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Information structure Mary Dalrymple, John Lowe, & Louise Mycock - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Information structure Mary Dalrymple, John Lowe, & Louise Mycock - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Information structure Mary Dalrymple, John Lowe, & Louise Mycock Centre for Linguistics and Philology Oxford University Konstanz, November/December 2012 Information structure Information structure is the level of sentence organisation which
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Content of information structure
- TOPIC: the entity or entities that the proposition is about (Reinhart,
1981; Gundel, 1988; Lambrecht, 1994). An entity, E, is the topic of a sentence, S, iff in using S the speaker intends to increase the addressee’s knowledge about, request information about, or otherwise get the addressee to act with respect to E (Gundel, 1988). There can be more than one topic, the primary topic and the secondary topic (Nikolaeva, 2001; Dalrymple & Nikolaeva, 2011).
- FOCUS: informative, newsy, contrary-to-expectation part of the
sentence (Vallduv´ ı, 1992; Vallduv´ ı & Engdahl, 1996); the semantic component of a pragmatically structured proposition whereby the assertion differs from the presupposition (Lambrecht, 1994)
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Content of information structure
- BACKGROUND: old/presupposed information specifying detailed
knowledge that may be necessary for a complete understanding of new (focused) information — different from TOPIC, which is a pointer to the relevant information to be accessed by the addressee (Butt & King, 2000)
- COMPLETIVE: new to the addressee but, unlike focus, not associated
with the difference between pragmatic assertion and pragmatic presupposition (Butt & King, 2000) What is Bill eating? He is eating pizza in the kitchen.
TOPIC BACKGROUND FOCUS COMPLETIVE
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Information structure in LFG Mycock (2009): the traditional semantic structure of LFG, an important component of the “glue” approach to the syntax-semantics interface, plays an important role in representing information structure relations.
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Categorising meaning contributions Categorise meaning constructors according to their information structure role (similar to “structured meaning” approaches: von Stechow 1982; Krifka 1992). [What did John do?] John married Rosa.
TOPIC FOCUS
m :
PRED
‘MARRYSUBJ,OBJ’
SUBJ
j :
- PRED
‘JOHN’
- OBJ
r :
- PRED
‘ROSA’
-
mσι
TOPIC
{john:jσ}
FOCUS
λy.λx.marry(x, y):rσ−
- (jσ−
- mσ)
rosa:rσ
-
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Using abbreviations: Simpler representations
IP NP N′ N
John
I′ VP V′ V
married
NP N′ N
Rosa m :
PRED
‘MARRYSUBJ,OBJ’
SUBJ
j :
- PRED
‘JOHN’
- OBJ
r :
- PRED
‘ROSA’
-
mσι
TOPIC
{John }
FOCUS
- married
Rosa
-
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Simpler representations married-Rosa can be derived from the premises married and Rosa:
IP NP N′ N
John
I′ VP V′ V
married
NP N′ N
Rosa m :
PRED
‘MARRYSUBJ,OBJ’
SUBJ
j :
- PRED
‘JOHN’
- OBJ
r :
- PRED
‘ROSA’
-
mσι
TOPIC
{John }
FOCUS
{married-Rosa}
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Specification of information structure role in semantic structure
- Each meaning constructor is required to take on some information
structure role (i.e., to appear in the appropriate set at information structure).
- Which role it takes on can be specified in various ways: agreement,
casemarking, word order, prosody, ...
- How to accomplish this: Specify the information structure role of a
meaning constructor as the value of the attribute DF in its semantic
- structure. This allows for instantiation of information structure roles by
various modules of the grammar.
- We can then use the value of that attribute to assign the appropriate
role at information structure.
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Revised lexical entries Each meaning contribution must bear some information structure role, specified as a feature at semantic structure: John
N
(↑ PRED) = ‘JOHN’ john ∈ (↑σι (↑σ DF)) The meaning constructor john (defined as john:↑σ) is a member of the set value of the discourse function signified by (↑σ DF) within the information structure ↑σι. (This is similar to the treatment of PCASE in early treatments of obliques.)
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Phrase structure rules Subject as the default topic:
IP
− →
NP (↑ SUBJ)=↓ ↑σι=↓σι ((↓σ DF)=TOPIC) I′ ↑ =↓
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Relations between structures
IP NP (m SUBJ)=j mσι=jσι ((jσ DF)=TOPIC) N′ N
John (j PRED) = ‘JOHN’ john ∈ (jσι (jσ DF)) I′ m :
- SUBJ
j :
- PRED
‘JOHN’
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Functional description (m SUBJ)=j mσι=jσι ((jσ DF)=TOPIC) (j PRED) = ‘JOHN’ john ∈ (jσι (jσ DF)) m :
- SUBJ
j :
- PRED
‘JOHN’
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Functional description
- mσι=jσι: requires the information structure corresponding to m and j
to be the same. We assume that all members of a clause share the same information structure. The result is that specifying a particular information structure role for a meaning constructor means that it bears that information structure role within the entire clause.
- ((jσ DF)=TOPIC) provides an optional, default discourse function TOPIC
for the subject.
- john ∈ (jσι (jσ DF)): the meaning constructor john must bear the
information-structure role specified by (jσ DF).
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Functional description ((jσ DF)=TOPIC) john ∈ (jσι (jσ DF)) ≡ john ∈ (jσι TOPIC)
- the semantic structure jσ corresponding to j has the feature DF with
value TOPIC
- the value of jσ’s DF appears as the feature TOPIC in the information
structure for the clause, mσι
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Rules
IP
− →
NP (↑ SUBJ)=↓ ↑σι=↓σι ((↑σ DF)=TOPIC) I′ ↑ =↓ I′
− →
- I
↑ =↓
- VP
↑ =↓ VP −
→
V′ ↑ =↓ V′
− →
V ↑ =↓ NP (↑ OBJ)=↓ ↑σι=↓σι
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Lexical entries married
V
(↑ PRED) = ‘MARRYSUBJ,OBJ’ marry ∈ (↑σι (↑σ DF)) Rosa
N
(↑ PRED) = ‘ROSA’ rosa ∈ (↑σι (↑σ DF))
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C-structure and f-structure
IP NP (m SUBJ)=j mσι=jσι ((jσ DF)=TOPIC) N′ N
John (j PRED) = ‘JOHN’ john ∈ (jσι (jσ DF))
I′ VP V′ V
married (m PRED) = ‘MARRYSUBJ,OBJ’ marry ∈ (mσι (mσ DF))
NP (m OBJ)=r mσι=rσι N′ N
Rosa (r PRED) = ‘ROSA’ rosa ∈ (rσι (rσ DF))
m :
PRED
‘MARRYSUBJ,OBJ’
SUBJ
j :
- PRED
‘JOHN’
- OBJ
r :
- PRED
‘ROSA’
-
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Contribution from linguistic and pragmatic context (jσ DF) = TOPIC (mσ DF) = FOCUS (rσ DF) = FOCUS This information comes from agreement, casemarking, prosody, word
- rder, context...
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John married Rosa (A) (m PRED) = ‘MARRYSUBJ,OBJ’ (m SUBJ)=j (j PRED) = ‘JOHN’
m :
PRED
‘MARRYSUBJ,OBJ’
SUBJ
j :
- PRED
‘JOHN’
- OBJ
r :
- PRED
‘ROSA’
-
(m OBJ)=r (r PRED) = ‘ROSA’ (B) (jσ DF)=TOPIC jσ :
- DF
TOPIC
(mσ DF) = FOCUS mσ :
- DF
FOCUS
(rσ DF) = FOCUS rσ :
- DF
FOCUS
(C) john ∈ (jσι (jσ DF)) marry ∈ (mσι (mσ DF)) rosa ∈ (rσι (rσ DF)) mσι=jσι mσι=rσι
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John married Rosa (C) john ∈ (mσι TOPIC) marry ∈ (mσι FOCUS) rosa ∈ (mσι FOCUS) mσι :
TOPIC
{john}
FOCUS
- marry
rosa
-
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References
Butt, Miriam & Tracy Holloway King. 2000. Null elements in discourse structure. In K. V. Subbarao (editor), Papers From the NULLS Seminar. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Dalrymple, Mary & Irina Nikolaeva. 2011. Objects and Information Structure. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Gundel, Jeanette K. 1988. The Role of Topic and Comment in Linguistic
- Theory. Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics. New York: Garland.
Krifka, Manfred. 1992. A framework for focus-sensitive quantification. In Chris Barker & David Dowty (editors), SALT 2: Proceedings of the Second Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference, pp. 215–236. Department of Linguistics, Ohio State University. Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics, Number 40. Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information Structure and Sentence Form: Topic, Focus, and the Mental Representation of Discourse Referents. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Mycock, Louise. 2009. “What do you do?”: Variation in interrogative predicates. Presented at the workshop “Blurring Component Boundaries: Levels of Analysis
- r Growth of Information?”, LFG09, Cambridge, July 2009.