Basic notions of information structure

This article takes stock of the basic notions of Information Structure (IS). It first provides a general characterization of IS — following Chafe (1976) — within a communicative model of Common Ground (CG), which distinguishes between CG content and CG management. IS is concerned with those features of language that concern the local CG. Second, this paper defines and discusses the notions of Focus (as indicating alternatives) and its various uses, Givenness (as indicating that a denotation is already present in the CG), and Topic (as specifying what a statement is about). It also proposes a new notion, Delimitation, which comprises contrastive topics and frame setters, and indicates that the current conversational move does not entirely satisfy the local communicative needs. It also points out that rhetorical structuring partly belongs to IS.

Metadaten
Author:	Manfred Krifka ORCiD GND
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hebis:30-1112151
URL:	http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2008/1960/
ISBN:	978-3-939469-88-9
Parent Title (German):	The notions of information structure / Caroline Féry (ed.) ; Working Papers of the SFB 632, Interdisciplinary studies on information structure (ISIS) ; Vol. 6
Publisher:	Univ.-Verl.
Place of publication:	Potsdam
Document Type:	Part of a Book
Language:	English
Year of Completion:	2007
Year of first Publication:	2007
Publishing Institution:	Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:	2008/11/06
Tag:	Information structure; contrast; focus; givenness; topic
Page Number:	44
First Page:	13
Last Page:	55
Source:	http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2008/1960/ ; (in:) C. Féry et al. : The notions of information structure. Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure (ISIS), 6, 2007.
HeBIS-PPN:	207576017
Dewey Decimal Classification:	4 Sprache / 40 Sprache / 400 Sprache
Sammlungen:	Linguistik
Licence (German):	Deutsches Urheberrecht

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