Darija Skubic

Primerjava razprave A. Breznika Besedni red v govoru (1908) s poglavjem Coherence v delu T. A. van Dijka Text and Context (1976)
A Comparison of Breznik's Dissertation Word Order in Speech (1908) and the Chapter on Coherence in Van Dijk's Text and Context (1976)


Slovenski sinopsis
English synopsis
English summary

Pri besednem redu je ločil neprosto (danes stalno) in prosto stavo). V razpravi govorimo o drugi, torej prosti stavi, v okviru katere je stavek tisti, ki določa besedam obliko in je hkrati temeljna prvina višje besedilne enote --- govornega odstavka. Prosta stava besed se po Brezniku veže na vsakokratni pomen stavka, ki je člen govornega odstavka. Breznikov pojem govornega odstavka kot (višje) besedilne enote z referenčnim pomenom je primerljiv s stavčnopovedno sekvenco pri van Dijku. Referenčna vloga jezika je torej tista, ki pre, ki prek pomenske podstave (propozicije) --- povezuje jezikovni izraz z vsakokratnim svetom, ki je predmet ubesedovanja. V članku želimo poudariti, da se je Breznik s tem približal sodobni besediloslovni teoriji van Dijka, ki določa referenčni pomen kot posledico razmerja (reference) med jezikovnim izrazom (prek propozicije) in predmetnostjo (dejanskostjo).

In discussing word order, Breznik distinguishes between non-free (today called fixed) and free word order. In free word order, it is the sequence that determines the form of words and functions as the basic unit of the next higher text unit --- of the speech paragraph. According to Breznik, free word order is determined by the meaning of a sequence as part of a speech paragraph in each individual occurence. Breznik's concept of speech paragraph as a (higher) text unit with referential meaning can be compared to Dijk's »sentence of sentences«. It is the referential function of language that connects a surface language unit --- through its proposition --- with the extralinguistic world it refers to. Breznik's 1908 dissertation already anticipates van Dijk's theory of the text with its postulation of referential meaning as a result of the (referential) relationship between a language unit --- through its proposition --- and exralinguistic reality.

In determining sentence stress, Breznik takes into account also omitted sentences and nonverbalized propositions indispensable for textual coherence. These implicit propositions feature in van Dijk's theory as »missing links«.

Breznik claims that the first sentence determines the word order of the second one, the word order of the second sentence determines the word order of the third one, and so on as long as the direction of the first sentence holds. This principle could be roughly compared to van Dijk's discussion of the change of discourse topic: discourse topic changes when one of the sentences no longer »belongs« to the current topic and functions as the first element in a sequence with a different topic.

Referential coherence among sentences leads Breznik to distinguish between expected and unexpected stress. Expected stress is associated with sentence-initial position, unexpected stress with sentence-final position. Sentence stress falls only on the word that represents the nucleus of the sentence structure. In Breznik's model, the nucleus is the word carrying the main sentence stress, in Chech structural linguistics it is the Rheme, while van Dijk discusses the binary Topic-Focus pattern, which may --- but need not --- coincide with the subject-predicate structure. Topic is related to known (given) information, Focus to unknown (new) information. Breznik's concept of Nucleus is comparable to van Dijk's concept of Focus.