Structure and intonation

Rules for assigning phrasal intonation to sentences are often assumed to require an autonomous level of 'intonational structure', distinct from what is usually thought of as surface syntactic structure. The present paper argues that the requisite notion of structure can be subsumed under the generalized notion of surface structure that emerges from the combinatory extension of Categorial Grammar. According to this theory, the syn-tactic structures and the intonational structures of English are one, and can be captured in a single unified grammar. The interpretations that the grammar provides for such constituents correspond to the entities and open propositions that are concerned in certain discourse-related aspects of intonational meaning that have variously been described as 'theme ' and 'rheme'. 'given ' and 'new', and 'presupposition ' and 'focus'.* 1. The problem. It is well known that phrasal intonation organizes the per-ceived grouping of words in spoken utterances in ways which are, on occasion, inconsistent with traditional linguistic notions of syntactic constituency. For example, consider the following exchange: (1) a. I know that Alice likes velvet. But what does Mary prefer