"A ruler came and knelt before him": Hendiadys as a Means of Presentation on the Scene

Authors

ADAM Martin

Year of publication 2012
Type Appeared in Conference without Proceedings
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Education

Citation
Description Seen from the point of view of the Firbasian theory of FSP, 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 (A cruel smile hovered over her face.). The present corpus-based paper proposes to throw light on the structure and the function of the Pr-sentences containing the so-called hendiadys (A ruler came and knelt before him.) Such constructions, in which “a single conceptual idea is realised by two distinct constituents” (Hopper 2002: 146 qtd. in Tárnyiková 2007: 107) actually operate within the area of pseudo-coordination (Quirk et al. 1985: 978-979). The aim of the analysis will be to discuss the potential capacity of such configurations to present a context-independent subject on the scene, i.e. to express appearance/existence with explicitness or sufficient implicitness.

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