ORCID Profile
0000-0003-3520-9683
Current Organisation
Universität Innsbruck
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Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Date: 11-02-2022
Abstract: The paper critically examines some central principles of the Question Under Discussion (QUD) framework and ultimately explores the concept of ‘question’, central to QUD-models. It demonstrates how fine-grained, interactionally informed analyses of language-specific categories can reveal building blocks of interaction and explain the sources of the observed information- and discourse-structuring interpretations (such as update, contrast and more). Employing data from Anal Naga (Trans-Himalayan, India), it proceeds to a fine-grained analysis of the notion of ‘question’. The decomposition of ‘questions’ into smaller building blocks similarly reveals how erse categories and discourse processes can trigger the interpretation of an information request. These findings and additional theoretical arguments suggest that QUD-models are problematic for various reasons: such models are non-parsimonious as they add superfluous extra layers to explain the observations the explanatory apparatus is circular, as the extra layers are derived from within the explananda but regarded as underlying explanatory factors and the models gloss over the actual factors by channelling them into cover terms prematurely regarded as primitive. Finally, since ‘question’ does not constitute a primitive concept but is a product of erse discourse processes, discourse cannot be modelled on this foundation.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2018
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Date: 2017
Abstract: The subject of this study is the copy-verb construction {
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Date: 2015
Abstract: Studies of narrative in various European languages analyzed the discourse structure as an elaborate system of oppositions based on complex paradigms of TAM categories. However, for obvious reasons this approach is not applicable for languages like Burmese, whose paradigmatic sets of TAM categories are very limited. Hence, although manifold discourse structuring devices are identified and described for this kind of languages, rarely do they form a coherently structured system. This study aims at representing discourse structuring strategies of narration in written colloquial Burmese as consisting of three principal categories, mobilized to reveal different aspects of the otherwise concealed presence of speech act participants. This results in a deviation of the narration from its typical form of untouched retelling of objectively represented events along three parameters: (a) remoteness vs. “here-and-now” relevance, (b) objective vs. subjective representation and (c) monologue vs. dialogic settings of communication. The fine structure of narrative in Burmese is shown to be an outcome of the interaction of these functions.
Publisher: California Digital Library (CDL)
Date: 26-07-2019
DOI: 10.5070/H918142426
Publisher: Universidade Estadual de Campinas
Date: 18-04-2023
DOI: 10.20396/JOSS.V12I00.17774
Abstract: The framework of syntactic analysis developed by Izre'el (2018, 2020) situates the simplest structure found in spoken data - the unipartite clause - at the core of its model. The implementation of this framework for the analysis of existential constructions in Modern Hebrew (Izre'el 2022) demonstrates how the unipartite analysis on presumably sentential structures allows us to remodel and bypass former research question, providing a new perspective and novel answers. This contribution attempts to follow up on this analysis and develop it further in an interactional, dynamic perspective. I propose that the discussed framework would additionally benefit from dispensing with other traditional models, which similarly originate in the bipartite view of sentence structure. Shifting away from categories of Information Structure and from the partitioning of information into topic vs. comment/focus and predicate can advance our understanding of language and discourse, while avoiding the pitfalls of problematic and poorly definable concepts. In this view, interlocutors do not structure their contributions or interpret others’ speech by identifying topics, comments, foci, or predicates. Instead, they navigate through the interactive discourse relying on low-level local communicative instructions which signal attention requirements, relevance, local discourse moves, interactionally structured discourse relations, epistemic management, emotive stance and more. Situating the analysis in the dynamic perspective of online syntax opens the way to a more refined understanding of the data, and further research questions.
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Date: 18-08-2015
Abstract: Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Burmese is usually analysed as directly related to the expression of information structure. Yet, this corpus-based study of DOM and the associated prosody finds that DOM is not based on information structure alone, but is also additionally motivated by discourse structure and content management. The suggested analysis proposes that DOM in Burmese provides a grammatical structure of information packaging: a system of separating information into units (packages) and establishing relations between them. Different configurations of packaging are employed to create an array of context-dependent interpretive effects related to information structure, discourse structure, and other factors. Hence, it is argued that information structure is not directly expressed in the language. Instead, it stems from an interpretation of the interplay between information packaging and various pragmatic-semantic factors, and is but one of the possible effects created by packaging.
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Date: 19-10-2018
DOI: 10.1075/SL.17030.OZE
Abstract: Complex phenomena of grammatical tone, well-described for many African languages, are increasingly attested also in the Tibeto-Burman family. This paper describes the tone assignment rule and two cases of tonal expression of grammatical categories in the Tibeto-Burman language Anal. The typologically unusual rule involves tone spreading, tonal polarity on a non-edge constituent and additional spreading, resulting in constant tonal patterns across grammatical suffixes. In two different cases the combination of the tonal pattern assigned by this rule with peculiar morpho-tonological processes results in a marking of a grammatical category (future and 1 sg -person) by grammatical tone, by vowel-length, or only by the overall tonal pattern of the verbal form. Both cases are related to the omission of an explicit marking of the category, although the outcome cannot be explained only by the concept of a floating tone.
Publisher: Open Library of the Humanities
Date: 08-04-2021
DOI: 10.5334/GJGL.967
Abstract: The study analyses the form and functions of two closely related non-arbitrary prosodic contours in Anal Naga (ISO 639-3:anm), a Trans-Himalayan (Tibeto-Burman) language of Northeast India. The two contours are (a) a Response-Seeking contour (RS), pronounced as a strongly accented rise-fall on the last syllable of the Intonation Unit and (b) Prosodic Intensification (PI), minimally pronounced as an identical deviant accent and maximally characterised by an abrupt shift into an extra-high pitch level (or a falsetto voice) and/or an extreme rhyme lengthening. RS has phatic, interaction-managing functions and PI triggers content-managing interpretations. Both markers index (in the Peircean sense) the investment of the speaker’s extra-effort, thus drawing the interlocutors’ attention and triggering an interpretive (PI) or responsive (RS) action. The study analyses RS and PI as conventional/symbolic indexicals (akin to a prosodic pointing) where on the one hand the form is naturally related to the triggered meaning but on the other hand the form of the marker, its distribution and the set of its functions are language-specific conventions. The study presents a brief cross-linguistic comparison of parallel indexical-iconic prosodic contours and demonstrates how despite their non-arbitrary nature, such markers have conventionalised forms, distribution and functions. The study adds to the growing evidence for the role of non-arbitrariness in language and interaction.
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Date: 31-12-2020
Abstract: It tends to be assumed that tonal languages do not make use of intonational tones and accent location for the purpose of conveying information structural aspects of the utterance. This study of read-aloud stories in colloquial Burmese shows that this tonal language does resort to this sort of intonational means for information-structuring reasons. The prosody of Burmese exhibits identifiable intonational patterns, which function on the level of accentual phrases. An accentual phrase constitutes the basic prosodic unit, and it is there that we find the real interaction of information structure, intonation and tone. Accentual phrases are organised around a single accent, the location of which depends on information structural factors. Sentences can consist of a single accentual phrase or a few phrases, while the exact partition into such phrases is also motivated by information- and discourse-structuring considerations.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2019
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Date: 08-2021
Abstract: A few languages of the South-Central branch of Trans-Himalayan (Tibeto-Burman/Sino-Tibetan) display diachronic shifts of the inclusive to become innovative markers of 1 sg or 2 sg . Such shifts are rarely reported in the cross-linguistic literature. In conjunction with phylogenetic-comparative evidence on cases of actual diachronic shift, we offer a synchronic usage-based analysis of the inclusive in one particular language, Anal Naga. In this language, usage frequencies suggest that a shift of the inclusive is underway: apart from the frequent generic usage, the inclusive now commonly has a humbling, empathy-seeking first person (1 sg/excl ) reference. In contrast, forms that combine inclusive and plural marking pattern more like a prototypical inclusive, i.e., with regular reference to the local speech act participants of speaker and addressee(s). The optional plural marking is the most important factor to determine the reference pattern of the inclusive. Other factors (irrealis setting lexeme semantics) only play a marginal role person form (bound indexes or free pronouns) and syntactic role are not indicative.
Publisher: Brill
Date: 2012
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Date: 2021
DOI: 10.1515/LINGVAN-2020-0039
Abstract: The paper presents the emerging alternative to the field of Information Structure, termed here Multifactorial Information Management (MIM). This framework regards the process of information structuring as an interplay of erse language-specific categories and discourse strategies, belonging to various areas of linguistic inquiry. The paper illustrates the application of this approach to cross-linguistic findings and suggests perspectives for future research. It also demonstrates how a multifactorial approach to information management eliminates the need for idiosyncratic concepts such as topic, focus and dedicated cognitive models associated with them.
No related grants have been discovered for Pavel Ozerov.