Revisiting prosodic reconstruction: an interface-based approach to partial focus and topic fronting in German

In this thesis, I develop a theoretical implementation of prosodic reconstruction and apply it to the empirical domain of German sentences in which part of a focus or contrastive topic is fronted. Prosodic reconstruction refers to the idea that sentences involving syntactic movement show prosodic pa...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Wierzba, Marta (Author)
Format: Thesis Book
Language:English
Published: Potsdam 2017
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Summary:In this thesis, I develop a theoretical implementation of prosodic reconstruction and apply it to the empirical domain of German sentences in which part of a focus or contrastive topic is fronted. Prosodic reconstruction refers to the idea that sentences involving syntactic movement show prosodic parallels with corresponding simpler structures without movement. I propose to model this recurrent observation by ordering syntax-prosody mapping before copy deletion. In order to account for the partial fronting data, the idea is extended to the mapping between prosody and information structure. This assumption helps to explain why object-initial sentences containing a broad focus or broad contrastive topic show similar prosodic and interpretative restrictions as sentences with canonical word order. The empirical adequacy of the model is tested against a set of gradient acceptability judgments
Item Description:Übersetzung des Haupttitels: Prosodische Rekonstruktion neu betrachtet, eine schnittstellenbasierte Analyse partieller Fokus- und Topikvoranstellung im Deutschen
Physical Description:vi, 224 Seiten Illustrationen, Diagramme

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