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Intonation and Information Structure Klaus von Heusinger Intonation and Information Structure Klaus von Heusinger Habilitationsschrift, accepted by the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Konstanz, June 1999 Bolinger (1964, 282f) compares the complex of intonational features with the up and down motions of waves at the surface of the ocean: The surface of the ocean responds to the forces that act upon it in movements resembling the ups and downs of the human voice. If our vision could take it all in at once, we would discern several types of motion, involving a greater and greater expanse of sea and volume of water: ripples, waves, swells, and tides. It would be more accurate to say ripples on waves on swells on tides, because each larger movement carries the smaller ones on its back (...) In speech (...) the ripples are the accidental changes in pitch, the irrelevant quavers. The waves are the peaks and valleys that we call accent. The swells are the separations of our discourse into its larger segments. The tides are the tides of emotion. Preface This work is the slightly revised version of my Habilitationsschrift, which was accepted by the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Konstanz in June 1999. The research was funded by a grant of the Dr. Meyer-Struckmann-Stiftung (Habilitation- stipendium der Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes). I started my research during 1997 as an affiliate at the Linguistics Research Center of the UC Santa Cruz and continued it as a researcher at the University of Konstanz. This work would not have been possible without the continuous support of my colleagues at Santa Cruz and Konstanz. I am particularly grateful to Aditi Lahiri, who always gave me all the personal, intellectual and financial support such a work requires. The content of this work was influenced by numerous stimulating discussions with Nick Asher, Daniel Büring, Miriam Butt, Jennifer Cole, Regine Eckardt, Donka Farkas, Chris Gunlogson, Eva Haji ová, Gerhard Jäger, Manfred Krifka, Bill Ladusaw, Aditi Lahiri, Arnim Mester, Jaroslav Peregrin, Roger Schwarzschild, Mark Steedman, Anna Szabolcsi, Hubert Truckenbrodt, Susanne Winkler and many others. I presented parts of this research at UC Santa Cruz, UC Davis, UC Los Angeles, University of Texas, Austin, University Rutgers, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Northwestern University, Evanston, Universität Konstanz, TU Berlin, at the Czech Academy of Science, the 11th Amsterdam Colloquium, at the conference "Bridges and Interfaces: Form, Meaning and Function" in Prague and at the third annual meeting "Sinn und Bedeutung" in Leipzig. I am indebted to the constructive comments of the audience. I also like to thank the members of the review committee for their helpful suggestions: Urs Egli, Aditi Lahiri, Hubert Schleichert and Mark Steedman. Due to limitation of time and other external conditions, this work is not as complete as it should. I therefore invite comments and criticism. Konstanz, July 1999 Klaus von Heusinger Contents 0. Introduction ...............................................................................................................1 0.1 The concept of information structure...............................................................3 0.2 The structure of the argument...........................................................................6 0.3 Research on intonation and information structure ........................................9 0.4 The outline of the book.....................................................................................11 1. Intonational effects – an overview ......................................................................13 1.1 The characterization of intonation..................................................................14 1.1.1 Suprasegmentals ......................................................................................16 1.1.2 Linguistic vs. paralinguistic information..............................................17 1.1.3 Sentence-level or postlexical...................................................................17 1.1.4 The interaction of intonational features................................................18 1.1.5 The functions of intonation.....................................................................20 1.2 Communicative functions................................................................................21 1.3 Speech acts .........................................................................................................22 1.4 Phrasing..............................................................................................................26 1.5 Contrast ..............................................................................................................27 1.6 Discourse structure ...........................................................................................29 1.6.1 Focus-background structure...................................................................30 1.6.2 Topic-comment structure........................................................................31 1.6.3 Scope effects..............................................................................................33 1.6.4 Deaccenting...............................................................................................34 1.7 Association with focus......................................................................................35 1.7.1 Focus-sensitive particles and truth-conditional effects ......................36 1.7.2 Focus-sensitive particles and presuppositional effects.......................38 1.7.3 Free focus...................................................................................................39 1.7.4 Recursiveness of focus.............................................................................40 1.7.5 Adverbs of quantification .......................................................................41 1.7.6 Nominal quantification ...........................................................................43 1.7.7 Other operators.........................................................................................45 1.7.8 Problems of association with focus .......................................................47 1.8 Summary ............................................................................................................48 2. Intonational phonology.........................................................................................50 2.1 Intonation as linguistic research area.............................................................50 2.1.1 Suprasegmental features.........................................................................51 2.1.2 Separating linguistics from paralinguistics..........................................52 2.1.3 Phonetic vs. phonological approaches to intonation ..........................54 2.1.4 Intonational features as phonemes........................................................56 2.2 Autosegmental-metrical approaches..............................................................62 2.2.1 Autosegmental phonology .....................................................................63 2.2.2 The structure of the tune.........................................................................66 2.2.3 Tune-text alignment.................................................................................69 2.3 Intonational phrases .........................................................................................72 2.3.1 Sense unit condition.................................................................................73 2.3.2 Intermediate phrases ...............................................................................74 2.3.3 Prosodic hierarchy ...................................................................................78 2.4 Pitch accent, stress, and focus..........................................................................82 2.4.1 Pitch accent and stress.............................................................................82 2.4.2 Pitch accent and focus .............................................................................83 2.5 Intonational meaning........................................................................................90 2.5.1 Tune and speech acts...............................................................................91 2.5.2 Intonational phrase and discourse structure........................................92 2.5.3 Intermediate phrase and sentence structure ........................................94 2.5.4 Prominence and focus .............................................................................95 2.5.5 Pitch accent and the way of presentation .............................................96 2.5.6 Compositionality......................................................................................99 3. Information structure and the partition of the sentence...............................101 3.1 Early models of information structure.........................................................104 3.1.1 Subject-predicate structure ...................................................................104 3.1.2 The early psychological model: Hermann Paul.................................107 3.1.3 The communicative model ...................................................................112 3.1.4 Linguistics, psychology, and information structure .........................113 3.2 Classical models of information structure...................................................115
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