Topic And Focus
DOWNLOAD
Download Topic And Focus PDF/ePub or read online books in Mobi eBooks. Click Download or Read Online button to get Topic And Focus book now. This website allows unlimited access to, at the time of writing, more than 1.5 million titles, including hundreds of thousands of titles in various foreign languages. If the content not found or just blank you must refresh this page
Topic And Focus
DOWNLOAD
Author : Chungmin Lee
language : en
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Release Date : 2006-12-18
Topic And Focus written by Chungmin Lee and has been published by Springer Science & Business Media this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2006-12-18 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
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 And Focus In English And German Sentences A Cross Linguistic Analysis
DOWNLOAD
Author : Patrick Wedekind
language : en
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
Release Date : 2016-04-21
Topic And Focus In English And German Sentences A Cross Linguistic Analysis written by Patrick Wedekind and has been published by GRIN Verlag this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2016-04-21 with Literary Collections categories.
Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, grade: A, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, language: English, abstract: When semanticists examine the way speakers or writers code the knowledge they expect their listeners or readers to have in a sentence, one of the most important aspects to consider is the information structure of the sentence. Within this information structure, a subdivision is commonly made between already known or given information, which is usually referred to as the ‘topic’ of the sentence, and new information, normally called the ‘focus’. While some languages, for instance Somali, possess explicit focus markers to indicate the focalization of certain elements in a sentence, English has to rely mainly on the intonation of a sentence as the focus marker due to its rigid subject-verb-object (SVO) word order. German, on the other hand, provides a greater syntactic flexibility since it is a highly inflected language in which the grammatical function of words is less defined by their position within a sentence than their grammatical cases. Therefore, speakers of German do not have to rely solely on changing the intonation in order to mark a sentence’s focus, but may also use syntactic displacement as a focus marker. Nevertheless, syntactic changes to focalize certain elements in a sentence are also possible to a limited extent in English, but they require special constructions not necessary for focus marking in German. Since these differences in focus marking seem to be significant in light of the fact that both English and German are Germanic languages, they will constitute the main focus of this paper. I will begin my study of topic and focus in the two languages with an examination of the several strategies for focusing employed in spoken English and German and then continue with those strategies typically used in writing. In doing this, I take account of the limitation of some of these strategies to one of these two different forms of communication.
The Grammar Of Focus
DOWNLOAD
Author : Georges Rebuschi
language : en
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Release Date : 1999
The Grammar Of Focus written by Georges Rebuschi and has been published by John Benjamins Publishing this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1999 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
The grammar of focus has been studied in generative grammar from its inception. It has been the subject of intense, detailed cross-linguistic investigation for over 20 years, particularly within the Principles and Parameters framework. It is appropriate at this point, therefore, to take stock. Appraisal at this particular point is all the more legitimate because it comes at a time of general evaluation of the results of the profound activity that has characterized the Principles and Parameters framework. This general assessment has produced a radical new direction within that framework. The volume starts off with an introductory chapter that aims to provide an outline for the assessment, to be followed by an overview of the evolution of the study of focus in generative grammar, and a recapitulation of the principal issues associated with focus. These issues are taken up in the remaining chapters of the book, where various grammatical means of marking focus (as well as grammaticalization of focus marking) are analyzed in a wide variety of languages.
The Syntax Of Topic Focus And Contrast
DOWNLOAD
Author : Ad Neeleman
language : en
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Release Date : 2012-12-06
The Syntax Of Topic Focus And Contrast written by Ad Neeleman and has been published by Walter de Gruyter this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2012-12-06 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
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.
Topic Focus Articulation Tripartite Structures And Semantic Content
DOWNLOAD
Author : Eva Hajicová
language : en
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Release Date : 2013-03-09
Topic Focus Articulation Tripartite Structures And Semantic Content written by Eva Hajicová and has been published by Springer Science & Business Media this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2013-03-09 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
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.
Structures Of Focus And Grammatical Relations
DOWNLOAD
Author : Jorunn Hetland
language : en
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Release Date : 2013-02-06
Structures Of Focus And Grammatical Relations written by Jorunn Hetland and has been published by Walter de Gruyter this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2013-02-06 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
The seven articles of this volume take up crucial aspects of information structure and grammatical form. Special attention is paid to the definition of topic, focus and contrast, to the language specific devices for expressing different types of these information structural notions, and to the typological characterisation of languages as to discourse configurationality. The investigation of grammatical relations includes the interplay between syntactic functions, morphological case and thematic structure, and the study of the functional and formal complexity of passive in Germanic languages.
The Role Of Topic And Comment In Linguistic Theory
DOWNLOAD
Author : Jeanette K. Gundel
language : en
Publisher: Dissertations-G
Release Date : 1988
The Role Of Topic And Comment In Linguistic Theory written by Jeanette K. Gundel and has been published by Dissertations-G this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1988 with Grammar, Comparative and general categories.
The Meaning Of Topic And Focus
DOWNLOAD
Author : Daniel Büring
language : en
Publisher: Routledge
Release Date : 2012-08-21
The Meaning Of Topic And Focus written by Daniel Büring and has been published by Routledge this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2012-08-21 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
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 Syntax Of Focus Topic In Somali
DOWNLOAD
Author : John I. Saeed
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 1984
The Syntax Of Focus Topic In Somali written by John I. Saeed and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1984 with Somali language categories.
Focus And Secondary Predication
DOWNLOAD
Author : Susanne Winkler
language : en
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Release Date : 1997
Focus And Secondary Predication written by Susanne Winkler and has been published by Walter de Gruyter this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1997 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
The architecture of the human language faculty has been one of the main foci of the linguistic research of the last half century. This branch of linguistics, broadly known as Generative Grammar, is concerned with the formulation of explanatory formal accounts of linguistic phenomena with the ulterior goal of gaining insight into the properties of the 'language organ'. The series comprises high quality monographs and collected volumes that address such issues. The topics in this series range from phonology to semantics, from syntax to information structure, from mathematical linguistics to studies of the lexicon. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Birgit Sievert