> > A pronoun does not stand for a noun as the name suggests. > subordin > subject slot, an object slot, adverbial slots, etc. I don't understand, Burkhard; can you explain why you are alluding to these slots? > > They can be used on their own as in 'Why?' - 'Because there was no > time.' This is a function in a 'communicateme' - a structure on one of > the text levels. Hmmm! I can't really imagine 'why' as a pronoun; I would prefer to think of it as a wh* interrogative marker without any particular relationship to pronouns. "Warum gehen wir?" would--if anything at all--stand for a missing clause: "weil wir den Film sehen wollen" or whatever. I seem to remember that some grammars treat clauses as objects or subjects of sentences. I suppose in that round-about way, one may refer to them as pronouns. I hope someone else will jump right in and clear this up. > Subclauses can fill functional slots in mini-paragraphs, e.g. > conditional structures: > If this is so, topic slot > then xxx conclusion slot. > Etc. If . . ., then . . . consists, logically, of antecedent and consequent and is considered one hypothetical. In no way can the "then"-part be thought of as a conclusion unless it pops up as the hypothetical premise in a modus ponens. So, I am not sure what you mean by "topic" and "conclusion" in this context. > Why we may want to put this information in focus, may have innumerable > reasons - this has to do with life in general. Maybe the information is new > to the hearer, or we find it fascinating, or we want to set right what > someone else has said, and so on. I don't think that the actual communicative setting needs to be relevant to a syntactic analysis. Trink 'n Bier fuer mich mit, Burkhard, ja? <grins> ==Cheerio, Reinhold ============================================================================ Dr. Reinhold Schlieper Humanities Department 500 Shadow Lakes Boulevard Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Apartment 139 Daytona Beach FL 32114 Ormond Beach FL 32174 Phone: 904-226-6664 Phone: 904-676-9392 ============================================================================