Information Structuring of Spoken Language from a Cross-linguistic Perspective PDF Download

Author: M. M. Jocelyne Fernandez-Vest
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110368757
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
Information structure and the organization of oral texts have been rarely studied crosslinguistically. This book contains studies of the grammatical organization of information in languages from different areas (e.g. Amazonian, Finno-Ugric, South-Asian) from a variety of theoretical angles. It will be a valuable resource for researchers investigating the interaction of morphosyntax and discourse in familiar and less familiar languages.

Author: Atsuko Utsumi
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781013291920
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
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: Yaron Matras
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 311019919X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 609

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Book Description
The book contains 30 descriptive chapters dealing with a specific language contact situation. The chapters follow a uniform organisation format, being the narrative version of a standard comprehensive questionnaire previously distributed to all authors. The questionnaire targets systematically the possibility of contact influence / grammatical borrowing in a full range of categories. The uniform structure facilitates a comparison among the chapters and the languages covered. The introduction describes the setup of the questionnaire and the methodology of the approach, along with a survey of the difficulties of sampling in contact linguistics. Two evaluative chapters, each authored by one of the co-editors, draws general conclusions from the volume as a whole (one in relation to borrowed grammatical categories and meaningful hierarchies, the other in relation to the distribution of Matter and Pattern replication).

Author: Sanghoun Song
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 9783944675978
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
This study makes substantial contributions to both the theoretical and computational treatment of information structure, with a specific focus on creating natural language processing applications such as multilingual machine translation systems. The present study first provides cross-linguistic findings in regards to information structure meanings and markings. Building upon such findings, the current model represents information structure within the HPSG/MRS framework using Individual Constraints. The primary goal of the present study is to create a multilingual grammar model of information structure for the LinGO Grammar Matrix system. The present study explores the construction of a grammar library for creating customized grammar incorporating information structure and illustrates how the information structure-based model improves performance of transfer-based machine translation.

Author: Jorina Brysbaert
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110986590
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
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: Manfred Krifka
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 311026160X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description
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: Angela Marcantonio
Publisher: Sapienza Università Editrice
ISBN: 8893770660
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
This volume contains the Proceedings of the ‘Uralic Studies’ Seminar: The State of the Art of Uralic Studies: Tradition vs Innovation, held in Padua (Italy), November 12-13, 2016. The seminar was organized by the Department of ‘Studi Linguistici e Letterari’ of Padua University and the ‘Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia’ of Sapienza University of Rome. The aim of the seminar, and of this volume, was / is to bring together linguists working on the Uralic languages from different perspectives, with the purpose of increasing the exchange of ideas and fostering mutual influences on each other field and methods of analysis. In addition to presenting the current ‘state of the art of Uralic studies’ – for specialists, general linguists and general public – the volume also addresses some issues related to the so-called ‘Ural-Altaic theory’, nowadays often referred to as the ‘Ural-Altaic linguistic belt, unique typological belt’. The contributors to the volume are renown scholars of Uralic, and also Altaic languages, from various European universities, such as Moscow, Helsinki, Paris, Budapest etc.

Author: Isabelle Buchstaller
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027239053
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
Research on quotation has yielded a rich and diverse knowledge-base. Scientific interest has been sparked particularly by the recent emergence of new quotative forms in typologically related and unrelated languages (i.e. English be like, Hebrew kazé, Japanese mitai-na).The present collection gives a platform to research conducted within different linguistic sub-disciplines and on the basis of a variety of Western and non-Western languages. The introduction presents an overview of forms and functions of old and new quotative constructions. The nine chapters investigate quotation from different perspectives, from conversation analysis over grammaticalization and language variation and change to typological and formal approaches. The collection advocates a comprehensive approach to the phenomenon 'quotation', seeking a more nuanced knowledge-base as regards the linguistic properties, social uses and pragmatic functions than monolingual or single disciplinary approaches deliver. The cross-disciplinary nature and the wealth of data make the findings broadly available and relevant.

Author: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191514128
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Languages can be similar in many ways - they can resemble each other in categories, constructions and meanings, and in the actual forms used to express these. A shared feature may be based on common genetic origin, or result from geographic proximity and borrowing. Some aspects of grammar are spread more readily than others. The question is - which are they? When languages are in contact with each other, what changes do we expect to occur in their grammatical structures? Only an inductively based cross-linguistic examination can provide an answer. This is what this volume is about. The book starts with a typological introduction outlining principles of contact-induced change and factors which facilitate diffusion of linguistic traits. It is followed by twelve studies of contact-induced changes in languages from Amazonia, East and West Africa, Australia, East Timor, and the Sinitic domain. Set alongside these are studies of Pennsylvania German spoken by Mennonites in Canada in contact with English, Basque in contact with Romance languages in Spain and France, and language contact in the Balkans. All the studies are based on intensive fieldwork, and each cast in terms of the typological parameters set out in the introduction. The book includes a glossary to facilitate its use by graduates and advanced undergraduates in linguistics and in disciplines such as anthropology.

Author: M. M. Jocelyne Fernandez-Vest
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110394510
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
This monograph is intended as a reference book on Detachment Constructions (DECs) in the Information Structuring of oral and spoken languages. Focusing on DECs in a textual perspective, the book is an innovative contribution to the knowledge of oral and spoken languages, some of them widespread (Indo-European), others less taught (Finno-Ugric).