Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Volume I: Clause Structure, Second edition
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Lgg Typology, Synt Description v. I - Clause structure
the sun is new information being introduced for the first time. Yet the
speaker treats it as definite for he assumes the listener can uniquely identify the referent; there is only one sun in the real world. Definiteness interacts with ref- erentiality to form all four possible combinations: (i) definite and referential – I’m looking for the snake (our pet diamond python); (ii) indefinite and referen- tial – I’m looking for a snake (my diamond python just escaped from its cage); (iii) definite and nonreferential – I’m looking for the friendliest snake I can find (I haven’t got it yet, but you and I know what kind it would have to be); and (iv) indefinite and nonreferential: I’m looking for a snake to buy (said to a pet-shop owner). The final distinction in the information status of nps to be considered here is that between generic and specific. This distinction indicates whether the np refers to the entire class of its potential referents (generic) or a specific one: (124) (a) Snakes are easy pets to care for (b) The snake is my favourite among my pets, but it keeps escaping Snakes in (124a) is generic; the statement is meant to cover all animals classed as snakes. The np the snake in (124b) is specific, as the sentence only applies to a particular snake, my pet snake. Generic nps can be definite or indefinite in English: (125) (a) The snake is an easy pet to care for (b) A snake is an easy pet to care for (c) Snakes are easy pets to care for We can summarize the discourse-based distinctions of information status of np s as: (i) Referent of np is already established in discourse Yes = given/presupposed information No = new information (ii) np refers to particular entity Yes = referential No = nonreferential (further, if np is to be taken as referring to entire class of possible referents, then = generic) A typology of information packaging 413 (iii) Speaker presupposes addressee can uniquely identify referent Yes = definite No = indefinite 3.3 The animacy hierarchy The distinctions of information status of nps looked at in the last section were all established by the discourse context. I will now investigate how inherent prop- erties of the referents of nps determine their information status – in particu- lar, the importance of being one of the participants in the immediate speech act, the speaker or addressee. Speaker and addressee are typically marked by the first and second person pronouns, I and you in English, although pronom- inal affixes on verbs are another common realization in many languages, e.g. Yimas. Traditionally, pronouns were claimed to stand for nouns, hence their name, ‘for-noun’, but this is clearly inaccurate in the case of first and sec- ond person pronouns for there is no possible np which they could plausi- bly be argued to replace. The referents of I and you are not constant, but shift during the course of a verbal interaction, depending on who is doing the talking and who is spoken to: ego ‘I’ when said by Julius Caesar did not have the same referent as when said by Brutus. This constant shifting of referents of first and second person forms is a pervasive fact about human language. The third person pronouns, on the other hand, do fit the traditional definition of pronouns as forms which stand in for nouns. English he, she, it, they are fundamentally different from Download 1.59 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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