encodes specific discourse information: with neutral intonation, topics precede discourse-neutral constituents which precede foci. King extends this idea to show that word order encodes different types of topic and focus in a principled manner.

Topic and Focus Markers in Spanish, Portuguese and French

Author : Anja Hennemann
Publisher : Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften
ISBN 13 : 9783631818893
Total Pages : 310 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (188 download)

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Book Synopsis Topic and Focus Markers in Spanish, Portuguese and French by : Anja Hennemann

Download or read book Topic and Focus Markers in Spanish, Portuguese and French written by Anja Hennemann and published by Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften. This book was released on 2020-06-12 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is concerned with the diachronic development of selected topic and focus markers in Spanish, Portuguese and French. On the one hand, it focuses on the development of these structures from their relational meaning to their topic-/ focus-marking meaning, and on the other hand, it is concerned with their current form und use. Thus, Romance topic and focus markers - such as sp. en cuanto a, pt. a propósito de, fr. au niveau de or sentence-initial sp. Lo que as well as clefts and pseudo-clefts - are investigated from a quantitative and qualitative perspective. The author argues that topic markers have procedural meaning and that their function is bound to their syntactic position. An important contribution of this study is the fact that real linguistic evidence (in the form of data from various corpora) is analyzed instead of operating with constructed examples.

On Information Structure, Meaning and Form

Author : Kerstin Schwabe
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9789027233646
Total Pages : 584 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (336 download)

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Book Synopsis On Information Structure, Meaning and Form by : Kerstin Schwabe

Download or read book On Information Structure, Meaning and Form written by Kerstin Schwabe and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of articles offers a new and compelling perspective on the interface connecting syntax, phonology, semantics and pragmatics. At the core of this volume is the hypothesis that information structure represents the common interface of these grammatical components. Information structure is investigated here from different theoretical viewpoints yielding typologically relevant information and structural generalizations. In the volume's introductory chapter, the editors identify two central approaches to information structure: the formal and the interpretive view. The remainder of the book is organized accordingly. The first part examines information structure and grammar, concentrating on generalizations across languages. The second part investigates information structure and pragmatics, concentrating on clause structure and context. Through concrete analyses of topic, focus, and related phenomena across different languages, the contributors add new and convincing evidence to the research on information structure.

The Syntax-Phonology Interface in Focus and Topic Constructions in Italian

Author : M. Frascarelli
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 9780792362401
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (624 download)

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Book Synopsis The Syntax-Phonology Interface in Focus and Topic Constructions in Italian by : M. Frascarelli

Download or read book The Syntax-Phonology Interface in Focus and Topic Constructions in Italian written by M. Frascarelli and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2000-04-30 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Though centered on Italian, cross-linguistic analysis is extensively provided: data from languages as diverse as English, Hungarian, Modern Greek, Hausa, Chichewa, Serbo-Croatian and Somali are used to show that despite surface variations, the interface interpretation of Focus and Topic lies in the interaction between base-generated extraposition and feature-checking." "This book targets scholars and researchers in linguistics who are interested in syntactic and/or phonological analysis of discourse-related categories within the Minimalist approach."--BOOK JACKET.

The Dynamics of Focus Structure

Author : Nomi Erteschik-Shir
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 0521592178
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (215 download)

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Book Synopsis The Dynamics of Focus Structure by : Nomi Erteschik-Shir

Download or read book The Dynamics of Focus Structure written by Nomi Erteschik-Shir and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Develops a new theory of focus structure, exploring the role of focusing in natural language sentence.

The Architecture of Focus

Author : Valéria Molnár
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
ISBN 13 : 3110922010
Total Pages : 629 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (19 download)

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Book Synopsis The Architecture of Focus by : Valéria Molnár

Download or read book The Architecture of Focus written by Valéria Molnár and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-12-22 with total page 629 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection investigates the architecture of focus in linguistic theory from different theoretical perspectives. Research on focus and information structure in the last four decades has shown that the phenomenon of focus is highly complex, the theoretical approaches manifold, and the data highly sensitive. The main emphasis has been placed on the integration of the notion of focus in generative grammar. In recent years, however, the approaches to focus and information structure underwent a radical change in perspective. The theoretical concept of focus, its related terms and phenomena became the object of research. Along with it, the research questions shifted: instead of locating focus in the architecture of grammar, linguists investigate the architecture of focus itself. The central underlying idea of this collection is to document this change in perspective with the aim of isolating essential keystones and research areas in both the theoretical and empirical domain. The book is structured accordingly. Following the introduction, there are four main sections: The general section discusses the theoretical foundations of focus within grammar. The second section hosts papers which investigate the representation of focus and topic at the syntax-pragmatics interface. The third section discusses the phonological representation of focus and its relation to meaning. The papers of the final section investigate different types of focus constructions in a variety languages. The collection of papers on the architecture of focus, its interpretation and representation mirror the establishment of the focus research field.

The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure

Author : Caroline Féry
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199642672
Total Pages : 993 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (996 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure by : Caroline Féry

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure written by Caroline Féry and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 993 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Researchers survey the main theories of information structure in syntax, phonology, and semantics as well as perspectives from psycholinguistics and other relevant fields"--Del editor.

The Meaning of the Sentence in Its Semantic and Pragmatic Aspects

Author : P. Sgall
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 9789027718389
Total Pages : 378 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (183 download)

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Book Synopsis The Meaning of the Sentence in Its Semantic and Pragmatic Aspects by : P. Sgall

Download or read book The Meaning of the Sentence in Its Semantic and Pragmatic Aspects written by P. Sgall and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1986-05-31 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Crossing the Boundaries in Linguistics

Author : Willemijn M. Klein
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 9400984537
Total Pages : 293 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (9 download)

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Book Synopsis Crossing the Boundaries in Linguistics by : Willemijn M. Klein

Download or read book Crossing the Boundaries in Linguistics written by Willemijn M. Klein and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was in the course of 1980 that it dawned upon several friends and colleagues of Manfred Bierwisch that a half century had passed since his birth in 1930. Manfred's youthful appearance had prevented a timely appreciation of this fact, and these friends and co11eagues are, therefore, not at ali embarrassed to be presenting him, almost a year late, with a Festschrift which willleave a trace of this noteworthy occasion in the archives of linguistics. It should be realized, however, that the deIay would have easily extended to 1990 if alI those who had wanted to contribute to this book had in fact written their chapters. Under the pressure of actuality, several co11eagues who had genu ineIy hoped or even promised to contribute, just couIdn't make it in time. Still, their greetings and best wishes are also, be it tacitly, expressed by this volume. Especia11y important for the archives would be a record of the celebrated one's works and physical appearance. For the convenience of present and future generations this Festschrift contains a bibliography of Manfred Bierwisch's scientific publications, which forms a chapter in itself. The frontispiece photograph was taken unawares by one of our accomplices. The title of this Festschrift may alIow for free associations of various sorts.

Haida Syntax

Author : John Enrico
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 9780803218222
Total Pages : 674 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (182 download)

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Book Synopsis Haida Syntax by : John Enrico

Download or read book Haida Syntax written by John Enrico and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Haida people make their home on the Queen Charlotte Islands in British Columbia and on Prince of Wales Island off the coast of southern Alaska. Their language, distinct from their Northwest Coast neighbors, is spoken today by a few elders and is in danger of becoming extinct, despite efforts by the community to save it. Intimately familiar with the Haida language, John Enrico bases this comprehensive description of the syntax of two Haida dialects on his twenty-five years of fieldwork in the Haida community and on the materials collected by the anthropologist John Swanton in the early twentieth century. This synthesis of the syntax of the Haida language provides an exemplary reference work of the language for the Haida community and for scholars.

Topic Continuity in Discourse

Author : T. Givón
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9027280258
Total Pages : 498 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (272 download)

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Book Synopsis Topic Continuity in Discourse by : T. Givón

Download or read book Topic Continuity in Discourse written by T. Givón and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1983-01-01 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The functional notion of “topic” or “topicality” has suffered, traditionally, from two distinct drawbacks. First, it has remained largely ill defined or intuitively defined. And second, quite often its definition boiled down to structure-dependent circularity. This volume represents a major departure from past practices, without rejecting both their intuitive appeal and the many good results yielded by them. First, “topic” and “topicality” are re-analyzed as a scalar property, rather than as an either/or discrete prime. Second, the graded property of “topicality” is firmly connected with sensible cognitive notions culled from gestalt psychology, such as “predictability” or “continuity”. Third, we develop and utilize precise measures and quantified methods by which the property of “topicality” of clausal arguments can be studied in connected discourse, and thus be properly hinged in its rightful context, that of topic identification, maintenance and recoverability in discourse. Fourth, we show that many grammatical phenomena which used to be studied by linguists in isolation, all partake in one functional domain of grammar, that of topic identification. Finally, we demonstrate the validity of this new approach to the study of “topic” and “topicality” by applying the same text-based quantifying method to a number of typologically-diverse languages, in studying actual texts. Languages studied here are: Written and spoken English, spoken Spanish, Biblical Hebrew, Amharic, Hausa, Japanese, Chamorro and Ute.