1st Edition

Focus, Coherence and Emphasis

Edited By Paul Werth Copyright 1984
308 Pages
by Routledge

308 Pages
by Routledge

307 Pages
by Routledge

First published in 1984, this book examines a number of questions on the boundary of competence and performance — whose solutions have implications for linguistic theory in general. In particular, the form of grammatical statements, the relationship between various rules of grammar, the interaction between sentence in a sequence, and the inferences to be drawn from linguistic behaviour to... Read more

List of figures and tables; Preface and acknowledgments; Part I: Generalia; 1. Introduction: Bringing Things into Focus 1.1 The field of scrutiny 1.2 A Programme 1.21 What do we know about texts? 1.22 What do we need to find out? 1.3 Defining terms 1.4 Aims and structure of the book Notes to Chapter One; Part II: Setting up the system; 2: Discourse 2.1 What IS a discourse 2.2 Summary: the properties of discourse 2.3 Sentences, propositions and semantic notation 2.4 Sketch of a model of D-grammar 2.5 Review section Notes to Chapter Two; 3. Context 3.1 Linguistic and extralinguistic context: competence or performance? 3.2 Review section: context-of-utterance 3.21 Immediate situation 3.22 Towards a model of situation 3.3 Frames and scenes 4.3 States-of-affairs 3.5 The common ground 3.6 Relevance Notes to Chapter Three; 4. Connectivity 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Cohesion 4.21 Anapora: a first glance 4.3 Collocation 4.4 Connectors 4.5 Coherence 4.51 An informal analysis 4.52 The coherence constraint Notes to Chapter Four; 5. Theoretical Considerations: Sharpening the Focus 5.1 Constraints in general 5.11 Review in action 5.12 Coherence constraints: general considerations 5.2 Positive coherence and synonymy 5.3 Negative coherence and antonymy 5.4 The coherence constraint: precise formulation Notes to Chapter Five; Part III: A text-grammar; 6. Emphasis 6.1 Emphasis-placement: an illustration 6.2 Is emphasis a surface-structure phenomenon? 6.21 What a phonological 6.22 A possible phonological account of emphasis 6.23 Some counterexamples 6.24 Summary: emphasis-interpretation from surface-structure 6.3 Is emphasis semantic/pragmatic in nature? 6.31 What a semantic/pragmatic account must do 6.32 Rules for emphasis 6.33 Arguments for the semantic/pragmatic nature of emphasis 6.4 Nature and behaviour of Reduction 6.5 Nature and behaviour of Accent 6.6 Nature and behaviour of Contrast 6.7 Review Section Notes to Chapter Six; 7. Contrast 7.1 Contrast on grammatical items 7.2 Contrast on lexical items 7.3 Summary: Contrast on grammatical and lexical categories 7.4 Semantic properties of sets 7.5 C and negative coherence Notes to Chapter Seven; 8. Anaphoric Connectivity 8.1 Résumé of anaphora 8.2 Reference 8.3 Type of anaphor 8.4 The role of emphasis 8.5 Anaphora as coherence 8.6 Reciprocal anaphora: two views 8.61 The view from G-B 8.62 Each 8.63 Other 8.64 Quantifier-floating 8.65 Reciprocals in complex sentences 8.66 Ambiguity of the phrasal form 8.67 Reciprocals and discourse 8.7 Anaphora and coherence Notes to Chapter Eight; 9. Syntactic Variation: Getting Movement into Focus 9.1 Introduction: "Movement" in recent grammatical models 9.2 Topic-comment articulation: review section 9.21 TCA and emphasis 9.22 The TCA constraint 9.3 Syntactic effects: summary of predictions 9.4 "Unmoved" structures 9.41 Behaviour of stress in unmoved structures 9.5 Passives: predictions of TCA constraint 9.51 Contexts with and without passives 9.52 Why passivise at all? 9.6 "Emphatic" constructions 9.61 Examples of emphatic constructions in context 9.62 Why cleft of pseudo-cleft? Notes to Chapter nine; 10. Conclusions 10.1 Summary 10.2 Implications 10.3 Empirical evidence for emphasis; Bibliography and Author-Index; Subject-Index

Biography

Paul Werth