Information Structure 2

Question 1

How can information be marked?

Answer 1

Intonation / Stress:

• New-Information Stress: “Who ate the last pizza?” -> “Harry ate the last Pizza”
• Constrative Stress: “Did you eat the last Pizza?” -> “(No), Harry ate the last Pizza”
• Properties of Stress: Loundness, pitch, duration

Morphology:

• English doesnt have any morphological markers but other languages do

Syntax:

• Left disclocation and Fronting:
  • I don’t like Tony
  • Tony I don’t like (fronting)
  • Tony, I don’t like him (left dislocation)
• Difference between them: pronoun and comma
• Functions: reintroducing given info and can be contrastive

Question 2

What is Cleft Structure?

Syntax

Answer 2

Simple sentence split into main and relative clause:

• Harry loves pizza (normal)
• It’s pizza that Harry loves (cleft)

It-cleft sentences:

• It’s - cleft (NP, PreP, AdvP) - that - given info
• It was my car that he destroyed.
• highlighted = given info

WH-cleft sentences:

• WH word - given info - is/was/will be - new info
• What he destroyed was my car.
• highlighted = given info

Function:

• marks givenness and contrast

Difference Between Them:

• WH-cleft is present and active in listerners mind (is already thinking about info)

Question 3

What are passives and what are their funcitons?

Syntax

Answer 3

Agentless passive:

• The house was built four years ago
• Agent is unimportant or already known and irrlevant

Agent passive:

• The house was built by my grandpa
• Other NP (the house) more important that agent (the grandpa)

Question 4

What is Austin’s ordinanry language philosophy?

Answer 4

People don’t only make logical statements about the world

• They preform communicative acts
• Cant use logical modell -> Speech acts (Model of communicative acts)

Speech Acts:

• not true / false but succesful / not

Question 5

How does Speaker’s meaning differ from utterance?

Answer 5

Speakers meaning:

• Meaning may differ from utterance
• E.g. Do you know the time?
  • Do you know what time it is? (yes / no)
  • Please tell me the time (7:30)
• Hearer reads between the lines
• A unit of meaning = utterance
  • -> Different types of speech acts

Question 6

What are the different types of speech acts?

Answer 6

Representatives:

• describe the world
• Dortmund is a city in Germany.

Directives:

• give orders, direct people
• Open that window there!

Declarations/declaratives:

• change the world via the utterance
• I pronounce you husband and wife.

Commissives:

• commit the speaker to doing something
• I promise that I will help you with your maths.

Expressives:

• express the feelings of the speaker
• I am really, really sorry about this.

Verdictives:

• speaker judges or assesses other people’s acts.
• Combines representations and declarations: You are out!

-> All utterances are types of speech acts
-> Shows intentions
-> Combination of several speech acts:

• I am tired (represenatitive: they are tired) (directive: please stop talking)