forground & background, boundry markers -Longacre's Model

Steven Lo Vullo doulos at merr.com
Sat Nov 3 15:14:21 EST 2001


on 11/3/01 10:08 AM, CWestf5155 at aol.com at CWestf5155 at aol.com wrote:

> In my model I don't equate marked formal features with prominence, but I
> suggest that they are significant contributors to prominence.  However, many
> occurences have to do with specificity, focus, etc. Also, even at the level
> of discourse, there may be relative prominence (emphatic indicators) within
> background, foreground and frontground.
> 
> Say it is a given that the color red is marked. I know of paintings where it
> occurs in the background, foreground and frontground for accent. Wherever it
> occurs, it draws the attention to the feature within the domain that it
> occurs in--it does not by definition make the object it colors frontground.
> 
> So all this is to say that marked formal features and even the general
> category of prominence make one contribution to a model of discourse
> structure that ought to be complex, and weigh in diverse other discourse
> features that contribute to textual cohesion, topic structure, co-text and
> context.

I don't know very much about DA, but I do enjoy following these discussions
and learning from those who do. But I sometimes do not understand the
terminology. Could someone briefly explain for me the difference between
"foreground" and "frontground" and also between "co-text" and "context?"
-- 

Steven Lo Vullo
Madison, WI




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