Information status and noncanonical word order in English / Betty J. Birner, Gregory Ward.

Format:

• Book

Author/Creator:

• Birner, Betty J.

Contributor:

• Ward, Gregory L.

Series:

• Studies in language companion series ; v. 40.
• Studies in language companion series, 0165-7763 ; v. 40

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

• English language--Word order.
• English language--Discourse analysis.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (328 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; Philadelphia : John Benjamins Pub. Co., 1998.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This work provides a comprehensive discourse-functional account of three classes of noncanonical constituent placement in English - preposing, postposing, and argument reversal - and shows how their interaction is accounted for in a principled and predictive way. In doing so, it details the variety of ways in which information can be 'given' or 'new' and shows how an understanding of this variety allows us to account for the distribution of these constructions in discourse. Moreover, the authors show that there exist broad and empirically verifiable functional correspondences within classes of

Contents:

CONTENTS; Acknowledgments; 1 Introduction; 2 Preposing; 3 Postposing; 4 Argument Reversal; 5 Noncanonical Word Order and Discourse Structure; 6 Extensions and Implications; Appendix; References; Index

Notes:

• Description based upon print version of record.
• Includes bibliographical references (p. 289-306) and index.

ISBN:

• 1-283-28033-7
• 9786613280336
• 90-272-8190-4

OCLC:

748242119