LIGN 239

Issues in Information Structure

The overall approach adopted in this course is "bottom-up": we will start with several essential notions, examine several case studies that are particularly relevant to this course and will then proceed to examine more general theoretical issues.

Week 1

Introduction. Prague school on Functional Sentence Perspective

Firbas, Jan. 1992. Functional Sentence Perspective In Written
And Spoken Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Ch. 2, 6)

Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information Structure and Sentence
Form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Ch. 1)

Gundel, Jeanette, Nancy Hedberg, and Ron Zacharski. 1993.
'Cognitive status and the form of referring expressions in
discourse.' Language 69: 274-307.
Prince, Ellen. 1981. 'Towards a taxonomy of given/new
information.' In Peter Cole, ed. Radical pragmatics, 223-44.
New York: Academic Press.
Ariel, Mira. 1988. 'Referring and accessibility.' J of Linguistics
24: 65-87.
Lambrecht (1994), ch. 1, 3

Reinhart, Tanya. 1982. Pragmatics and Linguistics. An Analysis of
Sentence Topics. Bloomington: IULC
Lambrecht, ch. 4 (4.1-2)
Prince, Ellen. 1981. 'Topicalization, Focus-Movement, and
Yiddish-Movement'. BLS 7: 249-64.

Week 5 Topic, antitopic.

Grammatical marking of topics.
Lambrecht (1994), Ch. 4.
Vallduvi, Enric. 1995. 'Structural properties of information
packaging in Catalan.' In K. Kiss, ed. Discourse-Configurational
Languages, 122-52. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Polinsky, Maria. 1998. 'Variation in complementation: Agreement
Climbing in Tsez.' In Kaoru Horie, ed. Studies in
Complementation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Week 6 Topicalization and its interaction with other syntactic processes

Aissen, Judith. 1992. 'Topic and focus in Mayan.' Language 68.
Müller, Gereon, and Wolfgang Sternefeld. 1993. 'Improper
movement and unambiguous binding.' Linguistic Inquiry 24: 461-507.
Culicover, Peter. 1996. 'On distinguishing A'-movements.'
Linguistic Inquiry 27: 445-63.
Note: these readings will be reviewed again in week 10 (wrt focus)

Week 7 Focus.

Categorical/thetic judgments and sentence-focus structures
Lambrecht (1994), ch. 5 (5.1-5.6)
Vallduvi (1995)
Kuroda, S-Y. 1972a. 'The categorical and thetic judgment.'
Foundations of Language 9: 153-85.
Kuroda, S-Y. 1972b. 'Anton Marty and the Transformational
Theory of Grammar.' Foundations of Language 9: 1-37.
Kuroda, S-Y. 1990. . 'The categorical and thetic judgment
reconsidered.' In K. Milligan, ed. Mind, Meaning, and Metahysics,
77-88. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Lambrecht, Knud, and Maria Polinsky. 1997. 'Typological
variation in sentence-focus constructions.' CLS 33.

Kratzer, Angelika. 1991. 'The representation of focus.' Semantik/
Semantics. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Rooth, Mats. 1994. 'Focus.' The Handbook of Contemporary
Semantic Theory. Oxford: Blackwell.

Selkirk, Elisabeth. 1984. Phonology and Syntax: The Relation
Between Sound and Structure. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
(chapter 5)
Selkirk, Elisabeth. 1995. 'Sentence prosody.' ' The Handbook of
Phonological Theory. Oxford: Blackwell.

Rochemont, Michael. 1986. Focus in Generative Grammar.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (ch. 1, 4, 5)
Kiss, K. E., ed. 1995. . Discourse-Configurational
Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (chapters 1, 8, 12)
Readings from week 6.