Prédication seconde et structure informationnelle : la relative de perception comme construction présentative

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Knud Lambrecht, Prédication seconde et structure informationnelle : la relative de perception comme construction présentative This paper proposes an analysis of the sentence type « Je vois le facteur qui arrive » ("I see the mailman coming") and « Voilà le facteur qui arrive » ("There's the mailman coming") within the information-structure framework of Lambrecht 1994. It is argued that this sentence type belongs to a general presentational construction which is also instantiated by sentences like « J'ai mon beau-frère qui fume » ("My brother-in-law smokes") or « Y a le téléphone qui sonne » ("The phone is ringing"). In this construction, the main clause introduces a new discourse entity (semantic role "theme", pragmatic role "focus") by situating it in relation to an explicit or implicit reference point (semantic role "locative", pragmatic role "topic"), while the relative clause expresses some hitherto unknown property of this new entity via secondary predication. The possible coding of the theme argument in pronominal form, as in « Je le vois qui arrive » ("I see him coming") or « Le voilà qui arrive » ("There he is coming") is explained in terms of the possible passage of a given discourse entity from an internal to an external discourse world. clause expresses some hitherto unknown property of this new entity via secondary predication. The possible coding of the theme argument in pronominal form, as in « Je le vois qui arrive » ("I see him coming") or « Le voilà qui arrive » ("There he is coming") is explained in terms of the possible passage of a given discourse entity from an internal to an external discourse world.