The Meaning of Topic and Focus - The 59th Street Bridge Accent (Hardcover, New)

Provides an account of the complex interaction of intonational phenomena, semantics and pragmatics. Based on examples from German and English, and centred on an analysis of the fall-rise intonation contour, a semantic interpretation for two different pitch accents - focus and topic - is developed. The cross-sentence, as well as the sentence internal semantic effects of these accents, follow from the given treatment. The account is based on Montagovian possible world semantics and Chomskian generative syntax. The theory, based on that of Rooth, allows for a maximally tripartite information structure, consisting of (an optional) sentence-topic, background and focus. Both focus and sentence-topic correspond to distinct tone sequences in the sense of Pierrehumbert's decompositional theory of pitch accents. Rooth's treatment of focus is adopted and supplemented with a theory of sentence-topic interpretation, which consists of topic effect on the appriopriateness conditions and topic implicatures. Among the phenomena discussed are: question-answer congruence; contrastive topics; and topic implicatures.

General

Imprint:	Routledge
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Series:	Routledge Studies in Germanic Linguistics
Release date:	October 1997
First published:	1997
Authors:	Daniel Buring
Dimensions:	234 x 156 x 14mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	216
Edition:	New
ISBN-13:	978-0-415-16897-7
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Phonetics, phonology, prosody (speech) Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Semantics (meaning) > General Promotions
LSN:	0-415-16897-X
Barcode:	9780415168977

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