Medvedeva N. Structure, Semantics and Pragmatics of Segmented Utterances in Contemporary French Fiction.

This thesis focuses on the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic study of segmented utterances in contemporary French fiction. The conceptual framework of the research includes such theories as the theory of integrative pragmatics, the theory of mental kinetism and the emergence theory. The research specifies the notion of "segmented utterance" and examines a segmented utterance in terms of the general process of utterance production that gave the possibility to determine the phase of formation of segmented structure. Structural types of segmented utterances have been analysed, and their language patterns have been reconstructed. The research contains also the semantic and pragmatic characteristic of the components of segmentation (theme, rheme, substitute). The discourse role of segmented utterances has been examined.