Information structure and referential givenness/newness: How much belongs in the grammar?

This paper is concerned with such concepts as topic, focus and cognitive status of discourse referents, which have been included under the label information structure (alternatively information status), as they are related in some sense to the distribution of given and new information. It addresses the question of which information structural properties are best accounted for by grammatical constraints and which can be attributed to non-linguistic constraints on the way information is processed and communicated. Two logically independent senses of given-new information are distinguished, one referential and the other relational. I discuss some examples of linguistic phenomena that pertain to each of these different senses and show that both are linguistically relevant and must be represented in the grammar. I also argue that phenomena related to both senses have pragmatic effects that do not have to be represented in the grammar since they result from interaction of the language system with general pragmatic principles that constrain inferential processes involved in language production and understanding.

[1]  Z. Harris,et al.  Foundations of language , 1941 .

[2]  M. Halliday.  NOTES ON TRANSITIVITY AND THEME IN ENGLISH. PART 2 , 1967 .

[3]  Noam Chomsky,et al.  Deep structure, surface structure, and semantic interpretation , 1969 .

[4]  Noam Chomsky,et al.  Deep structure, surface structure, and semantic interpretation by Noam Chomsky and other essays , 1970 .

[5]  Ray Jackendoff,et al.  Semantic Interpretation in Generative Grammar , 1972 .

[6]  P. Sgall,et al.  Topic, focus and generative semantics , 1973 .

[7]  E. Prince.  A COMPARISON OF WH-CLEFTS AND IT-CLEFTS IN DISCOURSE , 1978 .

[8]  Ellen F. Prince,et al.  Toward a taxonomy of given-new information , 1981 .

[9]  T. Reinhart.  Pragmatics and Linguistics: an analysis of Sentence Topics , 1981, Philosophica.

[10]  Irene Heim,et al.  The semantics of definite and indefinite noun phrases : a dissertation , 1982 .

[11]  박승윤,et al.  영어에서의 Functional Sentence Perspective의 제양상 , 1982 .

[12]  Ivan A. Sag,et al.  Referential and quantificational indefinites , 1982 .

[13]  Petr Sgall,et al.  The Meaning Of The Sentence In Its Semantic And Pragmatic Aspects , 1986 .

[14]  Mira Ariel.  Referring and accessibility , 1988, Journal of Linguistics.

[15]  Bonnie Webber,et al.  Discourse Deixis and Discourse Processing , 1988 .

[16]  Jeanette K. Gundel.  The Role of Topic and Comment in Linguistic Theory , 1988 .

[17]  Ron Zacharski,et al.  On the Generation and Interpretation of Demonstrative Expressions , 1988, COLING.

[18]  Jeanette K. Gundel.  Universals of topic-comment structure , 1988 .

[19]  Nancy Hedberg,et al.  Discourse pragmatics and cleft sentences in English , 1990 .

[20]  Enric Vallduví,et al.  The Informational Component , 1990 .

[21]  Kari Fraurud,et al.  Definiteness and the Processing of Noun Phrases in Natural Discourse , 1990, J. Semant..

[22]  E. Prince.  The ZPG Letter: Subjects, Definiteness, and Information-status , 1992 .

[23]  Jeanette K. Gundel,et al.  Cognitive Status and the Form of Referring Expressions in Discourse , 1993 .

[24]  Ivan A. Sag,et al.  Book Reviews: Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar and German in Head-driven Phrase-structure Grammar , 1996, CL.

[25]  Knud Lambrecht,et al.  Information structure and sentence form , 1994 .

[26]  Jeanette K. Gundel.  Relevance theory meets the givenness hierarchy: an account of inferrables , 1996 .

[27]  E. Engdahl,et al.  The linguistic realization of information packaging , 2013 .

[28]  P. Sgall.  Functional sentence perspective , 1996 .

[29]  Georgia M. Green,et al.  The structure of CONTEXT: The representation of pragmatic restrictions in HPSG , 1997 .

[30]  Nomi Erteschik-Shir,et al.  The dynamics of focus structure , 1997 .

[31]  Bonnie L. Webber,et al.  Structure and Ostension in the Interpretation of Discourse Deixis , 1991, ArXiv.

[32]  James F. Allen,et al.  Resolving Demonstrative Anaphora in the TRAINS93 Corpus , 1998 .

[33]  Betty J. Birner,et al.  Information status and noncanonical word order in English , 1998 .

[34]  Renata Vieira,et al.  A Corpus-based Investigation of Definite Description Use , 1997, CL.

[35]  Jeanette K. Gundel.  Topic, Focus, and the Grammar-Pragmatics Interface , 1999 .

[36]  Georgia M. Green,et al.  The Nature of Pragmatic Information , 1999 .

[37]  Jeanette K. Gundel,et al.  The Role of Context in Pronominal Reference to Higher Order Entities in English and Norwegian , 1999, CONTEXT.

[38]  Nancy Hedberg,et al.  The Referential Status of Clefts. , 2000 .

[39]  Ron Zacharski,et al.  Definite descriptions and cognitive status in English: why accommodation is unnecessary , 2001, English Language and Linguistics.

[40]  Jeanette K. Gundel,et al.  INFORMATION STRUCTURE AND THE ACCESSIBILITY OF CLAUSALLY INTRODUCED REFERENTS , 2001 .

[41]  Z. Harris,et al.  Foundations of Language , 1940 .

[42]  Michael Hegarty,et al.  Cognitive Status, Information Structure, and Pronominal Reference to Clausally Introduced Entities , 2003, J. Log. Lang. Inf..