Wortstellungsvariation und Salienz von Diskursreferenten

Abstract

This paper deals with the syntactically non-obligatory filling of the postfield (Nachfeld) in the German sentence; syntactic constituents which theoretically 'ought to' have been placed earlier occur in fact on the right periphery, after the so-called right sentence brace, i.e., in the postfield. Exploring the interface between syntax, discourse organization, and salience, the present study addresses the relationship between the marked word order and the so-called speaker-salience for the theoretical background of the Mental Salience Framework. The main point of this empirical analysis is to investigate the discourse functions of postfield constituents in a corpus of German newspapers with respect to local and global coherence.