Information Structure - Essay Example

Information Structure (s) Information Structure Question Place of Information Structure in Grammar Structure Information structure (IS) refers to the way in which the information in a sentence can be separated into categories such as topic, focus, background, comment, old or new. The question regarding the place of information structure in terms of grammar architecture is one of the most debated topics in linguistics. According to Jackendoff (216), there are two major general conceptions currently being used to explain the place where information structure fits in the structure of the grammar namely the syntactocentric vs. the parallel architecture theories. The syntactocentric conception is particularly associated with the works of Chomsky, from the Syntactic structures through the minimalist program (Chomsky 218). Generally, syntax is the main core of syntactocentric conception and the pragmatics and semantics (information structure) are considered to be the derivatives of syntax. On the other hand, the parallel architecture theory of the place of information structure in grammar structure contrasts the arguments of syntacto-centric conception by suggesting that there is no dominant component but a series of interacting components and the interactions are not necessarily mediated through the syntactic components. Fig 1: Syntactocentric vs. parallel architecture theories However, although the theory of Syntactocentric architecture is largely premised on the belief that information structure including the relations between meaning and sound often arises from the mapping of various syntactic structures into phonetic form, recent theoretical developments have revealed that phonological structures have their limitations and their combinations cannot be merely reduced to syntactic terms. As a result, parallel architecture currently seems to be the most appropriate theory that can be used to explain the Place of information structure in grammar structure. One of the most commonly used parallel architecture approaches known as the role reference grammar (RRG) particularly posits that one single synactic representation of a sentence normally corresponds to the actual structure of a sentence. Generally, according to various parallel architecture approaches, the generative capacity of a language is largely invested in a diverse number of multiple components including the components of syntactical, phonological and semantic structures (Bellosta von Colbe 246). However, each component has its own distinctive principles of combination and can generate its own structure. In addition, the relation between sound and meaning is widely seen to be primarily mediated by a particular set of interface components which attempt to establish various optimal linkings between the structures and their parts. Finally, the structure of a sentence is believed to be an n-tuple structure for each of the components including the linkages created among them interface components. Information structure also commonly known as information packaging is a style in grammar architecture which aims at explaining the placement of words within a sentence. For example in the next three sentences the packaging is different (Knud 876).. i. She loves JOHN ii. She LOVES John iii. JOHN she loves The propositional content of the sentences are the same but the coding different types of information. The first sentence emphasises on John, the second sentence emphasises on Love while the third closely similar to the first emphasises on JOHN. The third sentence puts John first and therefore gives more meaning to John than the first sentence. The instruction types largely depend on focus-ground partition. This Focus is the exact update of a potential in a sentence. This means the information made by the speaker to the hearer at the time of utterance. All sentences have a focal point. The ground on the other hand, already subsumes the state of information and plays the role of conveying the information to the focus. A ground will be found in a sentence only and only if an ushering is required by the context. Therefore, the ground is divided into LINK and TALL. These articulations have been consid3ered as primitive notions of binomial articulations of topic comment and focus ground. There are four intstruction types which combine the locus of information modes of update and the absence of the designations. Link focus – GOTO (fc) (UPDATE-ADD (Is)) Link-focus-tail – GOTO (fc) (UPDATE-REPLACE (Is, record (fc))) All focus – UPDATE –ADDS (Is) Focus tail – UPDATE-REPLACE (Is, record (fc)) The link gives information on the locus update as ‘sort keys’. Where a file card is denoted a link is encoded and is instructionally represented as a GOTO (fc). The tail will point at a non-specified direction showing a modification. When there is no tail the information is conveyed in a default called UPDATE-ADD. This means that an addition has been made to the focus of the input file. If the tail is present and there is need for the speaker to use facial expression in ushering the locus, the mode is called an UPDATE-REPLACE (Massegu et al. 316). The discrete units within a sentence do not overlap due to the distinct partition of focus-ground. It therefore follows that a component of a sentence will be defined as a tail, a link or a focus. This interpretation cannot combine a focus and a link or a tail and focus. In English as well as other languages, each component often has its own distinctive principles of combination and can generate its own structure. On the other hand, the relation between sound and meaning is widely seen to be primarily mediated by a particular set of interface components which attempt to establish various optimal linkings between the structures and their parts. The assumption is that each element in a sentence contributes to its structure of information. Every sentence has a focal segment and the ground is only used when it is needed. Structural placement of sentences is different from one language to the other. This is particularly consistent with parallel architecture approaches where each component has its own distinctive principles of combination and can generate its own structure. For example, the relation between sound and meaning is widely seen to be primarily mediated by a particular set of interface components which attempt to establish various optimal linkings between the structures and their parts. In this regard, although there are a number of theoretical conceptions that are being used to explain where information structure fits in the structure of the grammar, it can be concluded that parallel architecture approaches currently offers the most appropriate explanation of the Place of information structure in grammar structure. Question 5: Contrastive Focus and Presentational Focus in Languages In various languages, the type of focus whether contrastive focus or presentational focus normally depends on the structural position of a constituent in a sentence. An empirical study conducted by (Kiss, 1998) to investigate the patterns of contrastive focus or presentational focus in English, Italian, Rumanian, Arabic, Greek, Hungarian and Finnish particularly revealed that there are marked differences in the use of contrastive focus or presentational focus particularly with regard to the syntactic structure and phonological representation. The results of the study revealed that the difference between the two focus notions largely hinged on the movement and exhaustively (Kiss 246). According to many experts, contrastive focus does not normally convey new information but rather expresses exhaustive identification as the main specifier of a particular functional projection. In contrast, presentation focus is largely concerned with the expression of new non presupposed information and does not involve any movement. Contrastive focus can be semantically defined as the focus notion that represents the value of a particular variable uses to express exhaustive identification. Syntactically, contrastive focus is largely defined as the constituent in a sentence that acts as an operator binding a variable and moving into scope position. On the other hand, contrastive focus is widely seen to represent a subset of situationality or contextuality provided that the elements of the predicate phrases hold. In the various languages such as in English, Italian, Rumanian, Arabic, Greek, Hungarian and Finnish, the two focus notions differ in that presentational focus places no restriction on the particular constituents that mark it while contrastive focus cannot be expressed in certain constituents such as universal quantifiers and phrases (Chomsky 18). However, both information and contrastive focus are often difficult to differentiate as they are all coded by a similar type of linguistic prominence in various languages. This has particularly contributed to the blurring distinction between the two categories of focus. Generally, the differences can be summarized as shown below: Fig 1: Summary of Contrastive Focus vs. Presentational Focus in Languages (Kiss, 1998) In languages such as English, the differences between presentational focus and contrastive focus can be seen in a number of ways. For example, the English contrastive focus can be identified by a L+H* pitch accent as well as a phonological phrase break marked by both temporal disjuncture and a L-phrase accent. In contrast, the English presentational focus shows a pitch accent H* without a phonological phrase break (no disjuncture and no L-). Informational structure representation is manipulated and used differently depending on the type of language used. Some languages will tend to change the international structure and constituents of a sentence. English and Catalan are fond of manipulating international structure. English’s string permutation always operates with raison. The need to represent the information structure is called posody. Catalan is not capable of representing the international structure in information packaging and therefore uses permutations of string. Catalan, Dutch, English and Finish will be the languages to be discussed in this comparison. In these languages, contrastive focus expresses exhaustive identification as the main specifier of a particular functional projection and does not convey new information but is instead expressing exhaustive identification as the main specifier of a particular functional projection. On the other hand, presentation focus is largely concerned with the expression of new non presupposed information and does not involve any movement. The differences in these languages have been summarized in the table below. LANGUAGE INTONATION STRING ORDER English -plastic -A and b accents Links optionally front Catalan -non-plastic -A-accent Links and tails to detachment slots Dutch -plastic -A and B accents Links normally front Finnish -some plasticity -A accent Contrastive foci to designated slot Finnish, Dutch and English have an intonation that is malleable in contrast to the non plastic nature of Catalan. The repertoire of Dutch and English is richer in accent compared to Finnish and Catalan. As far as the string order is concerned, Dutch and English can place their links on the left. Catalan places its links either to the left or to the right especially in non-focal phrases. The tails in Catalan are also right placed. The permutations in Finnish also include non-focal elements. The characters however, are distinctive in its operation of the foci subset. Similar to all languages highlighted the A accent is related to the focus. In the intonation, phonology and typology the high accent pitch (H*) corresponds to the A accent followed by a boundary note which is falling. The attachment of the A accent in English and Catalan is different. The B accent is complicated by a rising and falling pitch in its accent. The b accent is not there in Finnish and Catalan languages. The foci and links are found the A accent of the Finnish language. No intonation prominence is given in Catalan. Left hand placement is used in Catalan unlike English and Dutch. Generally, contrastive focus and presentational focus In this study I have investigated IS in Turkish. It was claimed that syntax and phonology, by means of word order and prosody, are both responsible for the realization of the IS units, i.e. topic, tail and focus. Contrary to the approaches that reduce the role of either syntax or phonology to a secondary place, this paper provides a more fine grained and consequently more coherent analysis of IS facts. For example, there are two focusing strategies in Turkish, i.e. syntactic and intonational, that are clearly associated with two distinct pragmatic functions, marking p-focus and c-focus, respectively. Consequently focusing phenomena in Turkish cannot be explained if this distinction between the two types of focus is not drawn. On the other hand, it has been argued that the relation between NP/DP interpretation and IS is far more complex than previously assumed. This claim is supported by the examples of specifics, i.e. both definite and indefinite, and nonspecifics as well as incorporated NPs bearing different ARE interpretations depending on the context. How Contrastive Focus and Presentational Focus are carried out in Turkish Turkish language generally employs both phonological and syntactical strategies to realize information structure. According to numerous previous studies, Turkish has a form of tri-partite division into focus, topic (link) and background (tail) (Yağcıoğlu 75). Focus generally tend to occur pre-verbally and carries new information. However, contrastive focus and presentational focus are clearly distinctive in their functions. s-initial topics in Turkish are always placed in the initial position. If the element for construction is a topic then it must have an s-initial. This does not mean that the topic plays a dual role. An element cannot play the topic’s role and be an element at the same time. The element however can be c-focused to a topic function as shown in the example below. Ali[FEV-E] git-ti. home-DATgo-PST [FALI] eve gitti. ‘Ali went home’. It has been argued that, Turkish tones have a high pitch which is rising and in most cases has to be an s-initial. Prosodic markings are used in cases where the tail s-initial is used. Illustrations for these statements are as included below. [F [F BAS¸KAN]o¨ldu¨.] president die-PST ‘The PRESIDENT died Bas¸kan [FO¨LDU¨.] [FO¨LDU¨] bas¸kan. Apart from the ‘Focus Tale sentence’ type, it is evident that Turkish is fond of employing tails before the use of a foci (Deakin, et al. 750). An example is as shown. Ali-yi okul-a kim go¨tu¨r-ecek? Ali-ACC school-DAT WHO bring-FUT Who will bring Ali to the school? Tails can be placed on any sequence in the sentence so long as they occur after the verb. In this case a focused constituent is not placed after the verb and the topic is allowed to be at the s-initial position. This therefore means that elements after the verbs are interpreted as tails in Turkish language. In other instances tails appear before the verb in instances where the s-initially is used. It can also be used just immediately before the verb and is generally the default position for focus. The above examples particularly confirm the assumption that Turkish utilizes both phonological and syntactical strategies to achieve information structure based on a form of tri-partite division into focus, topic (link) and background. Finally, just like in other languages, contrastive focus in Turkish represents the value of a particular variable uses to express exhaustive identification and is syntactically acting as an operator binding a variable and moving into scope position. Question 11: Different Kinds of Topics in Information Structure Topic is one of the basic notions of information structure that is primarily used to describe pragmatic structure or information structure of a given clause and how it is able to cohere with other clauses (Aissen 280). Other authors have defined topic as the aboutness of a given proposition. Just like focus, topic is also a conceptual notion that is normally characterized non-linguistically but may be closely associated with linguistic expression. There are a number of different kinds of topics in the literature of information structure that are normally used to describe pragmatic structure or information structure of a given clause and how it is able to cohere with other clauses. This is particularly because different languages often mark topics in different ways. Generally, word order and distinct intonation are currently the most common means to highlight topics. The main types of topic categories in information structure include contrastive topics primary topics, tail topics and secondary topics. Contrastive Topics Contrastive topics refer to the independent information structural notion whose alternatives are usually evoked in the context but is different from the alternatives with regard to its semantic property. For example, in various languages, contrastive topics have alternatives that can be said to be contrastively related to them. Contrastive topics are common in Japanese and Korean languages. In Japanese, contrastive topics are generally marked by the particles wa while in Korean, it is marked by the use of particle nun. (Choe 80) Additionally, in both languages, the particles used in contrastive topic are generally associated with a clear set of properties. For example, Dare-ga Sue-ni ano CD-o ageta no? ..............................................................Japanese Who gave that CD to Sue?’ ‘Do you have money?’ In most studies it is argued there has to be a focus for a contrastive topic. This however has been defaulted by other studies (Garner 330). In a possessive construction like the one above, the non-marked topic candidate is the ‘money’. The pragmatic approach on the other hand deals specifically with the identical nature of propositions as received in different formal expressions in relation to the assumption of the speaker in regard to the addressee’s state of mind. The topic might have been changed as a sentence and recast into; ‘Money, do you have?’ Money has been used as potential topic for the utterances that will come after it. The respondent uses the topic as money and real topic to respond with a subset of money as coins (Michaud and Brunelle 450). In cases where paraphrasing in disconjunction and the respondent is expected to a single word, then a contrastive focus is implemented. In the informational structure and background, we can take for instance a topic-oriented view of (1a), a bipolar or tripartite view of the below (1b) or a focus-oriented view of (1c) below. (1) a. [topic-comment], b. [topic-given]-focus], c. [topic (ground/presupposition)-focus] and lastly, [topic-contrastive topic (CT) vs. contrastive focus (CF)-FOCUS]. If an incorporated notion is adopted in a sentence like the above (1d), then the contractive notion becomes more complex as per the structure of the sentence. The use of dialogue therefore or discourse model may be incorporated in a written context in order to characterize a Contrastive topic (CT) vs. Contraceptive Focus (CF). CT is therefore preceded by a conjunctive question whereas CF is always alternatively preceded by an alternative disjunctive question. The contrastive topic and how it comes from conjunctive question: example of a sentence. (2) a. what did Bill’s sister do? And (2) b. [Bill’s youngest sister] (CT) kissed John (F). The sentence above explains the contrastive nominal topic at large Primary and Secondary Topics The primary and secondary topics are almost the same in properties but their level of involvement differs. The primary topic has been identified to be, continuous than the secondary topic. It is also recurrent and more important than its counterpart, secondary topic. Linguistically the primary topic is cross encoded as a subject on its own. The secondary topic is usually a direct subject on its own without cross linguistic coding (Groce et al. 14). Secondary topicalisation is used as a promotion in some languages rather than the direct role of object. The grammatical function of the secondary topic is then considered to be grammaticalized in relationship to the direct object. The primary topic can also be grammaticalized in the same manner (He etal. 592). On the other hand, the primary topics must always have basic notions presented in a form of information structure (Lamberecht 143). For example, In a sentence (1) what is James Drinking? He is drinking beer. The function of the argument focus in the above sentence is to outline the missing argument (beer) in a presupposed openly written proposition (James is drinking Y). The pragmatic declaration evoked can therefore be presented as ‘Y=beer.’ The direct object is accessed differently by a sematic role for the same function. Secondary topic is generally associated with the saliency or topicality presumption just the same way as primary topic. However, secondary topic is often less pragmatically salient. The pragmatic approach on the other hand deals specifically with the identical nature of propositions as received in different formal expressions in relation to the assumption of the speaker in regard to the addressee’s state of mind. IS henceforth serves as the optimizing element in the communication process though information structure is exceptionally independent of the truth-conditional aspect of meaning. In summary, there are currently a diverse number of different kinds of topics in the literature of information structure that can be employed in describing pragmatic structure or information structure of a given clause with the major types being contrastive topics primary topics, tail topics and secondary topics among others. Works Cited Aissen, Judith L. Topic and Focus in Mayan. Language 68.1(2008):43–80. Print. Bellosta von Colbe, Valariano. Is Role and Reference Grammar an adequate theory for punctuation? 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