Workshop on Topic, Focus and Intonation, Santa Barbara, CA, July 20-21, 2001

University Of California-Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara CA

Investigators

Abstract

Recent work in syntax and semantics has yielded dramatic developments in the depth and cross-linguistic breadth of our understanding of the role of topic and focus in language. At the same time, there has been increased interest among phoneticians and phonologists in the cross-linguistic study of intonation. One area of intonation which has proven to be a rich yet relatively understudied area of research is focus and topic. Studies of various languages have indicated that utterances involving a focused or topicalized element are typically associated with intonational properties different from utterances without any focused or topicalized elements, e.g. increased pitch range, specialized tonal configurations, different durational characteristics. These studies suggest a close link between differences in prosody and the kinds of differences in meaning associated with various kinds of topicalization and focus. Nevertheless despite recent advances in the study of intonational properties of topic and focus, there is ample room for further advancing our cross-linguistic knowledge of the interaction between the phonetics and phonology of intonation and the syntax and semantics of topicalization and focus. In particular, increased interaction between syntacticians, semanticists, phonologists and phoneticians promises to yield important progress in the study of intonational correlates of the meanings associated with topicalization and focus. A workshop on Topic, Focus and Intonation will be held at the 2001 Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute in Santa Barbara, CA. In this workshop, we hope to explore further the effects of various kinds of topicalization and focus on intonation. It is especially hoped that the workshop will lay the groundwork for future collaborative efforts between linguists devoted to the study meaning and linguistics engaged in the quantitative study of intonation. Both descriptive and theoretical papers on any aspects of the relationship between intonation, on the one hand, and topic and/or focus, on the other hand, are welcome. Papers may deal with intonational aspects of topic and/or focus in any language, whether relatively well-studied or relatively underdocumented.