Focus particles in German : syntax, prosody, and information structure / Stefan Sudhoff.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sudhoff, Stefan, 1977-

Series:

Linguistik aktuell/linguistics today, 0166-0829 ; 151

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

German language--Particles.

German language.

German language--Syntax.

Prosodic analysis (Linguistics).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 335 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; Philadelphia : John Benjamins Pub. Co., 2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This study explores the grammar of focus particles in German. It gives a thorough description and analysis of focus particle constructions and links their syntactic, semantic, and information structural properties to their prosodic characteristics. The study also shows that focus particles present a particularly well-suited subject for the investigation of the modularity of grammar in general.

Contents:

Focus Particles in German

Editorial page

Title page

LCC data

Dedication page

Table of contents

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations and notational conventions

Introduction

1.1. Scope and goals

1.2. Organization of this study

Theoretical background

2.1. Focus particles

2.2. Syntax

2.3. Information structure

2.4. Prosody

2.5. Summary

The semantics of focus particles

3.1. Overview

3.2. Compositional semantics: Association with focus

3.2.1. Syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic theories

3.2.2. John only introduced Bill to Sue: Alternative Semantics and Structured Meanings

3.2.3. The restriction of the alternatives

3.2.4. Assertions, presuppositions, implicatures

3.3. Lexical semantics: Subgroups of focus particles

3.3.1. The traditional classification

3.3.2. A cross-classification of focus particles

3.4. Summary

Focus particles, syntax, and information structure

4.1. Focus particles in German: A descriptive survey

4.1.1. Positions of focus particles and their domains

4.1.2. The location of the sentence accent

4.1.3. Contrastive uses of focus particles

4.2. Syntactic analyses of focus particle constructions

4.2.1. Focus particles as adverbials

4.2.2. Focus particles as crosscategorial operators

4.2.3. The role of information structure

4.2.4. Summary

4.3. An alternative proposal

4.4. Focus particles as adjuncts to VP and AP

4.4.1. The syntactic status and the position of focus particles

4.4.2. Association with the sentence focus

4.4.3. Movement of (parts of) a focus particle's domain

4.4.4. An argument against adjunction to the root CP

4.4.5. Focus particles as adjuncts to AP

4.4.6. Summary

4.5. Stressed additive focus particles

4.5.1. Previous analyses

4.5.2. A movement account of stressed auch.

4.5.3. Arguments against a movement account

4.5.4. Summary

4.6. Focus particles as adjuncts to XP

4.6.1. Adjunction to DP, PP, and CP

4.6.2. Arguments against adjunction to XP

4.6.3. Adjunction to XP and information structure

4.6.4. Summary

4.7. Summary

The scope of focus particles

5.1. Syntactic restrictions on the scope of focus particles

5.2. Relative scope of focus particles and other scope-bearing elements

5.2.1. Negation

5.2.2. DPs and adverbials

5.2.3. Multiple focus particles

5.3. The (no) reconstruction argument against adjunction to XP

5.4. Summary and consequences

The prosody of sentences with stressed additive focus particles

6.1. Starting points and first observations

6.2. Corpus study

6.2.1. The corpus

6.2.2. Syntactic description of the corpus material

6.2.3. Intonational analysis

6.2.4. Discussion

6.3. Experimental pilot study

6.3.1. Hypotheses

6.3.2. Experiment 1: Speech production

6.3.3. Experiment 2: Speech perception

6.3.4. General discussion

6.4. Experiment 3: Stressed auch in speech production

6.4.1. Hypotheses

6.4.2. Data elicitation

6.4.3. Data analysis

6.4.4. Qualitative results

6.4.5. Quantitative results

6.4.6. Discussion

6.5. Experiment 4: The perception of utterances containing stressed auch (1)

6.5.1. Hypotheses

6.5.2. Method

6.5.3. Results and discussion

6.6. Experiment 5: The perception of utterances containing stressed auch (2)

6.6.1. Hypotheses

6.6.2. Method

6.6.3. Results and discussion

6.7. General discussion and summary

Focus particles and contrast

7.1. Focus particles, the focus-background partition, and contrast

7.2. Prosodic correlates of contrastive focus

7.3. Experiment 6: Focus particles and contrast in speech production

7.3.1. Experimental conditions and hypotheses.

7.3.2. Data elicitation

7.3.3. Data analysis

7.3.4. Results: Control conditions

7.3.5. Results: Conditions with focus particles

7.3.6. Discussion

7.4. Experiment 7: Contrast in speech perception

7.4.1. Hypotheses

7.4.2. Method

7.4.3. Results and discussion

7.5. General discussion and summary

Conclusion

Appendix

a.1. Sources of the spoken language corpus analyzed in Section 6.2

a.2. Materials of Experiment 1

a.2.1. Critical items

a.2.2. Filler items

a.3. Materials of Experiment 2

a.4. Materials of Experiment 3

a.4.1. Critical items

a.4.2. Filler items

a.5. Materials of Experiment 4

a.6. Materials of Experiment 6

Bibliography

Name index

Subject index

The series Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612558733

9781282558731

1282558730

9789027288561

9027288569

OCLC:

642206107