Communicative dynamism and prosodic prominence in presentation sentences with initial rhematic subjects

Authors

ADAM Martin HEADLANDOVÁ KALISCHOVÁ Irena

Year of publication 2017
Type Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source Linguistica Pragensia
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Education

Citation
Web https://sites.ff.cuni.cz/linguisticapragensia/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2017/07/Martin_Adam_-_Irena_Headlandova_Kalischova_57-69.pdf
Field Linguistics
Keywords FSP; presentation; scale; intonation centre; communicative dynamism
Description Within the framework of the theory of functional sentence perspective (Firbas 1992), the distinction between presentation and quality scale sentences plays a vital role. The present paper proposes to shed light on one of the most common configurations of presentation sentences, viz. structures with initial rhematic subject (e.g. an uninvited dwarf came), examining the way native speakers place the intonation centre in such structures, i.e. to map the correspondence between the degrees of communicative dynamism and prosodic prominence. For the purpose of the investigation selected chapters from Tolkien’s The Hobbit are used.

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