BibTeX
@MISC{Eriksen_thepragmatic,
author = {Pål Kristian Eriksen},
title = {THE PRAGMATIC NATURE OF GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES},
year = {}
}
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Abstract
This paper promotes the hypothesis that central grammatical categories must be analysed as pragmatic rather than semantic entities, in order to explain their seemingly redundant typological distribution. A case is made of the relatively complex English past tense system versus the single Russian past tense, and it is shown how the distinctions within the former system can be analysed in terms of pragmatic features like topic and focus, and how it thus can be explained how Russian may do with just a single past tense, without this leading to a communicative asymmetry between Russian and English. 1 The pragmatic nature of grammatical categories The topic of this paper is a seemingly trivial linguistic fact, but it has strong
Keyphrases
pragmatic nature grammatical category complex english past tense system grammatical category pragmatic nature seemingly redundant typological distribution communicative asymmetry semantic entity former system central grammatical category single past tense single russian past tense trivial linguistic fact pragmatic feature
