@article {6799, title = {The information-structural status of adjuncts: A QUD-based approach}, journal = {Discours }, volume = {28}, year = {2021}, month = {13 octobre 2021}, type = {en ligne : http://journals.openedition.org/discours/11454 }, abstract = {

In this paper we present an analysis of the information structural properties\ of different types of verb and sentence modifying adjuncts under a QUD\ approach. Our study is based on naturalistic data from English, German,\ and French containing adjuncts such as temporal, spatial, or manner prepositional\ phrases, as well as different types of adverbial clauses. The analyses\ relies on Riester et al. (2018)\’s approach, which identifies the (generally\ implicit, sometimes overt) Question Under Discussion preceding each utterance\ of a text through explicit pragmatic principles, and derives from it\ the information structure of the utterance. The analysis of adjuncts\ within this approach shows that in certain contexts, though conveying\ new information, adjuncts do not answer the QUD that is answered by the\ sentence they syntactically depend on. We argue that these adjuncts answer\ a different QUD and behave as independent discourse units. As such, they\ have an information structure of their own and are in a rhetorical relation\ with their host clause. Our analysis sheds light on the similarities\ between adjuncts and Potts (2005)\&$\#$39;s supplements: both can be accounted\ for as independent discourse units; however, while supplements display\ projective behavior, adjuncts do not. Following Venhuizen et al. (2014),\ we ascribe this difference to their different semantic anchor (nominal\ vs verbal). Our work therefore highlights a different way for an expression\ to be independent at a discourse level, other than being projective content.

}, keywords = {annotation, discourse structure, information structure, question under discussion}, author = {Brunetti, Lisa and De Kuthy, Kordula and Riester, Arndt} }