Cover not available

Article published In: Studies in Language
Vol. 47:1 (2023) ► pp.79–119

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB
authorization required

On the status of information structure markers

Evidence from North-Western Siberian languages

ORCiD logo with link | Universität Hamburg
Published online: 11 April 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.21043.dab
Abstract
The paper at hand deals with morphological marking of information structural relations from the perspective of North-Western Siberian languages. Given many items (morphemes as well as particles and clitics) which have been analyzed as markers of information structure in these languages, I try to discuss whether they indeed mark information structural relations or whether this supposed marking is rather a side effect of other functions expressed. In order to develop criteria for decision marking, I rely on the concepts of sufficiency as well as necessity and sufficient as well as necessary conditions, respectively. Additionally, I argue that the latter can be arranged hierarchically with respect to their reliability for the evaluation of potential markers of information structure, being intertwined with functional and transparency coding principles.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical, terminological and methodological preliminaries
    • 2.1Empirical database
    • 2.2Information structure
    • 2.3Necessary and sufficient conditions
  • 3.Information structure markers in North-Western Siberian languages
    • 3.1General issues
    • 3.2Case studies
      • 3.2.1Conditional converbs and participles of BE-verbs in Altaic languages
      • 3.2.2Nganasan təti
      • 3.2.3Selective suffixes in Northern Samoyedic languages
      • 3.2.4Northern Khanty pa
      • 3.2.5Evenki (h)ələ
      • 3.2.6“Non-possessive” possessive suffixes
  • 4.A way out of the dilemma
  • 5.Conclusion and further outlook
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
References (63)
References
Artemjev, Nikolaj M. 2013. Dolganskij jazyk. 10–11 klassy. Učebnoe posobie dlja obščeobrazovatel’nych učreždenij. Čast’ 2. Morfologija. [The Dolgan language. 10th to 11th grade. Textbook for secondary schools. Part 2. Morphology]. Saint Petersburg: Almaz-Graf.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Assmann, Muriel, Daniel Büring, Izabela Jordanoska & Max Prüller. 2019. Towards a theory of morphosyntactic focus marking. Unpublished manuscript. [URL] (last access 15 March 2022).
Brykina, Maria, Valentin Gusev, Sándor Szeverényi & Beáta Wagner-Nagy. 2018. Nganasan Spoken Language Corpus (NSLC). Archived at Hamburger Zentrum für Sprachkorpora. Version 0.2. Published on 2018-06-12. [URL]
Bühler, Karl. 1965 [1934]. Sprachtheorie. Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. 2nd edn. Stuttgart: Fischer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Castrén 1854 = Schiefner, Anton (ed.), 1854. M. Alexander Castrén’s Grammatik der samojedischen Sprachen. Saint-Peterburg: Eggers et Comp.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Däbritz, Chris Lasse. 2021. Topik, Fokus und Informationsstatus: Modellierung am Material nordwestsibirischer Sprachen. Language, Context and Cognition 17. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. Forthcoming. A grammar of Dolgan: A Northern Siberian Turkic language of the Taimyr Peninsula. Leiden: Brill.
Däbritz, Chris Lasse, Nina Kudryakova & Eugénie Stapert. 2019. INEL Dolgan Corpus. Version 1.0. Published on 2019-08-31. [URL].
Däbritz, Chris Lasse & Valentin Gusev. 2021. INEL Evenki Corpus. Version 1.0. Publication date 2021-12-31. Archived at Universität Hamburg. [URL].
Dalrymple, Mary & Irina Nikolaeva. 2011. Objects and information structure (Cambridge studies in linguistics 131). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
É. Kiss, Katalin. 1998. Identificational focus versus information focus. Language 74(2). 245–273. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Geeraerts, Dirk. 1996. On necessary and sufficient conditions. Journal of Semantics 51. 275–291. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gorelova, Liliya M. 2006. Typology of information structures in the Altaic languages. In Elena V. Boikova & Rostislay B. Rybakov (eds.), Kinship in the Altaic world. Proceedings of the 48th Permanent International Altaistic Conference, 149–171. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Götze, Michael, Thomas Weskott, Cornelia Endriss, Ines Fiedler, Stefan Hinterwimmer, Svetlana Petrova, Anne Schwarz, Stavros Skopeteas & Ruben Stoel. 2007. Information structure. In Stephanie Dipper, Michael Götze & Stavros Skopeteas (eds.), Information structure in cross-linguistic corpora (Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure 07), 147–187. Potsdam: Universitätsverlag Potsdam. Available at: [URL] (last access 15 March 2022).
Grice, H. Paul. 1975. Logic and conversation. In Peter Cole & Jerry L. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and semantics. Vol. 31: Speech acts, 41–58. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grönbech, Kaare. 1936. Der türkische Sprachbau. Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grzech, Karolina. 2016. The marker =ga and topicality in Tena Kichwa. SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics 181. 33–52.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haig, Geoffrey & Stefan Schnell. 2014. Annotations using GRAID (Grammatical relations and animacy in discourse). Manual version 7.0. Available at [URL] (last access 15 March 2022).
Haspelmath, Martin. 2010. Comparative concepts and descriptive categories in crosslinguistic studies. Language 86(3). 663–687. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd. 1997. Possession: Cognitive sources, forces, and grammaticalization (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 83). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Junghanns, Uwe. 2002. Informationsstrukturierung in slavischen Sprachen: Zur Rekonstruktion in einem syntax-zentrierten Modell der Grammatik. Leipzig: University of Leipzig Habilitation dissertation.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Junghanns, Uwe & Gerhild Zybatow. 2009. Grammatik und Informationsstruktur. In Sebastian Kempgen, Peter Kosta, Tilman Berger & Karl Gutschmidt (eds.), Die slavischen Sprachen (Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft 32:1), 684–707. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Khanina, Olesya & Andrey Shluinsky, Andrey. In prep. The digital corpus of Enets. Unpublished corpus.
Kim, Alan. 1988. Preverbal focusing and type XXIII languages. In Michael Hammond, Edith Moravcsik & Jessica Wirth (eds.), Studies in syntactic typology (Typological Studies in Language 17), 147–169. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Koškarëva, Natalja B. 2005. Očerki po sintaksisu lesnogo dialekta neneckogo jazyka. [Sketches of the syntax of the Forest dialect of the Nenets language]. Novosibirsk: Rossijskaja Akademija Nauk, Sibirskoe Otdelenie.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krifka, Manfred. 2008. Basic notions of information structure. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 551. 243–276. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krifka, Manfred & Renate Musan. 2012. Information structure: Overview and linguistic issues. In Manfred Krifka & Renate Musan (eds.), The expression of information structure (The expression of cognitive categories 5), 1–43. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kudrinskij, Maksim I., Darja P. Popova & Aleksandra P. Simonenko. 2014. Fokusnye časticy v kazymskom dialekte chatyjskogo jazyka: analiz priimennych upotreblenij. [Focus particles in the Kazym dialect of the Khanty language: An analysis of the adnominal usages]. Acta Linguistica Petropolitana 10(1). 781–786.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kuno, Susumu. 1969. Theme, contrast, and exhaustive listing – wa and ga in Japanese. The Bulletin of the Institute for Research in Language Teaching 2891. 19–32.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1972. Functional sentence perspective: A case study from Japanese and English. Linguistic Inquiry 3(3). 269–320.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1973. The structure of the Japanese language. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, George. 1982. Categories and cognitive models. Trier: Linguistic Agency of the University of Trier.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus, and the mental representation of discourse referents (Cambridge studies in linguistics 71). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lyons, Christopher. 1999. Definiteness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Malčukov, Andrej. 2008. Sintaksis evenskogo jazyka: semantičeskie, strukturnye, kommunikativnye aspekty [Syntax of Even: functional, structural, discourse aspects]. Sankt-Peterburg: Nauka.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matić, Dejan & Daniel Wedgwood. 2013. The meanings of focus: The significance of an interpretation-based category in cross-linguistic analysis. Journal of Linguistics 491. 127–163. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Molnár, Valéria. 1991. Das TOPIK im Deutschen und Ungarischen (Lunder germanistische Forschungen 58). Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Muysken, Pieter. 1995. Focus in Quechua. In Katalin É. Kiss (ed.), Discourse configurational languages (Oxford studies in comparative syntax), 375–393. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nedjalkov, Igor. 1997. Evenki. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nikolaeva, Irina. 1999. Ostyak (Languages of the World/Materials 305). München: LINCOM Europa.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2003. Possessive affixes in the pragmatic structuring of the utterance: Evidence from Uralic. In Pirkko Suihkonen & Bernard Comrie (eds.), International symposium on deictic systems and quantification in languages spoken in Europe and North and Central Asia, 130–145. Izhevsk & Leipzig: Udmurt State University & Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. A grammar of Tundra Nenets (Mouton Grammar Library 65). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nikolaeva, Irina, Edward Garrett & Oliver Bond. 2019. Endangered languages and cultures of Siberia. [URL] (last access 12 January 2022).
Nissim, Malvina & Shipra Dingare, Jean Carletta & Mark Steedmann. 2004. An annotation scheme for information status in dialogue. In Maria Teresa Lino, Maria Francisca Xavier, Fátima Ferreira & Rute Costa & Raquel Silva (eds.), Proceedings of the 4th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC), 1023–1026. Paris: ELRA.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ozerov, Pavel. 2019. Tracing the source of information structure: Towards the study of interactional management of information. Journal of Pragmatics 1381. 77–97. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2021. Multifactoral Information Management (MIM): Summing up the emerging alternative to information structure. Linguistics Vanguard 7(1). 20200039. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Paul, Hermann. 1920 [1880]. Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte. 5th edn. Halle: Niemeyer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Plank, Frans. 1983. Transparent versus functional encoding of grammatical relations. Linguistische Berichte 861. 1–13.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rudnickaja, Elena L. 2018. Delimitativnyj affiks riktV i fokusnaja častica (h)ələ v evenkijskom jazyke kak veršiny dvuch raznych proekcij DelimP i FocP. [The delimitative affix -riktV- and the focus particle (h)ələ in the Evenki language as heads of the two different projections DelimP and FocP]. In Ekaterina A. Ljutikova & Anton V. Zimmerlinh (eds.), Tipologija morfosintaksičeskich parametrov. Materialy meždunarodnoj konferencii. [Typology of morphosyntactic parameters. Materials of the international conference], Vol. 41, 209–221. Moskva: Gosudarstvennyj institut russkogo jazyka im. A.S. Puškina.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schurz, Gerhard. 2020. Logik. Grund- und Aufbaukurs in Aussagen- und Prädikatenlogik. 2nd edn. (De Gruyter Studium). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Siegl, Florian. 2013. Materials on Forest Enets, an indigenous language of Northern Siberia (Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Toimituksia 267). Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. The non-possessive use of px.2p in Nganasan and Dolgan. Finnisch-Ugrische Mitteilungen 391. 67–100.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Smith, Edward E. & Douglas L. Medin. 1981. Categories and concepts. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Steinitz, Wolfgang. 1950. Ostjakische Grammatik und Chrestomathie: mit Wörterverzeichnis. 2nd edn. Leipzig: Harrassowitz.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Taylor, John. 1995 [1952]. Linguistic categorization – Prototypes in linguistic theory. 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Van der Auwera, Johan & Volker Gast. 2012. Categories and prototypes. In Jae J. Song (ed.), The Oxford handbook of linguistic typology. Online edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vasilevič, Glafira M. 1958. Evenkijsko-russkij slovar’. [Evenki-Russian dictionary]. Moskva: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo inostrannych i nacional’nych slovarej.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wagner-Nagy, Beáta. 2019. A grammar of Nganasan. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wagner-Nagy, Beáta, Sándor Szeverényi & Valentin Gusev. 2018. User’s guide to Nganasan Spoken Language Corpus (Working Papers in Corpus Linguistics and Digital Technologies: Analyses and Methodology 1). Szeged, Hamburg: Universität Szeged, Universität Hamburg. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Weil, Henry. 1869 [1844]. De l’ordre des dans les langues anciennes comparées aux langues modernes. 2nd edn. Paris: Vieweg.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wiedemann, Ferdinand Johann. 1847. Versuch einer Grammatik der syrjänischen Sprache. Reval: Franz Kluge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zayzon, Réka. 2015. Observations on non-possessive usages of personal markers (possessive suffixes) in Nganasan. Journal of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics 61. 259–278. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zybatow, Gerhild & Uwe Junghanns. 1998. Topiks im Russischen (Sprache & Pragmatik 47). Lund: Germanistisches Institut der Universität Lund.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Ozerov, Pavel
2024. Left Dislocation in Spoken Hebrew, it is neither topicalizing nor a construction. Linguistics DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue