A functional note on Topicalization

Hietaranta, Pertti

doi:10.1080/00138388408598302

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 3 publications

(1 reference statement)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In topicalization constructions, the preposed element provides an anaphoric link to the preceding discourse (Gregory & Michaelis 2001;Ward & Birner 2004). Therefore, topicalization contributes to the cohesion of a text (Hietaranta 1984).…”

Section: Topic/focusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frozen by context: Pragmatic factors of syntactic freezing

Martens

2021

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Syntactic freezing has mainly been approached from a structural point of view, recently though, more cognitive approaches in terms of processing costs have been proposed. One such processing account is the additive account. According to this approach, the freezing effect is best explained as an additive effect of two syntactic processes coming together, rather than being a phenomenon on its own. Another processing account argues that the freezing effect is the result of a prosodic garden path according to which extraction can only take place from a prosodically focused constituent. The current study provides empirical evidence for a less discussed factor contributing to the freezing effect, namely a pragmatic one. The pragmatic account requires frozen sentences to have contextually given referents. If no such referent is present, the sentence becomes less acceptable. The need for such a referent comes from the non- default word order associated with frozen sentences, which often highlights/focuses a certain constituent. Several experiments were run to test the pragmatic account. Based on the results it was concluded that pragmatic factors play a significant role in explaining the apparent freezing effects. Other factors however, seem to contribute to this effect as well since this effect cannot be fully explained in terms of pragmatic factors solely.

show abstract

Section: Topic/focusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frozen by context: Pragmatic factors of syntactic freezing

Martens

2021

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Cf. also Hietaranta (1984) for a functionally oriented discussion of certain cases of OSV order in English. For some (originally) Praguian comments on these issues, see Vachek (1966: eh.…”

Section: University Of Tamperementioning

confidence: 99%

A Case of Sentence-Initial New Information: Towards a Frame-Theoretical Analysis of a Literary Technique

Hietaranta¹

1987

Jlse

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…This seems to be so especially in the case of those structures where the subject NP of a sentence is such that it cannot 'fulfill the functional role of the topic of the sentence', for example, because of its length and hence the more or less necessarily concomitant presence of at least some new information. Similarly, it is demonstrated, by means of authentic text fragments, in Hietaranta (1984) that one of the major discourse functions of Topicalization is to provide a means of securing sufficient cohesion in a text, i.e. of linking a new sentence with the preceding part of the discourse or text.…”

Section: ( 5 )mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Functional Constraint on Topicalization

Hietaranta

1986

Studia Linguistica

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A functional note on Topicalization

Cited by 5 publications

References 3 publications

Frozen by context: Pragmatic factors of syntactic freezing

Frozen by context: Pragmatic factors of syntactic freezing

A Case of Sentence-Initial New Information: Towards a Frame-Theoretical Analysis of a Literary Technique

A Functional Constraint on Topicalization

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About