info str

[Chungmin Lee]

Dear Larry and others interested in info str,
  I agree that most languages have commonalities or at least general
principles in information structure. English favors right-edge constituency
for 'focus' rather than 'topics'. You might have meant this.  Information
focus falls on 'Mary' in the given discourse. The part 'that on the
telephone' must be a topical part, as given. Korean, as a head-final or SOV
language, has a pre-verbal position of (default or wide) focus. Huangarian
is similar in this respect.
  Chungmin   

  
At 05:13 ¿ÀÈÄ 99-01-18 -0500, you wrote:
>Dear Chungmin and any others who may be interested,
>
>I am interested in opinions on whether English information structure really
>varies from some other languages (e.g. Italian, Portuguese, et al.) as much
>as some researchers seem to think it does.  Some notice that, unlike
>English, in Italian a subject that is coreference with the topic of a
>discourse is necessarily dropped, and focused constituents are necessarily
>positioned as right-edge constituents.  Although I do not question the
>Italian data, I think English also favors right-edge constituency for
>topics, and this is reflected by the decreasing discoursal acceptability of
>the following:
>
>    A:    Who was that on the telephone?
>        B1:    Mary.
>        B2:    That was Mary
>        B3:    ?It was Mary who called.
>        B4:    ??Mary was on the telephone.
>
>Some syntacticians cite B4 as the evidence that English favors syntax of
>discourse when it comes to information structure, but it seems to me to be
>questionable.  Have any of you worked with these issues?  I'd be interested
>in your thoughts.
>
>
>
>
>>I noticed everyone introducing one's research interest(s). I am currently
>>interested in working on Contrastive Topic, Topic and Focus, and their
>>intonation patterns. Also, I am interested in negative polarity and free
>>choice in relation to a game-theoretic concept of CONCESSION. I am
>>interested in both functional and formal approaches to discourse.
>>---Chungmin Lee clee at humnet.ucla.edu or clee at plaza.snu.ac.kr
>