Abstract
We have attempted to show how various states of the speaker’s knowledge structure take linguistic shape, with especial reference to conceptually and relationally given and new information. In Sect. 6.1, we demonstrated that conceptually given information can be indicated by means of the definite article. The speaker uses it to signal to the hearer that an individual concept is represented in their mutually shared knowledge. In Sect. 6.2, we showed that relationally given information can be communicated with the aid of a relative clause in a cleft sentence. Since relationally and conceptually given information cannot vary independently of each other (Sect. 3.1), article use marking the conceptually given information is dependent on the relationally given information (Sect. 6.3). In the relationally given information, only definite articles should occur.
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© 1983 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Engelkamp, J., Zimmer, H.D. (1983). Causes and Consequences of Focusing. In: Dynamic Aspects of Language Processing. Springer Series in Language and Communication, vol 16. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-69116-4_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-69116-4_9
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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