Information structure and syntactic change in Germanic and Romance languages / edited by Kristin Bech, Kristine Gunn Eide.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Bech, Kristin, editor.

Eide, Kristine Gunn, editor.

Series:

Linguistik aktuell.

Linguistik Aktuell = Linguistics Today

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Grammar, Comparative and general--Topic and content.

Grammar, Comparative and general.

Grammar, Comparative and general--Syntax.

Germanic languages--Grammar, Comparative--Romance.

Germanic languages.

Romance languages--Grammar, Comparative--Germanic.

Romance languages.

Language and languages--Variation.

Language and languages.

Comparative linguistics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (429 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam, The Netherlands ; Philadelphia, [Pennsylvania] : John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2014.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In this article, we discuss how contrastivity can be identified in historical texts where we have no direct access to prosodic features such as stress and intonation. We depart from our knowledge of contrastivity in the modern languages and their exponence in Modern Spanish and Portuguese, where both word order and prosody play a role in expressing contrast, and compare the analysis of the modern languages to our data of Old Spanish and Old Portuguese. Our findings indicate that very little has changed with regard to the expression of contrastivity through word order. Therefore, any word order

Contents:

Information Structure and Syntactic Changein Germanic and Romance Languages; Editorial page; Title page; LCC data; Table of contents; PartI. Information-structural categories and corpus annotation; Part II.Changes on the interface between syntax and information structure; Part III.Comparisons on the interface between syntax and information structure; Acknowledgements; Information structure and syntax in oldGermanic and Romance languages; 1. Introduction; 2. Approaches to information structure and syntax in historical linguistics; 3. Annotated corpora; 4. The structure of the book; References

The theoretical foundations of givenness annotation1. Introduction; 1.1 Theory and practice; 2. Theory; 2.1 Discourse referents; 2.2 Taggables; 2.3 Reference contexts; 2.4 Contexts and reference resolution in dynamic semantics; 2.4.1 The discourse context; 2.4.2 The encyclopaedic context and the situation context; 2.4.3 The scenario context; 2.4.4 Embedded contexts and non-specificity; 2.5 Generic reference; 2.6 The PROIEL tagset; 3. Annotation in practice; 3.1 General; 3.2 Specificity - nonspec vs. new; 3.3 Genericity; 3.3.1 kind vs. nonspec; 3.3.2 kind vs. acc-gen; 3.4 Bridging

3.4.1 acc-inf vs old3.4.2 acc-inf vs new, nonspec or no tag - the limits to inference; 4. Evaluation and conclusions; 4.1 The PROIEL scheme and other givenness annotation schemes; 4.2 Annotation workflow and interannotator agreement; 4.3 Data sample; 4.4 Conclusions; References; Testing the theory; 1. Introduction; 2. The data; 3. 'Old/given' information; 4. Inferables; 5. 'New' information; 6. Conclusions; Appendix A: Notes on data collection; References; Quantifying information structure changein English; 1. Introduction; 1.1 Old English V2 syntax and the subject

1.2 The changing role of the English subject1.3 Hypotheses; 2. Corpora; 2.1 Referential status; 2.2 Enriched texts; 3. Experiments; 3.1 Subject ellipsis; 3.2 Subject referent switch; 3.2.1 A definition of subject-referent switch; 3.2.2 Measuring subject-referent switch; 3.2.3 Subject-referent switch results; 3.2.4 Subject chain distribution; 3.3 Subject animacy; 3.3.1 Determining subject animacy; 3.3.2 Subject animacy results; 3.4 Pre-subject linking; 3.4.1 Clause-initial linking; 3.4.2 Determining pre-subject linking; 3.4.3 Pre-subject linking results; 4. Conclusions and discussion

5. SourcesReferences; Tracing overlap in function in historical corpora; 1. Introduction; 2. The passive and object fronting as 'information-rearrangers'; 3. Comparing the function of passives and object fronting in Old English; 3.1 Information status categories; 3.2 Results for long passives; 3.3 Results for object fronting; 4. The frequency of topicalization and passivization in the history of English; 5. Conclusion; References; Referential properties of the full and reduced forms of the definite article in German; 1. Introduction

2. The distribution of full and reduced definite articles in Present-day German: Some theoretical concepts

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9789027270467

9027270465

OCLC:

878263185