Functional Sentence Perspective

Question 1

a degree of communicative dynamism (CD) is…

Answer 1

• the relative extent to which the element contributes towards the development of the communication

Question 2

a syntactic constituent is…

Answer 2

• a communicative unit within a basic distributional field
• e.g. S, predicative verb

Question 3

sentence perspectives

Answer 3

1) away from the subject
- You haven’t seen a great black dog, have you? (theme → rheme)

2) towards the subject
- A bear-like black dog had appeared at Harry’s side. (rheme → theme)

Question 4

FSP factors

Answer 4

1) linear modification (word order)
2) context
- the most powerful factor
3) semantic structure
4) intonation (prosody)

Question 5

given X new information

Answer 5

1) given = what the sender considers shared knowledge, known by sender and receiver
→ context-dependent

2) new = what has not been introduced to the discourse and is not clear from situational or verbal context
→ context-independent

Question 6

3 types of context

Answer 6

1) experiential/pragmatic
- context of human experience shared by both participants
(Elizabeth II and Meghan Markle were present; the Queen (!) left earlier.

2) situational - of a particular situation
(Yesterday you (!) did not tell me (!) you (!) wanted to marry her (!).)

3) verbal - preceding text
(All of a sudden, John ran into the room. He (!) shouted…)

Question 7

semantics (2 scales)

Answer 7

1) presentation scale
- existence or appearance on the scene
(There was a note of urgency (!) in his voice.)

2) quality scale
(Harry (!) started to laugh.
He (!) heard a weak moan…)

Question 8

intonation

Answer 8

• a set of prosodic features in its broad sense
• pitch, rhythm and the stress

Question 9

types of relationship between CD and prosodic prominence

Answer 9

1) perfect correspondence
- the nuclear stress falls on the rhema (His name is George.)

2) non-re-evaluating intensification
- the theme-rheme relationship remains untouched but a thematic element is prosodically intensified
(His wife is OK but he seems to have troubles.)

3) re-evaluating intensification
- intonation re-evaluates the theme-rheme sequence and thus backgrounds the non-prosodic factors
(I think she is wrong. - Well, but she doesn’t.)

Question 10

thematic progression

Answer 10

= the choice and ordering of utterance themes, their hierarchy and relationship to the hyperthemes of the superior text units (paragraph, chapter) to the whole text and to the situation

• keeps cohesion in text

Question 11

types/patterns of TPs

Answer 11

1) simple linear TP (tematizace rématu)
(Here is a report on an important exhibition. The exhibition was…)

2) TP with a constant (continuous) theme (průběžné téma)
(Mathesius was the lead… He was… He did…)

3) TP with derived themes
- themes derived from a “hypertheme”
(New Jersey is flat along…; the north-western region is… The coastal climate is mild…)

4) splitting
- a split theme or rheme
(The rest of my family are just like me. My mother tries… My father tries to…)
(A king had three sons. The eldest was… The middle one was…)

5) summarizing of themes or rhemes
(“Which way to the car?” Gareth said, “That way,” pointing east. “That way,” Coconut said, pointing west. They both got it wrong.)