Abstract

This article is an inquiry into the discourse phenomenon of grounding, viz. the foreground-background structure. It explains the place of the phenomenon in the structure of discourse and provides evidence of grounding from short news items. Focusing on the surface structure level of discourse organization, the article examines variant marking of the FG-BG articulation at sentence-initial position. Using English and Arabic news data, the article explicates the grounding-signalling function of entities that appear in that position and shows that Arabic news texts rely on certain prefatory expressions to signal the grounding values of underlying propositions. The study underscores the influence of the cognitive level of information on grounding and its marking in the hierarchical structure of discourse.