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    Information Structure

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    sehar arif

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 19
    ‘Staging’ and the representation of discourse structure of ewer. Cesy, mach of this ype of aging is non nguitc (Gat of the exral cote of dun), bt i eft oo eur Imereti of the tx of ler snd ny ther types discourse should not be ignored. _— 7 5 Information structure ‘51 Thestructure of information In the previous chapters we have been considering increasingly restricted views of the production and interpretation of| locourse. In Chapter 2 we considered the effect of situation feontext on discourse and in Chapter 3 the effect of ifferent perspectives of top structure. We devoted Chapter 4 to discusing the elfectofHneriation in discourse, how what is presented first Timits the interpretation of what foliows and how decisions on thematisotion provide the overall structure within which the laddresce interpret the discourse "in this chapter we focus in even further, tothe smallest units of discourse structure: small lea! units atthe level of phrase oF {lause, We consider how information i packaged within such stall Structures and, particularly, what resourees are available to speak fem and woriters for indicating to their addressees the status of| information which is introduced into the discourse ‘54.4 Information structure andthe notion ‘given Inet in ‘The serious study of information structure within texts ‘as instituted by scholars of the Prague School before the Second World War. They studied what they called ‘the communicative {dynamism ofthe elements contsibuting to a sentence, within the ‘ameork of "functional sentence perspective. (Pur au uverview of this work see Vachek, 1966; Fitbas, 1074.) ‘Many of the insights developed by the Prague scholars were first brought to the attention of Western scholars by Halliday in an ‘extremely iluental article published in #967. Halliday elaborated Sind developed thove aspect of Prague work which related directly fo his owe interests in the suctire of texts. In particular, be 153 Information structure Adopted the Prague School view of information a consisting of two Categories: mew information, which is information that the Sdrewor believes is not known to the addvesse, and given information which the addresor believe s known tothe adres- see (either because it is physically preset inthe context or Because ithas already been mentioned in the discourse) Halliday further followed the Prague School in supposing tht ‘one ofthe funtions of intonation in English i to mark off which information the speaker is treating as new and which information the speaker js tresting a2 given. In his discussion of information structure, Halliday is pertcalarly concerned to specify the one ‘sation Of information within spoken English and to relate this ‘organisation to phonological season, especially to intonation. ‘More recently, many scholars have extended the discussion of ‘given’ and ‘new’ information tothe range of syntactic structures “which ae hel to realise these categories of information. This has Tesulted in a deft of the meaning of the terms so that their ‘extensions, particularly that of ‘given’, are now very much wider than Halliday intended them to be and, more important, no longer relate to the intonational phenomena which Halliday was ‘cocerned to describe, Once again we havea potentially confusing range of meaning associated with one term. We shall attempt (0 Keep the meanings distinct by organising our discussion in the following way. Pits, we thal outline Hallidy’s account of i formation structare and is intonationl easation. (We shal ite, limos exclusively, Halliday’ 1967 paper since this i the paper ‘which has most influenced the work of other sebolars. Haliday’s ‘own position on tome ofthe points we discuss has moved consider Ably since 1967, cf. Halliday, 1978.) We sall follow this outline with a eritque’ of Halliday’s postion, and the statement of & fomewhat diferent postion, sil on’ information structure as fealsed in intonation. After that, we shall turn our attention to the ynteti ration of information structure and, a this pint, oe ‘hall confront the change in meaning ofthe terms'given’ end now S12 Haldy’s acount of infomation snr: information Hiallidey assumes thatthe speaker intends to encode the content ofthe clauee (the base unit in hie grammatical syste). I 1 154 The structure of information many ways what Hliday views athe ‘detona!”content of RIL Te ompared with wha others have called te propo Geet Woda of sample sentence (ce dacssion in 37). Tis eee Shree i organised by the speaker nto ei aul Store shh peach among the hema pone EURDI to him and, spoken language, the cine content is sree co one or more information alte which ae raised enol by intonation. aan Halday, the speakers obtged wo chunk hit speech in btwmaion une He hao present hs mesage n sere of reat a however, fe to See how he wishes pckage Tenens lice to decide where each information unt ater eads and how iis organised internal” (967: 200). [TRG gen thatthe epeker bas dcied to ell hit ewer that ‘Jenn gaelnt the ren with Mary he speaker ay package {harman to one chu 2 0 (e) 4 Joba tas gone into the garden with Mary ‘or two o three chunks ain > John has gone nto the garden with Mary S JSR CAS Sone te wed wh = My “The eto ofthis ference in chunking wil be ses in the nest ton “AS sl organisation’ ofthe information unity relates tthe «eh gree and new iformation fe debated within TEU ehietenesay, Haley sure, the opeker i a oc fantom before new information, The mace ae Ee tration wrutre it ten to be geet Elta unt which re ial in » scours wi enn ony information £5 Halide casio src ee lean units are drs eained in seth tome groups, (Der decipions hve called uns of the ume geal Fee Ah groupe Phonenic else, oF Toe unis, Leite, see aie pear daibutes the quam of ration he wees Te Enso these phonological dined nt 155 Information structure ‘Tone groups are distinguished phonologically by containing one, and only one, tonic syllable. The tonic slable ie characterised at having the maximal uni of pitch oni. (In other descriptions i ie called ‘nuclear syllable’ or ‘Sentence stress! and ia characterised a having maximal moving pitch, maximal pitch height, maximal intensity and /or maximal duration, ef. Lehiste, 1970.) Tone ‘roups, being produced in spoken language, are alto related tothe ‘hythm of spoken language (as described in Abercrombie, £964), In Hallday’s terms, each foot begins with a tressed syllable and contains any numberof following unstressed sylables. I follows that cone groupe must begin with stressed syllable. Occasionally, the frst sllable inthe inital foot ima tone group is unstressed. A silent ictus (equivalent toa silent “beat” in tus) is then post- ted a intial inthe tone group. Ia the folowing example the tonic is marked by capitalisation, tne group boundaries by I, and the silent its By 11 Bad income | HENsibe ‘The tone syllable functions to focus the new information in the tone group. In the unmarked case, the tonic syllable will focus the lst lexical tem in the tone group, which wll generally be the headword ofthe constituent containing new information. Consider the rectal by a four-year-old of «fury story which ie very well known to her: ©) af ninad faraway / LAND Bn te ed a/R {4 11) Enda! lovely /PRINews i 11 She wana really! WICKed fry ‘The child (90 doubs influenced by the read-loud version which she has heard, which in turn will be influenced by the punctuation fof the written version) chunks her story ito information units Wels are rena a tone groupe: In tone groupe ad, the lst lexical item receives a tonic syllable, which marks this ae the focus ‘of new information. In tone groupe, the tonic eilable doesnot fll ‘on the last lexical item airy, since the iy" is already given inthe receding co-text and i treated an given bythe speaker, The tonic ‘lable falls on the last leseal iter which indieats ‘new informa on, on WICK, 16 15.1 The structure of information Its important nt to suppote that the tats of infomation is diced by wheter ot ota enya ean tlertd to already Srthin the docurse, As Haliay conisteny and correc re Turis: "Those ue options onthe pat ofthe speaker, not dtr ‘ined bythe textual or unto environment wt new i {he lst rr what the spake cows to poset new, and redicon from the douse have nly high probaly of bing ie” oer: a) Haida ser at there is 2 cose relationship between the sean ote fron ui pig te me up and spracally nthe casein the untarked cae ‘STomal convertion) te information unit wil be mapped on the clase, bu the speaker asthe option of making t coineide Mian cnsitcne specie? inte sentence stature. (967 BE.) oan exact fom a tanerpin presented by Hl Tee sees) where the seater ongeies is information into (egal chunks, tone groups, wih are coextensive wih Eom lates and phrases 1 fad oe of hae ie loi hws wa ry ashy © PSE ay sad Pon aoe pare ih aoe Tres Fling dare bak on tot vena Compare (a) where the cil alo orgie her story into toe Trecocatenste wih ine and phrase Fer htt seston we sal etm to consideration of he folowing spect of Falisay's mode: Co) the amare af the eatery tone oun Reet te exer tn Oe hi oe norman uni pong land syntactic categories, s.t4dentifying the tome group ae eres rein to much unplanned spntancons ech tha spears produce units whch ae thythmially bound Ei rc ot aluye ren cabo sutton ‘Wests bur which appear oe intended bythe speaker o Be aken {Opa sea reasonable to ell these, as Halliday doe, ‘Wetkison unr Ith dstoune sala wes to carer aie elundon of information vt, he heeds analyte sem 1s Information structure hich enables him to recognise these realisations ina reliable and Principled manner, In working with speech read aloud, o¢ with previously rehearsed speech, itis often posible co identify tone froups in the steam of speech, particularly as syntactic boundaries feguariy coincide with phonological boundaries. However, ia lunplanned epontancous speech, there are problems in identifying the tone group by phonological criteria alone. Ia principle, if tone sroupe realy can be distinguished by phonologial criteria alone, it ould be possible to identify them from a contentindesipherable, but tonecear, recording. In practice itis not. The claim, ab expressed, is too strong. ‘Halliday deseribee the intonational contour of tone groups as ‘being contituted around the tonic syllable: "Within the tone group there is always some part that is especialy prominent. . "The tonic {lable earns the main burden ofthe pitch movement inthe tone soup (19708: 4). The clear indication is that there is just one ‘trong intontional movement within the tone group. It posible to find such smoothly articulated intonatonal contours, but they fare comparatively rare. It is usual to find tightly rhythmically bound structures with several petks of prominence. Brown, Currie Kenworthy (age) report a series of experiments in which judges, experienced in teaching Hallidaysaystem, were unable to ‘make reliable identifications of tones, hence unable to identity tone troupe ela. I tis frequently dificult or imposible wo identify the single peak of prominence round which a tone group is structured, it ‘ought to be possible, in principle, vo lcate the boundaries ofthe ‘unit. Halday does not specify criteria for identifying the bound fares, He does, however, indicate thatthe boundaries wil be, in part at lest, determined by the shythmie structure of the utter nce! the tone group i a phonological unit that functions fealsaion of information structure, Ie isnot co-etensve with the Sentence or the clause or any ether uit of tentenceetructore but 4 is covestensive, ethin limits determined by the rita, with the information unit (2967: 203, our emphasis). This initence ‘on tying the information unit directly to the form of phono lel enon ys woe ening ifomaon units in. 158 15.1 The structure of information Gf notonly THAT but you I id's know where to art LOOKing for te ether anda GAIN wT! ay (ig 299) [A similar information unit boundary located in the mide of ‘word occurs in another example transcribed by Halliday, cited as {@) below. ‘These tone group boundaries seem counterintuitive if Seay are really to be regarded ax the direce encoding of the bouadaies of information unite in speech. ‘There are problems, then, with the ideniieation of tonics and of tone groups ip Spontaneous speech. We offer an alternative systern of analysis Eig and 5.17 which, naturally, confronts the same sort of Aitdeulies, but docs, we believe, offer the practial discourse “naiya a more secure bass for the identification of is categories ng. The tone group ond the clause [A problem arses from Halliday’ commitment to the laut as the principle unit of syntactic organisation. In spit of bis Ssecrtion that in the unmarked case (ia informal conversation) the {aformation willbe raapped on to the claus’, in his own extended ttanseription of conversation, the phrase seems a much more ikely candidate (9) flier fst fine an very plensnt to race on f much {he mont teresting rote tote mort ut for / some enon t wa ell gected I! (oopee: 1) [Extracts (2) and (3) (also quoted from Halliday) exemplify the ‘sme phenomenon. The potat for concern here is whether in a model which does not take the clause asthe domain ofthe main teas of syntactic choice, as Halliday’ does, itis helpful or necessary to identify unite which are mapped on to phrases rather than clauses as "marked". Tf they are ‘marked’ and the marking means anything, then some special, implicated, meaning ought {tach co them it we imply ook a paraignsentences ted out of ‘Content atin (2a and b) ic seems reasonable to sugges that (4) 1 on sone into the garden with Mary js in some sense more “marked (audge, nudge) than (a) bn has gone iat the garden with Mary i! Information structure 1f, however, instead of using 2 sentence which is open to ‘signifi- cant interpretations quite independently of intonation, we Use 2 less weighted sentence, say (6), (6) te room i taking longtime to arm up the ‘marked’ significance seems to disappear. It is possible that intonation, together with pausing an other paralinguistic features ‘of voice quality, may contribute toa marked interpretation. Tt has get to be shown that presenting phrases, eather than causes, 26 Fnformation units does contribute to a marked reading. In the tbeence of sich a demonstration, we shall not recognise an ‘unmarked syntactic domain fr information units, i'w abundon the clause ar the unmarked syntactic domain of the information unit, more follows. You will remember that Hlliday suggests that the unmarked structure of information| ‘within the information unit wil be tha given information precedes nie information ‘This is very plausible if you take the clause (or Simple sentence) a8 the unmarked syntactic domain because you fan choose your examples from genres like chose illustrated in (r2) fo (6) in Chapter 4 (obituaries, encyclopaedic entries, ee.) where, indeed, you are likely to find give” form, refering tothe topic tent, tthe beginning ofa clause, which i then followed by new Information, Indeed you can sometimes perceive this organisation ‘in snippets of conversation a8 in (7) (wedi se snow til we came up ~ the motorway where wei given inthe contet of discourse If, however, we look [x phrases marked out as information unit, iis early going to be the case that they contain given information, unless the whole ‘Phrase is given. (Consider the phrase marked a information units in 2) and (3).) In information unit realised as phrases, then, we fe more likely to find all new iaformation. ‘We retin to the question of the syntactic unit which realoes information structure in 5.2.2 5.46 Pausesdefined wits ‘A number of people working on intonation in discourse have found a problem with the principled identification of tone ‘groups by phonological eriteria alone and have resorted to working 51 The structure of information swith units bounded by pauses inthe stream of spech (for example, hate, to79: Brown, Corrie & Kenworthy, 1080; Butterworth (ed), 198; Deese, 1980) “The une of pause phenornena ass bass for building an analysis of chasing in epoken discourse might, at fist glance, seem a rather precatious undertaking. ‘The number and duration of pases wed ‘ya apaker wil obviously vary according to his rate of speech. It ‘would be unlikely then, that one percular pause length, sy one eond, would havea single function forall speakers in ll speech ‘Stastions (a problem farilia to anyone who has worked with any Lind of photological data). However, one obvious advantage of ‘working ith pauses is that they are readily identifiable and, apart rom the very briefest planning” pause, judges have no dificulty in fgresing on their location. ‘They ate, furthermore, amenable to instrumental investigation, hence, measurable. What we might hope to find, in investigating the incidence of pauses, i different types of pauses in some regular patter of distribution Tin an ivestgation of this type, itis important to choose the data tse in the investigation so that you ean generalise across speakers [A further prcteal point ie that you should work intially on data ‘which, you believe, wil yield regular units which you willbe abe to TReoguise, If you begin by working in this tricky area with Cncontrolicd “once-off data you may find yourself working with ‘dca ike that exemplified in (8) sn which itis hard to discera regularities, (8) shy nt ae gt in end) but os) Baa (eg wel known (21) 2. EUG sey frequent happens chat you you gs (63) cure of (a) an em wih 0) Trecogmed grammatia as (1.0) ane) supa of memes oa cas of (03) in Seve of one sit orate (0.0) Shaieie epee tre cannot restric Tesi patersing (2.6) Torely to temas ems (0), frm (06) ‘Shave shat ay mean in tal may mean (1.3) "This extract (fom a post-graduate seminar presents a sample of peech very neat the beginning of the seminar before the speaker 16 Information structure thas “got into his stride’. It ea perfectly familie phenomenon and fone which produces particularly ‘di-fluent speech. (Even here ‘certain regularities might tentatively be identified. The very brief ruses (0.20.3) are barely pereepuble. There are four cccurrences of prutes immediatly adjacent to erm, a conventional ‘planing tmatker. Pauses regularly our folowing sentence’ boundaries (4 tnd /or e,h and ).) The analyst makes life considerably easier for Iimaelf he works, iil, with speech where he knows what tis the speaker is ying to say, and where he can make direct comparison arose speakers (a methodology exploited fora range of purposes in, for example, Linde and Labov, 1975; Grosz, 1981; hate ed.) 1980; Level, 198). Ina study ofthe speech produced by twelve pars of undergrad ses, in which one member ofthe pair desribed a diagram which be ‘ould sce, but his irtener could not, so that his listener could draw the diagram, we were able to observe the incidence of pauses in ‘comparable speech across a numberof speakers. A typical piece of speech produced under thee condition a shown i (0). () Ar bafray down the page (03) draw (0.6) 4 ted (04) horizontal Tine (2) f about (3) Oo ches (16) on ch (Gn he right hand side as above the line (1.9) lack {Gin} wmte ON (39) B: ON Ga) 1A: vee ine (c) draw 0.) a blak 0.65) tangle (2.9) the (79) 3 aphtangle (0.2) ange (9) maraing 0 the ef (oa) of te redline 2.) abou (0) bal acetate shoe Ro) In extract () the following pause types, defined in terms of relative length, can be identified. 1. Extended pauses ‘These are long pauses which, in this entact, extend from between 3.2 t0 16 seconds (which ‘oeurat points where the speaker has provided sufficient {Mlourmation forthe hearer to drew or write what hat bow

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