A compositional theory of English intonational meaning is presented that is derived from Gussenhoven’s [1] biological codes. The resulting theory is compared to the more top-down approaches to focus and contrastive topic in the literature, suggesting how such stipulated semantic/pragmatic notions as ‘alternative’ and ‘strategy’ can be grounded – and revealing how they might be amended.
Gussenhoven, C. (2004). The phonology of tone and intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Index Terms: Intonational meaning, biological codes, pragmatics, topic and focus.
Cite as: Westera, M. (2014) Grounding topic and focus in biological codes. Proc. 4th International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages (TAL 2014), 134-137
@inproceedings{westera14_tal,
author={Matthijs Westera},
title={{Grounding topic and focus in biological codes}},
year=2014,
booktitle={Proc. 4th International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages (TAL 2014)},
pages={134--137}
}