3. Communicative dynamism

Communicative dynamism is a property of an expression that reflects its relative degree of importance in comparison with other expressions in the sentence attributed to it by the speaker; we consider contextually non-bound expressions to be more dynamic than expressions contextually bound (be they non-contrastive or contrastive).

In tectogrammatical trees, communicative dynamism is represented by the so called underlying word order (see also Section 3, "Deep structure word order"). Information about the underlying order of nodes is stored in the attribute deepord. See Table 10.2, "Values of the attribute deepord ".

Table 10.2. Values of the attribute deepord

non-negative integer

the order of a node in the graphical representation of the tectogrammatical tree (nodes are numbered from left to right)

The degree of communicative dynamism is always determined with respect to the governing node and to sister nodes, i.e. for each level of the tectogrammatical tree. Nodes on the individual levels of the tree are ordered according to increasing communicative dynamism.

Also the relative order between contextually bound and contextually non-bound (sister) nodes is set. We suppose that certain syntactic functions tend to certain positions on the scale of communicative dynamism (so-called systemic ordering - in Czech we presuppose the order: ACT - most adjuncts - ADDR - PAT - ORIG - EFF). However, the scale of communicative dynamism of a sentence is determined only through its integration into the context - the scale of communicative dynamism modifies in comparison with systemic ordering. Systemic ordering (we surmise) is preserved in the contextually non-bound part of the sentence.

The order is naturally different in verbal groups (verb phrases; Section 3.2, "Ordering of nodes in verbal groups (verb phrases)") and nominal groups (noun phrases; see Section 3.3, "Ordering of nodes in nominal groups (noun phrases)"). The same guidelines as for nodes in verbal groups hold also for nodes in adjectival groups (adjective phrases; see Section 3.2, "Ordering of nodes in verbal groups (verb phrases)").