Initial syntatic elements in Old English and Modern English sentences
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2009 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Early European Languages in the Eyes of Modern Linguistics. Loudová, K. Žáková M. (eds.) |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| web | http://www.muni.cz/research/publications/849782/ |
| Field | Linguistics |
| Keywords | syntax; history of the English language; initial sentence position; factors of word-order; synthetic and analaytical languages |
| Description | The paper examines the semantic, the syntactic, and the information structure of an Old English sentence, focusing on initial syntactic elements. In languages with flexible word order, syntactic elements occurring at the beginning of an unmarked sentence tend to provide a foundation for the message to be conveyed. The paper presents an analysis from the viewpoint of the Brno theory of functional sentence perspective. It provides a survey of the syntactic, semantic, and communicative functions that initial syntactic elements perform in Old English texts and compares this survey with the results of an analysis of Modern English texts. |
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