Arguments and information management in Inuktitut

• Main Author: Nowak, Elke
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: 2006
• Subjects: Inuktitut; ddc:400; inuktitut
• Online Access: http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/12438; https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30-1133438; http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/files/12438/Arguments.pdf

Research on a variety of structurally different languages suggests that information is assigned to grammatical form in way of preferred representations of arguments. These preferences can be captured by four interacting constraints which are based on the analysis of spoken and written discourse. These constraints represent measurable discourse preferences: pragmatically unmarked utterances seem to follow them blindly and widely. Consequently, the preferences motivating these constraints seem to represent the default structuring of discourse in immediate relation to elementary grammatical form. Discourse is no longer viewed as acting upon grammatical form, but as being ‘grammatical’ itself.