Communicative Organization in Natural Language: The semantic-communicative structure of sentences: 57 (Studies in Language Companion Series) - Hardcover

Mel’čuk, Igor

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9027230609 ISBN 13: 9789027230607

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Co, 2001

Synopsis

The book defines the concept of Semantic-Communicative Structure [= Sem-CommS]-a formal object that is imposed on the starting Semantic Structure [= SemS] of a sentence (under text synthesis) in order to turn the selected meaning into a linguistic message. The Sem-CommS is a system of eight logically independent oppositions: 1. Thematicity (Rheme vs. Theme), 2. Givenness (Given vs. Old), 3. Focalization (Focalized vs. Non-Focalized), 4. Perspective (Foregrounded vs. Backgrounded), 5. Emphasis (Emphasized vs. Non-Emphasized), 6. Presupposedness (Presupposed vs. Non-Presupposed), 7. Unitariness (Unitary vs. Articulated), 8. Locutionality (Communicated vs. Signaled). The values of these oppositions mark particular subnetworks of the starting SemS and thus allow for the distinction between sentences such as (a) A man killed a dog vs. The dog was killed by a man, (b) John washed the window vs. It was John who washed the window or (c) It hurts! vs. Ouch! The proposed Sem-Comm-oppositions are conceived as an attempt at sharpening the well-known notions of Topic ~ Comment, Focus, etc. Possible linguistic strategies for expressing the values of the Sem-Comm-oppositions in different languages are discussed at some length, with linguistic illustrations.

About this title

Synopsis

This text provides information on communicative organization in natural language. Topics include: the nature of semantic-communicative structure; the naturalness of semantic representation and separation vs communicative infomation; and communicative information in the conceptual representation.

Edition details

• Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Co
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9027230609
• ISBN 13: 9789027230607
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 405