expression: the discourse space is being demarcated and indicated as the scope of the expression in question. The particle wa in Japanese seems to serve this demarcation function §3.5.1.
Orientation information, once presented, appears to remain active throughout the discourse unit. As with ground on lower linguistic levels, orientation “remains implicit and non-salient, serving only as an
‘off-stage’ reference point” Langacker 2002. Its active status is shown, for example, in the fact that it is possible to refer to the value of a discourse unit’s temporal orientation by means of deictic expressions
such as then or at that time and to its locational value by means of there or at that place which are parallel with personal pronouns, whose referents are also active §2.4.2. Below the paragraph level, micro-level
spaces do not have independent orientation, but use the orientation grounding of the macro-level unit in which they occur §§2.2.1, 2.2.4, and 2.6.1. Other values in the orientation dimensions, such as two days
later and ten meters overhead, are identifiable because they are grounded on the current orientation dimensions, much as his mother is also identifiable in reference.
There do exist discourse spaces with incomplete relatively nonspecific grounding, such as those which relate only descriptive or habitual information Emmott 1997, ch. 8; see also Sweetser and
Fauconnier 1996. An initial orientation section in narrative, for example, can be primarily descriptive or habitual and will therefore lack specific temporal grounding. This is true of much non-narrative material
as well, such as a text which gives a procedure in the abstract or argues for a general point of view. In the Greek account of Anna the prophetess, for example, we see both an incompletely grounded description
and a grounded action Levinsohn 2000:12f., 174f.:
Example text 11: Luke 2:36–38 literal translation
36a ԦAnd there was a prophetess, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher.
36b– 37a
This [woman] was advanced in years, having lived with a husband seven years after her marriage, and as a widow to the age of eighty-four,
37b who never leaving the temple, was serving night and day with fastings and prayers. 38a ¶And
at that very moment she standing there wasbegan giving thanks to God,
38b and wascontinued speaking about Him to all those who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.’
Verses 36–37 constitute a descriptive paragraph about Anna with nonspecific temporal or locational grounding although highly specific referential grounding, whereas the brief action paragraph of verse
38, especially 38a, has specific grounding orientation along both dimensions.
2.3.2 Development
Although, logically speaking, orientation dimensions such as time and place could not only initialize a discourse unit but could also serve as “tracks” on which it runs during its internal development phase,
DEVELOPMENT
has more specific “tracks”: in
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
, it has the unit’s schema; in
ATTENTION MANAGEMENT
, it has thematic organization. The fact that themes integrate the schema means that these two tracks are really one; they cannot take off in different directions, or else the text
would run into serious comprehension difficulties. We can say that what is principally developed in text is the schema in high-level knowledge management, if we remember that high-level attention
management—thematic organization—lies behind fundamental choices in knowledge management, such as the selection and sequencing of material. As Tomlin 1987:458, 460 states, “Episodes are defined
ultimately by the sustaining of attention on a particular paragraph level theme…. Episode boundaries represent major breaks, or attention shifts, in the flow of information.”
In developing a schema, the speaker may mark particular steps as highly significant. This is the function of
DEVELOPMENT MARKERS
, which many and perhaps all languages have. These are often connectives or clitics see examples in Dooley and Levinsohn 2001:93f., but can include nominal
overcoding of participants as well, as in Biblical Hebrew and certain African languages Levinsohn 2006. In narratives in Mbyá Guarani, a high index of prenuclear adverbial clauses functions as a
development marker. Development markers appear to relate to unit-based aspects of discourse organization rather than to sequential aspects, in the sense of highlighting something that is important
with respect to a schema, on that or a higher level, including external conceptualization. This is perhaps
the main way in which development markers differ from markers of relations between propositions, which are primarily sequential. Development marking is a kind of evaluative expression, in which the
speaker indicates something in which he is particularly interested §2.1.3. Development has conceptual as well as linguistic signals—the ancient art of rhetoric dealt with them—but I am not aware of any
studies of conceptual signals of development marking, nor of any typology of conceptual reasons for development marking.
Since this is a treatment of thematicity, it naturally focuses on the high-level operations of knowledge management and especially of attention management. A few words can be said here about the sequential
local aspects of attention management, in which the speaker assists addressees by giving them step-by- step “instructions” for their construction of a mental representation Langacker 2001a:151. On can draw
a parallel with the assembly instructions that come with an unassembled piece of furniture, which are discardable once the piece is fully assembled Dooley 2005. Specifically, for each concept, the speaker
indicates whether he expects the addressee to be currently consciousness of it or not §2.4.1, what its information structure role is, and where in the addressee’s current mental representation it is intended to
connect. Attention management relates primarily to paragraph-internal micro-levels §2.6.2.
The linguistic expression of this kind of instruction is called
INFORMATION STRUCTURE
Lambrecht 1994. Its formal signals are conditioned by cognitive statuses for individual concepts, such as activation
and identification §2.4.1. This can be seen in line 06 of Churchill’s speech: Other key positions were filled yesterday. The sentence topic other key positions is in partitive contrast with its conceptual “sister”
a war cabinet of line 04, and the comment were filled yesterday contrasts with in one single day of line 05, the day before ‘yesterday’.
40
Line 06, then, is a double-contrast sentence Dooley and Levinsohn 2001:72, in which both topic and comment contrast with corresponding elements that are active.
Languages differ greatly in the frequency with which a particular marked information structure is used— that is, in the discourse conditions of its use. Koiné Greek, for example, typically has a high index for
argument focus. When Greek is translated into a language such as English with a very low index for this kind of markedness, and if the translation comes out sounding like natural English, there will be many
places where the English will leave implicit certain discourse functions that are signalled explicitly in the Greek Dooley 2005. A similar situation holds between marked topics and points of departure in German
as compared with English: the index for German is significantly higher Doherty 2005. We look at this situation again in §4.1.
2.3.3 Closure
