Information Structure Annotation and Secondary Accents Arndt Riester 1 Stefan Baumann 2 1 Institute for Natural Language Processing University of Stuttgart 2 IfL Phonetics University of Cologne DGfS Workshop Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 1 / 22
Annotating Information Structure (Focus-Background) for Research on Prosody Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 2 / 22
Annotating Focus-Background Structure Is considered “difficult”. Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 3 / 22
Annotating Focus-Background Structure Is considered “difficult”. Usually, focus theorists talk about given and new information, about presupposition , about “triggering alternatives”, about contrast . Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 3 / 22
Annotating Focus-Background Structure Is considered “difficult”. Usually, focus theorists talk about given and new information, about presupposition , about “triggering alternatives”, about contrast . All these notions have multiple interpretations and do not easily apply to corpus data. Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 3 / 22
Annotating Focus-Background Structure Is considered “difficult”. Usually, focus theorists talk about given and new information, about presupposition , about “triggering alternatives”, about contrast . All these notions have multiple interpretations and do not easily apply to corpus data. Usually, focus theorists don’t care. Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 3 / 22
Annotating Focus-Background Structure Is considered “difficult”. Usually, focus theorists talk about given and new information, about presupposition , about “triggering alternatives”, about contrast . All these notions have multiple interpretations and do not easily apply to corpus data. Usually, focus theorists don’t care. But we do! In corpus annotation, what comes closest to the given-new distinction are anaphora or information status . This is where we would like to start. Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 3 / 22
Annotating Focus-Background Structure Is considered “difficult”. Usually, focus theorists talk about given and new information, about presupposition , about “triggering alternatives”, about contrast . All these notions have multiple interpretations and do not easily apply to corpus data. Usually, focus theorists don’t care. But we do! In corpus annotation, what comes closest to the given-new distinction are anaphora or information status . This is where we would like to start. Annotating focus “directly” often involves question-answer tests (but where do the questions come from in narrative text?) or prosody (but does every pitch accent mean “focus”?) Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 3 / 22
Some consensus Recently, among people taking an annotation perspective to focus (Selkirk, 2007; Götze et al., 2007; Beaver & Velleman (subm.)) some consensus seems to emerge. Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 4 / 22
Some consensus Recently, among people taking an annotation perspective to focus (Selkirk, 2007; Götze et al., 2007; Beaver & Velleman (subm.)) some consensus seems to emerge. We must identify two sources responsible for the assignment of accent : Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 4 / 22
Some consensus Recently, among people taking an annotation perspective to focus (Selkirk, 2007; Götze et al., 2007; Beaver & Velleman (subm.)) some consensus seems to emerge. We must identify two sources responsible for the assignment of accent : Novelty and F-features (Rooth, 1992: e.g. overt contrast , association with exhaustive particles etc.), whereas the latter are referred to as “focus” (Selkirk), “importance” (Beaver & Velleman), “contrast(ive focus)” (Götze et al.), “elicited alternatives” (Riester & Baumann) Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 4 / 22
What to annotate? Given vs. new constituents (a.k.a. information status ) Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 5 / 22
What to annotate? Given vs. new constituents (a.k.a. information status ) ◮ Information status of DPs / terms (referential information status) Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 5 / 22
What to annotate? Given vs. new constituents (a.k.a. information status ) ◮ Information status of DPs / terms (referential information status) ◮ Focus-background structure additionally requires a notion of Information status for non-referential expressions (lexical information status) Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 5 / 22
What to annotate? Given vs. new constituents (a.k.a. information status ) ◮ Information status of DPs / terms (referential information status) ◮ Focus-background structure additionally requires a notion of Information status for non-referential expressions (lexical information status) ◮ Ref + Lex = RefLex scheme (Baumann & Riester, submitted; Riester & Baumann, 2011) Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 5 / 22
What to annotate? Given vs. new constituents (a.k.a. information status ) ◮ Information status of DPs / terms (referential information status) ◮ Focus-background structure additionally requires a notion of Information status for non-referential expressions (lexical information status) ◮ Ref + Lex = RefLex scheme (Baumann & Riester, submitted; Riester & Baumann, 2011) Alternative-eliciting features (F-features, contrast) Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 5 / 22
Annotating referential information status Units: referring expressions (terms, DPs) (for details, see Baumann & Riester, submitted) Prince (1981): Gundel et al. (1993): · evoked · activated · inferable · familiar · new unused · uniquely identifiable · new brand-new · referential Lambrecht (1994): Götze et al. (2007): · identifiable active · given · identifiable accessible · accessible inferable · identifiable inactive · accessible general · unidentifiable · new Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 6 / 22
Referential vs. lexical GIVENNESS (Baumann & Riester, submitted) Schwarzschild (1999): distinguishes between (i) expressions of type e and (ii) “functional” expressions of type � α, β � Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 7 / 22
Referential vs. lexical GIVENNESS (Baumann & Riester, submitted) Schwarzschild (1999): distinguishes between (i) expressions of type e and (ii) “functional” expressions of type � α, β � i. GIVENNESS = coreference anaphora Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 7 / 22
Referential vs. lexical GIVENNESS (Baumann & Riester, submitted) Schwarzschild (1999): distinguishes between (i) expressions of type e and (ii) “functional” expressions of type � α, β � i. GIVENNESS = coreference anaphora ii. GIVENNESS = entailment / set inclusion (for words: synonymy or hypernymy) Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 7 / 22
Referential vs. lexical GIVENNESS (Baumann & Riester, submitted) Schwarzschild (1999): distinguishes between (i) expressions of type e and (ii) “functional” expressions of type � α, β � i. GIVENNESS = coreference anaphora ii. GIVENNESS = entailment / set inclusion (for words: synonymy or hypernymy) Halliday and Hasan (1976): referential relations vs. lexical cohesion Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 7 / 22
Referential vs. lexical GIVENNESS (Baumann & Riester, submitted) Schwarzschild (1999): distinguishes between (i) expressions of type e and (ii) “functional” expressions of type � α, β � i. GIVENNESS = coreference anaphora ii. GIVENNESS = entailment / set inclusion (for words: synonymy or hypernymy) Halliday and Hasan (1976): referential relations vs. lexical cohesion Baumann & Riester: R - GIVENNESS vs. L - GIVENNESS Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 7 / 22
R - GIVEN vs. L - GIVEN A colleague came in. The idiot dropped a vase. (1) R - GIVEN Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 8 / 22
R - GIVEN vs. L - GIVEN A colleague came in. The idiot dropped a vase. (1) R - GIVEN A student came in. Another student greeted him. (2) L - GIVEN R - GIVEN Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 8 / 22
R - GIVEN vs. L - GIVEN A colleague came in. The idiot dropped a vase. (1) R - GIVEN A student came in. Another student greeted him. (2) L - GIVEN R - GIVEN A policeman came in. Another guy left. (3) L - GIVEN Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 8 / 22
R - GIVEN vs. L - GIVEN A colleague came in. The idiot dropped a vase. (1) R - GIVEN A student came in. Another student greeted him. (2) L - GIVEN R - GIVEN A policeman came in. Another guy left. (3) L - GIVEN A man came in. The man coughed. (4) L - GIVEN R - GIVEN Riester & Baumann (2011) Beyond Semantics 24.2.2011 8 / 22
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