The syntax-discourse interface: A comparative study of Catalan and Spanish

信息结构是将信息包装在命题中的语用概念。它指导听话者如何通过将语言信息组织成“焦点”，即在说话时不能被视为理所当然的命题部分(Lambrecht 1994：207)；以及“背景”，即语用上预设或确定的部分。信息结构理论之间缺乏共识(Erteschik-Shir，2007)，句法-语篇界面的跨语言变异仍然是一个很难理解的领域。在英语中，韵律突出通常是语用焦点分配的语言机制。然而，在加泰罗尼亚语和西班牙语中，词序也可以通过确定或限制信息分区来影响IS。在(1)：1.(A)Spa中标出一个例子来对比词序结构。我已经把车撞坏了。Se m‘ha espatllat el cotx.RFL Me Have the Car’‘My Car Has Back’这项拟议中的博士研究旨在调查加泰罗尼亚语和西班牙语快车中的词序。尽管这两种语言有着密切的同源关系和非常相似的类型，但加泰罗尼亚语的限制性更强，允许的词序配置和解释比西班牙语更少(Leonetti 2017)。因此，本研究旨在回答以下研究问题：a)加泰罗尼亚语和西班牙语如何映射到词序？b)主语倒置在加泰罗尼亚语和西班牙语中的确切作用是什么？c)这些语言在句法-语篇界面上的差异是否取决于语言的更广泛的属性(例如，语音或形态属性)？d)我们如何正式地解释和分析这种跨语言变异？本研究的目的是通过理论和实证论证来解决这些问题。

Information Structure (IS) is the pragmatic notion by which information is packaged in propositions. It instructsthe hearer on how to interpret linguistic information by structuring it into 'focus', i.e. the part of the propositionwhich cannot be taken for granted at the time of utterance (Lambrecht 1994: 207); and 'background', that which ispragmatically presupposed or established. There is a lack of consensus between theories of Information Structure(Erteschik-Shir, 2007) and crosslinguistic variation of the syntax-discourse interface is still a poorly understoodarea.In English, prosodic prominence is usually the linguistic mechanism by which pragmatic focus is assigned. InCatalan and Spanish, however, word order can also affect IS by determining or constraining the informationpartition. An example is marked VS word order constructions such as in (1):1. (a) Spa. Se me ha estropeado el coche.RFL me have broken the car(b) Cat. Se m' ha espatllat el cotxe.RFL me have broken the car'My car has broken'The proposed PhD research aims to investigate how word order in Catalan and Spanish express IS. Despite the twobeing closely cognate and typologically very similar languages, Catalan is more restrictive and allows for fewer word order configurations and IS interpretations than Spanish (Leonetti 2017). The proposed study therefore aimsto answer the following research questions:a) How does IS map onto word order in Catalan and Spanish?b) What is the exact role of subject inversion in IS in Catalan and Spanish?c) Do the differences in the syntax-discourse interface of these languages depend on broader properties of thelanguages (e.g., phonological or morphological properties)?d) How can we formally interpret and analyse this crosslinguistic variation?The objective of the study is to address these questions with theoretical and empirical arguments.