Information Structure In Lesser Described Languages

Author : Evangelia Adamou
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN 13 : 9027263817
Total Pages : 450 pages
Book Rating : 4.10/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Information Structure in Lesser-described Languages written by Evangelia Adamou and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2018-08-02 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The articles compiled in this volume offer new insights into the wealth of prosodic and syntactic phenomena involved in the encoding of information structure categories. They present data from languages which are rarely, if ever, taken into account in the most prominent approaches in information structure theory, and which belong to the Afroasiatic, Amerindian, Australian, Caucasian, and Niger-Congo language stocks. In addition to the significant descriptive value of these pioneering contributions, several studies also draw attention to previously undescribed or typologically rare phenomena. By adapting a variety of methods to under-described and endangered languages, ranging from experimental to naturalistic corpus studies, this volume also aims to serve as an invitation for further research in this direction.

Author : Manfred Krifka
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
ISBN 13 : 311026160X
Total Pages : 476 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Expression of Information Structure written by Manfred Krifka and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-08-31 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 : Atsuko Utsumi
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781013291920
Total Pages : 436 pages
Book Rating : 4.21/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Perspectives on Information Structure in Austronesian Languages written by Atsuko Utsumi and published by . This book was released on 2020-10-09 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Information structure is a relatively new field to linguistics and has only recently been studied for smaller and less described languages. This book is the first of its kind that brings together contributions on information structure in Austronesian languages. Current approaches from formal semantics, discourse studies, and intonational phonology are brought together with language specific and cross-linguistic expertise of Austronesian languages. The 13 chapters in this volume cover all subgroups of the large Austronesian family, including Formosan, Central Malayo-Polynesian, South Halmahera-West New Guinea, and Oceanic. The major focus, though, lies on Western Malayo-Polynesian languages. Some chapters investigate two of the largest languages in the region (Tagalog and different varieties of Malay), others study information-structural phenomena in small, underdescribed languages. The three overarching topics that are covered in this book are NP marking and reference tracking devices, syntactic structures and information-structural categories, and the interaction of information structure and prosody. Various data types build the basis for the different studies compiled in this book. Some chapters investigate written texts, such as modern novels (cf. Djenar's chapter on modern, standard Indonesian), or compare different text genres, such as, for example, oral narratives and translations of biblical narratives (cf. De Busser's chapter on Bunun). Most contributions, however, study natural spoken speech and make use of spoken corpora which have been compiled by the authors themselves. The volume comprises a number of different methods and theoretical frameworks. Two chapters make use of the Question Under Discussion approach, developed in formal semantics (cf. the chapters by Latrouite & Riester; Shiohara & Riester). Riesberg et al. apply the recently developed method of Rapid Prosody Transcription (RPT) to investigate native speakers' perception of prosodic prominences and boundaries in Papuan Malay. Other papers discuss theoretical consequences of their findings. Thus, for example, Himmelmann takes apart the most widespread framework for intonational phonology (ToBI) and argues that the analysis of Indonesian languages requires much simpler assumptions than the ones underlying the standard model. Arka & Sedeng ask the question how fine-grained information structure space should be conceptualized and modelled, e.g. in LFG. Schnell argues that elements that could be analysed as "topic" and "focus" categories, should better be described in terms of 'packaging' and do not necessarily reflect any pragmatic roles in the first place. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

Author : Amina Mettouchi
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN 13 : 9027268894
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Corpus-based Studies of Lesser-described Languages written by Amina Mettouchi and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2015-05-15 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents new findings based on the analysis of spoken corpora in thirteen different Afro-Asiatic languages – a unique endeavor in the domain of lesser-described languages. It will be of interest to corpus linguists, general linguists, typologists, and linguists specializing in Afro-Asiatic languages. In addition to the rarity of corpus studies based on endangered and lesser-described languages, the volume is remarkable due to its focus on the role of prosody in interaction with several other phenomena, including code-switching and borrowing. Phonology, syntax, and information structure are explored, and the issue of the elaboration of strategies for the typological comparison of corpora is addressed in several papers. The volume also contains a presentation of software development conducted within the scope of the CorpAfroAs project and based upon the widely used ELAN. The sound-indexed, and morphosyntactically-annotated corpora, with their OLAC metadata and several other deliverables can be accessed and searched at http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/scl.68.website.

Author : Sonja Riesberg
Publisher : Language Science Press
ISBN 13 : 3961101086
Total Pages : 440 pages
Book Rating : 4.85/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Perspectives on information structure in Austronesian languages written by Sonja Riesberg and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Information structure is a relatively new field to linguistics and has only recently been studied for smaller and less described languages. This book is the first of its kind that brings together contributions on information structure in Austronesian languages. Current approaches from formal semantics, discourse studies, and intonational phonology are brought together with language specific and cross-linguistic expertise of Austronesian languages. The 13 chapters in this volume cover all subgroups of the large Austronesian family, including Formosan, Central Malayo-Polynesian, South Halmahera-West New Guinea, and Oceanic. The major focus, though, lies on Western Malayo-Polynesian languages. Some chapters investigate two of the largest languages in the region (Tagalog and different varieties of Malay), others study information-structural phenomena in small, underdescribed languages. The three overarching topics that are covered in this book are NP marking and reference tracking devices, syntactic structures and information-structural categories, and the interaction of information structure and prosody. Various data types build the basis for the different studies compiled in this book. Some chapters investigate written texts, such as modern novels (cf. Djenar’s chapter on modern, standard Indonesian), or compare different text genres, such as, for example, oral narratives and translations of biblical narratives (cf. De Busser’s chapter on Bunun). Most contributions, however, study natural spoken speech and make use of spoken corpora which have been compiled by the authors themselves. The volume comprises a number of different methods and theoretical frameworks. Two chapters make use of the Question Under Discussion approach, developed in formal semantics (cf. the chapters by Latrouite & Riester; Shiohara & Riester). Riesberg et al. apply the recently developed method of Rapid Prosody Transcription (RPT) to investigate native speakers’ perception of prosodic prominences and boundaries in Papuan Malay. Other papers discuss theoretical consequences of their findings. Thus, for example, Himmelmann takes apart the most widespread framework for intonational phonology (ToBI) and argues that the analysis of Indonesian languages requires much simpler assumptions than the ones underlying the standard model. Arka & Sedeng ask the question how fine-grained information structure space should be conceptualized and modelled, e.g. in LFG. Schnell argues that elements that could be analysed as “topic” and “focus” categories, should better be described in terms of ‘packaging’ and do not necessarily reflect any pragmatic roles in the first place.

Author : Jorina Brysbaert
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110986590
Total Pages : 270 pages
Book Rating : 4.94/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book On the Role of Contrast in Information Structure written by Jorina Brysbaert and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-06-04 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 : Pierre-Yves Modicom
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN 13 : 9027261466
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.65/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Information-Structural Perspectives on Discourse Particles written by Pierre-Yves Modicom and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2020-03-15 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The articles collected in this volume offer new perspectives into the relevance of notions such as topic, antitopic, contrastive topic, focus, verum focus and theticity for the analysis of the syntax and semantics of modal particles, sentence-final particles and other medial, sentential and illocutive particles. This book addresses three great questions in a variety of languages ranging from Japanese to Mohawk, including Basque, French, German, Italian, Kazakh, Spanish and Turkish, with some insights from English and Russian. The first question is the role played by information-structural strategies such as left dislocations, clefts or the morphological marking of focus in the rise of discourse particles. In the second part, papers are concerned with the relevance of information structure for the study of polysemic and polyfunctional discourse particles. Finally, the contribution of particles to the determination of the information-structural profile of the clause is examined, as well as their role in the information-structural specification of illocutionary types. Language-specific papers alternate with comparative approaches in order to show how newer insights on information structure can help resolve some of the classical issues of the linguistic research on particles.

Author : Caroline Féry
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199642672
Total Pages : 993 pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

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.

Author : Carmen Dagostino
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110600927
Total Pages : 769 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Languages and Linguistics of Indigenous North America written by Carmen Dagostino and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-09-04 with total page 769 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook provides broad coverage of the languages indigenous to North America, with special focus on typologically interesting features and areal characteristics, surveys of current work, and topics of particular importance to communities. The volume is divided into two major parts: subfields of linguistics and family sketches. The subfields include those that are customarily addressed in discussions of North American languages (sounds and sound structure, words, sentences), as well as many that have received somewhat less attention until recently (tone, prosody, sociolinguistic variation, directives, information structure, discourse, meaning, language over space and time, conversation structure, evidentiality, pragmatics, verbal art, first and second language acquisition, archives, evolving notions of fieldwork). Family sketches cover major language families and isolates and highlight topics of special value to communities engaged in work on language maintenance, documentation, and revitalization.

Author : Davide Garassino
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN 13 : 9027258155
Total Pages : 315 pages
Book Rating : 4.51/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book When Data Challenges Theory written by Davide Garassino and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a critical appraisal of the tension between theory and empirical evidence in research on information structure. The relevance of ‘unexpected’ data taken into account in the last decades, such as the well-known case of non-focalizing cleft sentences in Germanic and Romance, has increasingly led us to give more weight to explanations involving inferential reasoning, discourse organization and speakers’ rhetorical strategies, thus moving away from ‘sentence-based’ perspectives. At the same time, this shift towards pragmatic complexity has introduced new challenges to well-established information-structural categories, such as Focus and Topic, to the point that some scholars nowadays even doubt about their descriptive and theoretical usefulness. This book brings together researchers working in different frameworks and delving into cross-linguistic as well as language-internal variation and language contact. Despite their differences, all contributions are committed to the same underlying goal: appreciating the relation between linguistic structures and their context based on a firm empirical grounding and on theoretical models that are able to account for the challenges and richness of language use.