Functional sentence perspective
Table of contents
The speaker can distinguish those sentence parts presented as easily accessible in the hearer’s memory (‘given’) from those denoting items to be attached in a ‘new’ relationship. In a declarative sentence the latter are asserted to hold about the former. This dichotomy, handled under headings such as Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP, topic-focus or theme-rheme articulation, information structure) since 150 years ago, was later discussed by German linguists (e.g. G. von der Gabelentz, H. Paul, P. Wegener, H. Ammann) and then introduced into structural linguistics by V. Mathesius; now this issue is crucial in discussions on the interplay of syntax, semantics and pragmatics. A detailed account can be found in Sgall et al. (1986).
References
Daneš, F.
1974 Functional sentence perspective and the organization of the text. In F. Daneš (ed.) Papers on FSP: 106–128. Academia. BoP
Fillmore, C.
Firbas, J.
1992 Functional sentence perspective in written and spoken communication. Cambridge University Press. BoP
Hajičová, E.
1972 Some remarks on presuppositions. Prague Bulletin of Mathematical Linguistics 17: 11–23. E. Hajičová, T. Hoskovec . BoP
Hajičová, E., B. Partee & P. Sgall
Jacobs, J.
Krifka, M.
Kuno, S.
Pfeiffer, O. , Michael Půček & P. Sgall
Rochemont, M.
Sgall, P. , E. Hajičová & J. Panevová