Exploring English Information Packaging Constructions in Written and Spoken Language

Abstract

Information structure refers to the relationship between sentence properties and the surrounding discourse: the legitimacy of the sentences may depend on what has been established by the immediately preceding sentences or phrases in the written and spoken language. Passive clauses, extraposition, the existential construction, the 'it'-cleft construction, pseudo-clefts, dislocation, and pre- and post-posing are described as non-canonical constructions. The paper is to characterize the syntactic differences between these constructions and their basic counterparts and to investigate the factors that encourage or discourage the use of one of these constructions as opposed to the more basic counterpart