Representing Information Structure in a Formal Grammar of Danish

This paper presents a proposal for the integration of information structure in a unification-based grammar of Danish. Three information structure features – topic, focus and background – are defined, and it is shown how they are instantiated in a number of different grammatical constructions. Prosodic, syntactic and information structure constraints characterising the various constructions are represented as typed feature structures following Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), and the constructions themselves are ordered in a type hierarchy. The proposed approach modifies and extends earlier HPSG-based accounts by i. defining a new interface between information structure and semantics, and ii. integrating information structure as a dimension of phrasal and clausal grammar constructions.