This study explores the preposing phenomenon in English from a discourse-functional perspective, and discusses what seems to cause a given sentential element to be placed in a position ahead of its original position. Unlike many previous studies on this well-known phenomenon, this study seeks to explain the phenomenon introducing the notions of ‘cognitive accessibility’ and ‘discourse relevance’, and suggests that a given entity is preposed due to its high cognitive accessibility and discourse relevance. More specifically, it argues that the syntactic structure of a given utterance would be determined by the information structure that a speaker chooses for the message to deliver. The information structure would be constructed based on the cognitive accessibility and discourse relevance of a given entity to the speaker’s consciousness at the time of utterance. In this study, the author takes postposing phenomenon in Korean as supporting evidence to account for the preposing phenomenon in English.
1. Introduction
2. Information Structure
3. Pragmatic Factors as the Trigger for the Syntactic Operation?
4. Semantics as the Trigger?
5. Cognitive Accessibility, Discourse Relevance and Preposing of NPs
6. Conclusion
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