Grammatical choice and discourse construction: the formal and functional evolution of textual referents

Abstract

This paper proposes a theoretical and analytical approach to the textual encoding of thirdperson referents in Spanish, understood as the simultaneous choice of grammatical forms and meanings within a discursive context. Three different variable phenomena are considered: the way referents are formulated or indexed, their preverbal vs. postverbal placement within the clause, as well as the syntactic function they are accorded. These phe-nomena are all interpreted as being motivated by two complementary discursive-cognitive factors: the salience and informativeness of referents in context. After outlining a model of the prototypical tendencies of referent encoding based on such factors, a narrative text is quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed in order to observe the evolution of grammatical choice patterns as salience is gained along the context. It is concluded that manner of for-mulation and placement react in a more systematic way to discursive-cognitive factors than syntactic function does, the latter variable being partly dependent on the eventive features of the specific clause.