information structure

Discoursal and textual analysis is a field of study in linguistics which deals with various topics, including the context of information distribution (information structure) (Shehbazi, 1378). Subject Noun phrases may contain old or new information that the textual (context) and situational context and the listener play significant roles in these analyses.

Prince (1981) makes a seven-fold division that forms the theoretical framework or perspective of the current research. In this study, the relationship among some syntactic features and some discoursal features of syntax in connection with discourse topics has been studied and analyzed. Out of the total Khayyam’s 178 quatrains of the examined version, 141 quatrains, i.e. 21.79% of Khayyam"s quatrains, constitute the research data. All the sentences of the studied quatrains have been identified and the subject noun phrases of the sentences have been studied and analyzed based on the level of familiarity for the listener based on the classification of Prince (1981).

The studied quatrains included 776 sentences; so that in 748 sentences, noun phrases were found in the subject position of the sentences. Also, in 28 sentences, the subjects of the sentences were non-nominal phrases such as prepositional phrases, independent clauses or dependent clauses. Finally, 340 subject noun phrases, 45.45% of the total subject noun phrases of the sentences are devoted to the noun phrases referenced or mentioned in the text, which have shown the most frequency or usage in this study.

The results of the analysis indicate that 83.69% of the subject noun phases (SNP) in the sentences convey listener- oriented old information and 16.31% of SNP convey new information. Therefore, in general, it can be concluded that the SNP of the analyzed sentences have a high level of familiarity for the listener, that is, they often convey old information.

Information, structure as well as phonetic, syntactic and semantic construction, has been one of the subjects of attention among linguists in recent years. Since information structure or , in other words, the way of distributing syntactic structures in dramatic texts is of great importance, the textual totality of the play ofool by Akbar Radi is used as linguistic data and as evidence in the analysis of the construction of information in sentences. To the knowledge of the authors of this research, no research has been conducted on the arrangement of sentence information in the dramatic genre; To this end, Akbar Radi's play entitled ofool was chosen as the corpus of research. The research method is descriptive-analytical. In order to analyze the informative structure of sentences, some phonetic, lexical and syntactic rules have been analyzed and summarized in this research. The findings revealed that this play is not the case of exception and encompasses all the advantages of this linguistic devices. In their own turn , these devices can be served to demonstrate staging, characterization and other dramatic thems. This linguistic devices are also used to serve the aesthetic aspects of the dramatic genre and create textual cohesion.

This research has investigated the topic in commercial advertising from the perspective of Lambrecht information structure framework by a descriptive -analytic method. 282 commercial advertisements have been collected from TV, radio, internet, commercial posters and street billboards. The main question of this research is how the Lambercht’s framework accounts for the representation of topic in advertising. Results showed that from 288 advertisements, 155 appeared as topic in form of nouns or pronouns, 86 in zero form, and 41 as antitopic. In terms of function, content and statistics there was no significant difference between television and internet advertisement. On the other hand, in posters and billboards advertising, no difference was found. That is to say, in both of them audio-verbal factors are not involved and only the visual factor has an effective role on the addressee.

This research tried to investigate a specific case of pronominal enclitic (eš/aš) in colloquial Persian based on functional approach. Two novels including a total of 56,500 words and the data on the internet were used as corpus. A corpus of 110 sentences with the desired structure were extracted. The investigation revealed that the reference of pronominal enclitic is the common and assumed knowledge of interlocutors which might be represented as a proposition in the discourse or activated by an element in the language. The pronominal enclitic is structurally a presupposition trigger and adjuncts (rastaš, haqiqataš, vaqeiataš) are discourse markers. The reference enclitic holds old information and is a specified definite. The predicate following enclitic holds new information and is a specified indefinite. This predicate contains focal information. The third person singular enclitic appears both as an adjunct and as a clause at the beginning of the sentence and can be omitted. Their semantic and pragmatic function is truth assertion.

The main purpose of this study is to explain the word order of topicalized constituents in non-pro.making persian topicalization based on Functional Discourse Grammar. Since this grammar does not believe in concepts such as movement, we will also seek to explain this process in base-generated procedures. Therefore, in this study, in order to achieve the above goals, the method of mapping the linguistic elements of sentences containing non-pro.making Persian topicalized constituents in morphosyntactic templates in four absolute initial, second, medial and final positions and infinite relative ones presented in Functional Discourse Grammar was considered. This study is based on a descriptive-analytical method and the examples are taken from selected samples of Persian speech and written texts, which after introducing the mechanisms of this grammar,have been analyzed based on the principles of this theory. The method of determining the order of constituents used in the present study is the dynamic method of FDG that is inspired by the method of determining the word order of Greenberg. In this approach instead of three categories of subject, object and verb, respectively, the concepts of actor, undergoer and predicate, determine the word order of the languages of the world. The results indicate that in marked constituents such as topicalization, considering the communicative intention of the speaker, various elements including ,thematic and non-thematic elements and even predicates can be topicalized and on the other hand, considering that, based on the principles of this grammar, the topicalized constituent in the interpersonal level is given priority in entering morphosyntactic templates, so the topicalization process is not the result of movement, but the topicalized element is produced in base-generated procedures in the same position. The results also show that Functional Discourse Grammar is an appropriate and efficient method by referring to the three principles of iconicity, domain integrity and functional stability in determining the constituent arrangement of sentences containing non-pro.making Persian topicalization.

The aim of this research is to investigate object omission based on Role and Reference Grammar. Object omission is a valency-reduction process in which a verb which is transitive in nature, appears without its object. This study, will indicate semantic, syntactic and pragmatic representation of the aforementioned construction with respect to the presented concepts in Role and Reference Grammar including the layered structure of the clause, logical structure, semantic macroroles, information structure, activation status of the referents and linking algorithm. Explaining object omission in the framework of RRG, indicates one of the advantages of this grammar. Although RRG attends to the interaction between form and function, it declines the abstract layers or elements in the syntactic analysis. Accordingly, in this grammar the syntactic structure of the clause is represented based on what is explicitly applicable. Therefore, RRG is not faced with any restriction in explaining object omission and regarding what is explicitly presented in the sentence, it behaves with transitive verbs which omit their objects as intransitive ones. The most specific attainments of investigating object omission in the framework of RRG are as follows: In the layered structure of a clause with omitted object, one of the arguments of the core will be reduced and the syntactic representation will be like an intransitive verb with just one argument (subject) in the core. The logical structure of such verbs, likewise, will be represent with just one argument (x), unlike transitive verbs which has two arguments (x, y) in logical structure. Regarding the aktionsart type of the verbs, the findings indicate that activities are the most frequent verbs in object omission construction. the reason is that the second argument of activity verbs is not a macrorole and therefore can be omitted. Describing object omission with regard to information structure and activation status of the referents in RRG shows that as in the aforementioned construction the object is omitted, it cannot be a focal or topical element and its referent can be considered as an accessible one. Since it is the hearer’s knowledge of the world that makes it possible to understand the notion of the omitted object. Moreover, in this study, regarding object omission construction, linking algorithm from semantic to syntax and from syntax to semantics has been provided. The bidirectional diagrams show that the linking principles of selecting and linking undergoer in both directions will not exist in the objectless sentences.

In different approaches of discourse analysis, the process of packaging and transferring the message from the author or speaker to the audience has a unique structure. In order to identify this structure, the current research has been conducted by examining the titles of "Iran" and "Iran-e varzeshi” newspapers. The description and analysis of the corpus has been carried out in the theoretical framework of "information packaging" by Vallduvi (1990) in order to determine what structure Persian language journalists use to convey their message and what is their purpose in using these special constructions. In order to achieve the mentioned goal and answer the research questions, a thousand titles of the mentioned newspapers have been selected and reviewed. Another goal of this research was to identify the high-frequency titles and the differences in them. The findings of the research showed that the link/ focus/ tail pattern was manifested as an unmarked face in the body. The link/ focus/ tail pattern is known as the most frequent pattern in Iran newspaper, and the link/ focus pattern is known as the most frequent pattern in Iran Sports newspaper. It seems that the Persian language journalists, in order to convey their message correctly, have led the audience to the pre-existing information in their minds so that the audience has a better inference from the news and also increases the attractiveness and fluency of their text and message. In the titles of both newspapers, the link/emphasis structure is used, and the only difference between the two newspapers is due to the presence of the end in the Iranian newspaper, which is evident in most of the titles with the link/ focus/ tail pattern.

Discourse markers are language elements that linguists do not have a consensus about their nature as well as their role and function. The present study aimed to investigate the function of Persian discourse markers as reference elements, based on Fraser's (1999, 2006) approach. For this purpose, a corpus of two types of political and economic texts was selected. Taking print run and history into consideration, 16 editorials of Kayhan newspaper for political texts and 15 editorials of Donya-e-Eqtesad newspaper for economic texts were analyzed, and the discourse markers were classified into four categories: contrastive, elaborative, inferential and temporal. Data analysis showed that the formula presented by Fraser (1999, 2006), for the sequence of sentences connected by discourse markers, is slightly different in Persian and should be rewritten as S2+DM.S1 /S1.S2 + DM. Furthermore, based on the importance of the information contained in the sentences preceding and succeeding the markers, they can be divided into cataphoric marking (markers placed after the main message), anaphoric marking (markers placed before the main message), and joint marking (markers placed between two main messages). Data analysis indicated that contrastive and elaborative markers are considered as joint marking, and inferential and temporal markers are anaphoric marking in Persian. Based on the research findings, it can be concluded that discourse markers can have a referencing function in information structure.

Dabir-Moghaddam (1972,2004) believes that -râ, moreover, is syntactically the function word of the explicit object, can also be informationally the marker of its secondary topic. Meanwhile, some researchers have challenged the use of -râ as a secondary topic marker in the explicit object when it is indefinite or when it is considered as an informative focus in response to the speaker's question in the discourse context. They have considered the marker-râ being fastened on factors such as identifiability, specificity, and definiteness. The current study's goal is to examine the marker-râ using the LFG approach of King (1997), Butt & King (2000), and Abubakari (2018), relying on the definitions provided by the secondary topic by Dabir-Moghaddam (1972,2004), Dalrymple & Nikolaeva (2011). The research methodology is descriptive-analytical, and the data was collected in two ways: in the library and field. The findings reveal that in the f-structure, the grammatical preposition-râ is placed in the (PFORM) feature and can indicate the grammatical function of the theme/patient oblique instead of the grammatical function of the explicit object. In the i-structure, -râ is placed in the (DFORM) feature and leads to secondary topic marking. In the c-structure, as the preposition's head, it also causes the formation of the prepositional phrase. Also, in the above-mentioned challenging cases, it has been shown that with a suggestion of the layered i-structure, the râ-Marker as a (DFORM) marks secondary topic at the sentence level and the secondary topic can be placed on the inner or outer layer of other informative elements at a level beyond the sentence. Therefore, it can be concluded that the mentioned approach in the LFG in line with the opinion of Dabir-Moghaddam (1972,2004) on the effect of syntactic and informational factors on the occurrence of -râ, can show a comprehensive representation of the marker-râ.

Persian texts of the earlier period, can be selected as a good case study in the field of linguistics. It is possible to look at the texts of this period through the window of functionalist frameworks and to describe its linguistic features in such a way as to become a stylistic research tool for further ado. Investigating the order of the elements in a sentence and information structure, and then communicating these two categories together allows the linguist to better understand the meaning (function) relationship with the linguistic form, and can also be a tool for identifying the stylistic features of each period. The present study attempts to consider information structure in the fifth century within the framework of Holliday’s systematic functional grammar, and also to statistically describe the order of the elements in a sentence and the syntactic structure throughout this period. The body of work contains 1,200 sentences from works such as Kashf-ul-Mahjub, Bayhaqi's History, the Qeshiriiyya treatise, al-Tafhim, the Qâboosnameh and the Ala'i encyclopedia, and then after, the patterns of ordering the main structures were identified in these texts. It was also determined whether the following sentences matched each of the patterns of information structure. This research showed that in the fifth century, the basic or unmarked form of the main elements of action statements, regarding their order, obeys the SOV pattern, and in the whole body of sentences, it corresponds to the head-final structures. The number of marked sentences was only ten percent of the whole body, which can be inferred as the flexibility of the texts in this period, in terms of the word order of the sentence. Investigating the state of information structure in this period also demonstrated that only 5% of sentences were under the marked patterns of information structure.

Information structure (IS) investigates the relationship between linguistic forms and mental referents of different utterances. Information structure, on one hand, is concerned with formal aspects of language and, on the other hand, it deals with functional aspects of language. This rather abstract approach, however, has received less attention comparing with tangible aspects of grammar such as morphology and syntax. Furthermore, those dealing with information structure were not consistent in terms of methodology and terminology that they employed. Accordingly, Prague School scholars employed “Functional Sentence Perspective” to refer to information structure. In the same vein, Halliday (2004) called it “Thematic Structure”; Chafe (1976) employed “Information Packaging”; and Vallduvi (1994) referred to this component of grammar as “Informatics”. Another issue to be dealt with in this study is “argument dislocation”. It is intended to investigate the effect of information structure on argument dislocation in Southern Kurdish. A dislocated structure is composed of two parts: detached part and propositional part. In propositional part, there is a pronoun which is co-referent with the dislocated noun phrase. Information structure may be among the key reasons why noun phrases are dislocated and appear as detached NPs in the left and right of sentences. In other words, for any NP, being topical or focal may alter the argument structure of any given clause. Lambrecht (1994: 188) used the term “topic” to refer to the dislocated NPs in the left side of the clause. He also referred to detached NPs in the right side of the clause as “anti- topic”.  

As stated above, the present study is intended to gauge the role of information structure (IS) in the formation of dislocated sentences in southern Kurdish (Kalhori) in Iran. Accordingly, the topical and focal arguments were identified and the possibility of dislocation of these arguments was, also, assessed. Information structure is among the main factors which can affect the syntax of sentences. The present study is theoretically based on the framework presented by Lambrecht (1994, 2001). Methodologically, it is a descriptive- analytic study in which linguistic intuition, observation, targeted interviews and consulting with authentic library sources were employed tools to collect the data. Moreover, the researchers of this study are both native speakers of southern Kurdish (Kalhori) which was an advantage in their judgments and decisions. In some cases, to ensure to make a right decision, a given structure was presented to many native speakers. The data were gathered from southern Kurdish (Kalhori dialect) spoken by people in the city of Eivan in the west of Iran. Kalhori Kurdish is mainly spoken in some parts of Ilam and Kermanshah Provinces in cities such as Kermanshah, Eivan, Gilan-e-Gharb, and Eslam Abad Gharb.

Information structure or information distribution across different sentences may result in syntactic variations and formation of various linguistic forms. All language components including, morphology, syntax, prosody and lexicon can be affected by information distribution. In the present study, an attempt was made to shed light on the role of information structure in the formation of so-called dislocated structures based on data from southern Kurdish in the west of Iran. The results indicated the topical subjects and objects (as the main arguments) are appropriate candidates to undergo left/ right dislocation, while their empty place (in argument structure of the clause) is filled with resumptive pronouns (pro and object enclitics). In contrast, focal arguments (left/right) dislocation would result in an infelicitous discourse. In other words, the detached NP in so-called dislocated structures must have degrees of identifiability to be placed at the beginning of the sentence as a possible topic. Overall, based on the results, two syntactic patterns are possible in southern Kurdish. First, in the presence of focal arguments, an inflexible sequence of (S O V) will be the only syntactic pattern in southern Kurdish. Second, if the arguments are topical, then a more flexible word order and a lot of syntactic dislocations are more probable. The Separation of Role and Reference Principle (SRRP) was proposed by Lambrecht (1994: 184) to refer to so-called dislocated structures. This principle is rooted in a pragmatic rule which states that if you introduce a new referent in a clause, do not talk about it in the same clause (lambrecht, 1994: 185). For our interlocutor, it is easier to process a clause whose new referent is located outside of the clause as a detached NP, because identifying the topic (detached NP) and interpretation of the related proposition take place independently. On the other hand, in terms of articulation, producing such a structure in which a new and non-identifiable topic is introduced independently from its related clause would be easier for the speaker.

In dislocated structures, detached NPs are “reference- based” due to their semantic content, while the resumtive pronouns which fill the empty position of detached NPs in the argument structure of the clause are “function-based” (Lambrecht, 1994: 187). Unlike left dislocation (LD) which places topical elements in the beginning of the clause (pre-posing), right dislocation (RD) or anti-topic post-poses the topical elements at the end of the clause. Like LD, this process enables the language users to follow “the Separation of Role and Reference Principle” (SRRP) in the appropriate communicative situations. The obtained results based on southern Kurdish proved that the detached NP in RD (unlike RD) would not be new topic or is not indicative of topic discontinuity. The findings of this study proved, also, that the detached NP in LD and RD would be different in terms of their relative identifiability. It was found that the detached NP in RD is more identifiable comparing with the detached NP in LD, while LD is mainly used to introduce possible topics which have not been established as topic in that given context.

The marked information structure is one of the topics addressed by functional linguists which has also attracted the attention of translation theorists. Among the marked syntactic structures are topicalization and focalization, in which the topic and focus are removed from their original position in the sentence and placed in another position, for example, at the beginning of the sentence. Considering that in terms of information structure, shifting in sentence elements and marking creates more semantic load; understanding this issue is especially important in translating religious texts and requires more accuracy of the translator and knowledge and observance of the structure of the two languages of destination and origin. Because two propositions may have the same meaning in appearance but have different meanings in terms of communication and verbal. The present study, based on the method of content analysis and with a comparative approach, and relying on Lambreckt's theory, has examined and analyzed Garmaroodi's translation of Jihad's sermon in terms of translation of marked structures. The results show that the translator has not been very successful in translating these structures in general and has translated most of these structures into Persian as unmarkers. Of course, this has not harmed the fluency of his translation, but undoubtedly, has damaged the precise transmission of some of the communicative meanings of the text, from the point of view of information structure due to the change of structures from marking to unmarking.

Persian owns a flexible syntax and is thought to be a free word order language. In this paper, employing a Role and Reference Grammar framework, we argue that constituent reordering in preposing and left-dislocation constructions of the Persian left-periphery is the result of the interface between information-discourse structure, on the one hand, and a certain syntactic position in the layered structure of the clause, on the other: topical, focused, and contrastive constituents are hosted respectively by the left-detached position, pre-core slot, and kontrast position. Bear in mind that each position requires a certain discourse condition to be met. We also show that non-canonical constituent orders at the Persian left-periphery are not merely a rearrangement of syntactic units for pragmatic reasons, they are in effect ‘constituent ordering constructions’ in line with the notion of construction as proposed and defined in the RRG theory.

This study aimed to investigate the intonation pattern of Kashani utterances with broad, narrow, and contrastive focuses on different syntactic structures, which were obtained by changing the order of verbs, subjects, and objects. Our data included 4 sentences produced in 3 syntactic structures with a broad focus, 1 syntactic structure with a narrow focus, and 1 syntactic structure with a contrastive focus produced by 16 speakers (8 males and 8 females) from Kashan City. The data were recorded in an anechoic chamber with the sampling frequency of 22050 Hz. A total of 320 utterances (4 sentences × 5 cases × 16 speakers) were annotated in the 2 tiers of tone and phone by using Praat software. The fundamental frequency (F0) of each word was measured at 5 intervals. After the average value of F0 was calculated for each word, their pitch contours were drawn. The results showed that the pitch contours of unmarked Kashani utterances followed a falling pattern. Moreover, the pitch contours were sensitive to the position of each verb as the sentence nucleus. "Verb" was the last constituent that received the pitch accent in a sentence, while it de-accented the constituents coming after it. Finally, the focal constituents appeared at the end of the sentences with narrow or contrastive focuses. These constituents had high prominence and amplitude compared to the other constituents in the sentences. In addition, alignment of the accent peaks in all the accented syllables corresponded to the vowels of the next syllables. The results of this research could be helpful in understanding the typologies of languages and dialects and identifying speakers of varied dialects.

Mostly, several formal structures could be used to express a specific proposition. In fact, under different communicative circumstances, speakers choose a grammatical structure among different ones with the same proposition to express their idea. Different factors could affect such choice and in this research, we examine whether information structure has any effect on this matter. Generally, information structure focuses on studying paired sentences which are semantically identical, but not grammatically or pragmatically. One kind is multiple argument realization, in which a verb appears with its arguments in diverse formal structures with a single meaning. Therefore, we have analyzed some multiple argument realizations of two argument verbs in Persian based on the theory of information structure introduced by Lambrecht (1994). The data consisting of around 150 sentences in 50 multiple realizations, have been collected from a few Iranian newspapers and then studied in accordance with the mental states of the interlocutors and pragmatic relations, topic and focus. The analysis showed that the mental representation of discourse referents, pragmatic articulation of sentences along with different focus structures have an impact on shaping and using this kind of realization. Moreover, it has been found that processes such as preposition and topic promotion play an important role in this matter.