In:Sociobiological Bases of Information Structure
Viviana Masia
[Advances in Interaction Studies 9] 2017
► pp. vii–x
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Published online: 16 November 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/ais.9.toc
https://doi.org/10.1075/ais.9.toc
Table of contents
List of tables
XI
List of figures
XIII
Preface
XV
Acknowledgements
XXI
Chapter 1.Presupposition and assertion
1
1.1Preamble
1
1.2Presupposition and assertion
1
1.2.1Theoretical perspectives on presupposition
1
1.2.2Approaches to presupposition projection: Dynamic Semantics and Discourse Representation Theory
10
1.2.2.1Dynamic Semantics
10
1.2.2.2Discourse Representation Theory
12
1.2.3A snapshot on categories: presuppositions as not implicatures
13
1.3Theoretical perspectives on assertion
20
Chapter 2.Topic, focus, given and new
25
2.1Preamble
25
2.2Topic and focus: From the Prague linguistic circle onwards
26
2.3Later approaches to information structure
30
2.4Given and new
36
2.5Levels of information structure: Long-term vs. short-term memory and the effects of information packaging
43
2.6Summary and conclusion
48
Chapter 3.Sociobiological perspectives
51
3.1Preamble
51
3.2Evidence, territory of knowledge, epistemic statuses and epistemic stances
52
3.3Evidentiality in the world’s languages: Information source and speaker’s attitude
56
3.3.1Information source evidentiality
56
3.3.2Speaker attitude evidentiality
60
3.4Evidentiality and information structure
63
3.4.1Epistemic stances and the evidential values encoded by IS units
63
3.4.1.1Assertion, focus and personal experience evidentiality
64
3.4.1.2Presupposition, topic and factual evidentiality
73
3.5Closure
79
Chapter 4.Experimental perspectives on information structure processing
81
4.1Preamble
81
4.2Psycholinguistic background on IS units
82
4.2.1Psycholinguistic perspectives on presupposition vs. assertion processing
82
4.2.2Psycholinguistic perspectives on the processing of topic, focus, given and new information
87
4.3Neurological frontiers on language studies: Brain imaging techniques
92
4.3.1Language-related neurophysiological components: N400 and P600
95
4.3.2Brain oscillatory dynamics as revealed by frequency bands
98
4.3.3Towards context-dependent approaches to the study of sentence processing
100
4.3.4Neurolinguistic approaches to presupposition vs. assertion processing
104
4.3.5Topic-focus, given-new and event-related brain potentials
106
Chapter 5.Experimental perspectives on information structure processing: Two electrophysiological studies
111
5.1Study 1. Electrophysiological response to presupposition vs. assertion of new information: Evidence from event-related potentials
111
5.1.1Prelude
111
5.1.2Limits of previous experimental research on presupposition processing
111
5.1.3Study rationale and experimental predictions
114
5.1.4Materials and method
116
5.1.4.1Participants
116
5.1.4.2Experimental design
116
5.1.4.3Stimuli
117
5.1.5Measures on materials
118
5.1.5.1Naturalness
119
5.1.5.2Readability and length
119
5.1.6Procedure and task
120
5.1.7EEG recording and analysis
120
5.2Results
122
5.2.1Behavioral task
122
5.2.2ERP results
122
5.2.3N400 analysis
122
5.2.4Latency analysis
124
5.3Discussion
125
5.4Study 2. Power spectrum analysis of different frequency bands during the online processing of aligned and misaligned topic-focus structures
130
5.4.1Prelude
130
5.4.2Method
131
5.4.3Predictions
132
5.4.4Data recording
132
5.4.5Data pre-processing
133
5.4.6Results
133
5.4.7Discussion
135
5.4.8Concluding remarks
136
5.5Information structure processing between bottom-up and top-down modalities
137
5.6Summary and conclusion: Chapter Four and Chapter Five
139
Chapter 6.A biolinguistic perspective on information structure
143
6.1Preamble
143
6.2Earlier accounts
144
6.3When selectivity matters
148
6.3.1Emerging selectivity: Ontogenetic evidence of information structure development
149
6.4A closer look at evolution
156
6.4.1Information Structure as shaped by nature
157
6.4.1.1
Cognitive constraints on the emergence of IS units: The role of bottom-up (or data-driven) processing modalities
159
6.4.1.2Cognitive constraints on the emergence of IS units: The role of top-down (or context-driven) processing modalities
163
6.5Conclusion
169
References
173
