The article puts forward a discourse-pragmatic approach to the notoriously evasive phenomena of contrastivity and emphasis. It is argued that occurrences of focus that are treated in terms of ‘contrastive focus’, ‘kontrast’ (Vallduví & Vilkuna 1998) or ‘identificational focus’ (É. Kiss 1998) in the literature should not be analyzed in familiar semantic terms like introduction of alternatives or exhaustivity. Rather, an adequate analysis must take into account discourse-pragmatic notions like hearer expectation or discourse expectability of the focused content in a given discourse situation. The less expected a given content is judged to be for the hearer, relative to the Common Ground, the more likely a speaker is to mark this content by means of special grammatical devices, giving rise to emphasis.

New evidence is provided for a grammatical principle that singles out contrastive focus (Rooth 1996; Truckenbrodt 1995) and distinguishes it from discourse-new “informational” focus. Since the prosody of discourse-given constituents may also be distinguished from discourse-new, a three-way distinction in representation is motivated. It is assumed that an F-feature marks just contrastive focus (Jackendoff 1972, Rooth 1992), and that a G-feature marks discoursegiven constituents (Féry and Samek-Lodovici 2006), while discoursenew is unmarked. A crucial argument for G-marking comes from second occurrence focus (SOF) prosody, which arguably derives from a syntactic representation where SOF is both F-marked and G-marked. This analysis relies on a new G-Marking Condition specifying that a contrastive focus may be G-marked only if the focus semantic value of its scope is discourse-given, i.e. only if the contrast itself is given.

Three dimensions can be distinguished in a cross-linguistic account of information structure. First, there is the definition of the focus constituent, the part of the linguistic expression which is subject to some focus meaning. Second and third, there are the focus meanings and the array of structural devices that encode them. In a given language, the expression of focus is facilitated as well as constrained by the grammar within which the focus devices operate. The prevalence of focus ambiguity, the structural inability to make focus distinctions, will thus vary across languages, and within a language, across focus meanings.

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Les langues offrent une multitude d’éléments linguistiques pour organiser et délivrer les informations (Jisa, Reilly, Verhoeven, Baruch & Rosado, 2002). Il y a plusieurs manières d’exprimer en mot la représentation mentale des événements. Le locuteur, en fonction des outils linguistiques dont il dispose, choisit les formes qui lui apportent le plus de valeur communicative pour transmettre son message.Notre étude est centrée sur deux connecteurs de l’amharique, -mm et dämmo, qui sont abondants dans la langue, et dans la narration en particulier. Nous avons pour objectif d’examiner, dans une perspective développementale, comment les locuteurs les utilisent, et les fonctions que ces particules ont dans leurs narrations. Nous cherchons à distinguer les fonctions communicatives ou pragmatiques qui sont signalées dans l’énoncé au moyen de ces marques. Pour ce faire, nous avons constitué un corpus de soixante productions narratives d’enfants de groupes d’âges différents (5-6, 7-8 et 10-12 ans) et d’adultes locuteurs d’amharique. Nous avons utilisé le support imagé sans texte « Frog, where are you? » (Mayer, 1969) pour recueillir nos données. Ce matériel expérimental a déjà servi à de nombreuses études développementales dans plusieurs langues (Bamberg, 1987 ; Kail & Hickmann, 1992 ; Berman & Slobin, 1994 ; Kern 1997 ; Akinci, 1999 ; Strömqvist &Verhoeven 2003 ; Jisa, Chenu, Fekete & Omar, 2010 ; Fekete, 2011, Saïdi 2014 entre autres).Les résultats montrent que le clitique -mm et la locution dämmo, bien qu’ils soient tous les deux employés par tous les locuteurs, n’ont pas toujours la même portée selon le locuteur et varient en fonction de l’âge. dämmo, marque principalement le thème contrasté pour montrer la concomitance des événements. Il s’avère être plus maniable pour les enfants par rapport à –mm qui est beaucoup plus complexe, non seulement de par sa structure synthétique mais surtout parce qu’il est multiusage. –mm ancre l’information dans le contexte, il met en exergue le constituant sur lequel il opère. / Languages provide speakers with a wide range of linguistic units to organize and deliver information (Jisa, Reilly, Verhoeven, Baruch & Rosado, 2002). There are several ways to verbally express the mental representations of events. The speaker, according to the linguistic tools he has acquired, selects the one that brings out the most communicative effect to convey his message.Our study focuses on two markers in Amharic, -mm and dämmo, which abound in the language and in narratives in particular. Our aim is to examine, from a developmental perspective, how the speakers use them, and the functions these elements have in their narratives. We seek to distinguish the communicative and pragmatic functions indicated by means of these markers. To do so, we created a corpus of sixty narrative productions of children from 5-6, 7-8 to 10-12 years old and adult Amharic speakers. The material we used to collect our data is a series of pictures without text “Frog, Where are you?” (Mayer, 1969). This experimental material has already been used in many developmental studies and in several languages (Bamberg, 1987 ; Kail & Hickmann, 1992 ; Berman & Slobin, 1994 ; Kern 1997 ; Akinci, 1999 ; Strömqvist &Verhoeven 2003 ; Jisa, Chenu, Fekete & Omar, 2010 ; Fekete, 2011, Saïdi 2014 and many more).The results show that -mm and dämmo, although all the speakers use them both, do not always have the same scope according to the speaker and vary according to the age. dämmo is mainly used to mark a contrastive topic to signal the concomitance of the events. It seems to be easy to use for children compared to -mm which is much more complex, not only because of its synthetic structure but primarily because it is a multi-purpose morpheme. -mm anchors the information into the context, it highlights the constituent on which it operates.

This thesis explores the variable behavior of bare nouns in Persian. Bare singular nouns realize different grammatical functions, including subject, object and indirect object. They receive different interpretations, including generic, definite and existential readings. However, the task of understanding the reasons for, and limits on, this variation cannot be achieved without understanding a number of pivotal features of Persian sentential architecture, including Information Structure, prosody, word order, and the functions of various morphological markers in Persian. After a brief introduction, chapters 2-3 deal with bare noun objects, firstly comparing them with nominals marked with indefinite morpheme -i suffixed to the noun, and the determiner yek. A bare noun object differs from morphologically marked nominals as it shows properties associated with noun incorporation in the literature (chapter 2). Of particular interest are the discourse properties of these ‘quasi-incorporated’ nominals. With respect to the discourse transparency of Incorporated Nominals, Persian belongs to the class of discourse opaque languages within Mithun’s classification (1984). However, under certain circumstances, Persian bare nouns show discourse transparency. These circumstances are examined in chapter 3, and it is proposed that bare nouns do introduce a number neutral discourse referent. There are no overt anaphoric expressions that could match such number-neutral antecedents in Persian. But covert anaphora lack number features, and hence can serve as means to pick up a number-neutral discourse referent. Also, in case world knowledge tells us that the number-neutral discourse referent is anchored to an atomic entity or to a collection, then an overt singular pronoun or an overt plural pronoun might fit the combined linguistic and conceptual requirements, and may be used to pick up the number-neutral discourse referent. This proposal is phrased within Discourse Representation Theory. In the second half of the dissertation, the interpretation of bare nouns in different positions and with different grammatical functions are discussed. Under the independently supported hypothesis of position>interpretation mapping developed by Diesing (1992), we will see the role of the suffix -ra in indicating that an object has been moved out of VP. Following Diesing, I assume that VP-internal variables are subject to an operation of Existential Closure. In many cases, VP-external –ra-marked objects have a different interpretation to their VP-internal, non-ra-marked, counterparts, because of escaping Existential Closure. For subjects, there is no morphological marking corresponding to –ra on objects, and we have to rely on prosody and word order to determine how a VP is interpreted using theories of the interaction of accent and syntactic structure. We assume that VP-internal subjects exist, under two independent but converging assumptions. The first is prosodic in nature: Subjects can be accented without being narrowly focused; theories of Persian prosody predict then that there is a maximal constituent that contains both the subject and the verb as its head. The second is semantic in nature: Bare nouns require an external existential closure operation to be interpreted existentially, and we have to assume existential closure over the VP for our analysis of the interpretation of objects. So, this existential closure would provide the necessary quantificational force for bare noun subjects as well. It is proposed that both subject and object originate within the VP, and can move out to the VP-external domain. The motivation for these movements are informational-structural in nature, relating in particular to the distinctions between given and new information, and default and non-default information structure.

This thesis explores the variable behavior of bare nouns in Persian. Bare singular nouns realize different grammatical functions, including subject, object and indirect object. They receive different interpretations, including generic, definite and existential readings. However, the task of understanding the reasons for, and limits on, this variation cannot be achieved without understanding a number of pivotal features of Persian sentential architecture, including Information Structure, prosody, word order, and the functions of various morphological markers in Persian. After a brief introduction, chapters 2-3 deal with bare noun objects, firstly comparing them with nominals marked with indefinite morpheme -i suffixed to the noun, and the determiner yek. A bare noun object differs from morphologically marked nominals as it shows properties associated with noun incorporation in the literature (chapter 2). Of particular interest are the discourse properties of these ‘quasi-incorporated’ nominals. With respect to the discourse transparency of Incorporated Nominals, Persian belongs to the class of discourse opaque languages within Mithun’s classification (1984). However, under certain circumstances, Persian bare nouns show discourse transparency. These circumstances are examined in chapter 3, and it is proposed that bare nouns do introduce a number neutral discourse referent. There are no overt anaphoric expressions that could match such number-neutral antecedents in Persian. But covert anaphora lack number features, and hence can serve as means to pick up a number-neutral discourse referent. Also, in case world knowledge tells us that the number-neutral discourse referent is anchored to an atomic entity or to a collection, then an overt singular pronoun or an overt plural pronoun might fit the combined linguistic and conceptual requirements, and may be used to pick up the number-neutral discourse referent. This proposal is phrased within Discourse Representation Theory. In the second half of the dissertation, the interpretation of bare nouns in different positions and with different grammatical functions are discussed. Under the independently supported hypothesis of position>interpretation mapping developed by Diesing (1992), we will see the role of the suffix -ra in indicating that an object has been moved out of VP. Following Diesing, I assume that VP-internal variables are subject to an operation of Existential Closure. In many cases, VP-external –ra-marked objects have a different interpretation to their VP-internal, non-ra-marked, counterparts, because of escaping Existential Closure. For subjects, there is no morphological marking corresponding to –ra on objects, and we have to rely on prosody and word order to determine how a VP is interpreted using theories of the interaction of accent and syntactic structure. We assume that VP-internal subjects exist, under two independent but converging assumptions. The first is prosodic in nature: Subjects can be accented without being narrowly focused; theories of Persian prosody predict then that there is a maximal constituent that contains both the subject and the verb as its head. The second is semantic in nature: Bare nouns require an external existential closure operation to be interpreted existentially, and we have to assume existential closure over the VP for our analysis of the interpretation of objects. So, this existential closure would provide the necessary quantificational force for bare noun subjects as well. It is proposed that both subject and object originate within the VP, and can move out to the VP-external domain. The motivation for these movements are informational-structural in nature, relating in particular to the distinctions between given and new information, and default and non-default information structure.