2.2.

The Referential Function of the Language This function refers to the informational content of the message, the ideas conv eyed by the locutor about the state of affairs that constitute the subject matte r of his linguistic discourse. These ideas have referents in the external object ive world or they may be created by the locutor s imagination. Every utterance or written sentence has a topic . Usually this has a con crete or an abstract referent and, functionally, it overlaps with the grammatica l subject: 1). 2). 3). 4). 5). conspicuous. 6). ld stand. 7). ealing this 8). The old gentleman went on as follows. They drank their tea in the bedroom sometimes. Charlie burst through the front door, shouting. The whole episode was clearly a great embarrassment to my father. The promise seemed, somehow, to make the recipient unfortunately The surface of their collective glory ondulated as one or another wou Nothing but an extreme love of truth could have hindered me from conc part of my story. Time ran on.

Even in these few examples it is clear that the topic, i.e. generally th e noun phrase functioning as the grammatical subject, concentrates only a part o f the informational content of the sentence, also known as old information in fu nctional grammar. It is its main part but not the whole of it. It is only the po int of departure in the development of the sentence. The verb itself bears a gre at amount of meaning, and the remainder of the sentence adds to its informationa l content as well. The new information conveyed by the sentence is provided by t hese last two parts. Given the fact that almost all utterances in English have an informational conte nt made up of one or more parts, what is important from a psychological point o f view is how the locutor organises syntagmatically this content. He may speak a bout various states of affairs following the classic structure of a kernel claus e : SUBJECT + VERB + OBJECT + COMPLEMENT(s) + ADJUNCT(s) , as in the examples fr om (1) to (8). In this case, the recipient of the message usually has no difficu lty in following the locutor s train of thought: this structure is deeply rooted i n his linguistic competence, therefore, it is the most expected and the easiest to recognise in the others performance. But the locutor may organise his utteranc es in various other ways. When one of the elements in the classic structure of a sentence is displaced, it becomes marked in that it is emphasised or given more weight in terms of informational content but not only; most of the times, empha sised elements bear the marks of the locutor s emotions, intentions or attitudes t owards the referent of these elements: 9). 10). 11). 12). ow. Sentences (9), (10), and (12) are semantically similar in that the under lying meaning conveyed by the locutor is X, not Y, i.e.: 9 ). To this gentleman, not to another one. 10 ). Such was the complexity of things, no other way. 12 ). It was then, not another time. Although they contain displaced / extraposed elements, as long as they c an be grouped as realising a certain semantic pattern, these sentences fall with To this Gentleman came Bellarmine on the Errand I have mentioned. Such was the complexity of things. Drunk am I? Mad am I? It was around this point [ ] that I happened to glance out of the wind

in the interlocutor s realm of possible expectations. He grasps relatively easily their meaning, which is not the case of a sentence like (13) below, for instance . Here the difficulty in processing the information conveyed by the locutor resi des in the displacement of only one part of an element in the structure of the s entence, not of a whole element as such: 13). At all which Places nothing happened worth remark. The classic word order of this sentence, if nothing were emphasised, wou ld be: 13`). The places in which nothing happened worth no remark at all. At all is an adverbial intensifier whose place in the sentence is closes t to the negative element it emphasises; in this case this element should be the noun phrase no remark; its meaning in such a context is equivalent to whatsoeve r. By placing it first in the sentence, the locutor creates in the interlocutor a certain expectancy of a following nominal element together with which this neg ative intensifier can occur. The difficulty in processing (13) resides in this l ast aspect: the noun phrase it makes up a semantic unit with is not in the negat ive and neither is worth, the transitive verb dominating it. It is not until the story unfolds a little more that the meaning (13`) becomes clear: the places wh ere nothing happened are not mentioned because they worth no remark at all. However, such examples of sentences that contain partially extraposed co nstituents difficult to process are rare in writing. It is not the aim of the pr esent section to get into more structural details. What is relevant here as far as the referential function of the language is concerned is that the locutor can express his own attitude towards the informational content of his utterances by simply changing the place of the structural elements, thus giving them the stat us of marked elements. This status of privileged element requires different degr ees of concentration and specific types of mental information processing from th e interlocutor.