Tasks based on Chapter 18    Theme, focus, and information processing

Read Chapter 18 from A Student’s Grammar of the English Language by Greenbaum and Quirk and answer
the following questions.

1. What is information processing (in your own words):





2. What do you know about communicative dynamism?






3. Describe the difference between theme and focus:






4. What is unmarked word order in English?






5. Choose either the principle of end-weight or that of end-focus, or perhaps both, and explain
them. Don’t forget some illustrations!






6. Illustrate unmarked and marked focus on your own examples:






7. What is divided focus?





8. What is fronting? Present at least two different fronted sentence elements:






9. Explain and illustrate the difference between a cleft sentence and a pseudo-cleft sentence:





10. How can you relate postponement and extraposition?





11. What is a discontinuous noun phrase. Exemplify it.





12. What do you understand under reinforcement? How can it be achieved?

Add one example!





13. When constructing a message, how is it natural to place given and new information, and why it
is so?





14. What is the difference between the ‘notional’ subject and the ‘grammatical’ subject in the
existential sentence? Supply your own example: