Publication details
Quality or Presentation? The role of the verb in the functional sentence perspective
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
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| Description | The author was invited to this prestigious event as a pupil of Jan Firbas and a follower of Firbasian theory of functional sentence perspective (FSP). He presented a paper on the distinction between presentation and quality scale sentences, which play a vital role in FSP. The main argument is that the English verb either ascribes a quality to the subject, providing its specification (Quality Scale), or introduces something new into the discourse, expressing the existence or appearance of a phenomenon with "explicitness or sufficient implicitness" (Presentation Scale) (Firbas 1995: 65). Therefore, the verb serves as a factor capable of structuring the information flow within a sentence, reflecting the distribution of communicative dynamism across individual units. This distinction becomes even more significant when comparing information structure principles across languages, especially in contexts of translation and foreign language teaching and learning. The paper examined various types of verbs and their role in sentence perspective, particularly in sentences that show differing syntactic configurations in English and Czech—specifically, English sentences with a rhematic subject in preverbal position (e.g., Panic |Rh| seized her vs. its Czech functional equivalent *Zachvátila ji panika* |Rh|). Special attention was given to the potential role of semantic affinity between the subject and predicate. |