Preferred Argument Structure In English Broadcast News Discourse

According to Du Bois's Preferred Argument Structure hypothesis, certain configurations of arguments are systematically preferred over other grammatically possible alternatives in spontaneous discourse. This hypothesis concerns the relation between argument structures and certain patterns of grammar and pragmatics in discourse. Preferred Argument Structure is a set of principles which describe empirical constraints on the information status and coding of core arguments in the clause. These principles comprise a grammatical dimension and a pragmatic dimension. In the grammatical dimension, One Lexical Argument Constraint to avoid more than one lexical argument per clause, and Non-Lexical A Constraint to avoid the single lexical referent appearing in the A role (subject of a transitive clause). In the pragmatic dimension, One New Argument Constraint to avoid more than one new argument per clause, and Given A Constraint to avoid the single new referent appearing in the A position. This thesis extends the applied study of Preferred Argument Structure to English broadcast news discourse, which is one of the important public discourses and imposes great influences on our lives and society. The author has collected 40 pieces of BBC hard news in standard English from Internet. Based on Du Bois's PAS hypothesis, this thesis attempts to illustrate the preferred...