The Role of Prosody and Morphology in the Mapping of Information Structure onto Syntax
The mapping of information structure onto morphology or intonation varies greatly crosslinguistically. Agglutinative languages, like Inuktitut or Quechua, have a rich morphological layer onto which discourse-level features are mapped but a limited use of intonation. Instead, English or Spanish lack...
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ftdoajarticles:oai:doaj.org/article:9b3672c5d18e4841ad95291c9dd6233f 2023-05-15T16:55:34+02:00 The Role of Prosody and Morphology in the Mapping of Information Structure onto Syntax Laura Colantoni Liliana Sánchez 2021-12-01T00:00:00Z https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6040207 https://doaj.org/article/9b3672c5d18e4841ad95291c9dd6233f EN eng MDPI AG https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/6/4/207 https://doaj.org/toc/2226-471X doi:10.3390/languages6040207 2226-471X https://doaj.org/article/9b3672c5d18e4841ad95291c9dd6233f Languages, Vol 6, Iss 207, p 207 (2021) intonation morphology Quechua Inuktitut Spanish English Language and Literature P article 2021 ftdoajarticles https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6040207 2022-12-30T23:45:53Z The mapping of information structure onto morphology or intonation varies greatly crosslinguistically. Agglutinative languages, like Inuktitut or Quechua, have a rich morphological layer onto which discourse-level features are mapped but a limited use of intonation. Instead, English or Spanish lack grammaticalized morphemes that convey discourse-level information but use intonation to a relatively large extent. We propose that the difference found in these two pairs of languages follows from a division of labor across language modules, such that two extreme values of the continuum of possible interactions across modules are available as well as combinations of morphological and intonational markers. At one extreme, in languages such as Inuktitut and Quechua, a rich set of morphemes with scope over constituents convey sentence-level and discourse-level distinctions, making the alignment of intonational patterns and information structure apparently redundant. At the other extreme, as in English and to some extent Spanish, a series of consistent alignments of PF and syntactic structure are required to distinguish sentence types and to determine the information value of a constituent. This results in a complementary distribution of morphology and intonation in these languages. In contact situations, overlap between patterns of module interaction are attested. Evidence from Quechua–Spanish and Inuktitut–English bilinguals supports a bidirectionality of crosslinguistic influence; intonational patterns emerge in non-intonational languages to distinguish sentence types, whereas morphemes or discourse particles emerge in intonational languages to mark discourse-level features. Article in Journal/Newspaper inuktitut Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles Languages 6 4 207 |
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Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles |
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ftdoajarticles |
language |
English |
topic |
intonation morphology Quechua Inuktitut Spanish English Language and Literature P |
spellingShingle |
intonation morphology Quechua Inuktitut Spanish English Language and Literature P Laura Colantoni Liliana Sánchez The Role of Prosody and Morphology in the Mapping of Information Structure onto Syntax |
topic_facet |
intonation morphology Quechua Inuktitut Spanish English Language and Literature P |
description |
The mapping of information structure onto morphology or intonation varies greatly crosslinguistically. Agglutinative languages, like Inuktitut or Quechua, have a rich morphological layer onto which discourse-level features are mapped but a limited use of intonation. Instead, English or Spanish lack grammaticalized morphemes that convey discourse-level information but use intonation to a relatively large extent. We propose that the difference found in these two pairs of languages follows from a division of labor across language modules, such that two extreme values of the continuum of possible interactions across modules are available as well as combinations of morphological and intonational markers. At one extreme, in languages such as Inuktitut and Quechua, a rich set of morphemes with scope over constituents convey sentence-level and discourse-level distinctions, making the alignment of intonational patterns and information structure apparently redundant. At the other extreme, as in English and to some extent Spanish, a series of consistent alignments of PF and syntactic structure are required to distinguish sentence types and to determine the information value of a constituent. This results in a complementary distribution of morphology and intonation in these languages. In contact situations, overlap between patterns of module interaction are attested. Evidence from Quechua–Spanish and Inuktitut–English bilinguals supports a bidirectionality of crosslinguistic influence; intonational patterns emerge in non-intonational languages to distinguish sentence types, whereas morphemes or discourse particles emerge in intonational languages to mark discourse-level features. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Laura Colantoni Liliana Sánchez |
author_facet |
Laura Colantoni Liliana Sánchez |
author_sort |
Laura Colantoni |
title |
The Role of Prosody and Morphology in the Mapping of Information Structure onto Syntax |
title_short |
The Role of Prosody and Morphology in the Mapping of Information Structure onto Syntax |
title_full |
The Role of Prosody and Morphology in the Mapping of Information Structure onto Syntax |
title_fullStr |
The Role of Prosody and Morphology in the Mapping of Information Structure onto Syntax |
title_full_unstemmed |
The Role of Prosody and Morphology in the Mapping of Information Structure onto Syntax |
title_sort |
role of prosody and morphology in the mapping of information structure onto syntax |
publisher |
MDPI AG |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6040207 https://doaj.org/article/9b3672c5d18e4841ad95291c9dd6233f |
genre |
inuktitut |
genre_facet |
inuktitut |
op_source |
Languages, Vol 6, Iss 207, p 207 (2021) |
op_relation |
https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/6/4/207 https://doaj.org/toc/2226-471X doi:10.3390/languages6040207 2226-471X https://doaj.org/article/9b3672c5d18e4841ad95291c9dd6233f |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6040207 |
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207 |
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