Setting Information

Glossary of Linguistic Terms

Definition:

Setting information is a kind of nonevent in discourse that provides locative, temporal and circumstantial information about a sequence of events.

Examples:

It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly a shot rang out. (The first sentence contains temporal setting information.)
Every tree and blade of grass was dripping, and the road shone like a river. The Pedestrian wasted no time on the landscape, but set out at once... (The first sentence contains circumstantial and locative setting information.)

Source:

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library. Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003.