Information Structure and Sentence Form: Topic, Focus, and the Mental Representations of Discourse Referents

ISBN-13: 9780521587044 / Angielski / Miękka / 1996 / 408 str.

Knud Lambrecht

Opis

Why do languages have so many different ways of expressing the same idea? Lambrecht addresses this question through an investigation of the "information structure" of sentences. His analysis is based on the observation that the structure of a sentence reflects a speaker's assumptions about the hearer's state of knowledge and consciousness at the time of the utterance. Four independent but interrelated categories are analyzed: presupposition and assertion, identifiability and activation, topic, and focus.

Recenzje

'It represents the state of the art in functional syntax.' Journal of Linguistics

Spis treści

Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. Information; 3. The mental representations of discourse referents; 4. Pragmatic relations: topic; 5. Pragmatic relations: focus; 6. Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.