integrating givenness into a structured meaning approach ...overview. existing hpsg approaches...

IntegratingGIVENness into a

structured meaningapproach in HPSG

Kordula De Kuthy andDetmar Meurers

Overview

BackgroundIntonation and Focus

Focus Projection

Givenness

Our approachWhere to represent info struc

What to represent

Lexical information structure

Basic example

Phrasal information structure

Focus projection in NPs

Focus projection andgivenness

Eliminate focus attribute?

OutlookUniform approach togivenness and what can beprojected over?

Empirical status of focusprojection

Summary

Integrating GIVENness into astructured meaning approach in HPSG

Kordula De Kuthy and Detmar MeurersUniversitat Tubingen

Information Structure and Formal Grammar WorkshopThe 18th International Conference on HPSG

Seattle. August 23, 2011

1 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Overview

◮ Existing HPSG approaches successfully capture someaspects of the relation between intonation, syntax,semantics, and information structure.

2 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Overview


◮ As a result, some constraints previously stipulated insyntax can be explained through the nature of theintegration of a sentence into the discourse,

2 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Overview


◮ As a result, some constraints previously stipulated insyntax can be explained through the nature of theintegration of a sentence into the discourse, e.g., for

◮ partial constituents in the nominal (De Kuthy 2002) andthe verbal domain (De Kuthy & Meurers 2003)

◮ multiple fronted elements (Bildhauer & Cook 2010)

2 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Overview





◮ None of the HPSG approaches so far capture theimportant empirical generalizations established bySchwarzschild (1999) around the notion of givenness.

2 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Overview





◮ None of the HPSG approaches so far capture theimportant empirical generalizations established bySchwarzschild (1999) around the notion of givenness.

◮ In this talk, we extend our HPSG approach to capturegivenness, explaining the so-called deaccenting cases.

2 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary


◮ English and German are intonation languages◮ Information structuring is signaled by the intonation of

an utterance, including different types of pitch accents.◮ presence and nature of an accent is an indicator of the

discourse function of a particular part of a sentence(cf., e.g., Beckman & Pierrehumbert 1986; Grice et al. 2002).

3 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary


◮ English and German are intonation languages◮ Information structuring is signaled by the intonation of

an utterance, including different types of pitch accents.◮ presence and nature of an accent is an indicator of the

discourse function of a particular part of a sentence(cf., e.g., Beckman & Pierrehumbert 1986; Grice et al. 2002).

◮ Most widely discussed discourse function: focus

◮ Intuitively, the “most important” or “new” information ofan utterance (e.g., Krifka 2007).

◮ Every focused expression must contain a pitch accent.

3 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

BackgroundMore on Focus

◮ Focus can be understood to be the part of an answercorresponding to the wh-element of a question.

(1) a. What did John rent?

b. He rented [[a BICYCLE]]F . (narrow NP focus)

◮ The answer in (1b) provides the element asked for, thefocus, which is marked with [[ ]]F .

◮ Out of the various alternative things John could haverented, he picked a bicycle.

4 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Focus Projection

◮ Observation: The same prosodic realization of anutterance can appear in different contexts.

5 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Focus Projection


(2) John rented a BICYCLE.

(3) a. What did John rent? (narrow NP focus)

John rented [[a BICYCLE]]F .

5 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Focus Projection





b. What did John do? (wide VP focus)

John [[rented a BICYCLE]]F .

5 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Focus Projection







c. What happened yesterday? (wide S focus)

[[John rented a BICYCLE]]F .

5 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Focus Projection







c. What happened yesterday? (wide S focus)

[[John rented a BICYCLE]]F .

◮ Lexical and syntactic conditions have been formulatedto define when focus can project (e.g., Gussenhoven 1983;von Stechow & Uhmann 1986; Uhmann 1991; Selkirk 1995).

5 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Givenness

◮ Schwarzschild (1999) observed an importantdissociation of focus and new information:

◮ when focused material is already given in the discourse,the focus includes unaccented substantive material

→ so-called deaccenting of given material

6 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Givenness




(4) The conference participants are renting all kind of vehicles.Yesterday, Bill came to the conference driving a red convertible.

a. What did John rent?

b. He rented [[a GREEN convertible]]F .

6 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Givenness







◮ Where given material occurs in the focus, the pitchaccent is realized on another, new word in the focus.

6 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Our approach

◮ Buring (2006) shows that deaccenting of given materialis a widespread phenomenon.

◮ Yet, currently it is not captured by any HPSG approach.

7 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Our approach

◮ Buring (2006) shows that deaccenting of given materialis a widespread phenomenon.

◮ Yet, currently it is not captured by any HPSG approach.

⇒ Extend HPSG to capture givenness and make theproper predictions for deaccenting examples.

◮ We provide an HPSG account using structuredmeanings (Krifka 1992).

7 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

An HPSG analysis incorporating givenness

◮ Starting point: information structure-syntax interfacedeveloped in De Kuthy (2002) and De Kuthy & Meurers (2003)

◮ inspired by Engdahl & Vallduvı (1996) in that it is lexicallydriven and constraint-based, but differing in

◮ where information structure is encoded,◮ what is represented, and the◮ empirical coverage of the focus projection principles

8 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Representing information structure in HPSGWhere?

◮ We introduce information structure as appropriate forsigns

◮ not for local objects as in Engdahl & Vallduvı (1996)

◮ Motivation: required for proper interaction with UDCs◮ fillers relevant for information structure, not the traces

9 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Representing information structure in HPSGWhat?

◮ We represent information structure as a structuring ofsemantic representations, following structured meaningapproaches (von Stechow 1981; Jacobs 1983; Krifka 1992).

◮ not entire signs as in Engdahl & Vallduvı (1996)

10 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary




◮ We use a standard semantic object language: Ty2◮ Ty2 integrated into HPSG by Sailer (2000).

10 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary





◮ We introduce focus and given attributes with lists of Ty2expressions as values, so-called meaningful expressions.

10 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary





◮ We introduce focus and given attributes with lists of Ty2expressions as values, so-called meaningful expressions.

(5) What did John do? (wide VP focus)John [[rented a BICYCLE]]F .

phon 〈John,rented,a,BICYCLE〉synsem|loc|cont|lf ∃x[bicycle′(x) ∧ rent ′(j, x)]

info-struc

focus 〈λy∃x[bicycle′(x) ∧ rent ′(y, x)]〉given 〈λP[P(john′)]〉

10 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Representing information structure in HPSGAccents and lexical information structure

◮ To encode whether a word bears an accent or not, weenrich the phonology with the boolean feature accent.

sign

phon

phon-str listaccent bool

◮ In general, different accent types can be introduced,e.g., following ToBI (Beckman & Pierrehumbert 1986).

11 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Representing information structure in HPSGAccents and lexical information structure

◮ To encode whether a word bears an accent or not, weenrich the phonology with the boolean feature accent.

sign

phon

phon-str listaccent bool

◮ In general, different accent types can be introduced,e.g., following ToBI (Beckman & Pierrehumbert 1986).

◮ Relating accent placement and focus for words:

word →

phon|accent +

ss|loc|cont|lf 1

info-struc[

focus 〈 1 〉]

∨

phon|accent −

info-struc[

focus 〈〉]

11 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Information structure: A basic example

John

phon|accent −

s|loc| cont|lf λP[P(john′)]info-struc|focus〈〉

rented

phon|accent −

s|loc|cont|lf λwλy[rent ′(y,w)]

info-struc|focus〈〉

a

phon|accent −

s|loc|cont|lf λPλQ∃x[P(x) ∧ Q(x)]info-struc|focus〈〉

BICYCLE

phon|accent +

s|loc|cont|lf 4 λz[book ′(z)]

info-struc|focus⟨

4⟩

a BICYCLE

s|loc|cont|lf 3 λQ∃x[bicycle′(x) ∧ Q(x)]

info-struc|focus⟨

3⟩

rented a BICYCLE

s|loc|cont|lf 2 λy∃x[bicycle′(x) ∧ rent ′(y, x)]

info-struc|focus⟨

2⟩

John rented a BICYCLE

s|loc|cont|lf ∃x[bicycle′(x) ∧ rent ′(john′, x)]

info-struc|focus⟨

2 λy∃x[bicycle′(x) ∧ rent ′(y, x)]⟩

12 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Information structure of phrases

◮ Focus projection principles define which parts of thesentence can be in the focus given an accent placement.

13 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary



Base case: no focus projection

◮ Collect the focus values of the daughters.

13 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary



Base case: no focus projection

◮ Collect the focus values of the daughters.

phrase →

info-struc|focus 1 ⊕ 2

head-dtr|info-struc|focus 1

non-head-dtr|info-struc|focus 2

∨ . . . the focus projection cases . . .

13 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Information structure of phrasesFocus projection in NPs and PPs (De Kuthy 2002)

◮ Focus can project in a PP or NP if the rightmostconstituent in it is focused.

14 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary



phrase →




∨


s|loc

[


]


either-dtr (

phon|phon-str 2

s|l|cont|lf 4


, )

either-dtr ( 1 , 2 ) :=

[

head-dtr 1

non-head-dtr 2

]

∨

[

head-dtr 2

non-head-dtr 1

]

14 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Information structure of phrasesFocus projection in the presence of givenness

◮ Focus can project from any focused daughter if theother daughter is given.

15 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Focus projection with deaccentingExample revisited




16 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Focus projection with deaccenting

John

phon|accent −

s|loc|cont|lf 1 λP[P(john)]

info-struc

focus 〈〉

given

⟨

1⟩

rented

phon|accent −

s|loc|cont|lf 2 λwλy[rent ′(y,w)]

info-struc

focus 〈〉

given

⟨

2⟩

a

phon|accent −

s|loc|cont|lf λPλQ∃x[P(x) ∧ Q(x)]

info-struc

[

focus 〈〉

given 〈〉

]

GREEN

phon|accent +

s|loc|cont|lf 5 λw[green′(w)]

info-struc

focus

⟨

5⟩

given 〈〉

convertible

phon|accent −

s|loc|cont|lf 6 λz[convertible′(z)]

info-struc

focus 〈〉

given

⟨

6⟩

GREEN convertible

s|loc|cont|lf 4 λx[convertible′(x) ∧ green′(x)]

info-struc

focus

⟨

4⟩

given

⟨

6⟩

a GREEN convertible

s|loc|cont|lf 3 λQ∃x[convertible′(x) ∧ green′(x) ∧Q(x)]

info-struc

focus

⟨

3⟩

given

⟨

6⟩

rented a GREEN convertible

s|loc|cont|lf 2 λy∃x[convertible(x) ∧ green′(x) ∧ rent ′(y, x)]

info-struc

focus

⟨

3⟩

given

⟨

2 , 6⟩

John rented a GREEN convertible

s|loc|cont|lf ∃x[convertible′(x) ∧ green′(x) ∧ rent ′(john, x)]

info-struc

focus

⟨

3 λQ∃x[convertible′(x) ∧ green′(x) ∧Qp(x)]⟩

given

⟨

1 , 2 , 6 λz[convertible′(z)]⟩

17 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Could we only use givenness, eliminating focus?

◮ It would fail to predict that in a focused VP where neitherverb nor argument is given, the argument must be accented:

(6) What did John do? (wide VP focus)

a. John [[rented a BICYCLE]]F .

b. % John [[RENTED a bicycle]]F .

19 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

OutlookUniform approach to givenness and what can be projected over?

◮ Focus projection is limited for unexpected material:

(7) Hi John, good to see you in the department, but whyare you so pale?

a. [[I just saw a man with an AXE!]]F

20 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary





b. % [[I just saw a chicken with an AXE!]]F

20 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary






◮ The material focus projected over cannot be toounexpected; it must be possible to accomodate it.

20 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary







◮ Is the required expectability of material focus-projectedover related to the deaccenting of given material?

20 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary







◮ Is the required expectability of material focus-projectedover related to the deaccenting of given material?

◮ Possible relation to purely pragmatic approacheseliminating focus projection (Roberts 2006; Kadmon 2006).

20 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

OutlookEmpirical status of focus projection

◮ Recent formal pragmatic approaches have claimed thatfocus projection does not exist (Roberts 2006; Kadmon 2006)

21 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary



◮ Requires empirical exploration (De Kuthy & Meurers 2010, 2012)

◮ Survey of experimental evidence for focus projection◮ Exploration of annotated corpora

◮ parsed versions off German IMS Radionews Corpusand Verbmobil Corpus

21 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary



◮ Requires empirical exploration (De Kuthy & Meurers 2010, 2012)

◮ Survey of experimental evidence for focus projection◮ Exploration of annotated corpora

◮ parsed versions off German IMS Radionews Corpusand Verbmobil Corpus

◮ Corpora with information structure annotation◮ for English: NXT Switchboard (Calhoun et al. 2010)◮ but information structure annotation hard (Dipper et al. 2004)→ Idea: collect corpora with explicit, linguistic task context

◮ Corpus of answers to reading comprehension questionsmakes text & question explicit (Meurers et al. 2011, 2012).

21 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Summary

◮ Extended our HPSG approach to information structureto capture givenness (Schwarzschild 1999).

◮ Correctly licenses deaccenting of given information, awidespread phenomenon (Buring 2006) not previouslydealt with in HPSG.

◮ Issues we are currently exploring:◮ relation of deaccenting of given information to role of

expected information◮ empirical exploration (corpora, experiments) of where

and under what conditions focus projection occurs, andwhether syntax plays a role in this

22 / 22




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

References

Beckman, M. & J. Pierrehumbert (1986). Intonational Structure in Japanese andEnglish. Phonology Yearbook 3, 255–309.

Bildhauer, F. & P. Cook (2010). German Multiple Fronting and ExpectedTopic-Hood. In S. Muller (ed.), Proceedings of the 17th InternationalConference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Paris University ParisDiderot, France. Stanford: CSLI Publications, pp. 68–79.

Buring, D. (2006). Focus projection and default prominence. In V. Molnar &S. Winkler (eds.), The Architecture of Focus, Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter,vol. 82 of Studies in Generative Grammar , pp. 321–346.

Calhoun, S., J. Carletta, J. Brenier, N. Mayo, D. Jurafsky, M. Steedman & D. Beaver(2010). The NXT-format Switchboard Corpus: A Rich Resource forInvestigating the Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics and Prosody of Dialogue.Language Resources and Evaluation 44, 387–419.

De Kuthy, K. (2002). Discontinuous NPs in German — A Case Study of theInteraction of Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics. Stanford, CA: CSLIPublications.

De Kuthy, K. & D. Meurers (2010). Focus in German: Towards a Corpus-basedstudy. In Proceedings of Linguistic Evidence 2010. Tubingen, pp. 128–132.URL http://purl.org/dm/papers/dekuthy-meurers-10.html.

De Kuthy, K. & D. Meurers (2012). Focus projection between theory and evidence.In S. Featherston & B. Stolterfoth (eds.), Current Work in Linguistic Evidence:The Fourth Tubingen Meeting. Amsterdam: De Gruyter. Accepted.

22 / 22

http://purl.org/dm/papers/dekuthy-meurers-10.html




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

De Kuthy, K. & W. D. Meurers (2003). The secret life of focus exponents, and whatit tells us about fronted verbal projections. In S. Muller (ed.), Proceedings ofthe Tenth Int. Conference on HPSG. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. URLhttp://purl.org/dm/papers/dekuthy-meurers-hpsg03.html.

Dipper, S., M. Gotze, M. Stede & T. Wegst (2004). ANNIS: A Linguistic Databasefor Exploring Information Structure. Interdisciplinary Studies on InformationStructure (ISIS) 1.

Engdahl, E. & E. Vallduvı (1996). Information Packaging in HPSG. In C. Grover &E. Vallduvı (eds.), Studies in HPSG, Edinburgh: The University of Edinburgh,vol. 12 of Edinburgh Working Papers in Cognitive Science, pp. 1–31.

Grice, M., S. Baumann & R. Benzmuller (2002). German Intonation within theFramework of Autosegmental-Metrical Phonology. In S.-A. Jun (ed.), ProsodicTypology and Transcription: A Unified Approach, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress. To appear.

Gussenhoven, C. (1983). Testing the reality of focus domains. Language andSpeech 26, 61–80.

Jacobs, J. (1983). Fokus und Skalen, vol. 138 of Linguistische Arbeiten. Tubingen:Max Niemeyer Verlag.

Kadmon, N. (2006). Some Theories of the Interpretation of Accent Placement.Handout for Presentation in the Department of Linguistics Colloquium, OSU,October 19, 2006. (Based on a talk given at the Colloque de Syntax etSemantique in Paris, 2000).

Krifka, M. (1992). A Compositional Semantics for Multiple Focus Constructions. InJ. Jacobs (ed.), Informationsstruktur und Grammatik , Opladen: WestdeutscherVerlag, Linguistische Berichte, pp. 17–54.

22 / 22

http://purl.org/dm/papers/dekuthy-meurers-hpsg03.html




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Krifka, M. (2007). Basic Notions of Information Structure. In C. Fery, G. Fanselow& M. Krifka (eds.), The notions of information structure, Potsdam:Universitatsverlag Potsdam, vol. 6 of Interdisciplinary Studies on InformationStructure (ISIS).

Meurers, D., N. Ott & R. Ziai (2012). Creation and Analysis of a ReadingComprehension Exercise Corpus: Towards Evaluating Meaning in Context. InT. Schmidt & K. Worner (eds.), Multilingual Corpora and Multilingual CorpusAnalysis. Hamburg Studies in Multilingualism (HSM), Benjamins.

Meurers, D., R. Ziai, N. Ott & J. Kopp (2011). Evaluating Answers to ReadingComprehension Questions in Context: Results for German and the Role ofInformation Structure. In Proceedings of the TextInfer 2011 Workshop onTextual Entailment . Edinburgh, Scottland, UK: Association for ComputationalLinguistics, pp. 1–9. URL http://aclweb.org/anthology/W11-2401.

Roberts, C. (2006). Resolving Focus. Conference abstract for Sinn und Bedeutung11. Barcelona, Spain. URLhttp://purl.org/dm/tmp/Roberts-Sinn-und-Bedeutung-2006.pdf.

Rooth, M. (1992). A Theory of Focus Interpretation. Natural Language Semantics1, 75–116.

Sailer, M. (2000). Combinatorial Semantics and Idiomatic Expressions inHead-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Ph.D. thesis, Universitat Tubingen.

Schwarzschild, R. (1999). GIVENness, Avoid F and other Constraints on thePlacement of Focus. Natural Language Semantics 7(2), 141–177.

Selkirk, E. (1995). Sentence Prosody: Intonation, Stress, and Phrasing. In J. A.Goldsmith (ed.), The Handbook of Phonological Theory, Oxford: BasilBlackwell, chap. 16, pp. 550–569.

22 / 22

http://aclweb.org/anthology/W11-2401

http://purl.org/dm/tmp/Roberts-Sinn-und-Bedeutung-2006.pdf




Overview


Focus Projection

Givenness


What to represent


Basic example







Summary

Uhmann, S. (1991). Fokusphonologie. No. 252 in Linguistische Arbeiten.Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.

von Stechow, A. (1981). Topic, Focus, and Local Relevance. In W. Klein & W. Levelt(eds.), Crossing the Boundaries in Linguistics, Dordrecht: Reidel, pp. 95–130.

von Stechow, A. & S. Uhmann (1986). Some Remarks on Focus Projection. InW. Abraham & S. de Meij (eds.), Topic, Focus, and Configurationality ,Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co., no. 4 in LinguistikAktuell, pp. 295–320.

22 / 22

integrating givenness into a structured meaning approach ...overview. existing hpsg approaches...

Documents