On pragmatic functions and their correlation with syntactic functions: A functionalist perspective

• Autores: Arsenio Jesús Moya Guijarro
• Localización: Atlantis: Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos, ISSN 0210-6124, Vol. 28, Nº 1, 2006, págs. 9-28
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The aim of this paper is to analyse two different text types within a discourse functional framework, in order to determine whether there is a difference in their formal realizations of new and known topics. This will be done by investigating how introductory and given topics are realized in clause structure in a sample of sixty news items and tourist brochures. In line with Biber, I have assumed that linguistic features vary with communicative purpose and topic. The results of the analysis carried out seem to conflict with Dik¿s claim that the new topics tend to be located towards the final slot of the clause. The study also shows that these two text types differ in terms of how the known topics are realized syntactically.