End-focus

A feature of English simple declarative sentences is that the topic tends to occur in the beginning while the focus – and here is meant cognitive focus – tends to occur at the end. Leech’s (1983) processibility principle is relevant here: “This principle recommends that the text should be presented in a manner which makes it easy for the hearer to decode in time” (1983: 64). It includes two maxims: the maxim of end-focus, which “recommends that if the rules of the language allow it, the part of a clause which contains new information should be placed at the end”; and the maxim of end-weight, which concerns syntactic ordering in English (and other subject-verb-object languages) and recommends that “ ‘light’ constituents proceed ‘heavy’ ones” (1983: 65). Consider example [3.15], which is the first sentence of a newspaper article about a famous fashion model:

Here, semantic and cognitive focus overlap. The topic of the sentence, what it is about, is obviously “Rosie Huntington-Whiteley”; the focus is the rest of the sentence. It has end-focus, as this final part of the clause contains new information. It is also the heaviest constituent (the one with most syllables) and so also has end-weight. Both maxims, as Leech notes (Leech 1983: 66), are probably motivated by restrictions on human memory (usually said to be up to seven random items). Older information is easier for the mind to cope with than newer and, if shorter constituents appear first, there is less to remember before one gets to the final constituents of the sentence, so the cognitive load in interpreting utterances is reduced.