Discourse Functions of Certain Fronting Constructions in English

Following the assumption that similarities in syntactic form may correspond to discourse-functional similarities in the use of those forms, the paper examines English declarative sentences with initial non-subject nominals and initial adverbials. The identified discourse functions (additional elements of meaning introduced in the propositional content of sentences with canonical word order and the contribution of frontings to the context) were divided into prominence-giving pragmatic ones and text-development ones. The parameters influencing these discourse functions include: a/syntactic ones (form, definiteness, functional category), b/semantic and pragmatic ones (referring to information status), and c/ semantic and textual ones (dealing with formal, functional and semantic similarities between the initial element and other elements and structures in the relevant language segment)