A New Architecture for Functional Grammar (Functional Grammar Series)

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FG and the dynamics of discourse 237


  1. The marked ‘heavy’ Themes move an informational Focus to the front
    (ContrFoc, in LIBMSEC normally uttered on a high level), and at the same
    time, the Subject, which would not be in focus in CWO counterparts, also
    acquires focal status (in LIBMSEC usually with Falling tones) and is
    thereby put ‘on stage’.

  2. In LIBMSEC the rhematic area of there-constructions was found to be lexi-
    cally and informatively four times heavier than the thematic part (8 vs 2).

  3. According to the results reported for LIBMSEC, most EMTs are obtained
    by the presence of a prefield TT, thereby having a high-low or combined
    orientation, that is, structural or conjunctive Themes (e.g. and, but), linking
    hypotactic or paratactic clause complexes, or continuatives (e.g. em, well,
    so), punctuating an exchange and staging discourse turns.


References


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Bakker, Dik and Anna Siewierska
This vol. Towards a speaker model of Functional Grammar.
Bates, Elizabeth and Judith C. Goodman
1997 On the inseparability of grammar and the lexicon: evidence from ac-
quisition, aphasia and real-time processing. Language and Cognitive
Processes 12: 507–584.
Bencini, Giulia M.L. and Adele E. Goldberg
2000 The contribution of argument structure constructions to sentence
meaning. Journal of Memory and Language 43: 640–651.
Berry, Margaret
1996 What is Theme? A(nother) Personal View. In: Margaret Berry,
Christopher Butler, Robin Fawcett and Guowen Huang (eds), Mean-
ing and Form: Systemic Functional Interpretations. Norwood, NJ:
Ablex. 1–64.
Bolkestein, A. Machtelt
1998 What to do with Topic and Focus? Evaluating pragmatic informa-
tion. In: Mike Hannay and A. Machtelt Bolkestein (eds), 193–214.
Butler, Christopher S.
2003 Structure and Function: A Guide to Three Major Structural-
Functional Theories. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Carroll, John B., Peter Davies, and Barry Richman
1971 Word Frequency Book. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

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