The Appendix of Comment according to Language into Act Theory

Abstract

The article deals with the détachement instances, an aspect of spoken language differing from the binary structure (Topic-Comment) considered to both semantically and informationally form the basic unit of spoken language. According to Language into Act Theory, détachment instances are considered specific information units called Appendix of Comment (APC), with a clear distinction from the Topic unit. The APC may be formally identified in the corpus through its distribution after the Comment and its prosodic performance via a suffix unit. The APC records a frequency value of 4.28% of reference units, which is significantly lower than that of the Topic (close to 20%). The morpho-syntactic fillings of the APC show a kind of “randomness”, that cannot truly be generalized, unlike Topic, since they are employed “in the moment”, as late adjunctions, echoes, repetitions, deictics, and formulas. APC doesn’t constitute a syntactic/semantic island, as Topic does, and its content is ultimately irrelevant, lacks an independent modality and is de-focused. The APC’s features confirm the specificity of its information function in order to textually integrate with the Comment, facilitating an agreement with the addressee, while the Topic serves as the field of application for the illocutionary force. The purpose of the article is to explain the distinction between the previous information functions by demonstrating the specific role of Appendix through examples derived from Italian corpus analysis.