Presentation sentences in fiction and academic prose: a syntactico-semantic, FSP and textual view

The aim of the present thesis is to analyze syntactic realisations of the Presentation Scale (presentation sentences) as they are defined in the framework of Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP). Several aspects are examined: the semantic aspect is reflected in the observation of the semantic character of the presentation verb and in the semantic affinity it displays with its subject. From the syntactic viewpoint, the sentential architecture of presentation sentences is examined as well as the distribution of the syntactic realisations in text. The study also offers results as regards sentences implementing the Extended Presentation Scale, namely the syntactic realisation of the dynamic semantic function of Specification. The textual aspects concern the correlation between the type of presentation sentence, its location within a paragraph and its textual function. All the above-mentioned aspects are examined in sentences excerpted from texts of two different functional styles, viz. academic prose and fiction. The corpus on which the analysis is based comprises 1731 presentation sentences, 826 from texts of academic prose and 905 from texts of fiction. The theoretical part of the thesis aims both at presenting the FSP theory as it was developed by Jan Firbas and his followers and at a comprehensive..