The author first defines the following notions of information structure: focus (vs. background), given (vs. new), and topic (vs. comment). He then goes on to show how these notions are reflected in the prosodic systems of Slavic languages. Focus in all Slavic languages is reflected in prosodic prominence governed by a stress-focus correspondence defined by the author. In general, ‘given’ is realized outside the sentence stress. Focus does not have an obligatory prosodic reflex in Slavic languages.

We shed light on the question of how narrow information (F) and contrastive focus (CF) are intonationally and syntactically realized by heritage speakers (HSs) of Peninsular Spanish (PS) who have German as their second L1, and compare their data to those of monolingual speakers (MSs) of PS. Results from a production experiment show clear differences between the groups with respect to preferred syntactic strategies and, consequently, the intonational realization of focal pitch accents. The preferred strategy of HSs is stress shift, followed by p-movement and simple clefts, for both focus types. Conversely, MSs mostly use different strategies for each focus type; that is, pseudo-clefts and p-movement for F, and simple clefts and focus fronting for CF. Interestingly, stress shift is not a relevant option. The attested differences support the view that the interface between discourse on one hand, and syntax and phonology on the other, is challenging for bilingual speakers (Sorace, 2011).

We present an analysis of phrasal prosody, with an emphasis on focus-marking, for heritage speakers of Samoan in Aotearoa New Zealand. The analysis is based on recordings of four speakers doing a picture-description task designed to elicit different focus positions and types, from an earlier study of home country Samoan (Calhoun, 2015). All speakers showed features of phrasal prosody similar to those found for home country Samoan; however, there was considerable variation between speakers. We relate this to the language background of the speakers, and their attitudes and beliefs toward their heritage language. In particular, there were differences between generation 1.5 and 2 speakers, relating to their engagement with and beliefs about their university Samoan language classes. This shows the importance of these factors in the acquisition and maintenance of prosodic features, similar to other more-studied language features.

In this chapter, we argue that a distinct concept of “aesthetic hope” emerges from the way Kierkegaard’s Aesthete treats hope [Haab] and its relationship to recollection [Erindring] in “The Unhappiest One” and “Rotation of Crops.” We first show that aesthetic hope is distinct from the two other kinds of hope discussed by Kierkegaard: temporal hope and eternal hope. We then consider the suggestion that aesthetic hope is also an expression of despair – an inverse hope against hope, which seeks to avoid disappointment by hoping for things that are in some sense certain. The aesthete’s recommendation that we hope in such a way illuminates Kierkegaard’s view of the “dialectic” of temporal hope and eternal hope. Finally, we explore the treatment of hope in Either/Or as essentially involving a controlled, attentional element that anticipates some contemporary trends in the philosophy of hope.

This chapter introduces the theoretical constructs adopted by Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) in the treatment of information structure and addresses the question of the place of information structure in the architecture of grammar. It is claimed that RRG offers an approach to information structure which is flexible enough to capture the cross-linguistic variation in the role played by discourse in the semantics–syntax and syntax–semantics linking, while also being sufficiently constrained to make important generalizations on the expression of pragmatic states and pragmatic relations, and their interface with prosody, morphology and sentence structure.

This chapter shows that there were fundamental changes in two types of information structure: one is at the clause level, involving the arrangement of new and given information, and the other is at the predicate level, involving the arrangement of resultative and non-resultative (accompanying) information. The first is cross-linguistically true and can be found in many other languages; the second may be particular to the language and has thus far been known to exist only in Chinese. Throughout the entire history of Chinese grammar, these two principles of information organization are critical for understanding how the grammar has evolved over time. On the one hand, both reflect the results of grammatical developments; on the other hand, they motivated a series of significant changes in history that together have largely shaped the grammatical system of Contemporary Chinese.

This chapter discusses a fundamental change in copula structures from Old to Middle Chinese, which in turn caused a series of consequent developments that significantly altered the texture of Chinese grammar at the time. Old Chinese lacks such a copula verb, as there is no linking verb between the subject and the complement, and the copula construction at the time was obligatorily marked by a sentence-final particle yě that followed the complement, unlike other verbs.

Wallace’s work exhibits a fascination with attention that is regulated and optimized through processes of self-administration, as well as an interest in how alertness and interest can be performed (I explored this in Contemporary Fictions of Attention, 2018). However, he also demonstrates a concern with forms of attention that do not just play out in the self-conscious practices of an isolated subject. Instead, his work also stages interactive moments of collective attention, such as the focus group in “Mister Squishy” or the game of Eschaton in Infinite Jest. This chapter will lay out a broader context for Wallace’s interest in attention, before going on to identify how Yves Citton’s notion of “attention ecology” might help to frame an argument about Wallace’s depictions of group attention.

The notion of ’alternative’ is central to analyses of various semantic/pragmatic phenomena, such as disjunction, focus, discourse structure, questions, and implicature. However, basic questions concerning the various notions of alternatives have not received the attention they deserve, e.g. what exactly these notions signify, or how they are supposed to interact. This chapter reflects on such questions, centering on appeals to alternatives in characterizations of focus, disjunction, discourse goals (questions under discussion), and interrogatives. More precisely, this chapter criticizes the conflation of the set of focus alternatives with the meaning of an interrogative, discusses two conceptions of the alternatives introduced by disjunction (algebraic and attention-based), and departs from the predominant view of QUDs as, essentially, linguistic questions that represent discourse goals.

Clauses may represent one of three types of information packaging. The most common is topic--comment (referent--predication) packaging, assumed in Chapters 6–9. The topic may be the most central participant (the ‘subject’; see Chapter 6), or there may be multiple participants high in topicality. A variety of strategies is used when the most topical participant is not the most central one, or is not a participant at all. Thetic packaging does not divide a clause into topic and comment. Thetic packaging is associated with certain situation types (including weather), and discourse functions such as presentation and background description. Identificational packaging divides the information into a focus and a presupposed open proposition (POP). A number of contexts are typically construed as identificational, including questions and answers and different types of contrast. Thetic and identificational strategies include distinct prosody and word order, and/or distinct morphosyntax. Most thetic strategies involve making the subject argument phrase look less like a subject, and/or making the predicate look less like a predicate. Identificational strategies include clefts and ellipsis.

This chapter deals with the analyses of the grammatical phenomena that have been related to information structure in the Romance languages, and that have played a central role in the general research on the encoding of information-structure notions in the grammar and at the interfaces. An overview is presented of this work, which has offered a great contribution to our current understanding of both empirical and theoretical issues. Highly debated questions are addressed, such as the relationship between focus and newness and between topic and givenness, the grammatical and interpretive correlates of different types of focus and topics, and the ‘aboutness’ nature of topics in contrast with subjects.