232 María de los Ángeles Gómez-González
struct, which puts the A’s short-term memory under strain and decelerates
the process of comprehension, an undesirable effect for dialogic discourse,
which normally works on an immediate-response basis.
Lastly, to round off this section, unmarked high-low, low-high and
combined orientations within EMTs can also be associated with corre-
sponding instructions for discourse continuity, discourse discontinuity and
both. High-low-oriented ETMs (e.g. (6) and (7) above) show how dis-
course continuity is ensured by firstly providing a logico-conjunctive peg
on which speaker’s attitudes and the core message – normally in this order
- is to be hung, whether viewed through one attentional window or more.
An alternative discontinuous low-high strategy – as in (8) – assigns focal
and cognitive prominence to the profiled relationship, normally encoded in
the ET. Detached from the Rest (or Rheme) by means of IT and/or TT, the
ET specifies a domain of knowledge, a ‘mental address’, and the proposi-
tion by the following clause is ‘delivered’ to that address, i.e. integrated
into the domain of knowledge centred on the (local) D-Topic.
In most cases, not only ETs, but also post-field ITs and/or TTs, are
framed within their own intonation units, which are accorded focal promi-
nence, more processing time and a fuller realization. Both strategies and
their corresponding discourse effects are present in the combined type
(shown in (9)).^20
Owing to their different orientations, EMTs tend to be used either in
constructive discourse, which often requires the help of logico-conjunctive
signposts to develop their specialized contents, or in dialogic discourse,
where speakers can freely express their points of view and have to gain or
maintain the discourse floor. Besides, both constructive and dialogic dis-
course tend to involve the type of State of Affairs preferred by EMTs, i.e.
material processes in the sense of Halliday (1994: 106–107), which, be-
cause of their informative and objective nature, readily accept logico-
conjunctive connectors and interpersonal hedging.
- Conclusion
In this chapter we have attempted to offer a cognitively-oriented extension of
Hengeveld’s (this volume) FDG, dubbed IDCG in line with the recent trends
observed within and outside FG - mostly Mackenzie’s IFG, Nuyts’s FPG and
Langacker’s CG. Space constraints have forced us to give but a cursory ex-
position of what the model as a whole would look like, to zoom in, in
subsequent sections, on different aspects of the dynamics of discourse.