From Syntax to Text: The Janus Face of Functional Sentence Perspective [Paperback]

The volume deals with the interaction between syntax, informational structure (or functional sentence perspective), and text in present-day English and Czech. Libuše Dušková focuses on the two facets of functional sentence perspective: syntactic structures as carriers of informational structure functions and the connection of functional sentence perspective within the level of text. Functional sentence perspective is investigated as a potential factor of syntactic divergence between English and Czech, and the role of functional sentence perspective is examined with respect to theme development, text build-up, and style. Other topics include the hierarchical relationship between syntax and functional sentence perspective and general and specific questions of word order, with major attention paid to the role of semantics.

Libuše Duškováis professor emeritus and was a long-term head of the Department of English Language, Faculty of Arts, at Charles University, Prague.

Preface

1. Syntactic Constancy
1. Constancy of the syntactic and FSP function of the subject
2. Syntactic constancy of adverbials between English and Czech
3. A side view of syntactic constancy of adverbials between English and Czech
4. Syntactic constancy of the subject complement. Part 1: A comparison between Czech and English
5. Syntactic constancy of the subject complement. Part 2: A comparison between English and Czech
6. Syntactic constancy of clause elements between English and Czech
7. Syntactic constancy of the verb between English and Czech
8. Noun modification in English and Czech: a contrastive view

2. Syntax FSP Interface
9. From the heritage of Vilém Mathesius Jan Firbas: Syntax in the service of FSP
10. Basic distribution of communicative dynamism vs. nonlinear indication of functional sentence perspective
11. Synonymy vs