Communicative dynamism

Jan Firbas
Table of contents

Communicative dynamism (CD) is a phenomenon that has played a central role in the theory of functional sentence perspective (FSP) since the late fifties. The methods of investigation into FSP were developed by Czech scholars such as František Daneš (e.g. 1974a), Eva Hajičová, Petr Sgall (e.g. Hajičová, Partee & Sgall 1998), Aleš Svoboda (e.g. 1981), Ludmila Uhlířová (e.g. 1987) and the present author (e.g. Firbas 1992) who have drawn their inspiration from the ideas of the pre-war Prague School, especially from those offered by Vilém Mathesius (e.g. 1975) and Vachek (e.g. 1966). In order to demonstrate the central role played by CD in FSP, the present article presents a comprehensive outline of the operation of CD in the system of language. (For a detailed discussion, see Firbas 1992).

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