A textual perspective on Givón's quantity principle

This paper reports on a study conducted to test in written texts the applicability of one of Givón's iconic coding principles, the quantity principle, which states that less predictable information will be given more coding material. The study bases its investigation on English narrative texts, with attention focused on comparing the linguistic constructions that are used at episode- and subepisode-initial positions in these texts. The results of the study support the quantity principle. They specifically indicate that the episode-initial constructions, which function to signal major breaks in the thematic structures of the narrative texts, tend to carry more pieces of new (and therefore unpredictable) information than their subepisode-initial counterparts and in correspondence to this difference the former use more coding material than the latter.