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The Surface-Compositional Semantics of English Intonation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Mark Steedman
Mark Steedman*
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
*
University of Edinburgh School of Informatics 10 Crichton Street Edinburgh, United Kingdom [steedman@inf.ed.ac.uk]
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Abstract

This article proposes a syntax and a semantics for intonation in English and some related languages. The semantics is ‘surface-compositional’, in the sense that syntactic derivation constructs information-structural logical form monotonically, without rules of structural revision, and without autonomous rules of ‘focus projection’. This is made possible by the generalized notion of syntactic constituency afforded by combinatory categorial grammar (CCG)—in particular, the fact that its rules are restricted to string-adjacent type-driven combination. In this way, the grammar unites intonation structure and information structure with surface-syntactic derivational structure and Montague-style compositional semantics, even when they deviate radically from traditional surface structure.

The article revises and extends earlier CCG-based accounts of intonational semantics, grounding hitherto informal notions like ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’ (a.k.a. ‘topic’ and ‘comment’, ‘presupposition’ and ‘focus’, etc.) and ‘background’ and ‘contrast’ (a.k.a. ‘given’ and ‘new’, ‘focus’, etc.) in a logic of speaker/hearer supposition andupdate, usingaversion of Rooth's alternative semantics. A CCG grammar fragment is defined that constrains language-specific intonation and its interpretation more narrowly than previous attempts.

Keywords

intonation structureinformation structuresecond-occurrence focuscombinatory categorial grammar (CCG)syntaxsemantics

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Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 90 , Issue 1 , March 2014 , pp. 2 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 Linguistic Society of America

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Footnotes

*

Preliminary versions of some of these ideas were presented under various titles at the Conference on Focus and Natural Language Processing at Schloß Wolfsbrunnen (Steedman 1994, 2000a), the LSA Summer Institute Workshop on Topic and Focus, Santa Barbara, July 2001 (Steedman 2007), the 2nd International Conference on Linguistic Evidence, Tübingen, February 2006, and the CHC Workshop on the Prosody-Syntax Interface, UCL, October 2006, and in talks at OSU in 2006, and at Penn, NYU, Cornell, UT Austin, and Northwestern in 2007. Thanks to the audiences there, and to Sasha Calhoun, Chris Geib, Rob Clark, Stephen Isard, Aravind Joshi, Kordula de Kuthy, Bob Ladd, Alex Lascarides, Detmar Meurers, Ron Petrick, Steve Pulman, Geoff Pullum, Craige Roberts, Mats Rooth, Matthew Stone, Alice Turk, and Bonnie Webber, and to the referees for Language. The work was supported at different stages by ERC Advanced Fellowship 249520 GRAMPLUS, EC FP7 IP grant 270273 Xperience, the Edinburgh-Stanford Link grant Sounds of Discourse from the Scottish Executive, and by a sabbatical leave in 2006-7 at the University of Pennsylvania granted by the University of Edinburgh.

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