A tune-based account of Turkish information structure

Download
index.pdf
2003
Özge, Umut
Show full item record
323
views
0
downloads
Languages differ in the means they avail themselves of for the structural realization of information structure, where available options are word order,prosody and morphology. Turkish has long been characterized as predominantly using word order and its variation in realizing information structure, where certain positions in a sentence are associated with certain pragmatic functions related to information structure. Prosody has been proposed to play only a secondary role interacting with word order. Contrary to this widely established view, the thesis argues that the notion that sentential positions have pragmatic functions and word order variation is a syntactic means to realize these functions can be abandoned, without any loss of explanatory power, in favor of a tune-based perspective where prosody is the sole structural determinant of information structure. In this setting word order variations are argued to be prosodically motivated, in that Turkish phonology imposes some precedence constraints on intonational contours. Word order variation then turns out to be just a consequence as opposed to being a determinant in attaining the right information structure required by the discourse context. To substantiate these claims a tune-based account, based on Steedman's account of English information structure, is proposed for the structural realization of information structure in Turkish, whereby information structural units are directly associated with prosodic phrases intonationally marked in certain ways. Validity of the account is tried to be established by intonational analysis of recorded speech data. As for the explanatory value, the information structure phenomena that has received positional explanation in the relevant literature, are tried to be captured only in prosodic terms, without committing to positions, syntactic strategies and such.
Linguistics, Literature and science
http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/770081/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/13228
Graduate School of Informatics, Thesis

Suggestions

The influence of early monolingual dictionaries and word lists on the standardisation of English spelling
Sönmez, Margaret Jeanne M. (Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2001-01-01)
This paper aims to ascertain as precisely as possible what direct influence the early monolingual word lists and dictionaries may have had on the standardisation of English spelling. It is based upon research in which a quantitative analysis of the spellings of lemmas from the nine earliest published such lists and dictionaries was made and followed by a comparison of these lemmas and their spellings with the spellings from a manuscript and printed text of appropriate date. These word lists and dictionaries...
An inter-annotator agreement measurement methodology for the Turkish Discourse Bank (TDB)
Yalçınkaya, Şaban İhsan; Zeyrek Bozşahin, Deniz; Department of Cognitive Sciences (2010)
In the TDB[1]-like corpora annotation efforts, which are constructed by the intuitions of the annotators, the reliability of the corpus can only be determined via correct interannotator agreement measurement methodology (Artstein, & Poesio, 2008). In this thesis, a methodology was defined to measure the inter-annotator agreement among the TDB annotators. The statistical tests and the agreement coefficients that are widely used in scientific communities, including Cochran’s Q test (1950), Fleiss’ Kappa (1971...
The use of verbal morphology in Turkish as a third language: The case of Russian-English-Turkish trilinguals
Antonova-Unlu, Elena; Sağın Şimşek, Sultan Çiğdem (SAGE Publications, 2015-06-01)
Aims and Objectives: Several studies suggest that third language acquisition (TLA) is marked with complex patterns of language interaction. However, it is not clear yet to what extent multilinguals activate each of their background languages in TLA, as various factors may trigger the activation of one of the previously learnt languages. This study aims to contribute to the discussion by examining the use of verbal morphology in third language (L3) Turkish of Russian-English-Turkish trilinguals. We investiga...
The processing of morphologically complex words in a specific speaker group A masked-priming study with Turkish heritage speakers
Jacob, Gunnar; Kırkıcı, Bilal (John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2016-01-01)
The present study investigates to what extent morphological priming varies across different groups of native speakers of a language. In two masked-priming experiments, we investigate the processing of morphologically complex Turkish words in Turkish heritage speakers raised and living in Germany. Materials and experimental design were based on Kirkici and Clahsen's (2013) study on morphological processing in Turkish native speakers and L2 learners, allowing for direct comparisons between the three groups. E...
Discourse Information Structure : a cognitive approach to language based on dynamic network representation
Öter, Fırat; Temürcü, Ceyhan; Department of Cognitive Sciences (2015)
The historical course of linguistics studies with an emphasis on meaning points out the requirement of a representational framework that is capable of forming a structure building bridge between the linguistic (i.e. symbolic) and cognitive (i.e. conceptual) levels. The present thesis aims to lay down some conditions for a comprehensive semantic theory, which is capable of representing all relevant levels of cognitive information involved in semantic processing. This attempt will give rise to a new, suggesti...
Citation Formats
U. Özge, “A tune-based account of Turkish information structure,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2003.
METU IIS - Integrated Information Service open@metu.edu.tr