360 Dik Bakker and Anna Siewierska
- Note that Dik (1989) proposes the FG underlying representations as candi-
dates for mental representations. - Long-term memory is assumed to be split up between semantic memory for
relative static bodies of knowledge such as the grammar and lexicon, and
episodic memory for the storage of events, e.g. what happens during a con-
versation. Instead of short-term memory we will use the wider and more
dynamic notion of working memory. This holds the information directly re-
lated to the utterance, typically for a very short time, but it also includes –
and runs – the processes which operate on that information. See Carroll
(1994: 49f.) for a more detailed discussion of the several types of memory
relevant for language processing. - In this context the magical ‘7 plus or minus 2 items of information’, stem-
ming from Miller (1956), should be mentioned. - In working memory, data and processes are in competition for space and
time. In this connection it is tempting to think of grammaticalization as a
method to economize on the resources of working memory. - We will use the notion GrammarN for the normative standard grammar of
the language, as it is used in writing and in formal speech. Good examples
of short and incomplete utterances in informal discourse may be found in
the contributions to Chafe (1980), in which versions of the renowned Pear
Story are discussed. DuBois (1987), also taking the Pear Film as a point of
departure, contains interesting observations about the utterances typically
used during recall sessions of this short film. More particularly, he focuses
on the distributions of nominal and pronominal (or zero) NPs in the expres-
sion of grammatical relations. A recent survey of spoken English may be
found in Biber et al. (1999), where it is observed that more than a third of
the utterances in the spoken English section of the British National Corpus
are non-clausal, with an average length of just under 2 words. - For an early discussion of abstract predicates in FG meaning definitions see
Siewierska (1993), who discusses proposals in Jackendoff (1990). See Fa-
ber and Mairal Usón (1999) for a recent discussion of meaning and the
lexicon in FG which also takes abstract concepts in meaning definitions as a
point of departure. - Typically, in this type of story-telling discourse, each Move will be Inform-
ing by default. The insertion of continuation markers such as And and And
then may well be the expression of this operator. - We will follow the convention of distinguishing abstract, language-
independent concepts from the related English words by using capital letters
for the former. For the rest, no attempt will be made to say anything about
the way mental concepts might be represented. - In order not to burden the discussion with matters irrelevant to it, we follow
the FG convention of representing adpositions via semantic functions. In