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Information Structure of Sentences and Discourse Structure

Class at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics |
NPFL082

Syllabus

Information structure of a sentence (in the Czech traditional terminology: topic-focus articulation) as a semanticly relevant aspect of the sentential structure and means of the expression of the topic-focus articulation in different types of languages.

Treatment of the information structure in the formal description of a language.

Information structure and its annotation in the Prague Dependency Treebank.

Use of the annotated electronic corpus for a verification of linguistic hypotheses, with a special concern on the information structure.

From the structure of the sentence to the discourse structure: how the observations of the sentential structure can be used in the study of different aspects of discourse.

The common stock of knowledge of the speaker and the hearer and the salience of single elements within the stock. Application of the theory in the analysis of texts belonging to different styles.

The reference of expressions in a text, anaphoric relations, coreference.

The treatment of the coreference in the Prague Dependency Treebank; possibilities of an automatic analysis of coreferential relations.

Discourse relations and their treatment in the Prague Dependency Treebank

Annotation

The information structure distinguishes a topic of the sentence and its focus (new information). This kind of structure is a basis for the study of complex units (texts). The lecture deals with the semantic scope of this structure, its formal expression in a language and its formal description, on the material of the Prague Dependency Treebank. We focus on the issues of the construction of the upper units (discourse), the interplay between information structure, coreference and discursive relations in the narrower sense.

Taught in Czech or English.