Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T20:59:01.857Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Prosodic Reflexes of Information Structure

from Part 1 - Prosody and Phonology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2024

By
Radek Šimík
Edited by
Danko Šipka  and
Wayles Browne
Danko Šipka
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
Wayles Browne
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Get access

Summary

The author first defines the following notions of information structure: focus (vs. background), given (vs. new), and topic (vs. comment). He then goes on to show how these notions are reflected in the prosodic systems of Slavic languages. Focus in all Slavic languages is reflected in prosodic prominence governed by a stress-focus correspondence defined by the author. In general, ‘given’ is realized outside the sentence stress. Focus does not have an obligatory prosodic reflex in Slavic languages.

Keywords

information structureprosodyfocustopicgivenpitch accentprosodic prominence
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Slavic Linguistics , pp. 104 - 126
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alter, K. (1997a). Fokusprosodie im Russischen: Phonologische und akustische Korrelate von Informationsstrukturierung. In Junghanns, U. & Zybatow, G., eds., Formale Slavistik, Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert, pp. 399–414.Google Scholar
Alter, K. (1997b). Russian prosody: Phrasing and tonal structure. In Lindseth, M. & Franks, S., eds., Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 5. The Indiana Meeting, 1996, Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slavic Publications, pp. 1–17.Google Scholar
Alter, K. & Junghanns, U. (2002). Topic-related prosodic patterns in Russian. In Kosta, P. & Frasek, J. (eds.), Current Approaches to Formal Slavic Linguistics: Contributions of the Second European Conference on Formal Description of Slavic Languages (FDSL II), Potsdam 1997, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, pp. 73–88.Google Scholar
Andreeva, B., Barry, W. J., & Koreman, J. (2016). Local and global cues in the prosodic realization of broad and narrow focus in Bulgarian. Phonetica, 73(3–4), 256–278. https://doi.org/10.1159/000448044.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Andreeva, B. & Oliver, D. (2005). Information structure in Polish and Bulgarian: Accent types and peak alignment in broad and narrow focus: A cross-language study. In Franks, S., Gladney, F. Y., & Tasseva-Kurktchieva, M., eds., Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 13. The South Carolina Meeting, 2004, Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slavic Publications, pp. 1–13.Google Scholar
Antonyuk-Yudina, S. & Mykhaylyk, R. (2013). Prosody of scrambling. In Kan, S., Moore-Cantwell, C., & Staubs, R., eds., NELS 40: Proceedings of the 40th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, Vol. 1, Amherst, MA: GLSA, pp. 31–44.Google Scholar
Arnaudova, O. (2001). Prosodic movement and information focus in Bulgarian. In Franks, S., King, T. H., & Yadroff, M., eds., Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 9. The Bloomington Meeting, 2000, Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slavic Publications, pp. 19–36.Google Scholar
Arnaudova, O. (2003). Focus and Bulgarian Clause Structure: PhD dissertation, University of Ottawa.Google Scholar
Browne, W. & McCawley, J. (1965). Srpskohrvatski akcenat. Zbornik za filologiju i lingvistiku, 8, 147–151.Google Scholar
Browne, W. & McCawley, J. (1973). Serbo-Croatian accent. In Fudge, E. C., ed., Phonology: Selected Readings, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, pp. 330–335.Google Scholar
Bryzgunova, E. A. (1977). Zvuk i intonacija russkoj reči, Moscow: Russkij jazyk.Google Scholar
Bryzgunova, E. A. (1980). Intonacija. In Švedova, N. J., ed., Russkaja gramatika, Moscow: Nauka.Google Scholar
Büring, D. (2003). On D-trees, beans, and B-accents. Linguistics and Philosophy, 26(5), 511–545. www.jstor.org/stable/25001898.Google Scholar
Büring, D. (2016). (Contrastive) topic. In Féry, C. & Ishihara, S., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure, Oxford: Oxford University Press., pp. 64–85. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199642670.013.002.Google Scholar
Chafe, W. (1976). Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, and point of view. In Li, C. N., ed., Subject and Topic, New York, NY: Academic Press, pp. 25–55.Google Scholar
Chao, Y. R. (1958). How Chinese logic operates. Anthropological Linguistics, 1, 1–8.Google Scholar
Chierchia, G. (1998). Reference to kinds across languages. Natural Language Semantics, 6(4), 339–405. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008324218506.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, N. & Halle, M. (1968). The Sound Pattern of English, New York, NY: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Cinque, G. (1993). A null theory of phrase and compound stress. Linguistic Inquiry, 24(2), 239–298. www.jstor.org/stable/4178812.Google Scholar
Daneš, F. (1957). Intonace a věta ve spisovné češtině, Prague: Československá akademie věd.Google Scholar
Daneš, F. (1959). K otázce pořádku slov v slovanských jazycích. Slovo a slovesnost, 20(1), 1–10. http://sas.ujc.cas.cz/archiv.php?lang=en&art=972.Google Scholar
Daneš, F. (1960). Sentence intonation from a functional point of view. Word, 16(1), 34–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.1960.11659719.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dogil, G. (1980). Focus marking in Polish. Linguistic Analysis, 6(3), 221–245.Google Scholar
Dogil, G. & Williams, B. (1999). The phonetic manifestation of word stress. In van der Hulst, H., ed., EUROTYP 4: Word Prosodic Systems in the Languages of Europe, Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 273–334. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110197082.1.273.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duběda, T. (2011). Towards an inventory of pitch accents for read Czech. Slovo a slovesnost, 72(1), 3–12.Google Scholar
Féry, C., Paslawska, A., & Fanselow, G. (2007). Nominal split constructions in Ukrainian. Journal of Slavic Linguistics, 15(1), 3–48. www.jstor.org/stable/24599567.Google Scholar
Féry, C. & Samek-Lodovici, V. (2006). Focus projection and prosodic prominence in nested foci. Language, 82(1), 131–150. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2006.0031.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Godjevac, S. (2000). Intonation, Word Order, and Focus Projection in Serbo-Croatian. PhD dissertation, The Ohio State University.Google Scholar
Godjevac, S. (2006). Focus Projection in Serbo-Croatian, Stanford, CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
Groeben, L, Šimík, R., & Kügler, F. (2017). Stress shift, focus, and givenness in Czech. In Oseki, Y., Esipova, M., & Harves, S., eds., Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 24. The New York University Meeting, 2015, Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slavic Publications, pp. 180–199.Google Scholar
Gussenhoven, C. (1983). Focus, tone, and nucleus. In On the Grammar and Semantics of Sentence Accents, Dordrecht: Foris, pp. 11–62.Google Scholar
Gutzmann, D., Hartmann, K., & Matthewson, L. (2020). Verum focus is verum, not focus: Cross-linguistic evidence. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 5(1), S1. https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamlaoui, F., Engelmann, J., & Szendrői, K. E. (2021). Prosodic marking of focus and givenness in Kinyarwanda and Rwandan English. In Lee, S. J., Patin, C., & Riedel, K., eds., Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus 62: Crossing Boundaries: A Festschrift for Laura Downing, Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University, pp. 135–160. https://doi.org/10.5842/62-0-896.Google Scholar
Hamlaoui, F., Żygis, M., Engelmann, J., & Wagner, M. (2019). Acoustic correlates of focus marking in Czech and Polish. Language and Speech, 62(2), 358–377. https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830918773536.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hockett, C. F. (1958). A Course in Modern Linguistics, New York, NY: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Inkelas, S. & Zec, D. (1988). Serbo-Croatian pitch accent: The interaction of tone, stress, and intonation. Language, 64(2), 227–248. https://doi.org/10.2307/415433.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackendoff, R. (1972). Semantic Interpretation in Generative Grammar, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jacobs, J. (2001). The dimensions of topic-comment. Linguistics, 39(4), 641–681. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.2001.027.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jasinskaja, K. (2016). Information structure in Slavic. In Féry, C. & Ishihara, S., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 709–732. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199642670.013.25.Google Scholar
Jasinskaja, K. & Šimík, R. (Forthcoming). Slavonic free word order. In Fellerer, J. & Bermel, N., eds., The Oxford Guide to the Slavonic Languages, Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004919.Google Scholar
Junghanns, U. (2002). Untersuchungen zur Syntax und Informationsstruktur slavischer Deklar ativsätze [Linguistische Arbeitsberichte 80], Leipzig: Leipzig University.Google Scholar
Junghanns, U. & Zybatow, G. (2009). Grammatik und Informationsstruktur. In Kempgen, S., Kosta, P., Berger, T., & Gutschmidt, K., eds., Die Slavischen Sprachen/The Slavic Languages: Halbband 1: Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft, Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 684–707. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110214475.1.9.684.Google Scholar
Kratzer, A. & Selkirk, E. (2020). Deconstructing information structure. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 5(1), 113. https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.968.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krifka, M. (2008). Basic notions of information structure. Acta Linguistica Hungarica, 55, (3–4), 243–276. https://doi.org/10.1556/ALing.55.2008.3-4.2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kruijff-Korbayová, I. & Steedman, M. (2003). Discourse and information structure. Journal of Logic, Language and Information, 12(3), 249–259. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024160025821.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kügler, F. & Calhoun, S. (2020). Prosodic encoding of information structure: A typological perspective. In Gussenhoven, C. & Chen, A., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Language Prosody, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 454–467. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198832232.013.30.Google Scholar
Kučerová, I. 2007. The Syntax of Givenness. PhD dissertation, MIT. https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/39580.Google Scholar
Ladd, D. R. (1980). The Structure of Intonational Meaning, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Lohnstein, H. (2016). Verum focus. In Féry, C. & Ishihara, S., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure, Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199642670.013.33.Google Scholar
Mathesius, V. (1907). Studie k dějinám anglického slovosledu. Věstník České akademie císaře Františka Josefa pro vědy, slovesnost a umění, 16, 261–274.Google Scholar
Mathesius, V. (1939). O tak zvaném aktuálním členění věty. Slovo a slovesnost, 5(4), 171–174. http://sas.ujc.cas.cz/archiv.php?lang=en&art=308.Google Scholar
Mehlhorn, G. & Zybatow, G. (2000). Alte und neue Hüte der russischen Informationsstruk tur. Linguistische Arbeitsberichte, 74.Google Scholar
Molnár, V. (1993). Zur Pragmatik und Grammatik des Topik-Begriffes. In Reis, M., ed., Wortstellung und Informationsstruktur, Tübingen: Niemeyer, pp. 155–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paul, H. (1880). Principien der Sprachgeschichte, Halle: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Petřík, S. (1938). O hudební stránce středočeské věty [On the musical aspect of the Central Bohemian sentence], Prague: Filosofická fakulta University Karlovy.Google Scholar
Pešková, A. (2017). Czech ToBI. Presented at Phonetics and Phonology in Europe (PaPE) 2017, Cologne, June 2017.Google Scholar
Reinhart, T. (1981). Pragmatics and linguistics: An analysis of sentence topics. Philosophica, 27(1), 53–94. http://logica.ugent.be/philosophica/fulltexts/27-4.pdf.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reinhart, T. (2006). Interface Strategies: Optimal and Costly Computations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rochemont, M. (2016). Givenness. In Féry, C. & Ishihara, S., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 41–63. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199642670.013.18.Google Scholar
Rooth, M. (1985). Association with Focus. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI8509599.Google Scholar
Rooth, M. (1992). A theory of focus interpretation. Natural Language Semantics, 1(1), 75–116. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02342617.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmerling, S. (1976). Aspects of English Sentence Stress, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Schwarzschild, R. (1999). Givenness, AvoidF and other constraints on the placement of accent. Natural Language Semantics, 7(2), 141–177. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008370902407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sgall, P., Hajičová, E., & Panevová, J. (1986). The Meaning of the Sentence and Its Semantic and Pragmatic Aspects, Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Silverman, K., Beckman, M., Pitrelli, J., Ostendorf, M., Wightman, C., Price, P., Pierrehumbert, J. B., & Hirschberg, J. (1992). ToBI: A standard for labelling English prosody. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP), Vol. 2, Banff, pp. 867–870.Google Scholar
Šimík, R. (2021). Information structure and its relation to syntax, semantics, and reference. Manuscript, Charles University. https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/005822.Google Scholar
Šimík, R. & Wierzba, M. (2015). The role of givenness, presupposition, and prosody in Czech word order: An experimental study. Semantics & Pragmatics, 8(3), 1–103. https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.8.3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Šimík, R. & Wierzba, M. (2017). Expression of information structure in West Slavic: Modeling the impact of prosodic and word-order factors. Language, 93(3), 671–709. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2017.0040.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slioussar, N. (2007). Grammar and Information Structure: A Study with Reference to Russian. PhD dissertation, Utrecht University. www.lotpublications.nl/Documents/161_fulltext.pdf.Google Scholar
Stopar, A. (2017). The prosody of focus: Non-contrastive, contrastive and verum focus in Slovenian, English and Russian. In Komar, S. & Stopar, A., eds., Linguistica 57(1): Sounds and Melodies Unheard: Essays in Memory of Rastislav Šuštaršič, Ljubljana: Ljubljana University Press, pp. 293–312. https://doi.org/10.4312/linguistica.57.1.293-312.Google Scholar
Szwedek, A. (1974). Co-reference and sentence stress in Polish. Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics, 3, 209–213.Google Scholar
Szwedek, A. (2011). The Thematic Structure of the Sentence in English and Polish: Sentence Stress and Word Order, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Tomioka, S. (2021). Topic. In Gutzmann, D., Matthewson, L., Meier, C., Rullmann, H., & Zimmermann, T. E., eds., The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Semantics, Vol. 5, Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, pp. 3061–3091. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118788516.sem125.Google Scholar
Truckenbrodt, H. (1995). Phonological Phrases: Their Relation to Syntax, Focus, and Prominence. PhD dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Truckenbrodt, H. (2007). The syntax–phonology interface. In de Lacy, P., ed., The Cambridge Handbook of Phonology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 435–456.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Truckenbrodt, H. (2012). An analysis of prosodic F-effects in interrogatives: Prosody, syntax, and semantics. Lingua, 124, 131–175. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2012.06.003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vallduví, E. (1990). The role of plasticity in the association of focus and prominence. In No, Y. & Libucha, M., eds., ESCOL ’90: Proceedings of the 7th Eastern States Conference on Linguistics, The Ohio State University, pp. 295–306.Google Scholar
Vallduví, E. & Engdahl, E. (1996). The linguistic realization of information packaging. Linguistics, 34(3), 459–519. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.1996.34.3.459.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wagner, M. (2012). Focus and givenness: A unified approach. In Kučerová, I. & Neeleman, A., eds., Contrasts and Positions in Information Structure, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 102–147. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511740084.007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weil, H. (1844). De l’ordre des mots dans les langues anciennes comparées aux langues modernes, Paris: Didier Érudition.Google Scholar
Zubizarreta, M. L. (1998). Prosody, Focus, and Word Order, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Zybatow, G. & Mehlhorn, G. (2000). Experimental evidence for focus structure in Russian. In King, T. H. & Sekerina, I. A., eds., Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 8. The Philadelphia Meeting, 1999, Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slavic Publications, pp. 414–434.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×