Information structure

Abstract

Information structure is a field of linguistics covered in numerous books and articles. Information structure in sign languages has also been investigated almost from the first days of sign linguistics; however, as is often the case, most of the available studies focus on a very small number of sign languages, and among these, American Sign Language (ASL) is the one most prominently represented. Nevertheless, some interesting results have been obtained that can be relevant for the theory of information structure in general.In this chapter, we are going to use the terminology commonly used in the information structure literature: in particular, topic, focus, contrast, and emphasis. More specific terms are explained throughout the chapter. A reader not familiar with the field of information structure is encouraged to consult Krifka (2008) for a concise and accessible overview.Recently, two handbook chapters devoted to information structure in sign languages have appeared: Wilbur (2012) and Kimmelman & Pfau (2016). Moreover, Kimmelman (2019) is a book-length study of information structure in sign languages, investigating information structure notions based on corpus data from Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT) and Russian Sign Language (RSL). In this chapter, we thus try to avoid overlap with these works to the extent possible and report new results and new perspectives on the topic. In addition, we go beyond previous overviews by also addressing generative approaches to certain aspects of information structure in sign languages. In Section 26.2, we discuss topic and focus marking in sign languages. Section 26.3 is devoted to recent studies that shed light on a number of particularly interesting phenomena, some of which appear to be modality-specific. In Section 26.4, we offer a brief overview of experimental research on information structure. Section 26.5 concludes the chapter. Information structure: description and formalizationWe start by providing an overview of how different types of topics (Section 26.2.1) and foci (Section 26.2.2) are marked in different sign languages. To that end, we address syntactic position, non-manual (prosodic) marking, and for foci also manual marking. As

Focus and contrast in Catalan Sign Language (LSC): Form and interpretation

“…(adapted from Kimmelman 2014: 125) 4. CONTRAST ___________________________________________________________ 125 However, as Kimmelman & Pfau (2021) point out, for some SLs it has been argued that contrastive and non-contrastive focus can be marked by the same manual and non-manual markers (Crasborn & van der Kooij 2013, Kimmelman 2014, Herrmann 2015. They argue that there is a difference of degree, so contrast is more likely to be a subtype of focus rather than an orthogonal category.…”

“…They argue that there is a difference of degree, so contrast is more likely to be a subtype of focus rather than an orthogonal category. Kimmelman & Pfau (2021) also state that it is not clear whether this type of marking can be applied when more than two alternatives are contrasted (cf. Kimmelman 2014).…”