Intonational and pragmatic marking of prepositional-predicative combinations in English-language public speech
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22301981
Abstract
The article examines the intonational and pragmatic features of prepositional-predicative constructions in contemporary English public speech. The aim of the study is to identify the conditions under which these constructions become the communicative and intonational centre of the utterance. The material consists of fragments of English public speech selected from open TED and TEDx video transcripts. On the basis of contextual, structural-semantic and discourse analysis, it is shown that prepositional-predicative constructions receive intonational prominence in contexts of warning, evaluation, contrast and semantic completion. The main semantic load usually falls on the nominal component of the construction.
Keywords:
Intonation emphasis prepositional-predicative construction predicative public speech information focusReferences
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