AUC Philologica (Acta Universitatis Carolinae Philologica) is an academic journal published by Charles University. It publishes scholarly articles in a large number of disciplines (English, German, Greek and Latin, Oriental, Romance and Slavonic studies, as well as in phonetics and translation studies), both on linguistic and on literary and cultural topics. Apart from articles it publishes reviews of new academic books or special issues of academic journals.
The journal is indexed in CEEOL, DOAJ, EBSCO, and ERIH PLUS.
AUC PHILOLOGICA, Vol 2017 No 1 (2017), 51–61
What Comes First, What Comes Next: Information Packaging in Written and Spoken Language
Vladislav Smolka
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14712/24646830.2017.4
published online: 20. 07. 2017
abstract
The paper explores similarities and differences in the strategies of structuring information at sentence level in spoken and written language, respectively. In particular, it is concerned with the position of the rheme in the sentence in the two different modalities of language, and with the application and correlation of the end-focus and the end-weight principles. The assumption is that while there is a general tendency in both written and spoken language to place the focus in or close to the final position, owing to the limitations imposed by short-term memory capacity (and possibly by other factors), for the sake of easy processibility, it may occasionally be more felicitous in spoken language to place the rhematic element in the initial position or at least close to the beginning of the sentence. The paper aims to identify differences in the function of selected grammatical structures in written and spoken language, respectively, and to point out circumstances under which initial focus is a convenient alternative to the usual end-focus principle.
keywords: word order; functional sentence perspective; end-focus; written language; spoken language
references (9)
1. Adam, M. (2013) Presentation Sentences (Syntax, Semantics and FSP). Brno: Masaryk University.
2. Biber, D., S. Johansson, G. Leech, S. Conrad and E. Finegan (1999) Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Longman.
3. Crystal, D. (1997) The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4. Firbas, J. (1992) Functional Sentence Perspective in Written and Spoken Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossRef
5. Halliday, M. A. K. (1989) Spoken and Written Language, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
6. Huddleston, R., G. K. Pullum et al. (2002) The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossRef
7. Quirk, R., S. Greenbaum, G. Leech and J. Svartvik (1985) A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.
8. Mathesius, V. (1975) A Functional Analysis of Present-Day English on a General Linguistic Basis. Prague: Academia.
9. British National Corpus (BYU-BNC). Available at: http://corpus.byu.edu/ [2016-08-29].
What Comes First, What Comes Next: Information Packaging in Written and Spoken Language is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
230 x 157 mm
periodicity: 3 x per year
print price: 150 czk
ISSN: 0567-8269
E-ISSN: 2464-6830
