SFB 632:  Information structure: The Linguisitic Means for Structuring Utterances, Sentences and Texts

• Subject Area: Humanities
• Term: from 2003 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5485900

• Final Report Year: 2015

Final Report Abstract

The main objective of the SFB632 was the thorough investigation of the phenomenon of information structure, and its relation to the grammar of natural languages. The term information structure refers to the manner in which the content of an utterance is structured in terms of linear and hierarchical organisa-tion. Whereas it is possible, in principle, to convey information by non-linguistic means, research in the SFB was mainly focused on linguistic utterances as carriers of information. The same information content can be linguistically realised in different ways, depending on context and knowledge state, attention state and discourse goals of the discourse participants. For instance, the declarative clause Karl will go to Ber-lin tomorrow can be realised with accent on Karl or on Berlin depending on whether the addressee is more interested in the goal of the trip (whereto?) or in the identity of the traveller (who?). Likewise, the same information content can be realised as He will go to Berlin tomorrow, or Karl will go there tomorrow, depending on whether the current discourse is about Karl or about Berlin. It follows that information struc-ture is located at the interface of grammar and non-linguistic cognition. The SFB-research was based on the initial findings that information structure plays a crucial role for linguistic communication, on the one hand, and that languages vary considerably in the linguistic coding of information-structural categories. Based on these findings, the SFB had the following empirical, methodological and theoretical goals: The empirical goal was the systematic elicitation of data on the linguistic realisation and the processing of information structure, with a strong focus on non-Indoeuropean languages, on language acquisition, on language change, and on language contact. The methodological goals consisted in the collection of ex-perimental (including psycho- and neurolinguistic), spontaneous, and diachronic data on information structure, and in the development of multitier-corpora. The theoretical goal was a better understanding of the basic categories of information structure, and their relation to the core-grammatical modules of pho-nology, (morpho-) syntax and semantics. Another central objective was the development of a consistent terminology. The SFB approached its various goals from a range of different linguistic and cognitive per-spectives (grammar theory, typology, variation linguistics, corpus linguistics, studies on language contact, computer linguistics, psycho- and neurolinguistics, psychology), and in various successful cooperations between different sub-disciplines. In addition, the SFB also included cooperations with partners outside the university, for instance in the software development for speech synthesis and in the development and testing of materials for the education sector. A major methodological result is the development of a questionnaire (QUIS) for the elicitation of compa-rable and quantifiable data on information structure in different languages. The QUIS is complemented by a second questionnaire QUISsem for the elicitation of focus-semantic phenomena. A second major result is the development of the ANNIS-database, which is used for the annotation, presentation and storage of data that were elicited in the individual projects. The ANNIS-database will be accessible beyond the fund-ing period of the SFB and provides a good basis for quantifying corpus studies. A third result was the development of psycholinguistic experiments (ERP, eye-tracking, acting out, recall, i.a.). The experiments were successfully carried out in the investigation of information structure in language processing (com-prehension and production) and language acquisition. A major empirical goal was the elicitation of comparable data on information structure in 17 typologically unrelated languages from all over the world. The data were collected with QUIS, which was complemented with several other elicitation methods. For some of the languages (e.g. Niue, Mwang, Prinmi, Konkani) and varieties (Kiezdeutsch, Turk-German) in the sample, it was the first systematic investigation of infor-mation-structural properties. In addition, the SFB-projects carried out numerous prosodic, morpho-syntactic and semantic studies on information structure in European and Non-European languages. The focus of the investigations on non-Indoeuropean languages was on West Africa (Chadic, Gur, Kwa, Ban-tu), Central America (Maya, Teribe) and (South) East Asia (Mandarin, Japanese, Vietnamese). The inves-tigations on German also focused on informal uses of the language beyond Standard German. The em-pirical investigations were complemented by acquisition studies in European languages (G., Fr., E., Finn.), by investigations of language change, and by psycho- and neurolinguistic experiments on the pro-cessing of linguistically and non-linguistically embedded sentences with information-structural marking. All in all, the empirical studies led to a much better theoretical understanding of information structure, which is used beyond the SFB for the building of theoretical models and as the basis for future investiga-tions in numerous sub-disciplines (African Studies, Romance Studies, Historical Linguistics, Language Contact, Language Acquisition, General Linguistics, Computer Linguistics). Information structure consists of the following three independent, but interacting levels: given-new, focus-background, topic-comment. Languages and varieties differ in which of these levels are grammatically marked, and, if so, which lin-guistic strategy (phonology, syntax, morphology) is used for such marking. Another crucial result is that, contrary to standard assumptions, many languages do not require formal marking of information-structural categories, such as focus, through structural prominence. The resulting optionality and under-specification in the coding of information-structural categories effects the conception of the interface be-tween information structure and grammar: First, information structure seems to be much more condi-tioned by non-linguistic and communicative factors such as hearer attention and hearer expectation than commonly assumed in linguistic models of information structure. This underlines the importance of psy-cho- and neurolinguistic approaches to information structure. Secondly, the frequent absence of explicit linguistic marking of information structure points to a more indirect relation between information structure, on the one hand, and the grammatical core component of syntax, on the other. This result is in contradic-tion to popular models of syntax and will have a lasting impact on future theoretical debates on the relation of information structure and grammar.

Publications

• (2006). Focus projection and prosodic prominence in nested foci. Language 82(1), 131-150
  Féry, C. & Samek-Lodovici, V.
  
• (2006). Questionnaire on Information Structure (QUIS) – Reference Manual. In Working Papers of the SFB632, Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure (ISIS) 4. Potsdam: Universitätsverlag Potsdam
  Skopeteas, S., Fiedler, I., Hellmuth, S., Schwarz, A., Stoel, R., Fanselow, G., Féry, C. & Krifka, M.
  
• (2007). Focus Strategies in Niger-Congo and AfroAsiatic: On the interaction of focus and grammar in some African Languages. de Gruyter, Berlin
  Aboh, E. O., Hartmann, K. & Zimmermann, M. (eds.)
  
• (2007). Zur informationsstrukturellen Annotation sprachhistorischer Texte. Sprache und Datenverarbeitung 31, 39-45
  Donhauser, K.
  
• (2008). Basic Notions of Information Structure. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 55, 243-276
  Krifka, M.
  
• (2008). Pitch accent scaling on given, new and focused constituents in German. Journal of Phonetics 36, 680-703
  Féry, C. & Kügler, F.
  
• (2009). Information structure and language change: new approaches to word order variation in Germanic. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter
  Hinterhölzl, R. & Petrova, S. (eds.)
  
• (2009). Quantificational topics. A scopal treatment of exceptional wide scope phenomena. Dordrecht: Springer
  Endriss, C.
  
• (2009). Tone and intonation from a typological perspective. Special issue of Lingua 119(6)
  Zerbian, S., Downing, L. & Kügler, F. (eds.)
  
• (2010). Contrast as an Information-Structural Notion in Grammar. Special issue of Lingua 120(6)
  Repp, S. & Cook, P.
  
• (2010). Evidence for two types of focus positions in Old High German. In G. Ferraresi & R. Lühr (eds.), Diachronic Studies on Information Structure: Language Acquisition and Change. Berlin: de Gruyter, 189-217
  Petrova, S. & Hinterhölzl, R.
  
• (2010). From V1 to V2 in Older Germanic. Lingua 120(2), 315-328
  Hinterhölzl, R. & Petrova, S.
  
• (2010). Information Structure. Theoretical, Typological, and Experimental Perspectives. Oxford University Press, Oxford
  Zimmermann, M. & Féry, C. (eds.)
  
• (2010). Information Structure: Overview and Lingustic Issues. In M. Krifka & R. Musan (eds.), The expression of information structure, 1-44. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton
  Krifka, M. & Musan, R.
  
• (2010). Subject Focus in West African Languages. In M. Zimmermann & C. Féry (eds.), Information Structure. Theoretical, Typological, and Experimental Perspectives, 234-257. Oxford: OUP
  Fiedler, I., Hartmann, K., Reineke, B., Schwarz, A. & Zimmermann, M.
  
• (2010). The Expression of Information Structure. A documentation of its diversity across Africa. Amsterdam: John Benjamins
  Fiedler, I. & Schwarz, A. (eds.)
  
• (2011). Contextual Licensing of Marked OVS Word Oder in German. Linguistische Berichte 225, 3-18
  Weskott, T, Hörnig, R., Fanselow, G. & Kliegl, R.
  
• (2011). Exhaustiveness effects in clefts are not truthfunctional. Journal of Neurolinguistics 24, 320-337
  Drenhaus, H., Vasishth, S. & Zimmermann, M.
  
• (2011). Focus and the Exclusion of Alternatives: On the Interaction of Syntactic Structure with Pragmatic Inference. Lingua 121(11), 1693-1706
  Skopeteas, S. & Fanselow, G.
  
• (2011). Focus Marking Strategies and Focus Interpretation. Special issue of Lingua 121(11)
  Zimmermann, M. & Onéa , E. (eds.)
  
• (2011). Focus Marking und Focus Interpretation. Lingua 121(11), 1651-1670
  Zimmermann, M. & Onéa, E.
  
• (2011). Information Structure in African Languages: Corpora and Tools. Language Resources and Evaluation 45, 361-374
  Chiarcos, C., Fiedler, I., Grubic, M., Hartmann, K., Ritz, J., Schwarz, A., Zeldes, A. & Zimmermann, M.
  
• (2011). Left peripheral focus: Mismatches between syntax and information structure. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 29, 169-209
  Fanselow, G. & Lenertová, D.
  
• (2012). Focus Marking in Bura: Semantic Uniformity matches syntactic heterogeneity. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 30(4), 1061-1108
  Hartmann, K. & Zimmermann, M.
  
• (2012). On the prosodic expression of pragmatic prominence: the case of pitch register lowering in Akan. Language and Speech 55, 331-359
  Kügler, F. & Genzel, S.
  
• (2012). Restrictions on addition: Children’s interpretation of the focus particles auch (‘also’) and nur (‘only’) in German. Journal of Child Language 39, 383-410
  Berger, F. & Höhle, B.
  
• (2012). Stressed out! Accented discourse particles – the case of DOCH. In A. Aguilar et al. (eds.), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 16(1), 225-238. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics
  Egg, M. & Zimmermann, M.
  
• (2013). Focus as prosodic alignment. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 31(2), 683-734
  Féry, C.
  
• (2013). Identifying Aboutness topics: two annotation experiments. Dialogue & Discourse 4(2), 118-141
  Cook, P. & Bildhauer, F.
  
• (2013). What can new urban dialects tell us about internal language dynamics? The power of language diversity. In W. Abraham & E. Leiss (eds.), Dialektologie in neuem Gewand. Zu Mikro/Varietätenlinguistik, Sprachenvergleich und Universalgrammatik. Linguistische Berichte, Sonderheft 19, 207-245
  Wiese, H.
  
• (2014). ANNIS3: A new architecture for generic corpus query and visualization. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 2014
  Krause, T. & Zeldes, A.
  
• (2014). Context updating during sentence comprehension: The effect of aboutness topic. Brain and Language 137, 62-76
  Burmester, J., Spalek, K. & Wartenburger, I.
  
• (2014). How can the study of developmental disorders inform linguistic theory about information structure? In D. El Zarka & S. Heidinger (eds.), Methodological Issues in the Study of Information Structure 81, 69-86. [Special Issue] (Grazer Lin.)
  Stegenwallner-Schütz, M. & Adani, F.
  
• (2014). Not only the apples: Focus sensitive particles improve memory for information-structural alternatives. Journal of Memory and Language 70, 68-84
  Spalek, K., Gotzner, N. & Wartenburger, I.
  
• (2015). Constraining the derivation of alternatives. Natural Language Semantics
  Trinh, T. & Haida, A.
  
• (2015). Intonation influences processing and recall of left-dislocation sentences by indicating topic vs. focus status of dislocated referent. Language, Cognition and Neuro-science 30, 324-346
  Repp, S. & Drenhaus, H.
  
• (2015). Markedness considerations in L2 Prosodic Focus and Givenness Marking. In E. Delais-Roussarie, M. Avanzi & S. Herment (eds.), Prosody and Language in Contact: L2 Acquisition, Attrition and Languages in Multilingual Situations, 7-27. Berlin: Springer
  Zerbian, S.
  
• (2015). The role of givenness, presupposition, and prosody in Czech word order: An experimental study. Semantics & Pragmatics 8(3), 1-103
  Šimík, R. & Wierzba, M.
  
• (2015). Variation in Information Structure with Special Reference to Africa. Annual Review of Linguistics (1), 155-178
  Güldemann, T., Zerbian, S. & Zimmermann, M.