Abstract
Previous studies indicate that speakers signal the informational status of referents through a combination of intonation, word order and lexical realisation. In this paper, I argue for a non-binary view of information structure with referents being (1) hearer and discourse new, (2) discourse new but hearer given and (3) hearer and discourse given. Thus there can be no simple one-to-one relationship between information structure, lexical realisation and accenting. In the spoken data examined, evidence was found to substantiate a relationship between referential distance and lexical realisation but not between referential distance and tonic accenting. Tonic accents signal speakers’ subjective projection of the importance of a referent but the exact informational meaning signalled by the referent depends on a combination of tonic accent, tone choice, key, linear position and lexical realisation.
Highlights
In this study, I examine a corpus of recorded English speech in order to unpack the relationship between the opaque terms ‘Given’ and ‘New’ and their linguistic realisations. Prince (1981) argued that the meanings of terms such as old/given/known
In order to achieve my aim of unpacking the linguistic realisations of Given/ New, I first provide a critical overview of previous work, focusing in Section 3 on the prosodic systems used to signal informational status
The distance between two mentions of a referent corresponded with the lexical realisation of the second mention
Summary
I examine a corpus of recorded English speech in order to unpack the relationship between the opaque terms ‘Given’ and ‘New’ and their linguistic realisations. Prince (1981) argued that the meanings of terms such as old/given/known,. I examine a corpus of recorded English speech in order to unpack the relationship between the opaque terms ‘Given’ and ‘New’ and their linguistic realisations. In order to achieve my aim of unpacking the linguistic realisations of Given/ New, I first provide a critical overview of previous work, focusing in Section 3 on the prosodic systems used to signal informational status.
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