Discourse prominence: Definition and application

• Published in: Journal of pragmatics Vol. 154; pp. 117 - 127
• Main Authors: von Heusinger, Klaus, Schumacher, Petra B.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.12.2019; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Accessibility; Discourse; Discourse analysis; Linguistics; Prominence; Referential choice; Referential expression; Salience; Prominence; Discourse; Referential choice; Accessibility; Reference; Referential expression
• ISSN: 0378-2166; 1879-1387
• DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2019.07.025

We argue that prominence is a structure-building principle throughout the grammar of languages, and in particular for building discourse representations. We provide an explicit characterization of prominence as a) relational, b) dynamic, and c) as an attractor of operations. This characterization allows us to better account for other key notions of discourse representation and discourse models on prominence, such as referential activation, attention, accessibility, and salience. We show that these notions can either be derived from or are closely related to prominence. Finally, we illustrate the structure-building force of such a clearly defined notion of prominence by two recent studies on referential choice and structural attraction. •Prominence is an organizational principle centered in discourse representation.•Prominence is essentially relational.•Prominence is dynamic and an element's prominence status shifts in time.•Prominent entities are structural attractors.