The Role of Prosody and Morphology in the Mapping of Information Structure onto Syntax

The mapping of information structure onto morphology or intonation varies greatly crosslinguistically. Agglutinative languages, like Inuktitut Quechua, have a rich morphological layer which discourse-level features are mapped but limited use intonation. Instead, English Spanish lack grammaticalized morphemes that convey to relatively large extent. We propose the difference found in these two pairs languages follows from division labor across language modules, such extreme values continuum possible interactions modules available as well combinations and intonational markers. At one extreme, set with scope over constituents sentence-level distinctions, making alignment patterns apparently redundant. other some extent Spanish, series consistent alignments PF syntactic required distinguish sentence types determine value constituent. This results complementary distribution languages. In contact situations, overlap between module interaction attested. Evidence Quechua–Spanish Inuktitut–English bilinguals supports bidirectionality crosslinguistic influence; emerge non-intonational types, whereas discourse particles mark features.