Intonatorische und semantische Aspekte der Informationsstruktur
(Intonational and semantic aspects of Information Structure)

Haupteminar

2. Studienabschnitt
Zeit und Ort: Fr 9-11, Bau 17.2, Konferenzraum (2.11)
Beginn: 2.11.2001
Ende: 22.2.2002
Anmeldung für die Prüfungsleistung bis zum 8.2.2002
Scheine: für "kleinen" Hauptseminarschein (dokumentierter Seminarvortrag): 2 Leistungspunkte; für "grossen" Hauptseminarschein (Seminarvortrag + Hausarbeit): 4 Leistungspunkte
Sprechstunden: nach Vereinbarung

Der Unterricht wird auf deutsch und englisch gegeben. Fragen können immer auf deutsch gestellt werden.

Inhalt

Information Structure (IS) concerns how speakers/writers realize content within a sentence in a way that reflects their intentions and their formulation of the hearer/reader's attentional state.

The goals of the course are:

• to introduce various approaches to IS, and explain the diverging terminologies that are used by them;
• to explain how IS is realized by an interplay of various means including intonation, word order, syntactic constructions and morphological marking;
• to consider how IS projects beyond the sentence into discourse.

Kursüberblick

Information Structure (IS) concerns how speakers/writers realize content within a sentence in a way that reflects their intentions and
their formulation of the hearer/reader's attentional state. By means of a particular IS, a speaker/writer  presents some parts of the sentence meaning as context-dependent, and others as context-affecting.

Various approaches to IS exist, which use diverging terminologies. Among the most often distinguished notions in the area of IS (at various levels) are Theme-Rheme (Mathesius, Firbas, Danes, Halliday, Steedman), Topic-Comment or Topic-Focus (Sgall and Hajicova), Ground(=Link+Tail)-Focus (Vallduvi),  Backround-Focus (von Stechow, Krifka, Steedman), Given-New (Halliday), contextually bound-nonbound (Sgall and Hajicova). The course introduces these approaches and explains the different terminologies they use.

IS can be realized by various means, and often by an interplay thereof. This includes intonation (i.e., accenting, de-accenting, and phrasing) , word order, syntactic constructions and morphological marking. Languages differ in the extent to which they employ these means.  The course explains how IS is realized by various means in various languages.

 Since IS reflects attentional state(s) and attention transcends the  sentence,  it is appropriate to ask also how IS projects beyond the sentence into discourse.  The course shows how the interpretation of particular adverbials  and connectives reflects the  interaction between sentence-level IS and discourse semantics.

Zeitplan

• 2.11. Session 1 (Lecture; IK): (slides)
  • Introduction
  • Outline of the seminar; Goals
  • Basic concepts of Information Structure (IS) realization, representation and interpretation (based on Steedman's approach to compositional semantics of English intonation in terms of IS)
  Reading: Steedman (2000)
  


• 9.11. Session 2 (Lecture; GJMK): IS Realization (slides)
  Various IS-realization means within and across languages (intonation, word order, syntactic constructions, morphological marking and their combinations)
  Reading: Kruijff (in press); Kruijff (2001, chapter 6)
  


• 16.11. Session 3 (Lecture, IK): Approaches to IS (slides; terminology evolution diagram)
  Different approaches to IS and the relationships among them, evolution of terminologies, comparison between leading approaches (Steedman, Prague School, Vallduvi, Halliday)
  Reading: Steedman and Kruijff-Korbayova (2001)
  


• 23.11. Session 4 (Lecture; IK): IS and Context I (slides)
  • IS and the (cognitive) status of entities
  Reading: Prince (1981), Gundel et. al, Chafe (1976), Lambrecht (1994, Chapter 3)
  


• 30.11. Session 5 (Lecture; SB): IS and Intonation (1)
  Phonetics of intonation and accent, the relation between prominence and focus, a metrical account of sentence accentuation
  Reading: Ladd (1996:160-167, 221-235); Uhmann (1991:108-120)
  

NOTE CHANGE IN SCHEDULE: SESSIONS 6 and 7 HAVE BEEN EXCHANGED!
Below is the currently valid schedule.

• 7.12. Session 6 (Lecture; SB): IS and Intonation (2) (slides of sessions 5 and 6)
  Structure-based vs. highlighting-based accounts of focus
  Reading: Gussenhoven (1983)
  


• 14.12. Session 7: Presentation of "Hausarbeit" topics and discussion
  
  
• 11.1. Session 8 (Lecture; GJMK): IS and word order
  Reading: Kruijff (2001, chapter 7)
  

NOTE CHANGE IN SCHEDULE: SESSIONS 9 and 10 HAVE BEEN EXCHANGED!
Below is the currently valid schedule.

• 18.1. Session 9 (Lecture; IK): IS and context (2) (slides)
  Reading: tbd
  
  • IS and the semantics of negation, focalizers (`only', `even'), discourse markers (`too', `although', `otherwise')
  • IS and semantic scope
  Reading: Hajicova (1993, chapters 2 and 3)
  


• 25.1.+1.2. Session 10 and 11 (Lecture; SB+GJMK): Realization and interpretation of IS in German (slides session 10) (slides session 11) (example text session 11)
  The phonology of focus in German
  Reading: Uhmann (1988); Kruijff (2001, chapter 8)
  


• 8.,15., 22.2. Sessions 12-14: Students' Presentations

Voraussetzungen: Keine.

Die Prüfungsleistungen bestehen aus einem (kurzen) Vortrag und einer schriftlichen Hausarbeit (Gewichtung 40% / 60%). Die Vorträge sollen 25-30 Minuten dauern und einen Entwurf der Hausarbeit zum Inhalt haben (Schwerpunkt liegt auf Struktur und Argumentation). Die Hausarbeit kann in der vorlesungsfreien Zeit fertiggestellt werden. Für Studenten, die sich im 1. Studienabschnitt befinden, besteht u.U. die Möglichkeit, einen Proseminarschein zu erwerben (Scheinanforderungen sind im einzelnen zu besprechen).
Anmeldefrist für die Prüfungsleistung bis zum 8.2.2002.