“A bee buzzed across their path.” Semantic Affinity as a Formative Force in Presentation Scale Sentences
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2011 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Ostrava Journal of English Philology |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Linguistics |
| Keywords | Presentation; Scale; Affinity; FSP; Firbas; Existence; Appearance; |
| Description | In the context of the theory of functional sentence perspective (FSP), the English verb either ascribes a quality to the subject, bridging its specification, or presents something new on the scene, expressing the existence or appearance of the phenomenon on the scene with “explicitness or sufficient implicitness” (Firbas 1995: 65). The article discusses the prototypical type of sentences implementing the so-called Presentation Scale (i.e. that containing a rhematic subject in preverbal position) within fiction narrative discourse with special regard to the semantic affinity operating between the subject and the predicate. In such distributional fields (cf. The sun shone. or A bee buzzed across their path.), the Pr-verbs seem to semantically support the character of their subjects, preparing “the way for the phenomenon to be presented” (Firbas 1992, 61). |