Thematic information, argument structure, and discourse adaptation in language production

In the minds of language users, situations are represented as states, processes, and events. Each such representation originates from perception, imagination, or illusion (cf. e.g., Glasersfeld 1972) and includes the partaking entities and the respective relations holding between them. Since situations cannot be represented by linguistic means in all their aspects, verbalization always requires schematization, i.e. the reduction of information. In the consequence, in linguistic expressions some of the information inherent in the situation to-be-verbalized is left implicit. Naturally, this entails that speakers have to make choices between alternate linguistic realizations; the more so as the to-be-verbalized conceptual structures can be expressed in a variety of ways depending on what facets of a situation a speaker wants to focus on.