170 Michael Fortescue
are talking about something else. This does not preclude eventually elabo-
rating a single model that can be interpreted both ways. What we do need
is clear principles for (and constraints on) how to interpret such a model in
the one or the other way.
Notes
- Cf. Dik (1989: 13) for the possibility of interpreting FG as a production
model that achieves psychological adequacy and which is said to “lay out
recipes for construing linguistic expressions from their basic building
blocks”. Grammar he sees from this point of view as tripartite (production
and comprehension plus a common store of elements and principles). In this
context he approved (1989: 13, fn. 9) of Nuyts’s proposal to give a proce-
dural interpretation to FG, although his own approach was different, being
closer to the predicational representations of standard FG. Thus Dik (1988)
suggested that the representations used by a hypothetical logic component
could be the same as those of the underlying propositional structure of sen-
tences, whereas Nuyts (1992) argues that deeper cognitive representations
are needed that cover both (see Anstey this volume: 38ff). - Harder’s ‘process vs. product’ dichotomy is not quite the same as my ‘proc-
ess vs. pattern’ one. For example, his representation of the phrase the old
elephant as: (1 (prop: old (ent: elephant))) is to be understood as a set of
nested instructions to produce the phrase in question, which would then be
the static ‘product’ of the procedural representation. By ‘pattern’ I mean the
grammar as such, the relational template of coding choices which constrains
the processes of expression in a given language. This is not a ‘product’ (ex-
cept in the historical sense), but rather a high-level abstraction across norms
of (communicative) behaviour. - See in particular Bolkestein (1998) for discussion of the question of the
level of the revised FG model at which the pragmatic function of Focus
should be assigned. - Hannay proposes several basic types of utterance ‘mode’ at this level, which
he labels TOPIC, ALL NEW, REACTION, NEUTRAL and PRESENTA-
TIVE. The last-mentioned, for example, corresponds to ‘thetic’ as opposed
to ‘categorial’ judgments typically expressed by special constructions for
introducing a NewTop, whereas REACTION mode in English triggers Fo-
cus in P1, and TOPIC mode Topic in P1. In general, the choice of mode
determines what will fill the P1 slot (in English). So for Hannay the initial
choice in a processual interpretation of FG concerns which entity – or other
semantic element – is to go in initial P1 position in the accruing utterance.
As Mackenzie interprets this (Mackenzie 1996: 144) these modes may be