The information structure tier, unlike the other two, is concerned with packaging a complex concept for the purpose
of communication. Thus it seems a less likely candidate for an aspect of general-purpose thought. On the other hand,
cognitive grammarians (e.g. Talmy 1978; 1996b; Langacker 1987) have consistently used the terms“figure”and
“ground”in connectionwithinformation structureissues, suggestingthatTopic and Focus havesomething to do with
the distribution of attention. If so, perhaps the packaging in expression simply reflects the way we are built to package
perception. The issues are at the moment wide open and well worth exploring.
Finally, are these all the tiers there are in meaning? Another candidate, somewhat distanced from“logical meaning,”
might be register: the use of words, constructions, and phonology to convey degree of formality, presumed
relationship to the hearer, and so forth. Some lexical items, constructions, and other stored elements are lexically
marked for their register (e.g.Daddyis informal,Fatheris formal); other items (e.g.someandbanana) are registrally
neutral. The phrasal computationofregister wouldsimplyensurethatnomarked items conflictwithoneanother. I am
not in a position to address whether this leads to any significant formal complexity.
12.7 Beyond: discourse, conversation, narrative
I haveskippedover many oftheusual topicsof pragmatics such as conversational implicature, irony, and metaphor,in
thehopethatconnoisseurs willbeabletodeterminefor themselveshowtointegratethem intothepresentframework.
I wish to conclude by very briefly mentioning some issues that arise from pushing the scale of analysis still larger, to
multi-sentence assemblages.
First, we have clear intuitions about the semantic connections between adjacent sentences. (70) illustrates a few
possibilities.
(70)
a. The dog was fat. The cat was thin. [Simultaneous states]
b. You pickup thatend. I'llpick upthis
end.[Simultaneous events]c. I can't come. I feel sick. [S 2 is reason for S 1
d. I feel sick. I can't come. [S 2 is result of S 1
e. John walked in. He took off his
shoes.[S 2 follows S 1f. The bottle fell off the table. It crashed into a million pieces.
[S 2 follows S 1 and is a consequence
of it]
g. John walked in. He looked angry. [S 2 is a state revealed by event S 1The examples in (70) can all be paraphrased by conjoined forms likethe dog was fat and the cat was thin. But this is not
always possible, particularly if one of the sentences is nondeclarative.