University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons
IRCS Technical Reports Series Institute for Research in Cognitive Science
January 1998
Information Structure and the Syntax-Phonology Interface
Mark Steedman University of Pennsylvania
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Steedman, Mark, "Information Structure and the Syntax-Phonology Interface" (1998). IRCS Technical Reports Series. 49. https://repository.upenn.edu/ircs_reports/49
University of Pennsylvania Institute for Research in Cognitive Science Technical Report No. IRCS-98-02.
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Abstract This paper proposes a theory relating syntax, semantics, and intonational prosody, and covering a wide range of English intonational tunes and their semantic interpretation in terms of focus and information structure. The theory is based on a version of combinatory categorial grammar which directly pairs phonological and logical forms without intermediary representational levels.
Keywords Intonation, Syntax, Information Structures, Focus, Categorical Grammar
Comments University of Pennsylvania Institute for Research in Cognitive Science Technical Report No. IRCS-98-02.
This technical report is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/ircs_reports/49 , Institute for Research in Cognitive Science
Information Structure and the Syntax-Phonology Interface
Mark Steedman
University of Pennsylvania 3401 Walnut Street, Suite 400A Philadelphia, PA 19104-6228
January 1998
Site of the NSF Science and Technology Center for Research in Cognitive Science
IRCS Report 98--02 Information Structure and the
Syntax-Phonology Interface
Mark Steedman
Draft 3.1, June 11, 1997
The paper proposes a theory relating syntax, semantics, and intonational prosody, and cover- ing a wide range of English intonational tunes and their semantic interpretation in terms of focus and information structure. The theory is based on a version of combinatory categorial grammar which directly pairs phonological and logical forms without intermediary represen- tational levels. Keywords: Intonation, Syntax, Information Structure, Focus, Categorial Grammar.
1 Introduction.
Phrasal intonation in English is frequently orthogonal to traditional notions of surface syntac- tic structure. For example, the subject and transitive verb may form an intonational phrase, at odds with the traditional subject-predicate structure, in a simple transitive sentence such as the following: (1) Anna married Manny. This fact presents a problem for any theory of grammar. Selkirk’s 1984 proposal to incorporate phrasal phonology in a then-standard GB framework gives rise to a theoretical architecture that can be summarized in the extension of the traditional T or Y-diagram shown in Figure 1 (cf. Selkirk 1984, p.205). In addition to the usual modules of the parent theory, including a level of S-structure mediating between Phonetic Form (PF) and Logical Form (LF), this architecture postulates an autonomous structural level of Intonational Structure, which also mediates between PF and LF. The responsibility of S-structure is as usual to define aspects of LF that relate to predicate-argument relations. The responsibility of Intonation