Revisiting the Information Structure of English Prepositional Phrases in Predication
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Linguistica Pragensia |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| web | https://linguisticapragensia.ff.cuni.cz/en/magazin/2025-35-2-2/ |
| Doi | https://doi.org/10.14712/18059635.2025.2.3 |
| Keywords | FSP; lexical semantics; prepositional; presentation; quality; scale; verbo-nominal |
| Description | The theory of functional sentence perspective (FSP) is centred on communicative dynamism and its distribution among communicative units, i.e. individual sentence elements. When a context-dependent subject is further speci(ed by more dynamic elements, the sentence implements the Quality Scale. Conversely, if a context-independent subject is the most dynamic element, it follows the Presentation Scale. This corpus-based study examines English sentences with prepositional predications of the pattern BE + PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE (speci(cally, be at fault, be at large, be in full swing, be in place, be on guard, be on display). The aim is to determine whether and under what circumstances these predicates express existence or appearance on the scene. |