23 - Information structure

Summary

Introduction

The term information structure is often used as a convenient cover expression for a bundle of phenomena – referred to by (back)ground, comment, contrast, focus, given, new, rheme, theme, topic and associated terms – that exhibit pragmatic, semantic,morphosyntactic and phonological features. It is clear that information structure affects content, and in particular that it concerns context-sensitive aspects of content, but it is not universally agreed whether information structure forms a distinct dimension within the interpretative component of language.

In this chapter, for expository purposes and as in Kruijff-Korbayová and Steedman (2003), the term information structure is used broadly as encompassing utterance-level features of both a semantic and a structural nature. The discussion will be centred around the following information-structural notions: the theme–rheme distinction (Section 23.3), givenness and topic (Section 23.4), and contrast (Section 23.5). These descriptive notions allow linguists to go a long way in analysing phenomena that have generally been thought of as concerning information structure. The facts concerning focus, one of the most (ab)used labels in information structure research, will be discussed in connection with the notions contrast and theme–rheme.

As a first approximation to information structure, consider (1) (small caps identify the lexical item associated with nuclear prominence):

(1)

1. a. We like hokey-pokey.

2. b. Hokey-pokey we like.

3. c. Hokey-pokey we hate.

4. d. We like hokey-pokey.

Examples (1a) and (1b) have identical truth conditions but still differ interpretatively; there is something in the content, understood broadly, of (1a) which sets it apart from the synonymous (1b); this interpretative difference correlates with the difference in word order. Interestingly, (1b) and (1c) display a certain interpretative equivalence which is obviously not connected to their truth-conditional meaning; this interpretative equivalence correlates with the structural ‘sameness’ that they display. Both the interpretative difference between (1a) and (1b) and the partial interpretative equivalence between (1b) and (1c) are taken to be information structural in nature. There is also a difference in (non-truth-conditional) content between (1a) and (1d), which is of a nature similar to the difference between (1a) and (1b); here, however, the structural contrast associated with the interpretative difference is not in the word order but rather in the intonation. In English and many other languages, if not all, intonation is an important correlate of information-structural content.