The Oxford Handbook of Information Structure - Paperback

by Caroline Féry (Editor), Shinichiro Ishihara (Editor)

This book provides linguists with a clear, critical, and comprehensive overview of theoretical and experimental work on information structure. Leading researchers survey the main theories of information structure in syntax, phonology, and semantics as well as perspectives from psycholinguistics and other relevant fields. Following the editors' introduction the book is divided into four parts. The first, on theories of and theoretical perspectives on information structure, includes chapters on topic, prosody, and implicature. Part 2 covers a range of current issues in the field, including focus, quantification, and sign languages, while Part 3 is concerned with experimental approaches to information structure, including processes involved in its acquisition and comprehension. The final part contains a series of linguistic case studies drawn from a wide variety of the world's language families. This volume will be the standard guide to current work in information structure and a major point of departure for future research.

Author Biography

Caroline Fery is a Professor of Phonology at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Her research is in phonology and theory of grammar with a special focus on intonation and prosody, as well as the interface with information structure. She is the author of articles in journals such as Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, Lingua, and The Linguistic Review, and is co-editor, with Malte Zimmermann, of Information Structure: Theoretical, Typological, and Experimental Perspectives (OUP, 2010).

Shinichiro Ishihara is Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Languages and Literature at Lund University, having previously held positions at Goethe University Frankfurt, the University of Stuttgart, and the University of Potsdam. His research focuses on the syntax-prosody interface and its relation to information structure in Japanese and other languages. His work has appeared in international journals such as Lingua and Syntax and in edited volumes published by OUP and Mouton de Gruyter.