The Prosody of French Interrogatives

Our aim is the study of the intonation of interrogatives in French. Interrogatives refer to a clause type, defined independently of illocutionary forces or actual speech act values in context. We restrict ourselves to wh-interrogatives and polar interrogatives, and we want to show that the theory proposed for declaratives by Beyssade et al. 2004a among others) readily extends to interrogatives. The localization of nuclear contours in declarative and interrogative utterances involves the same sensitivity to the partition of semantic content in both types. Moreover, the anchoring of nuclear contours exploits the pitch accent in declaratives, which gives prominence to the right edge of the nuclear domain, whereas it exploits the phrasal tone in interrogatives, which gives prominence to the left edge – identified with the lexical mark of the clause type

LA STRUCTURE DE L'INFORMATION DANS LES QUESTIONS : quelques remarques sur la diversité des formes interrogatives en français.

Version préfinale.Il existe en français bien des façons différentes de poser une question : on peut utiliser un mot interrogatif in situ ou antéposé, utiliser ou non l'inversion clitique, choisir une intonation spécifique... Il est donc légitime de se demander si ces différentes formes sont équivalentes ou si elles ont des conditions d'emploi différentes. Nous chercherons dans cet article à caractériser certaines des contraintes qui pèsent sur l'emploi de certaines formes de questions, notamment les questions déclaratives et les questions in situ. Pour ce faire, il nous faudra esquisser les grandes lignes d'un modèle du dialogue, montrer comment analyser l'impact d'un énoncé (assertant ou questionnant) sur le contexte, et chercher à isoler les paramètres pertinents pour caractériser un contexte et le comparer avec un autre. Il semble que si l'articulation fond-focus joue un rôle dans les questions comme dans les assertions, c'est en fait la notion de topique de discours qui est cruciale pour caractériser les contextes d'emploi. La fonction d'une question dans un discours, c'est d'en changer le topique

Introduction

Introduction to genericity in the nominal, verbal and sentential domain

La structure de l'information dans les questions : quelques remarques sur la diversité des formes interrogatives en français

Il existe en français bien des façons différentes de poser une question : on peut utiliser un mot interrogatif in situ ou antéposé, utiliser ou non l’inversion clitique, choisir une intonation spécifique… Il est donc légitime de se demander si ces différentes formes sont équivalentes ou si elles ont des conditions d’emploi différentes. Nous chercherons dans cet article à caractériser certaines des contraintes qui pèsent sur l’emploi de certaines formes de questions, notamment les questions déclaratives et les questions in situ. Pour ce faire, il nous faudra esquisser les grandes lignes d’un modèle du dialogue, montrer comment analyser l’impact d’un énoncé (assertant ou questionnant) sur le contexte, et chercher à isoler les paramètres pertinents pour caractériser un contexte et le comparer avec un autre. Il semble que si l’articulation fond-focus joue un rôle dans les questions comme dans les assertions, c’est en fait la notion de topique de discours qui est cruciale pour caractériser les contextes d’emploi. La fonction d’une question dans un discours, c’est d’en changer le topique.French is a language which offers a large variety of question constructions: the speaker may use an in situ or fronted wh-word, she may use clitic inversion or a specific intonation… It is thus legitimate to wonder whether all these forms are equivalent or whether they are used in different contexts. In this paper, our aim is to characterize some of the constraints that bear on the use of some of question forms, such as declarative vs interrogativequestions and in situ vs frontedquestions. To do this, we will have to outline the main lines of a model of dialogue, to account for the impact (in terms of update) of an utterance onto the context, and try to determine the relevant parameters that characterize a context and allow to compare and identify contexts. If the focus-ground articulation plays a role in the analysis of questions, as in the case of assertions, it appears that the most relevant dimension to define constraints on the use of questions is the discourse topic. The role of a question in a discourse is to change the discourse topic

Back to uniqueness presupposition

While it is usually assumed that definite descriptions presuppose the existence and the uniqueness for their referent, there are lots of counter-examples, in which either the existence or the uniqueness isn’t presupposed. Among them are weak definites, which can be divided into two classes: (i) the short weak definites such as the train in the VP take the train and (ii) the long weak definites such as the student of a linguist in the sentence this data comes from the student of a linguist. A unified analysis of these two classes is proposed, based on the claim that nouns in weak definite descriptions refer to types and that the definite determiner triggers only a weak uniqueness presupposition, in wich the uniqueness depends on the existence.Alors qu’on dit en général que les descriptions définies présupposent l’existence et l’unicité de leur référent, il existe un nombre important de contre-exemples, pour lesquels soit l’existence, soit l’unicité du référent n’est pas présupposée. C’est le cas en particulier des définis faibles, dont on montre qu’ils se divisent en deux classes : les courts comme dans prendre le train et les longs comme dans Cela vient de l’étudiant d’un linguiste. Nous proposons une analyse unifiée de ces deux classes de définis faibles qui repose sur l’idée que le nom réfère à un type et que le déterminant défini ne déclenche qu’une présupposition d’unicité faible, où l’unicité du référent est conditionnée à son existence

Introduction

International audienceThis introductory chapter is organized into three parts. The first part focuses on the syntactic structure and compositional interpretation of determiner phrases, and frames the ontological issues related to reference to kinds in this context. It addresses a series of ontological issues relevant to the analysis of natural language: in order to account for linguistic data, must we postulate the existence of kinds, viewed as a type of entities, distinguished from particulars or tokens? What is the relationship between kinds and sets of entities, between kinds and properties, between kinds and sets of properties? The second part is comprised of three sections which are dedicated respectively to the stage-level/individual-level distinction, to the contribution of unboundedness and plurality, and to the dispositional reading of generic sentences. The questions addressed in this part pertain to the relationship between genericity, habituality, abilities, and dispositions. The third part examines the type of generic sentences, opposing analytic vs synthetic judgments, and raises the question of the notion of normality. It comprises two sections. The first section addresses the issue of the linguistic manifestation of the analytic/synthetic distinction and investigates the sources of the available interpretations for indefinite generic sentences, bare plurals, and definite plural generics. The second section discusses the notion of normality, comparing the view of normality as a statistical fact and the view of normality as a normative one

Prosodic Marking of Information Focus in French

This article addresses the controversial issue of the prosodic marking of Information Focus in French. We report the results of three experiments (one in production two in perception) that support three claims. The first one is empirical. Phrases that resolve a question may be set off by two types of intonational marks in French: they host the nuclear pitch accent (NPA) on their right edge and/or they are intonationally highlighted (IH). The second one is analytical: NPA placement is sensitive to the informational/illocutionary partition of the content of utterances, while intonational highlighting (IH) is sensitive to any type of distinguishedness: semantic or pragmatic. The third one is methodological: the "Question/Answer" pair provides a criterion to identify the Information Focus (i.. e. the part of content specifically asserted and making up the update brought about by the utterance) only it the answer is congruent. Congruence of answers is impossible to control in experiments based on question/answers pairs

A Syntax-based Analysis of Predication

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Introduction

Topic of the volume It is commonly assumed that the primary function of the definite article is to show that a reference is made to an entity that both the Speaker and the Addressee can find (i.e. identify) in the context. By this property, the definite article is distinguished from the indefinite article, which is used when a reference is made to a non specific entity belonging to a class of similar entities. There is thus an opposition between definite and indefinite DPs, which can be illus..

From sentences to utterances : what prosody tells us about speech acts

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