Chapter 4 presents textual features, text types and genres in the detail necessary for elucidating translation practice. Starting with texture as the essential distinction between a sequence of sentences and a text, it examines textual features, that is, those elements that serve to distinguish between texts and non-texts and that give texts their identity. Among the textual features discussed are cohesion and coherence, markers of cohesion and coherence, information structure and information flow (from old to new), and topic and thematic development (along with topic maintenance and the tracing of participants in discourse). Textual functions (text types) and genres are also discussed. The implications for translation of textual features, textual functions and genres are presented throughout the chapter with numerous examples. Armed with these basic concepts, readers are offered tips on textual and parallel text analysis and on how assistive texts (background texts, parallel texts) and online corpus tools can be used for translation tasks.

This chapter provides an overview of the developments in syntax in the history of English. There is a long–term typological drift, with the language moving from synthetic to analytic, with functions that were earlier expressed in the morphology increasingly coming to be expressed by free morphemes. The main word order developments are the loss of Object–Verb orders in Early Middle English, and the loss of V2/V3 word order in the fifteenth century, leading to strict SVO order in which information–structural status was mapped onto syntactic function, with subjects as the only unmarked way to express ‘given’ information and objects as the only unmarked way for ‘new’ information. A number of ‘escape hatches’ develop to compensate for the loss of options for the flow of information in the clause: word order alternations such as the dative alternation or the particle alternation in phrasal verbs, cross-linguistically rare passives, ‘stretched verb’ constructions and clefts.

Old English differs from Present-Day English in two main respects. The first is that Old English has relatively rich inflectional morphology, most of which is no longer present in Present-Day English. The second is that Old English word order is relatively free compared to that of Present-Day English, particularly when it comes to the position of finite verbs. These differences are the result of a number of changes that can be observed in the recorded history of English and that are commonly understood as representing a typological shift towards a more analytic type. The key changes include the loss of inflection, the shift from OV to VO and the development towards a fixed position of the lexical verb, which have also resulted in a divergence from the continental West Germanic languages.

This chapter investigates the syntactic development of full-verb inversion in the history of English. It aims to connect so-called late subjects in Old English (OE) and Middle English (ME) to full-verb inversion in Present-Day English (PDE), also known as locative inversion. They share crucial characteristics – occurrence with unaccusative verbs and passivised transitive verbs and an information-structural function – but have so far been studied as distinct phenomena. Crucially, PDE inversion is non-canonical, but late subjects are only one of the many inversion orders in earlier English, raising questions regarding the status of late subjects in OE and ME and full-verb inversion throughout the history of English. Using data from four syntactically parsed corpora of historical English, the study shows that (i) late subjects are already a somewhat non-canonical pattern in OE/ME, infrequent and not part of the dominant verb-second system; (ii) full-verb inversion becomes more non-canonical, limited to certain initial elements and verbs, while other inversion patterns are lost. Full-verb inversion is thus a continuation of existing patterns and it also emerges as a more non-canonical word order option over time. Further research needs to establish whether the information-structural function can explain the continued presence of this inversion pattern throughout the history of English.

The existential there-construction typically features prominently in studies of non-canonical syntax (e.g., Birner & Ward 1998), both from a synchronic and from a diachronic perspective. Current approaches within the World Englishes paradigm are mostly concerned with (non‑)concord or default singulars in the existential clause, as in there’s bears back there (Walker 2007; Collins 2012), a phenomenon that is by no means absent from earlier stages of English. This chapter makes use of the rich data represented by the Old Bailey Corpus 2.0 (1720 to 1913) to zoom in on developments within the existential construction in Late Modern English, a period which combines relatively little syntactic change in comparison to earlier periods of English with extensive activities in the realm of codification (cf. Leonard 1962; Sundby et al. 1991; Tieken-Boon van Ostade 2008). Two case studies probe into the tension between language change from above and below with respect to the occurrence of default singulars in existential constructions, highlighting some of the many aspects of non-canonicity that intersect in the variable realisation of this particular construction.

Cleft constructions are non-canonical in several regards: they deviate from a minimally complete grammatical structure since they involve lexical material absent from the corresponding non-cleft; they are information packaging devices and are rare across registers. Previous work on clefts has identified various factors influencing the use of clefts, such as formality, topicality, weight, and informativity. Building on these findings, this chapter examines the communicative purpose of evaluating as a further factor by comparing a large corpus of primarily evaluative texts with a control corpus of primarily non-evaluative texts. This investigation reveals that in both corpora most clefts are evaluative. They are thus very closely associated with the situational communicative intention to evaluate (rather than with the primary textual communicative purpose). Consequently, clefts are a (more) canonical syntactic choice when speakers/writers intend to express evaluations and may even be regarded as part of an extended set of overtly evaluative lexico-grammatical stance constructions. The study further shows that the formal and semantic characteristics of clefts, including the presupposition, the ‘known fact’ effect, and the exclusiveness implicature, permit the flexible foregrounding and backgrounding of evaluations, which, in turn, may account for the frequent evaluative use of these constructions.

It is shown how the highest levels of prosodic phrasing, φ-phrase and ι-phrase, are mapped to syntactic structure. The interface between the two is driven by the Match model, which requires an isomorphic correspondence between syntactic and prosodic constituents and assigns prosodic boundaries at both edges of syntactic constituents at once. When the syntactic structure is recursive, the prosodic structure is recursive as well. This perfect mapping can be disturbed by well-formedness conditions, a special kind of markedness constraint that bears on the prosodic constituents themselves. Constituents must have a head, be non-recursive, have a minimal weight, etc. In some cases (e.g., when syntactic constituents are too light to be matched by a φ-phrase), they even restructure the matching between syntax and prosody. Information structure is a further factor that influences prosody: Focus may require a different location for the nuclear accent, and givenness may have a deaccenting effect in the postnuclear region of the sentence. As a result, the phonological correlates of φ-phrase and ι-phrase include relative prominence of the prosodic constituents represented on metrical grids.

Dictionaries, both print and digital, rely on type fonts, styles, and sizes to make hierarchies of information within entries clear to dictionary readers. This chapter introduces a doctrine of dictionary typology: The more information of different kinds that a dictionary entry attempts to convey or the more information that readers of a dictionary entry try to manage and absorb – including relations among types of information – the more typography assists in the organization and reception of that information. A corollary principle suggests that the relative value of information should be emphasized typographically, as well. Besides its role in conveying information structure, dictionary typography also contributes to the aesthetics of the dictionary page, along with space, lines, boxes, and pictures of various kinds. Finally, while sighted persons understand typography through the eyes, blind persons know it through their fingers and construe information hierarchies differently, as a result.

The author first defines the following notions of information structure: focus (vs. background), given (vs. new), and topic (vs. comment). He then goes on to show how these notions are reflected in the prosodic systems of Slavic languages. Focus in all Slavic languages is reflected in prosodic prominence governed by a stress-focus correspondence defined by the author. In general, ‘given’ is realized outside the sentence stress. Focus does not have an obligatory prosodic reflex in Slavic languages.

Slavic languages are notorious for rich inflectional systems, allowing substantial freedom in word order. Aside from SVO word order, canonical for the great majority of Slavic languages, orders with arguments surfacing in non-canonical positions are also allowed. We consider two such orders – OVS and OSV. The two orders stem from two different types of argument reordering with distinct syntactic, interpretive and prosodic properties. The first is linked to neutral prosody and is licenced by the object being construed as interpretively prominent compared to the subject. The object undergoing this type of reordering binds into the subject and takes scope over it. This reordering is possible only if the thematic prominence relations of arguments are identified by means other than their relative structural position. The second type is linked to marked prosody and is licenced by the displaced object being disambiguated as contrastive. In this type of reordering the object cannot bind into the subject or take scope over it. This type of reordering is possible only if the object carries a strong prosodic marker.

The theory of the nonprofit institutional form introduced by Henry Hansmann more than 40 years ago proposed that informational problems, specifically information asymmetry, explains the essential defining feature of the nonprofit organization – the so-called nondistribution constraint. While the conventional argument holds that an asymmetry of information arises due to intrinsic, hard-to-measure attributes of nonprofit outputs, this chapter argues instead that informational problems arise because private purchasers fail to sufficiently value the positive externalities of information. In short, information is a social good, rather than a private good, and neither purchasers (donors) nor producers (nonprofits) have sufficiently strong incentives to systematically incur the costs and risks associated with generating information. The undervaluing of information by private parties results in a symmetry of ignorance that may lead to “benefit failure” in the form of foregone social impact. This type of failure is induced by transaction, allocative, and production inefficiencies resulting from the symmetry of ignorance.

Chapter 11 opens by asking readers to imagine what different kinds of people likely know and don’t know. For example, everyone knows that things fall when you drop them. But details of social etiquette and childhood memories will vary across people. This exercise relates to the Maxim of Manner, which focuses on brevity, clarity, and orderliness for contributions to successful conversations. Information structure is central here: Learning is enhanced when learners meet given or familiar information before new or unfamiliar information. In other words, we build on what we already know. One reason that this point is critical to public engagement is that we compute meaning for words and sentences as we hear/read them. The Worked Example uses a demonstration in which we write people’s names in the International Phonetic Alphabet to compare two orders for presenting critical information. This chapter’s Closing Worksheet asks readers to write down an ideal interaction they want with the demonstrations they are developing and then to change the order of the elements around.

Chapter 15 opens by asking readers to work through a complex language analysis problem, where the solution requires figuring out what the component parts mean and then making new sentences with those parts. This exercise introduces the notion of scaffolding, which goes beyond the advice that given information should precede new information. The progression from one type of information to the other will likely involve multiple steps, and attention to the order of each step should ideally be audience specific. The chapter encourages readers to describe their topics with as much technical apparatus as they want and then to break their descriptions down as much as possible. An example with vowel formants is introduced, emphasizing links back to problems with jargon and to the idea that incomplete is not incorrect. The Worked Example describes scaffolding in the formant example for the levels of explanation one might use for a young child, an older child, a teenager, a college student, and someone with expertise in a language-related field. Technical terms, materials (such as videos, spectrogram-making programs, or diagrams), and take-home messages are modified accordingly.