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M. A. K. Halliday

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The first tone group has a simple tonic segment (John) ... Closed system items that follow are the realization of grammatical features and ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: M. A. K. Halliday


1
M. A. K. Halliday
  • Notes on transivity and theme in English (4.2
    4.5)
  • Part 2

2
4.2 Information Unit
  • John saw a movie last night, and then he went
    home.
  • Discourse (verbal exchange of ideas) is
    distributed into information units.
  • One IU is one tone group.
  • Information structure is the result.
  • There is no text without IUs.

3
4.2 Information Unit
  • Where to put commas?
  • After 1827, the world had to live without
    Beethoven. phonological punctuation
  • After 1827 the world had to live without
    Beethoven. grammatical punctuation

4
4.2 Information Unit
  • 1. //John saw the play yesterday//
  • 2. //John//saw the play yesterday//
  • 3. //John//saw the play//yesterday//
  • 1. Unmarked. The clause is one IU.
  • 2. Marked, with the clause as two IUs.
  • 3. Marked, with the clause as three IUs.
  • ? The average number of IUs per clause lies
    between one and two.

5
4.2 Information Unit
  • //John sawlt//or said he was going to see//gtthe
    play yesterday//
  • One can enclose a tone group within another one.
  • This procedure is called interpolation.

6
4.2 Information Unit
  • 1. //Mary//always goes to town on Saturdays//
  • 2. //Mary//always goes to town on Saturdays//
  • Both have two IUs, but the information focus is
    accommodated at different spots.
  • What goes first unit or focus?
  • Unit always goes first!

7
4.3 Information Focus
  • //John//saw the play yesterday//
  • // two IUs two tone groups

8
4.3 Information Focus
  • //John//saw the play yesterday//
  • Information focus on John, play, and yesterday
  • The first tone group has a simple tonic segment
    (John).
  • The second tone group has a compound tonic
    segment, that is, it has two tonic segments
    (play, yesterday).

9
4.3 Information Focus
  • //John//saw the play yesterday//
  • Two tonic segments (play, yesterday) primary
    focus on play, secondary focus on yesterday
  • //John//saw the/play/yesterday//
  • / indicates the foot boundary. Each component
    within the tonic segment consists of at least one
    foot (foot the basic unit of verse metre).

10
4.3 Information Focus
  • //John//saw the/play/yesterday//
  • Bold type indicates the tonic syllable, which is
    the initial syllable in the tonic component.
  • The tonic syllable is phonologically prominent.
    This is a matter of pitch movement.

11
4.3 Information Focus
  • //John//saw the/play/yesterday//
  • What is saw the?
  • It precedes the tonic segment and is thus called
    pretonic segment.
  • It does not have information focus.

12
4.3 Information Focus
  • Focal information is important, stressed, and
    new.
  • What is not new (like saw the) is given.
  • //John//saw the/play/yesterday//
  • Rule In many English sentences, the stress
    falls on the last accented syllable. Thus, each
    tone group has a new element, realized as tonic,
    and a given element, realized as pretonic.

13
4.3 Information Focus
  • However, the new element can occur at the
    beginning of a sentence.
  • All the/GCE/papers have to be/marked out
    of/two/hundred.
  • All is new. It is non-derivable information.

14
4.4 Given and New
  • What items can carry information focus?
  • Reference (e.g., this) and other closed system
    items (e.g., verbal auxiliaries or prepositions)
    will not carry information focus even when final
    in the IU, unless they carry contrastive
    information.
  • //John saw the play yesterday// - not today
  • //It lies on the table// - not under

15
4.4 Given and New
  • Rule The tonic falls on the (accented syllable
    of the) final lexical item in the tone group.
    Closed system items occur as the realization of
    grammatical features.
  • This rule is still not complete. The tonic may
    fall anywhere within the tone group. What it
    specifies is unmarked information focus.

16
4.4 Given and New
  • 1. //John painted the shed yesterday// - Who
    painted the shed yesterday?
  • 2. //John painted the shed yesterday// - What did
    John do to the shed yesterday?
  • 3. //John painted the shed yesterday// - When did
    John paint the shed?
  • 4. //John painted the shed yesterday//
  • Examples 1, 2 and 3 are marked in information
    focus, whereas ex. 4 is unmarked in information
    focus. 4 does not trigger a specific question!

17
4.4 Given and New
  • Rule The tonic falls on the (accented syllable
    of the) final lexical item in the tone group as
    long as unmarked information focus occurs. Closed
    system items that follow are the realization of
    grammatical features and are thus automatically
    unstressed. If marked information focus occurs
    before the last lexical item, the latter is also
    post-tonic and behaves as if belonging to the
    closed system.

18
4.5 Some Particular Cases
  • Defining and non-defining relative clauses can be
    the result of a different distribution into
    information units.
  • 1. //his brother the heart surgeon//
  • The heart surgeon is defining.
  • 2. //his brother//the heart surgeon//
  • The two nominals are in apposition a
    non-defining example.
  • Here, information structure determines sentence
    structure.

19
4.5 Some Particular Cases
  • The IU frequently defines the domain of
    constituents whose status in sentence structure
    does not fully specify a domain for them.
  • ? Exaggerated Those words need the help of IUs
    to become strong.

20
4.5 Some Particular Cases
  • Clause-initial adjuncts
  • //For some reason hes//gone away and he hasnt
    left an address//
  • He hasnt left an address is part of what is
    unexplained It is within the domain of for some
    reason

21
4.5 Some Particular Cases
  • //For some reason hes//gone away and he hasnt
    left an address//
  • Only hes gone away is within the domain of for
    some reason.

22
4.5 Some Particular Cases
  • Non-initial items such as only, either or too are
    defined in the same way
  • //Yorkshire gained twelve points and won the
    championship//too//
  • The domain of too is the whole of the preceding
    IU There must have been an utterance before.
  • //Yorkshire gained twelve points//and won the
    championship//too//
  • Too relates won the championship to gained twelve
    points. There is no previous utterance.

23
4.5 Some Particular Cases
  • If one stresses the WH-element in a question
    (instead of the final lexical item), it means
    that one has forgotten the answer, even though
    the question has been asked before.
  • //What was the name of the speaker//
  • The question element is marked as contrastively
    new.

24
4.5 Some Particular Cases
  • Contrast in verbal groups
  • //He took it// - unmarked positive
  • //He did take it// - marked positive
  • //He did take it// - contrastive positive

25
Net Result
  • A piece of discourse consists of a linear
    succession of message blocks, the information
    units, realized by tonality. Each information
    unit is the point of origin for the choice of
    information focus, by which one element is
    selected as focal. In the unmarked case the new
    is, or includes, the final lexical item, but the
    focus can appear at any point in the information
    unit. New information is non-derivable, whereas
    given information is recoverable anaphorically or
    situationally. The information structure provides
    the framework within which all of these choices
    are exercised.
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