Topic, Focus, and the Grammar-Pragmatics Interface

Topic, focus, and the grammar-pragmatics interface

Form-Meaning Interface in Constraint-based Unified Grammar: Prosody and Pragmatics

The present work aims at a formal description of the interface between prosody and pragmatics in the framework of Constraint-based Unified Grammar CUG. It focuses on two main aspects of this interface: (1) intonation patterns vs. speech acts and (2) stress vs. topicfocus articulation. First, four terminal contours are proposed: fall, mid, rise, and high rise. They are then mapped into the speec...

Cross-linguistic Influence at Syntax-pragmatics Interface: A Case of OPC in Persian

Recent research in the area of Second Language Acquisition has proposed that bilinguals and L2 learners show syntactic indeterminacy when syntactic properties interface with other cognitive domains. Most of the research in this area has focused on the pragmatic use of syntactic properties while the investigation of compliance with a grammatical rule at syntax-related interfaces has not received...

Syntax-prosody Interface for Romanian within Information Structure Theories

The following main ideas have been pointed out and put to work within our paper: (a) Information Structure (IS) theories (topic-focus, theme-rheme, background-contrast, informational and contrastive focus, focus projection rules, etc.) on text are shown to behave currently as a consistent linguistic tool that can stand behind a correct, language and contextual-depending, mapping of text into sp...

Integrating Pragmatics into the Grammar

0 . Introduction In recent years, the number of linguists who refer to notions like focus and ground have grown rapidly. Many interesting articles have appeared that show that we cannot give a complete syntactic, morphological or prosodic analysis without taking such notions into acccount. By the focus of an utterance I understand the new information that the speaker wants to convey. In contras...