Information structure in Sembiran Balinese

Abstract

This paper discusses the information structure in Sembiran Balinese, an endangered, conservative mountain dialect of Balinese. It presents the first detailed description of the ways topic, focus and frame setter in this language interact with each other and with other elements in grammar. It is demonstrated that Sembiran Balinese employs combined strategies that exploit structural positions, morpho-lexical and syntactic resources in grammar. The description is based on a well-defined set of categories of information structure using three semantic-discourse/pragmatic features of [+/−salient], [+/−given] and [+/−contrast]. This novel approach allows for the in-depth exploration of the information structure space in Sembiran Balinese. The paper also highlights the empirical-theoretical contributions of the findings in terms of the significance of local socio-cultural context, and the conception of information structural prominence in grammatical theory. Show more