Cover not available
Part of
When Data Challenges Theory: Unexpected and paradoxical evidence in information structure
Edited by Davide Garassino and Daniel Jacob
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 273] 2022
► pp. 91–112

Alternatives to information structure

| University of Münster

The paper questions the assumption that information structure is a necessary component of communication. It is shown that there is no language-independent evidence that communication is based on regular alternation of presupposed and focused information, and that sentences necessarily convey information about topics. The argumentation to this effect is circular and based on contextual determinism and reification of interpretative effects. If we dispose of these fallacies, the need to posit a separate information-structural level of meaning disappears. This opens up a competely new research paradigm in discourse organisation which takes into account the practically infinite variability of natural languages, psycholinguistic evidence, social and information-transmitting nature of communication, and many other factors.

Keywords: information structure, focus, topic, interpretation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Basic tenets of information structure
  • 3.Brief critical assessment
  • 4.Alternatives to information structure
  • 5.Summary
  • Abbreviations
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 22 February 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.273.03mat
References
Abbott, Barbara
2000 Presuppositions as nonassertions. Journal of Pragmatics 32: 1419–1437. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Adamou, Evangelia, Haude, Katharina & Vanhove, Martine
(eds) 2018 Information Structure in Lesser-Described Languages: Studies in Prosody and Syntax. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bickel, Balthasar
2007 Typology in the 21st century: major current developments. Linguistic Typology 11: 239–251. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, Ina & Schumacher, Petra
2016 Towards a neurobiology of information structure. In The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure, Caroline Féry & Shinichiro Ishihara (eds), 581–598. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cowles, Heidi Wind
2012 The Psychology of Information Structure. In The Expression of Information Structure, Manfred Krifka & Renate Musan (eds), 287–317. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dąbrowska, Ewa
2010 Naive vs. expert intuitions: An empirical study of acceptability judgments. The Linguistic Review 27: 1–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Delin, Judy & Oberlander, Jon
1995 Syntactic constraints on discourse structure: the case of it-clefts. Linguistics 33: 465–500. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dickins, James
2020 Thematic Structure and Para-Syntax: Arabic as a Case Study. Abingdon: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dimroth, Christine, Andorno, Cecilia, Benazzo, Sandra & Verhagen, Josje
2010 Given claims about new topics. How Romance and Germanic speakers link changed and maintained information in narrative discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 42: 3328–3344. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
El Zarka, Dina & Schuppler, Barbara
2018 On the interplay of pragmatic and formal factors in the prosodic realization of themes in Egyptian Arabic. Grazer Linguistische Studien 90: 33–106.Google Scholar
Erteschik-Shir, Nomi
2007 Information Structure: The Syntax-Discourse Interface. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Féry, Caroline & Ishihara, Shinichiro
2016 The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Féry, Caroline & Samek-Lodovici, Vieri
2006 Focus projection and prosodic prominence in nested foci. Language 82: 131–150. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Garassino, Davide
2016 Using cleft sentences in Italian and English. A multifactorial analysis. In Current Issues in Italian, Romance, and Germanic Non-Canonical Word Orders, Anna-Maria De Cesare & Davide Garassino (eds), 181–204. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Hanks, Peter
2015 Propositional Content. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hartmann, Katharina & Zimmermann, Malte
2012 Focus Marking in Bura: Semantic Uniformity Matches Syntactic Heterogeneity. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 30: 1061–1108. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hatcher, Ann Granville
1956 Theme and Underlying Question. Two Studies of Spanish Word Order. New York: Linguistic Circle of New York.Google Scholar
Hedberg, Nancy
2006 Topic-Focus Controversies. In The Architecture of Focus, Valéria Molnár & Susanne Winkler (eds), 373–397. Berlin-New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Heller, Benedikt, Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt & Grafmiller, Jason
2017 Stability and fluidity in syntactic variation world-wide: the genitive alternation across varieties of English. Journal of English Linguistics 45: 3–27. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heusinger, Klaus von
1999 Intonation and Information Structure. Habilitationsschrift, University of Konstanz. [URL] (06 January 2020).
Jakobson, Roman
1960 Linguistics and Poetics. In Style in Language, Thomas Sebeok (ed), 350–377. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jaspers, Danny & Seuren, Pieter A. M.
2016 The Square of opposition in Catholic hands: A chapter in the history of 20th-Century logic. Logique & Analyse 233: 1–35.Google Scholar
Kaiser, Elsi
2016 Information structure and language comprehension: Insights from psycholinguistics. In The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure, Caroline Féry & Shinichiro Ishihara (eds), 523–540. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kim, Ilkyu
2015 Is Korean -(n)un a topic marker? On the nature of -(n)un and its relation to information structure. Lingua 154: 87–109. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 Can Korean -(n)un mark (contrastive) focus? Linguistic Sciences 56: 105–117. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Krifka, Manfred & Musan, Renate
2012 The Expression of Information Structure. Berlin-New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kruijff-Korbayová, Ivana & Steedman, Mark
2003 Discourse and information structure. Journal of Logic, Language and Information 12: 249–259. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas S.
1962 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lee, Chungmin, Kiefer, Ferenc & Krifka, Manfred
(eds) 2017 Contrastiveness in Information Structure, Alternatives and Scalar Implicatures [Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 91]. Cham: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matić, Dejan
2009 On the variability of focus meanings. In Current Issues in Unity and Diversity of Languages. Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Linguists, Seoul 2008, 10. Seoul: Linguistic Society of Korea.Google Scholar
2014 Deriving information structure from field data. In Methodological Issues in the Study of Information Structure, Dina El Zarka & Steffen Heidinger (eds), 25–42. Graz: Universität Graz.Google Scholar
2015 Information structure in linguistics. In International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edn., James D. Wright (ed), 95–99. Oxford: Elsevier. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matić, Dejan & Nikolaeva, Irina
2018 From polarity focus to salient polarity: From things to processes. In The Grammatical Realization of Polarity Contrast. Theoretical, Empirical, and Typological Approaches, Christine Dimroth & Stefan Sudhoff (eds), 9–53. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matić, Dejan & Wedgwood, Daniel
2013 The meaning of focus: The significance of an interpretation-based category in cross-linguistic analysis. Journal of Linguistics 49: 127–163. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mercier, Hugo & Sperber, Dan
2017 The Enigma of Reason. A New Theory of Human Understanding. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Molnár, Valéria, Egerland, Verner & Winkler, Susanne
2019 The Architecture of Topic. Berlin-New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nerlich, Brigitte & Clarke, David
1996 Language, Action and Context: The Early History of Pragmatics in Europe and America. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ozerov, Pavel
2015 Information structure without topic and focus: Differential object marking in Burmese. Studies in Language 39: 386–423. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2018 Tracing the sources of Information Structure: Towards the study of interactional management of information. Journal of Pragmatics 138: 77–97. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Potts, Christopher
2007 The expressive dimension. Theoretical Linguistics 33: 165–197. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reinhart, Tanya
1982 Pragmatics and linguistics: an analysis of sentence topics. Philosophica 27: 53–94.Google Scholar
Riester, Arndt, Brunetti, Lisa & De Kuthy, Kordula
2018 Annotation guidelines for Questions under Discussion and information structure. In Information Structure in Lesser-Described Languages: Studies in Syntax and Prosody, Evangelia Adamou, Katharina Haude & Martine Vanhove (eds), 403–443. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Riesberg, Sonja, Shiohara, Asako & Utsumi, Atsuko
2018 Perspectives on Information Structure in Austronesian Languages. Berlin: Language Science Press.Google Scholar
Schindler, Samuel, Drożdżowicz, Anna & Brøcker, Karen
(eds) 2020 Linguistic Intuitions: Evidence and Method. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schwabe, Kerstin & Winkler, Susanne
(eds) 2007 On Information Structure, Meaning and Form: Generalizations across Languages. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Seuren, Pieter A. M.
1998 Western Linguistics: An Historical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 The cognitive ontogenesis of predicate logic. Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 55: 499–532. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sprouse, Jon, Schütze, Carson T. & Almeida, Diogo
2013 A comparison of informal and formal acceptability judgments using a random sample from Linguistic Inquiry 2001–2010. Lingua 134: 219–248. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stalnaker, Robert
1974 Pragmatic Presuppositions. In Semantics and Philosophy, Milton Munitz & Peter Under (eds), 197–213. New York: New York University Press,Google Scholar
2002 Common Ground. Linguistics and Philosophy 25: 701–721. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van der Wal, Jenneke
2016 Diagnosing focus. Studies in Language 40: 259–301. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wagner, Michael
2016 Information structure and production planning. In The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure, Caroline Féry & Shinichiro Ishihara (eds), 541–561. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wedgwood, Daniel
2005 Shifting the Focus. From Static Structures to Dynamic Interpretation. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Zimmermann, Malte & Onea, Edgar
2011 Focus Marking and Focus Interpretation. Lingua 121: 1651–1670. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

De Cesare, Anna-Maria
2022. To be or not to be focus adverbials?. In When Data Challenges Theory [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 273], ► pp. 204 ff. DOI logo
Garassino, Davide & Daniel Jacob
2022. Introduction. When data challenges theory. In When Data Challenges Theory [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 273], ► pp. 2 ff. DOI logo
Ozerov, Pavel
2023. From sentential syntax to syntax of interaction. Journal of Speech Sciences 12 ► pp. e023001 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.