THE INTERFACE OF PROSODY AND INFORMATION STRUCTURE (IPS’16)

Aims and Scope

This workshop aims at bringing together researchers with different approaches to examine the interface of prosody and syntax. The workshop will be subdivided into two parts. The first day of the workshop will be dedicated to theoretical issues, while the second day of the workshop will explore different methodologic approaches to the matter.

Topics of Interest

Friday, 17.5. – Theoretical issues

  • How do prosody and syntax interact? Are there syntactic phenomena that cannot be explained using a purely syntactic approach but can be explained by means of prosody?
  • What insights can be gained from considering focus as a form of alignment?
  • What insights can the analysis of prosodic boundaries provide?
  • What insights can be gained from the prosodic study of languages in which focus is marked syntactically and that therefore have no apparent need for a prosodic expression of focus?

 
Saturday, 18.5. – Methodological issues

  • How can prosodic and multimodal corpora help to resolve existing questions regarding the interface of prosody and information structure?
  • How can the data collected in a prosodic corpus best be presented and compared?
  • In particular, which advantages can the interactive platform for corpus analysis and research tools (ICARUS) provide for the analysis of prosodic corpora and for the analysis of the interface between prosody and syntax?
  • What advantages does the analysis of time-normalized contours provide for the analysis of prosodic data and what should be kept in mind during the analysis of time-normalized or –aligned F0-contours?
  • What's the best way to deal with the major inter- and intra-speaker variability observed in natural speech?
  • What advantages and possibilities does the RefLex annotation scheme provide for the analysis of information status in general and referring expressions in particular and how can this scheme be used for prosodic analyses?