Date: 05-Sep-2006 From: Julia Ulrich <julia.ulrichdegruyter.com> Subject: Pragmatic Organization of Discourse in the Languages of Europe: Bernini, Schwartz (Eds)
Title: Pragmatic Organization of Discourse in the Languages of Europe
Series Title: Empirical Approaches to Language Typology / EUROTYP 20-8
Published: 2006
Publisher: Mouton de Gruyter
http://www.mouton-publishers.com
Editor: Giuliano Bernini, University of Bergamo
Editor: Marcia L. Schwartz, Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel, Germany
Hardback: ISBN: 3110157535 Pages: 632 Price: Europe EURO 198.00 Comment: for USA, Canada, Mexico US$ 267.30
Abstract:
The volume is a collection of papers reporting the results of investigations on the interaction of discourse and sentence structure in the languages of Europe. The subjects discussed in the book include: morphosyntactic characteristics of spontaneous spoken texts; different patterns of word order in a pragmatic perspective; the coding of the pragmatic functions topic and focus in sentences with non-canonical word orders (e.g. dislocations, clefts); the range of functions of verb-subject order in declarative clauses and the notion of theticity; prosodic patterns of de-accenting of given information; deixis and anaphora; coding of definiteness and article systems. The book provides the empirical basis for the comparative survey of major phenomena found in the languages of Europe which have pragmatic relevance. Beside traditional areas of investigation at the interface between syntax and pragmatics such as dislocations, new areas are explored, such as the prosody of given information. Data are considered within a functional- typological approach.
From the Contents:
Part I: General issues
Introduction Giuliano Bernini
Spoken and written language Jim Miller and M.M.Jocelyne Fernandez-Vest
Part II: From function to form
Sentence topics in the languages of Europe Elena S. Maslova and Giuliano Bernini
Focus in the languages of Europe Jim Miller
Deixis and Anaphora Yaron Matras and Machtelt Bolkestein
Theticity Hans-Jürgen Sasse
Part III: From form to function
The de-accenting of given information: a cognitive universal? Alan Cruttenden
Interaction of syntactic and pragmatic factors on basic word order in the languages of Europe Rosanna Sornicola
Articles and article systems in some areas of Europe Christoph Schroeder
Linguistic Field(s):
Linguistic Theories
Pragmatics
Syntax
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