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Article published In: English Text Construction
Vol. 14:1 (2021) ► pp.1–24

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‘Actually given’ versus ‘presented as given’ and ‘actually new’ versus ‘presented as new’

What happens when the ‘presented as’ gets out of step with the ‘actually’?

 | University of Nottingham
Published online: 15 September 2021
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https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.00041.ber
Abstract
This paper considers the relevance of various approaches to the study of ‘Given’ and ‘New’ to a number of practical problems: complaints from listeners to UK radio programmes that presenters place emphasis on the wrong words; inaudibility of openings of utterances in radio news bulletins; and ambiguity of pronouns. Approaches to ‘Given’ and ‘New’ to be discussed include those whose concerns are with intonation (e.g., Halliday, Michael A. K. & Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen. 2014. Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), those who pay attention to definiteness/indefiniteness in the nominal group (e.g., Martin, James R. 1992. English Text: System and Structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), and those who are more concerned with what is in the minds of hearers and readers (e.g., Prince, Ellen F. 1981. Toward a taxonomy of Given-New information. In Radical Pragmatics, Peter Cole (ed.). New York NY: Academic Press, 223–255.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information Structure and Sentence Form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). The underlying questions that are being investigated are: How free are speakers and writers to assign ‘Given’ or ‘New’ status to entities? Are there constraints on what they can do intonationally, or with definiteness, or with pronouns?
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The problems
    • 2.1Problem 1: The “wrong” use of intonation by radio presenters and newsreaders
    • 2.2Problem 2: Missing first elements of clauses
    • 2.3Problem 3: Ambiguous third person pronouns
  • 3.Problem 1: The “wrong” use of intonation by radio presenters and news readers
    • 3.1Intonation and Given and New
    • 3.2Lexicogrammar and Given and New
    • 3.3Propositional content and Given and New
  • 4.Problem 2: Missing first elements of clauses
  • 5.Problem 3: Ambiguous third person pronouns
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
References (21)
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