Annotation guidelines for Questions under Discussion and information structure

Abstract

We present a detailed manual for a pragmatic, i.e. meaning-based, method for the information-structural analysis of naturally attested data, which is built on the idea that for any assertion contained in a text (or transcript of spoken discourse) there is an implicit Question under Discussion (QUD) that determines which parts of the assertion are focused or backgrounded (and which ones are not at issue, i.e. not part of the assertion at all). We formulate a number of constraints, which allow the analyst/annotator to derive QUDs from the previous or upcoming discourse context, and demonstrate the method using corpus examples (of French, German, and English). Since we avoid making reference to language-specific morphosyntactic or prosodic properties, we claim that our method is also cross-linguistically applicable beyond our example languages.

Priming Effects of Focus in Mandarin Chinese

“…Following the analysis of Büring (2003) (see also Constant, 2014; Riester, 2018), based on (4b) and (4c), (4a) sets up an implied question 谁关上了什么 ? “Who closed what?,” which can be divided into two sub-questions 顾客 关上 了什么 ?…”

The Information-Structural Status of Adjuncts: A Question-under-Discussion-Based Approach

“…In order to be more precise, we will assume a QUD model of discourse (Roberts, 2012;Van Kuppevelt, 1995;Ginzburg, 1995;Onea, 2015) and argue that the IS of an utterance is determined by the implicit question it provides an answer to. In order to precisely determine the different informational parts of an utterance on the basis of QUDs, we will follow the principles that we developed in Riester et al (2018).…”

“…In line with Roberts (2012), Van Kuppevelt (1995, Ginzburg (1995), Onea (2015) and many others, the starting point of Riester et al (2018) is that for any assertion contained in a text there is a QUD, determining which parts of the assertion are focussed or backgrounded. The focus of the assertion is the value given to the variable contained in the question (Rooth, 1992).…”

“…In Section 2, we illustrate what informational functions V/S-adjuncts may take, and concentrate in particular on the special informational status in which some adjunct represents new information together with other material in the same sentence. In order to account for that particular informational status, we adopt the guidelines proposed by Riester et al (2018) for the annotation of the information structure (IS) of utterances in a text. In Section 3, we summarize the basic principles of Riester et al (2018), which are aimed at finding an implicit QUD for each utterance or discourse unit.…”

“…In order to account for that particular informational status, we adopt the guidelines proposed by Riester et al (2018) for the annotation of the information structure (IS) of utterances in a text. In Section 3, we summarize the basic principles of Riester et al (2018), which are aimed at finding an implicit QUD for each utterance or discourse unit. Within the described model, V/S-adjuncts that are part of the new information of a sentence turn out to be elements that -despite being new information -do not answer the current QUD.…”