The Meaning of Topic and Focus

Download or read book The Meaning of Topic and Focus written by Daniel Büring and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2012-08-21 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study provides an illuminating and ground-breaking account of the complex interaction of intonational phenomena, semantics and pragmatics. Based on examples from German and English, and centred on an analysis of the fall-rise intonation contour, a semantic interpretation for two different pitch accents - Focus and Topic - is developed. The cross-sentence, as well as the sentence internal semantic effects of these accents, follow from the given treatment. The account is based on Montogovian possible world semantics and Chomskian generative syntax.