‘Actually given’ versus ‘presented as given’ and ‘actually new’ versus ‘presented as new’

Abstract

This paper considers the relevance of various approaches to the study of ‘Given’ and ‘New’ to a number of practical problems: complaints from listeners to UK radio programmes that presenters place emphasis on the wrong words; inaudibility of openings of utterances in radio news bulletins; and ambiguity of pronouns. Approaches to ‘Given’ and ‘New’ to be discussed include those whose concerns are with intonation (e.g., Halliday & Matthiessen 2014), those who pay attention to definiteness/indefiniteness in the nominal group (e.g., Martin 1992), and those who are more concerned with what is in the minds of hearers and readers (e.g., Prince 1981; Lambrecht 1994). The underlying questions that are being investigated are: How free are speakers and writers to assign ‘Given’ or ‘New’ status to entities? Are there constraints on what they can do intonationally, or with definiteness, or with pronouns?