Information structure in linguistic theory and in speech production : validation of a cross-linguistic data set

The aim of this paper is to validate a dataset collected by means of production experiments which are part of the Questionnaire on Information Structure. The experiments generate a range of information structure contexts that have been observed in the literature to induce specific constructions. This paper compares the speech production results from a subset of these experiments with specific claims about the reflexes of information structure in four different languages. The results allow us to evaluate and in most cases validate the efficacy of our elicitation paradigms, to identify potentially fruitful avenues of future research, and to highlight issues involved in interpreting speech production data of this kind

Encoding information structure in Yucatec Maya : on the Interplay of prosody and syntax

The aim of this paper is to outline the means for encoding information structure in Yucatec Maya. Yucatec Maya is a tone language, displaying a three-fold opposition in the tonal realization of syllables. From the morpho-syntactic point of view, the grammar of Yucatec Maya contains morphological (topic affixes, morphological marking of out-of-focus predicates) and syntactic (designated positions) means to uniquely specify syntactic constructions for their information structure. After a descriptive overview of these phenomena, we present experimental evidence which reveals the impact of the nonavailability of prosodic alternatives on the choice of syntactic constructions in language production

Distinctness effects on VOS order: Evidence from Yucatec Maya

Skopeteas S, Verhoeven E. Distinctness effects on VOS order: Evidence from Yucatec Maya. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics. 2009;59(New Perspectives in Mayan Linguistics):135-152

The discourse function of inverse voice: An experimental study in Teribe (Chibchan)

Quesada JD, Skopeteas S. The discourse function of inverse voice: An experimental study in Teribe (Chibchan). Journal of Pragmatics. 2010;42(9):2579-2600.It has been argued that the use of inverse voice in languages with pragmatic inversion depends on the discourse status of the referents: this voice occurs when the patient outranks the agent in topicality. In our article, we present empirical evidence from Teribe, a Chibchan language of Panama and Costa Rica and we examine the interaction between inverse voice and information structure. We report the results of three production experiments which show that there is a strong correlation but not a categorical association between inverse voice and particular information structural properties. On this empirical basis, we claim that the occurrence of inverse voice in discourse may be accounted for in terms of discourse-oriented preferences concerning the linear order and does not require the assumption that discrete pragmatic properties such as topic or focus are inherent part of the construction at issue

Semantic categorizations and encoding strategies

Skopeteas S. Semantic categorizations and encoding strategies. In: Zaefferer D, Schalley A, eds. Ontolinguistics: Correlations between ontological status and linguistic coding. Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [TiLSM]. Vol 176. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter; 2007: 331-356

A cross-linguistic study on turn-taking and temporal alignment in verbal interaction

Kousidis S, Schlangen D, Skopeteas S. A cross-linguistic study on turn-taking and temporal alignment in verbal interaction. In: Proceedings of Interspeech 2013. 2013

Focus and intonation in Georgian: Constituent structure and prosodic realization

Skopeteas S, Féry C. Focus and intonation in Georgian: Constituent structure and prosodic realization. Submitted. Draft

Licensing Focus Constructions in Yucatec Maya

Verhoeven E, Skopeteas S. Licensing Focus Constructions in Yucatec Maya. International Journal of American Linguistics. 2015;81(1):1-40.An important challenge in the study of focus constructions is teasing out the properties of the layers of linguistic structure that are involved, in particular identifying which interpretational properties are associated with the syntactic operation at issue, which properties arise through inferential processes, and which properties can be deduced on the basis of the prosodic structure. This article undertakes this challenge in a language with a structurally identifiable left-peripheral position which is employed for the expression of focus, namely, Yucatec Maya. This syntactic configuration comes with a focus interpretation and we show that the occurrence of this construction is not restricted to a subtype of focus corresponding to a truth-conditionally relevant operator. The properties of the syntax-prosody mapping indicate that focus fronting is a syntactic operation that places the material in focus in the maximally prominent partition of the prosodic constituent that contains the predicate

Discovering the prehistory of multilingual situations in the lexicon. An empirical study on the Caucasian Urum vocabulary

Multilingual situations are reflected in the lexicon; by consequence, lexical borrowings are powerful evidence for language contact in the prehistory of linguistic communities. This article presents an empirical study on the lexical knowledge of Caucasian Urum speakers, i. e., ethnic Greek speakers in the Small Caucasus, who are bilingual in a variety of Turkish (Urum) and Russian. The analysis is based on the established assumption that certain concepts are cross-linguistically associated with a certain likelihood of borrowing. Based on this assumption the data from lexical knowledge allow for insights with respect to the substrate/superstrate status of the involved languages in a multilingual situation and provide evidence for the type of relation (genetic or contact-induced) between compared languages