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Meta-informative Centering in Utterances: Between Semantics and PragmaticsEdited by André Włodarczyk and Hélène Włodarczyk
[Studies in Language Companion Series 143] 2013
► pp. 285–296
Personal subject pronouns are used as meta-informative markers in classical Latin. Given that they are optional when the utterance contains a personal-ending verb, we put forward the hypothesis that they inherently emphasise the person already involved by the personal ending of the verb. Careful observation of examples taken from Cicero’s Correspondence shows that the pronouns ego and tu featured in discourse have a highly important role in the construction of informative coherence, since they can be used as topicalisations, but also as focalisations. Moreover, they can be used as additional markers: their second position gives to the first position element an informative emphasis which it would not otherwise have.