Shaping Information: Transitive Structures as Means of Expression of Existence/Appearance
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| Year of publication | 2015 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Within the Firbasian framework of the theory of FSP, sentences are understood to implement either the Presentation Scale or the Quality Scale (Firbas 1992); this essential distinction represents a cornerstone in a systematic FSP analysis. Attention has recently been paid to the role of the English verb operating in the Presentation Scale sentences and different realization structures of Pr-sentences. It follows that, in addition to the existential there-construction, it is the prototypical configuration of the rhematic subject in preverbal position that seems to convey existence/appearance on the scene most frequently in English (cf. A cruel smile hovered over her face.). In such sentences, the presentation verb is typically intransitive. The present corpus-based paper, however, proposes to shed light on the Presentation Sentences that are realized by means of SVO structures, in which the transitional verb is, unlike most other cases of presentation, transitive (cf. Robbers attacked him). In such sentences the interpretation difficulties namely arise from the use of the active transitive constructions with a context-independent subject (S/Rh - V/Trans - O/Th). The principal obstacle in FSP analysis is related to an obvious clash of the FSP functions with the dynamic semantic function of the complement. Whereas in the case of other sentence elements we observe clear correspondence in this respect (Th functions: Setting, Bearer of Quality; Rh functions: Phenomenon, Specification), in the cases tackled above there is a discrepancy between the lexical-semantic relations of the verb and its complement, which is the participant affected by the action. |