Intonation and Information Structure.
Klaus von Heusinger

Habilitationsschrift. Universität Konstanz. 1999

1. Intonational effects – an overview

3. Information structure and the partition of the sentence

5. Association with focus in definite NPs

6. Focus and discourse semantics

7. New vistas of the intonational lexicon

Introduction

Topics:

The concept of information structure
The structure of the argument
Research on intonation and information structure
The outline of the book

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1. Intonational effects – an overview

Topics:

The characterization of intonation
Suprasegmentals
Linguistic vs. paralinguistic information
Sentence-level or postlexical
The interaction of intonational features
The functions of intonation
Communicative functions
Speech acts
Phrasing
Contrast
Discourse structure
Focus-background structure
Topic-comment structure
Scope effects
Deaccenting
Association with focus
Focus-sensitive particles and truth-conditional effects
Focus-sensitive particles and presuppositional effects
Free focus
Recursiveness of focus
Adverbs of quantification
Nominal quantification
Other operators
Problems of association with focus
Summary

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2. Intonational phonology

Topics:

Intonation as linguistic research area
Suprasegmental features
Separating linguistics from paralinguistics
Phonetic vs. phonological approaches to intonation
Intonational features as phonemes
Autosegmental-metrical approaches
Autosegmental phonology
The structure of the tune
Tune-text alignment
Intonational phrases
Sense unit condition
Intermediate phrases
Prosodic hierarchy
Pitch accent, stress, and focus
Pitch accent and stress
Pitch accent and focus
Intonational meaning
Tune and speech acts
Intonational phrase and discourse structure
Intermediate phrase and sentence structure
Prominence and focus
Pitch accent and the way of presentation
Compositionality

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3. Information structure and the partition of the sentence

Topics:

Early models of information structure
Subject-predicate structure
The early psychological model: Hermann Paul
The communicative model
Linguistics, psychology, and information structure
Classical models of information structure
The Prague School
Halliday and the American structuralists
Chafe on givenness
Chomsky on focus and presupposition

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4. Semantic theories of focus

Topics:

A prepositional analysis of only
The construction of focus
The syntactic focus feature F
The semantic representation:
Association with focus and the scope of the particle
Semantics of association with focus
Movement theories
Alternative Semantics
Focus Phrases
At what level does focus operate?
Levels of representation
Focus represented in syntactic configurations
Focus as different denotational levels
Representational approach
Perspectives on the function of focus

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5. Association with focus in definite NPs

Topics:

Definite NPs in focus
Alternative Semantics and definite NPs
Extension of Alternative Semantics
The definite article
Focus Phrases reconsidered
Adverbs of quantification
The Architecture of Alternative Semantics
Fine-grained descriptions
No number information
Choice functions
Polymorph choice function
Type shifting operation
Summary
The problems of focus semantics

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6. Focus and discourse semantics

Topics:

Discourse Representation Theory
Anaphoric relations
Quantification
Discourse structure and background
The Foreground-background semantics
The construction of foreground and background
Discourse structure, background, and givenness
Background-foreground interaction
Association with focus
Perspectives

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