Information Flow

Question 1

What acronym is used to remember these features?

Answer 1

• FEC

Question 2

What are the three features?

Answer 2

• Front focus
• End focus
• Clefting

Question 3

How can front focus be created?

Answer 3

• Fronting (placing something other than subject NP at the beginning of a sentence)
  
  • “Around the edges of the garden, she had planted geraniums”
• Inversion (subject and verb are inverted/swapped)
  
  • “Least inspiring of all the players was MacMillan”
• Passive voice (the object becomes the subject, and the object becomes an agent, which can be omitted, after the verb)
  
  • “Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror”

Question 4

How can end focus be created?

Answer 4

• Placing material with higher communicative value at the end of the sentence
  
  • Original: “She depended on her books for inspiration”
  • End focus: “She depended for inspiration on the presence of her books”

Question 5

How can clefting be created?

Answer 5

• It-clefts (dummy subject (it) + verb + subject + relative pronoun + clause)
  
  • “It was the winning goal that Ayo kicked”
• What-clefts (what + subject/noun clause + verb + noun phrase (complement))
  
  • “What I really want are answers”