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

• Authors: Adam Martin , Headlandová Kalischová Irena
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

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.

Keywords

EN

FSP; presentation; scale; intonation centre; communicative dynamism

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Arts, Czech Republic
• Journal: Linguistica Pragensia
• Year: 2017
• Volume: 27
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 57-69

Contributors

author

Adam Martin

• Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Education, Masaryk University, Brno

author

Headlandová Kalischová Irena

• Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Education, Masaryk University, Brno