Publications

Publication details [#19492]

Mel’čuk, Igor A. 2001. Communicative Organization in Natural Language: The semantic-communicative structure of sentences. (Studies in Language Companion Series 57). John Benjamins. xii + 393 pp.
Publication type
Book – monograph
Publication language
English
ISBN
90 272 3060 9

Annotation

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 allow for distinctions between sentences.