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Information Structure

1. Conceptual and Terminological Issues

(1) a. Who did the Red Sox play?

b. The Red Sox played the YANKEES.

c. #The RED SOX played the Yankees.

{Uppercase letters indicating the location of a prominent pitch accent}

1.1 Two given-new distinctions

� The topic-focus distinction has been widely associated with the division between

given and new information in a sentence.

� There has been disagreement and confusion, however, regarding the exact nature of

this association. Some of the confusion has resulted from conflating two types of

givenness-newness: REFERENTIAL GIVENNESS-NEWNESS and RELATIONAL GIVENNESS-

NEWNESS.

• Referential givenness-newness involves a relation between a linguistic expression

and a corresponding non-linguistic entity in the speaker/hearer's mind, the

discourse (model), or some real or possible world. Some representative examples

of referential givenness concepts include existential presupposition, various

senses of referentiality and specificity, the familiarity condition on definite

descriptions, the activation and identifiability statuses, and the cognitive

statuses. For example, the cognitive statuses on the Givenness Hierarchy in (2)

represent referential givenness statuses that an entity mentioned in a sentence may

have in the mind of the addressee.

(2) The Givenness Hierarchy (Gundel et al. 1993) in focus > activated > familiar > uniquely identifiable > referential > type identifiable

that

{it} this {that N} {the N} {indefinite this N} {a N}

this N

[indefinite this N = “new-this”]

• Relational givenness-newness, in contrast, involves a partition of the

semantic/conceptual representation of a sentence into two complementary parts, X

and Y, where X is what the sentence is about (the logical/psychological subject)

and Y is what is predicated about X (the logical/psychological predicate).

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X is given in relation to Y in the sense that it is independent of, and outside the

scope of, what is predicated in Y. Y is new in relation to X in the sense that it is

new information that is asserted, questioned, etc. about X.

Relational givenness-newness thus reflects how the informational content of a

particular event or state of affairs expressed by a sentence is represented.

• Referential givenness-newness and relational givenness-newness are logically

independent of each other.

(3) A: Who called?

B: Pat said SHE called. {“Pat” and “she” are coreferential.}

(4) A: Did you order the chicken or the pork?

B: It was the PORK that I ordered.

1.2 Referential properties of topic

� We have noted that topic-focus structure is associated with relational givenness-

newness in the sense that topic is given in relation to focus and focus represents the

new information predicated about the topic. This association is logically independent

of referential givenness-newness, which is not necessarily connected to topic or focus

at all.

� There is, however, a good deal of empirical evidence for an independent connection

between topic and some degree of referential givenness. Virtually the whole range of

possible referential givenness conditions on topics has been suggested, including

presupposition, familiarity, specificity, referentiality, and focus of attention.

• Some of the well-known facts that indicate a connection between topicality and

some kind of referential givenness have to do with the “definiteness” or

“presupposition” effect of topics.

o For example, it has often been noted that the phrase marked by a topic marker

in Japanese and Korean necessarily has a “definite” (including generic)

interpretation. Thus, in (5), where the subject phrase is followed by the

nominative marker ga, both the subject and the object can have either a

definite or indefinite interpretation. But in (6), where the subject is followed

by the topic marker wa, it can only be interpreted as definite.

(5) Neko ga kingyo o ijit-te ……

cat NOM goldfish ACC play.with-and

‘The/A cat is playing with the/a goldfish, and …’

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(6) Neko wa kingyo o ijit-te

cat TOP goldfish ACC play.with-and

‘The/*A cat is playing with the/a goldfish, and …’

o Similarly in English:

(7) My sister, she's a high school teacher.

(8) That book you borrowed, are you finished reading it yet?

(9) My work, I'm going crazy.

(10) The Red Sox, did they play the Yankees?

Indefinites are generally excluded from topic position unless they can be

interpreted generically.

(11) a. The window, it's still open.

b. *A window, it's still open.

One explanation: Gundel (1985, 1988) proposes a condition on felicitous

topics which states that their referents must already be familiar, in the sense

that the addressee must have an existing representation in memory. Since

indefinites generally are not used to refer to familiar entities (unless they are

intended to be interpreted generically), the familiarity condition on topics

provides a principled explanation for facts like those in (7-11).

� To sum up, topics are relationally given, by definition, in the sense that they are what

the sentence/utterance is about. They provide the context for the main predication,

which is assessed relative to the topic.

1.3 Information focus vs. contrastive focus

� There has been a similar confusion between two conceptually distinct interpretative

notions of focus: one of these is relational - the information predicated about the topic;

the other is referential - material that the speaker calls to the addressee's attention,

thereby often evoking a contrast with other entities that might fill the same position.

Gundel & Fretheim (2004) refer to these two senses as INFORMATION FOCUS and

CONTRASTIVE FOCUS, respectively.

(12) A: Do you know who called the meeting?

B1: BILL called the meeting. [information focus]

B2: It was BILL who called the meeting. [information focus]

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(13) Every time we get together I'm the one who has to organize things, but this time

BILL called the meeting. [information focus]

(14) We have to get rid of some of these clothes. That COAT you're wearing I think we

can give to the Salvation ARMY. [COAT: “contrastive topic”; “contrastive focus”]

[ARMY: “information focus”]

(15) A: Who made all this great food?

B: BILL made the CURRY. [BILL: “information focus”; “contrastive focus”]

[CURRY: “contrastive topic”; “contrastive focus”]

� As seen in (12-15), both information focus and contrastive focus may be marked with

a prominent pitch accent. In fact, (14) and (15) each have two positions of prominent

pitch accent - one of these falls on the information focus, and the other falls on a

“contrastive topic.”

(16) A: Which of these clothes do you think we should give to the Salvation Army?

B: That COAT you're wearing (I think we can give away). [Information focus]

2. Phonological and syntactic reflections of topic and focus

2.1 Focus and intonation

� The association between prosodic prominence and focus has been shown to hold in a

variety of typologically and genetically diverse languages, and is widely believed to

be universal.

� Information focus and contrastive focus in English: They are associated with distinct

pitch accents. Information focus is marked by a falling tone. A “contrastive topic”

(and possibly contrast in general, including contrastive focus) is typically indicated by

a complex L + H* tone.

(17) He has just left for London.

(18) A: Do you like both of the two books?

B: This book, I like; that book, I don’t.

2.2. Topic, focus, and syntactic structure

2.2.1 Non-canonical structures: An introduction

� It has been a linguistic truism that human languages tend to structure discourse on the

basis of a “given before new” principle – that is, in any particular sentence,

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information that is assumed to be familiar, or given, tends to be placed before that

which is assumed to be new.

� One way of ensuring that this flow of information is preserved is through the use of

non-canonical constructions, i.e. syntactic structures in which the canonical order of

elements (in English, subject-verb-object) is rearranged.

(19) a. Fred ate the beans.

b. ?The beans, Fred ate. (topicalization)

c. It was the beans that Fred ate. (cleft structure)

d. The beans, Fred ate them. (left-dislocation)

e. Fred ate them, the beans. (right-dislocation)

� Various individual constructions serve distinct discourse functions relating to the

structuring of information within the discourse, and these functions work together to

create generalized patterns of information structure.

• Horn (1986) posit a “conspiracy of syntactic constructions” preventing NPs

representing relatively unfamiliar information from occupying subject position.

• He argues that leftward movement in general serves to prepose “thematic” or

familiar information, whereas rightward movement serves to postpose non-

thematic or unfamiliar information.

[Horn, Laurence R. 1986. Presupposition, theme and variations. Papers from the

Parasession on Pragmatics and Grammatical Theory. Chicago Linguistics Society 22.

168-192.]

� “Open proposition” (i.e. presupposition) and focus

(20) a. Is it JOHN who writes poetry?

b. It isn’t JOHN who writes poetry.

c. No, it is BILL who writes poetry.

• “Open proposition” (OP) serves to mark presumed shared knowledge in discourse.

An open proposition contains one or more variables and represents what the

speaker assumes to be salient or inferrable in the discourse at the time of utterance.

The open proposition required for the felicity of a given utterance is derived by

replacing its tonically stressed constituent with a variable.

• Focus: the instantiation of the variable

(21) Open proposition: X writes poetry

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2.2.2 Preposing

� A preposing consists of two parts: the open proposition (containing one or more

variables) and the focus. The instantiation of a variable in an open proposition

constitutes an utterance’s focus, represents new information, and is realized

prosodically with a pitch accent.

� Preposings can be classified into two major types on the basis of their prosodic and

information structure: focus preposing and topicalization. Intonationally speaking,

the difference between focus preposing and topicalization is that only the former

requires that the nuclear accent be on the preposed constituent.

(22) Yeah we did it. Two or three times we did it.

(Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean)

OP: We did it X times (where X is a member of the set of numbers).

• The preposed constituent of a topicalization does not contain the focus but it does

bear one or more pitch accents since it typically is contained within its own

intonational phrase.

(23) [context: A and B are discussing which film to see]

A: Ok, our choices are “Star Struck” playing on Sansom Street and either “The

Return of Martin Guerre” or “L’Etoile du Nord,” both playing at the Ritz.

B: I vote for “Star Struck.” The OTHER ones you have to go all the way down to

Second and WALNUT to see.

• The OP for a topicalization is determined in much the same way as for focus

preposing, except that the set member represented by the preposed constituent is

replaced in the OP by the full set, as in (24):

(24) a. OP = You have to go to X LOCATION TO SEE {MOVIES}.

b. Focus = all the way down to Second and Walnut.

2.2.3 Clefts (What can be clefted?)

� The noncanonical constructions most associated with open propositions are cleft

sentences, of which there are two principal subtypes, IT-CLEFTS and WH-CLEFTS.

Wh-clefts may be further classified into two types based on constituent order:

reversed and non-reversed.

(25) a. I bought a red wool sweater. [non-cleft]

b. It was a red wool sweater that I bought. [it-cleft]

c. What I bought was a red wool sweater. [non-reversed wh-cleft]

d. A red wool sweater was what I bought.[reversed wh-cleft]

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� Clefts consist of two parts: the open proposition, corresponding to the presupposition

of the utterance, and the focus.

� Each of the examples (25b–d) presupposes that the speaker bought something. The

focus, a red wool sweater, is the instantiation of the variable and represents new

information.

� The use of a cleft implicates that the instantiation of the variable is both exhaustive

and exclusive. Thus, the speaker's use of any of the clefts in (25) implicates that a red

wool sweater constitutes the sum total of the purchase, i.e. that the speaker didn’t (on

the occasion in question) buy anything else. Note that this implicature is absent from

the non-cleft (25a), which is consistent with the speaker's having bought additional

items.

� It-clefts may also be classified into two types on the basis of whether the information

represented by the presupposition is discourse-old or discourse-new.

• Discourse-old presupposition

(26) a. A: Did you turn the air-conditioning off?

B: No, it was Kim.

b. Inexperienced dancers often have difficulty in ending the Natural Turn in the

correct alignment …It is usually the man who is at fault.

c. John only did the illustrations for the book. It was Mary who wrote the story.

• Discourse-new presupposition

(27) a. It was 50 years ago that the first real computer was built in Philadelphia.

b. It is with great pleasure that I now declare this Exhibition open.

c. The Indians were helpful in many ways. It was they who taught the settlers how

to plant and harvest crops successfully in the New World.

In such examples, most of the new information is conveyed by the relative

clause. As with the first type, however, the information in the relative clause is

presented as a presupposition, i.e. as factual and uncontroversial. [The concept of

presupposition is thus distinct from that of old information: information does not

have to be given to be presupposed.] The focused element in this second type of

it-cleft may be an adjunct, as in (27a–b), or an argument, as in (27c).

� Gundel & Fretheim (2004) concludes that there is no unique one-to-one mapping

between the clefted constituent and the information focus of the sentence.

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2.2.4 Gapping

� Gapping also requires a contextually salient open proposition for felicity. In this case,

however, the OP contains at least two variables.

(28) Ross studied law and Norris history.

(29) OP: X studied Y (where X is a member of some salient set of people and Y is a

member of the set of academic subjects).

� As with clefts, the instantiations of these variables receive nuclear stress.

2.2.5 Inversion

� An inversion is a sentence in which the logical subject appears in postverbal position

while some other, canonically postverbal, constituent appears in preverbal position.

(30) a. There are huge cartons and tins of nuts, vanilla, honey, peanut butter. Varieties

of herb tea are visible. On the counter are loaves– whole wheat, cinnamon

raisin, oatmeal, rye, soy sunflower, corn meal. (S. Terkel, Working, NY: Avon,

1974, p. 607)

b. She's a nice woman, isn’t she? Also a nice woman is our next guest …

c. Two CBS crewmen were wounded by shrapnel yesterday in Souk el Gharb

during a Druse rocket attack on Lebanese troops. They were the 5th and 6th

television-news crewmen to be wounded in Lebanon this month. One television

reporter, Clark Todd of Canada, was killed earlier this month. Wounded

yesterday were cameraman Alain Debos, 45, and soundman Nick Follows, 24.

(Philadelphia Inquirer, 9/24/83)

� As with clefts, gapping, and preposing, felicitous inversion is also sensitive to the

presence of a salient open proposition. Associated with each inversion in (30) is an

OP that is required to be salient in the context in order for the inversion to be

felicitous. What this OP is for any given inversion can be determined in the same way

as for preposing: the preposed constituent is replaced with the relevant set of which it

is a member and the focused item is replaced with a variable. In the case of (30c), this

process results in (31):

(31) a. OP = X WAS WOUNDED AT {TIME}.

b. Focus = cameraman Alain Debos, 45, and soundman Nick Follows, 24.

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2.2.6 Left-dislocation and right-dislocation

� Left-Dislocation ((32a)) and Right-Dislocation ((32b)): The structure most widely

and consistently associated with topic marking is one in which a constituent

referring to the topic of the sentence is adjoined to the left or right of a full sentence

comment/focus.

(32) a. The beans, Fred ate them. (left-dislocation)

b. Fred ate them, the beans. (right-dislocation)

• Left-Dislocation: It refers to constructions where a constituent is left-adjoined to a

sentence containing a coreferential copy.

• Right-Dislocation: It refers to constructions where a constituent is right-adjoined

to a sentence containing a coreferential copy.

• Dislocated phrases mark topics.

(33) Most middle-class Americans, when they look at the costs plus the benefits, they're

going to be much better off. (Prodigy 1993, cited in Prince 1998)

(34) Any company, if they're worth 150 million dollars, you don't need to think of …

(Terkel 1974, cited in Prince 1998)

While there is still some controversy about the referential givenness properties of

topics, it is generally agreed that topics must be at least referential. But Gundel

(1999) argues that sentences like those in (33) and (34) are not necessarily

counterexamples to the view that left-dislocated phrases mark topics, if a

distinction is made between topic as a syntactic category and topic as a

semantic/pragmatic category. She proposes that the semantic/pragmatic topic

associated with dislocated phrases of this type is the entity that is quantified (i.e.,

the N-set), not the whole quantified phrase. Thus, (33) and (34) could be

paraphrased as (33') and (34'), respectively (see also Gundel 1974).

(33') (As for) Middle-class Americans, when most of them look at the costs plus the

benefits, they're going to be much better off.

(34') (As for) Companies, if any one of them is worth 150 million dollars, you don't need

to think of. …

{Any effect from the adverbial clause in between?}