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Article published In: Pragmatics
Vol. 31:4 (2021) ► pp.560–588

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Re-evaluating the importance of discourse-embedding for specificational and predicative clauses

ORCiD logo with link | UNamur | KU Leuven | F.R.S-FNRS
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 14 June 2021
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https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.20053.van
Abstract
This paper studies the discourse-embedding of specificational clauses, in contrast with predicative ones. Specificational clauses – which express a variable – value relation – are assumed to have a ‘fixed’ information structure. This follows from the widespread definition of information structure in terms of a presupposition – focus contrast, which is often conflated with the variable – value contrast, on the one hand, and with a given – new contrast, on the other. Against these conflations, this study demonstrates that the specification is a separate layer of meaning, which not only shows variation in terms of focus-marking (Van Praet, Wout, and Gerard O’Grady. 2018. “The Prosody of Specification: Discourse Intonational Cues to Setting up a Variable.” Journal of Pragmatics 1351: 87–100. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), but also in terms of its embedding in specific contexts of use. These findings urge us to revisit not only the basis for distinguishing specificational clauses from predicative ones, but also to separate out the different layers of coded and pragmatic meaning that have been conflated under the header of ‘information structure’.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.A taxonomy of discourse-familiarity
  • 3.Method
  • 4.Quantitative and qualitative analysis
    • 4.1The embedding of predicative and non-reversed specificational clauses
    • 4.2The embedding of indefinite vs definite variable subjects
    • 4.3The embedding of non-reversed vs reversed specificationals with indefinite variable NP
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (36)
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