The Focus in Spanish Language: Definition Problems and Syntactic Manifestations
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4312/vh.26.1.165-192Keywords:
Focus, Pragmatic Functions, Information Structure, Syntactic Focalisation, PragmaticsAbstract
The field of information structure, a meeting point of pragmatics with the traditional linguistic disciplines, is nowadays facing many terminological inconsistencies which hinder its theoretical consolidation, and the resulting practical application of its analytical models to concrete linguistic manifestations. The present article aims to revise the different conceptions of one of the central terms of this linguistic discipline, the focus, to contribute to its terminological elucidation. After presenting the existing definitions of focus as a pragmatic function, the author proceeds to analyse the information structure of its syntactic manifestations in concrete communicative situations in an attempt to determine how the assignment of this pragmatic function is conditioned by the degree of newness of the information, and what its relationship with the notion of contrast is. The study thus concludes with an outline proposal of a possible redefinition of the term and its main distinctive features.
Downloads
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2019 Vita Veselko
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors are confirming that they are the authors of the submitting article, which will be published (print and online) in journal Verba Hispanica by Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani (University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Aškerčeva 2, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia). Author’s name will be evident in the article in journal. All decisions regarding layout and distribution of the work are in hands of the publisher.
- Authors guarantee that the work is their own original creation and does not infringe any statutory or common-law copyright or any proprietary right of any third party. In case of claims by third parties, authors commit their self to defend the interests of the publisher, and shall cover any potential costs.
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
