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8. Amelia No. Baron. Baron Wildenhain Does not your face glow, when he
makes you a fine speech ? referring, perhaps, to love or marriage. Amelia
verb : makes
theme : a fine speech : inanimate
beneficiary : you : animate
2.2.4 Discourse Accessibility of Theme and Beneficiary
Discourse accessibility is reviewed as the feature which is proven to influence the choice of alternative constructions Halliday 1970, Thompson
1995. The role of the tonic is fully demonstrated, and the power of themerheme in relation to givennew is very powerful. The feature givenness of theme and or
beneficiary is strongly related to the focus placement. The focus of placement of given or non-given information is the main spotlight of the so called alternations.
Bresnan et al 2007 state that many of previous studies on dative alternations, the data were coded into seven levels of discourse accessibility
– „evoked‟, „situationally evoked‟, „frame inferrable‟, „generic‟, „containing
inferrable‟, „anchored‟, and „new‟ Prince 1981, Gundel et al. 1993, Michaelis Hartwell 2007. Prince 1981:1
hypothesizes a “conspiracy of syntactic construction” designed to prevent NPs that represent unfamiliar information from
occupying subject position. In this conspiracy of syntactic construction, given information, which the speaker assumes the addressee is aware of the knowledge
precede new information, which the speaker assumes he is introducing into the addressee‟s consciousness Chafe 1976.
To make a simple coding in modeling, this research takes the categorization made by Bresnan 2010. The seven categories of discourse
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givenness were simplified into two categories. The theme and beneficiary phrase was defined as „given‟ if first, its referent was mentioned in the previous ten lines
of discourse „evoked‟, or second, it was a first or second person pronoun denoting a „situationally evoked‟ referent. All others were „non-given‟. The
examples of given and non-given theme and beneficiary are given below. See also Appendices 1 and 2.
9. was rather the result of principle than of personal predilection. When Mr.
West had made a sketch for the Regulus, and submitted it to His Majesty, after some
verb : made
theme : a sketch
: non-given beneficiary : the Regulus : given
2.2.5 Pronominality of Theme and Beneficiary
