Review of Erteschik-Shir (2007): Information structure: The syntax-discourse interface

Abstract

ReviewsNomi Erteschik-Shir. 2007. Information structure: The syntax-discourse interface. Oxford: Oxford University Press. vii + 246 pp. (ISBN 978-0-19-926258-8 (hb) / 978-0-19-926259-5 (pb)) Reviewed by María de los Ángeles Gómez-González (University of Santiago de Compostela)This book is of interest to those studying, researching, and teaching in the variously labelled field of 'information structure' (IS) (Halliday 1967), 'information packaging' (Chafe 1976), or 'information flow' (Chafe 1979), which explores the strategies whereby information is expressed to meet the communicative demands of a particular situation, a central topic in linguistics, computer science, cognitive science, information science and philosophy. In spite of its importance in the 'information age' , there is no consensus in modern linguistics on the place of information structure in the grammar, nor on what a theory of IS should look like. Two factors contribute to this controversy. One is the fact that, for better or worse, IS is rife with theoretical frameworks, each with its own focus, with the effect that a considerable range of definitions, identificational criteria and terminology for IS categories have mushroomed in a myriad of studies. The second reason is the wide coverage of the field. For IS not only relates to virtually all the established levels of linguistic description, phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical, and semantico-pragmatic, but also, in order to achieve explanatory adequacy, IS accounts integrate cross-disciplinary insights from rhetoric, sociology, cognitive science, psychology, philosophy, computing science, literary studies, and cultural or ethnographic studies. And, still further, there is an enormous variation in the particular IS devices attested by cross-linguistic investigations.