Contrast marking variation in Romance and Germanic languages: Crosslinguistic and intralinguistic comparison through task-elicited speech

Andorno, Cecilia; Benazzo, Sandra; Dimroth, Christine

doi:10.1075/fol.22018.and

Article published In:

Continuative and contrastive discourse relations across discourse domains: Cognitive and cross-linguistic approaches
Edited by Matthias Klumm, Anita Fetzer and Evelien Keizer
[Functions of Language 30:1] 2023
► pp. 92–109

Contrast marking variation in Romance and Germanic languages

Crosslinguistic and intralinguistic comparison through task-elicited speech

Cecilia Andorno | University of Turin

Sandra Benazzo | University Paris 8

Christine Dimroth | University of Münster

In research on information structure and discourse cohesion, contrast has been defined in different ways, depending on the pragmatic/semantic relation established between the propositions involved in the contrast, on the text types and on other discourse conditions. As a whole, despite – or possibly because of – its vagueness, contrast has proved to be a useful heuristic tool for characterizing discourse cohesion phenomena. This paper focuses on results from our research concerning cohesion phenomena in elicited discourse in Romance (Italian, French) and Germanic (German, Dutch) languages and aims to offer a more precise characterization of contrast against several variation parameters. We take into consideration earlier work on three tasks (Finite Story, Polarity-Switch Dialogues, Map Task) and add a new one (Spot the Difference). The comparison between the results allows us to disentangle the following variables: information units involved in the contrast relation; discourse conditions (monologue vs. dialogue); speakers’ access to information (shared vs. non-shared); effect of contrast on information in the common ground (alternative maintained vs. rejected). The aim is to achieve a more fine-grained definition of contrast relations, which allows us to identify and characterize the divergent behavior of Romance and Germanic languages, and to relate intra- and crosslinguistic differences revealed by speakers’ preferences in speech with structural specificities of the two language groups.

Keywords: verum focus, contrastive focus, polarity contrast, Romance and Germanic languages, task-based

Article outline

1.Introduction
2.The notion of contrast and parameters for its variation
3.Contrastive relations in different tasks
- 3.1 The Finite Story: Contrast on entity or polarity?
- 3.2 Polarity-Switch Dialogues: Polarity contrast
- 3.3A modified version of the Map Task: A different case of polarity contrast
- 3.4 Spot the Difference: Contrast on entities and/or locations
4.Discussion and conclusion
Notes
References

Published online: 19 January 2023

https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.22018.and

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