In much of the previous work on this topic, prosody has been presumed to be the universal means of marking information structure (Gundel 1999; Büring 2010). Many previous papers have studied information structure with special reference to how it is marked by prosody. Bolinger (1958) argues that there are two types of pitch accents in English; the A and B-accents (i.e. H* and L+H* in the ToBI format respectively). Jackendoff (1972) creates a generalization about the correlation be- tween pitch accents and information structure components: A and B-accents in
English are responsible for marking constituents as focus and topic respectively.1
The way in which A and B accents structure information is exemplified in (1), in which small caps represents the A-accent, and boldface represents the B-accent. The constituent semantically associated with aboutness bears the B-accent in En- glish, and because it refers to aboutness, is identified as the topic in the present study. The constituent corresponding to the wh-word in the question What did Kim read? bears the A-accent, which gives a focus meaning.
(1) Q: What about Kim? What did Kim read? A: Kim read the book.
In the following subsections I explore the details of three perspectives on in- corporating prosodic information into grammatical structures. This is done with an emphasis on application in the creation of an information structure library as a tool for grammar engineering.
4.1.1 Prosody as a widespread means of marking
Since Jackendoff (1972), quite a few studies have explored the connection be- tween prosodic patterns and information structure in languages, including En- glish (Steedman 2000), German (Büring 2003), Portuguese (Frota 2000), Japanese and Korean (Ueyama & Jun 1998). However we should not assume that every language employs prosody for marking information structure. In fact there are several counterarguments to treating prosody as a language-universal way to express focus and/or topic.
My cross-linguistic survey reveals several languages with no means of express- ing information structure through prosody. For instance, it is reported that Yu- catec Maya employs no prosodic marking for expressing information structure. Instead, syntactic functions indicate these relations without an interaction with prosody (Kügler, Skopeteas & Verhoeven 2007). In Akan, prosodic patterns also have little to do with expressing focus, and instead a focused item must occupy the clause-initial position with one of several morphological markers (Drubig 2003). Likewise, Catalan, in which syntactic operation is responsible for mark- ing information structure, has a rather weak (or even null) correlation between
1Admittedly, there are quite a few recent and comprehensive studies of the interaction between
prosody and information structure, such as Ladd (2008), Chen (2012), and many others. Their analyses may help model information structure in a cross-linguistic perspective. Nonetheless, the present study does not enter into the deeper details of them, mainly because the current model basically aims to be used for text-based processing systems.
prosody and information structure meanings (Engdahl & Vallduví 1996). Hence, the assumption that prosody is a language-universal means of marking informa- tion structure is not valid. That is to say, using prosody for expressing informa- tion structure is clearly widespread, but not universal (Drellishak 2009).
4.1.2 Mappings between prosody and information structure
There seems to be no clear consensus with respect to mappings between prosody and information structure even in English. Contra to Jackendoff’s claim, (i) Kad- mon (2001), Büring (2003), and Oshima (2008) argue that B-accents are specifi- cally responsible for contrastive topics, rather than topic in a broad sense. (ii) Steedman (2000) argues that B-accents mark theme, and additionally associates information structure meanings with boundary tones. (iii) Hedberg (2006) re- gards the use of a B-accent as a contrastive marker for both focus and topic (i.e. either or contrastive topic). (iv) More recently, Constant (2012) explores how se- mantic and pragmatic behavior is influenced by a specific prosodic ‘rise-fall-rise’ pattern in English (transcribed in the ToBI format as [L*+H L- H%]), as illustrated in (2). That is, there are three components: The first ‘rise’ corresponds to [L*+H], ‘fall’ to [L-], and the second ‘rise’ to [H%].2
(2) A: Why isn’t the coffee here?
B: I don’t know. I was expecting there to be coffee …
L*+H L- H%
(Constant 2012: 409)
Constant investigates the correlations between ‘rise-fall-rise’ intonation and con- trastive topic intonation. Constant denies the previous assumption that the for- mer is a subclass of the latter.
Among the varied claims, I follow Hedberg’s argument, mainly because Hed- berg’s classification is firmly based on an acoustic analysis of naturally occur- ring spoken data (Hedberg & Sosa 2007): A-accents are responsible for non- contrastive focus, while B-accents are responsible for topic and contrast in En- glish.
The debate presented above is largely concerned with which prosodic pattern has which effect on information structure, and the nature of the mapping be- tween prosody and information structure. However, there exist some circum-
2The main argument Constant (2012) provides is that the ‘rise-fall-rise’ intonation involves a
regular conventional implicature, acting as a focus sensitive quantifier over assertable alterna- tive propositions.
stances in which prosody is not involved in the articulation of information struc- ture (even in English). Féry & Krifka (2008) argue prosodic patterns are not obli- gatorily related to information structure even in English. For example, the as- sociation between prosody and focus can be canceled in the context of Second Occurrence Focus. A second occurrence focus is an expression that falls within the scope of a focus sensitive operator (e.g. only in English), but is a repeat of an earlier focused occurrence (Partee 1999; Beaver et al. 2007; Féry & Ishihara 2009). The repeatedly focused item prosodically differs from the previously fo- cused one (i.e. ordinarily focused), and is normally devoid of a specific pitch ac- cent responsible for marking focus. Because vegetables in (3b) is combined with a focus sensitive item only, it would be interpreted as containing focus meaning, but that meaning is already given in (3a).
(3) a. Everyone already knew that Mary only eats [vegetables]F.
b. If even [Paul]Fknew that Mary only eats [vegetables]SOF,
then he should have suggested a different restaurant. (Partee 1999: 215– 216)
(3) is a clear counterexample to Halliday’s claim that what is focused should carry new information as ‘vegetables’ in (3b) has already been mentioned. In addition, while the vegetables in (3a) bears an A-accent, the repeated occurrence in (3b) does not. According to Féry & Krifka (2008: 132), “there are only weak correlates of accent, and no pitch excursions in the postnuclear position.”. This means that the focus meaning in this case is not directly invoked by the A-accent.
These findings indicate that prosodic patterns do not always reliably reveal in- formation structure.3In other words, prosodic prominence is merely a tendency;
it is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for conveying information structure meanings even in languages whose markings are largely dependent on prosody (e.g. English) (Rochemont 1986; Drubig 2003).
4.1.3 Flexible representation
Prosody makes a contribution to information structure in many languages, even if the relationship between prosodic marking and information structure is com-
3Fanselow (2007) provides a view against this. The claim is that the connection between infor-
mation structure and syntax is mediated by prosody, with no direct link between information structure and syntax. I do not follow this, because my cross-linguistic survey reveals that some languages, such as Catalan (Engdahl & Vallduví 1996), Akan (Drubig 2003), and Yucatec Maya (Kügler, Skopeteas & Verhoeven 2007), have a system with very weak or no interaction between prosody and syntax with respect to focus.
plicated. However, in some contexts, especially processing of texts that were originally written (rather than transcribed speech), we do not have access to prosodic information anyway. Given that our processing system is usually text- based, currently it is almost impossible for us to resolve the phonological pat- terns of sentences, including intonation contour and pitch accents. The best way to handle prosodic marking is to allow for underspecification in such a way that prosodic information can be later added into the formalism. Kuhn (1996) in the same context suggests an underspecified representation for information struc- ture, noting that even prosodic marking of information structure often yields ambiguous meanings, which cannot in general be resolved in sentence-based processing. The present work employs underspecification for representing infor- mation structure when the meaning is not fully solved by prosody. In principle, this would allow for refining the representation monotonically.