Constituent order

Randall Buth ButhFam at compuserve.com
Mon Nov 5 14:18:41 EST 2001


Message text written by INTERNET:boyd at huxcomm.net
>
For those who don't have his book, he essentially says that if a 
sentence begins with a nonverbal constituent, it will either be a 
"point of departure" or "in focus." (p. 45).  A point of departure 
"provides a starting point for the communication" and "cohesively 
anchors the subsequent clause(s) to something which is already in 
the context (i.e., to something accessible in the hearer's mental 
representation.)." (p. 8).  "The focus of an utterance is that part 
which is intended to make the most important... change in the 
hearer's mental representation." (p. 32 n. 8).
<

This is classic Functional Grammar, in slightly different terminology and 
corresponds to typically generative approaches to what might be termed 
functional sentence perspective. So Yes, it is fairly widely used by
linguists 
though by no means universally. Linguists are usually able to follow such 
an approach with minimal exemplification of terms.

ERRWSO

Randall Buth

Randall Buth, PhD
Director, Biblical Hebrew Ulpan
www.BiblicalUlpan.org
Buth at jerusalemschool.org
and Lecturer, 
Rothberg  International School
Hebrew University



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