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Subordinating and Coordinating Discourse Relations
Abstract
This paper studies the distinction between subordinating and coordinating discourse relations, a distinction that governs the hierarchical structure of discourse. We provide linguistic tests to clarify which discourse relations are subordinating and which are coordinating. We argue that some relations are classified as subordinating or coordinating by default, a default that can be overridden in specific contexts. The distinction between subordinating and coordinating relations thus belongs to the level of information packaging in discourse and not to the level of information content or the semantics of the relations themselves.
... SDRT introduces a distinction between coordination and subordination, which helps to analyze rhetorical relations such as Explanation, Contrast, and Result within the hierarchical structure of discourse [4]. Moreover, SDRT employs the concepts of Elementary Discourse Units (EDUs) and Compound Discourse Units (CDUs) to model discourse hierarchically. ...
... Scholars who support the romantic interpretation argue that CDU2 is the main section of the poem, while CDU1 merely provides background, which implies that the rhetorical relation between CDU1 and CDU2 is Background. If rhetorical relations are divided into two types, subordination and coordination [4], Result is typically viewed as a coordination relation, while Background is seen as a subordination relation. Given the opposite nature of these two relations, it is impossible for CDU1 and CDU2 to simultaneously possess both Result and Background relations, suggesting that one of these analyses may be flawed. ...
... Given the opposite nature of these two relations, it is impossible for CDU1 and CDU2 to simultaneously possess both Result and Background relations, suggesting that one of these analyses may be flawed. In SDRT, coordination shifts the scene and advances the narrative, while subordination elaborates on the scene, deepening the narrative [4]. From CDU1 to CDU2, the scene has indeed changed: CDU1 describes the prosperous times before the rebellion, with the emperor and consort immersed in pleasure, while CDU2 depicts the aftermath of the rebellion, with the Tang dynasty's glory gone and the life of luxury vanished. ...
This research conducts a thematic analysis of The Everlasting Regret based on Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT), aiming to uncover its deeper meanings by exploring the text's discourse structure and rhetorical relations. Unlike traditional literary criticism approaches, this study adopts the SDRT framework, with a focus on analyzing the rhetorical relations between Compound Discourse Units (CDUs). The academic debate surrounding the theme of The Everlasting Regret is extensive, with major perspectives including allegorical, romantic, and dual-theme interpretations. Through detailed analysis, this research argues that The Everlasting Regret does not present a dual theme, but rather a single one. Moreover, this theme is not a celebration of love, but rather a subtle and nuanced form of satire. Additionally, the research offers an in-depth examination of key discourse units within the text, revealing that the rhetorical relations among them can be interpreted as Contrast, Result, and Narration. This not only highlights the complexity of discourse coherence and textual structure, but also suggests a potential intrinsic link among these three rhetorical relations.
... The above-mentioned theoretical differences aside, another important classification axis of discourse relations pertains to whether a discourse relation should be considered as coordinating or subordinating ( [38]). Briefly, coordinating relations, such as Narration and Continuation, relate EDUs that share a general common topic and can be thought of as providing information on the same level of detail on that topic, while subordinating relations, such as Elaboration and Explanation between two EDUs are asymmetrically related, since one of the two plays a subordinate role relative to the other. ...
... Briefly, coordinating relations, such as Narration and Continuation, relate EDUs that share a general common topic and can be thought of as providing information on the same level of detail on that topic, while subordinating relations, such as Elaboration and Explanation between two EDUs are asymmetrically related, since one of the two plays a subordinate role relative to the other. Ref. [38] argues that it is not an easy task to classify discourse relations as either coordinating or subordinating and presents linguistic tests that help decide which discourse relations are subordinating and which are coordinating in a given context. The relevant part of the distinction between coordinating and subordinating relations for the construction of the discourse representation is that the first type of relation is indicated through horizontal connections, as in the simple graph in Figure 1 (1), for the coordinating relation Narration between π 1 and π 2 and the second type through vertical ones, as in Figure 2 for the subordinating relation Explanation between π 1 and π 2 in (1). ...
... Although the classification of discourse relations as subordinating or coordinating has important semantic effects in discourse interpretation, reflected in discourse anaphora and attachment availability ( [39]), it is highly context-dependent, as pointed out by [38,40], which suggests that the contexts that they appear in and the conditions that dictate their classification as either coordinating or subordinating should be further investigated. As [38] mentions, a discourse relation does not share common underlying content with a homogeneous set of other discourse relations that can be assigned to either the coordinating or the subordinating type. ...
In this paper, we argue that discourse representations can be mapped to networks and analyzed by tools provided in network theory so that deep properties of discourse structure are revealed. Two discourse-annotated corpora, C58 and STAC, that belong to different discourse types and languages were compared and analyzed. Various key network indices were used for the discourse representations of both corpora and show the different network profiles of the two discourse types. Moreover, both network motifs and antimotifs were discovered for the discourse networks in the two corpora that shed light on strong tendencies in building or avoiding to build discourse relations between utterances for permissible three-node discourse subgraphs. These results may lead to new types of discourse structure rules that draw on the properties of the networks that lie behind discourse representation. Another important aspect is that the second version of the STAC corpus, which includes nonlinguistic discourse units and their relations, exhibits similar trends in terms of network subgraphs compared to its first version. This suggests that the nonlinguistic context has a significant impact on discourse structure.
... However, the prediction of form-independence holds only if all of the clausal connective devices used are semantically compatible with all of the coherence relations naturally associated with the texts. As we will see below, prior research (Txurruka, 2003;Asher and Vieu, 2005) provides independent reason to expect semantic incompatibility between one of our connective devices (conjunction) and a class of coherence relations called Subordinating, including our explanation relation. This point motivates the revised analysis in Section 4.1, which tests the hypothesis that coherence is independent of form for nonsubordinating coherence relations. ...
... On reflection, this pattern is readily intelligible based on existing findings in the literature on coherence relations and their linguistic interactions. As discussed by Asher and Lascarides (2003); Asher and Vieu (2005), coherence relations fall into two classes-"coordinating" and "subordinating"-which are distinguished by a variety of empirical criteria, such as the availability of various types of anaphora. Result is a coordinating relation, while explanation is a subordinating relation. ...
... Txurruka (2003) shows that this is example is an instance of a general prohibition on subordinating discourse relations in and-sentences. Asher and Vieu (2005) discuss a number of further empirical diagnostics and theoretical applications of the distinction between coordinating and subordinating discourse relations. ...
Missing-link conditionals like “If bats have wings, Paris is in France” are generally felt to be unacceptable even though both clauses are true. According to the Hypothetical Inferential Theory, this is explained by a conventional requirement of an inferential connection between conditional clauses. Bayesian theorists have denied the need for such a requirement, appealing instead to a requirement of discourse coherence that extends to all ways of connecting clauses. Our experiment compared conditionals (“If A, C”), conjunctions (“A and C”), and bare juxtapositions (“A. C.”). With one systematic exception that is predicted by prior work in coherence theory, the presence or absence of an inferential link affected conditionals and other statement types in the same way. This is as expected according to the Bayesian approach together with a general theory of discourse coherence.
... SDRT is a formal theory of how one pragmatically enriches a discourse with coherence relations and how this leads to the pragmatic interpretation of a discourse (Lascarides and Asher, 1993;Asher andLascarides, 1998, 2003;Asher and Vieu, 2005). The guiding idea is that discourses (consisting of clauses or, here, pictures) compose to narratives that convey more information than their parts-just like subclausal units compose to meaningful clauses that contain more information than the sum of their parts. ...
... See Asher and Lascarides (2003) for details on this point. 20 Asher and Vieu (2005) note that there are some cases in which Result can be subordinating. However, they also note that subordinating Result is rare and usually marked. ...
... The putative discourse structure of (22) would be the same. All explanations for co-reference in pictures rested on information contributed by coherence relationsand which segments can be connected by a coherence relation is subject to the Right Frontier Constraint Asher and Lascarides (1998); Asher and Vieu (2005). To resolve the burger depicted in the third picture in (22) to the one in the first picture in (22), we would therefore need to establish a coherence relation between these two pictures. ...
Recent advances in the Super Linguistics of pictures have laid the Super Semantic foundation for modelling the phenomena of narrative sequencing and co-reference in pictorial and mixed linguistic-pictorial discourses. We take up the question of how one arrives at the pragmatic interpretations of such discourses. In particular, we offer an analysis of: (i) the discourse composition problem: how to represent the joint meaning of a multi-picture discourse, (ii) observed differences in narrative sequencing in prima facie equivalent linguistic vs pictorial discourses, and (iii) the phenomenon of co-referencing across pictures. We extend Segmented Discourse Representation Theory to spell out a formal Super Pragmatics that applies to linguistic, pictorial and mixed discourses, while respecting the particular ‘genius’ of either medium and computing their distinctive pragmatic interpretations.
... The appositive could appear medially as in (3a) and (3b), interrupting the VP, or finally, (3c) and (3d). Two versions of the items (3b, 3d) were phrased in the simple past tense, intended to convey a Narration relation, the prototypical example of a coordinating relation according to Asher and Vieu (2005). The two other versions (3a, 3c) were in the progressive and were intended to convey an Elaboration relation, a prototypical subordinating relation. ...
... As noted earlier, it remains an open question why a given relation is subordinating or coordinating based on their semantic content. Asher and Vieu (2005) discuss intuitive notions present in the literature and provide diagnostics for classifying a relation of interest but also acknowledge the heterogeneity of each class of relations and the difficulty of making existing intuitions precise. Although there exist promising proposals in this regard, such as the idea to relate subordinating relations to the presence of a grounding problem (Jasinskaja & Karagjosova, 2020), a fully satisfying account remains to be fleshed out. ...
... 2. In the literature on discourse, related claims have appeared. For example, Asher & Vieu (2005) note that the literature on discourse relations contains the claim that in coordination but not subordination, there is a temporal progression of events. Jasinskaja (2016, p. 6) notes that coordinating relations but not subordinating relations "push the discourse forward." ...
Recent studies of appositives have turned up differences between sentence-medial appositives and sentence-final appositives, for instance, in their availability for discourse continuations. Three experiments investigated whether medial appositives are more difficult to comprehend than final appositives and if so why. Experiment 1 tested coordinating (Narration) versus subordinating (Elaboration) discourse relations in sentence-medial or sentence-final position. Coordinating relations received lower naturalness ratings in general but especially in medial position. We propose a timeline hypothesis that coordinating (Narration) relations in medial position are difficult because the processor constructs a narrative timeline from earlier to later times and avoids ordering an event later on the timeline than an event whose description has not yet been completed. An interpretation study of ambiguous appositives confirmed the timeline hypothesis (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, the appositive event was disambiguated to either precede or follow the main clause event on the narrative timeline. Sentences with medial appositives disambiguated to precede the main clause event received higher naturalness ratings than those disambiguated to follow the main clause event, as expected on the timeline hypothesis.
... Partido a partido, 119-140 puede ocurrir como parte de la trama principal, o sea, sin subordinación a nivel discursivo-semántico. Segundo, se puede realizar como parte de una relación retórica (en el sentido de Asher, Lascarides 2003) de subordinación (cf. Asher, Vieu 2005). Y el tercer caso frecuente ocurre como parte de estructuras nominales. ...
... Los retrocesos temporales también ocurren en contextos en que elaboran o explican otra información dada previamente. En términos de la teoría de la representación discursiva segmentada (SDRT; Asher, Lascarides 2003), estas relaciones semántico-pragmáticas entre frases son discursivamente subordinadas (Asher, Vieu 2005). Como hemos discutido recientemente, estas relaciones generalmente inhiben el desarrollo discursivo (Egetenmeyer 2024c). ...
This book explores a range of pathways in the evolution and variation of the Spanish language across different communicative domains related to football. From press conferences to the language used by analysts and fans, from journalistic reports to media broadcasts and social networks, and from the very name of the sport to regional variants within Spanish football vocabulary, Partido a partido. La lengua del fútbol addresses a variety of linguistic research topics. These include lexical, discursive, and pragmatic phenomena, as well as diachronic, variational, sociopragmatic, comparative, and intralingual translation-based approaches. The book brings together nine papers, each with distinct aims, scopes, and analytical techniques. Despite this diversity, all the papers focus on the linguistic peculiarities of historical changes and contemporary variations in the Spanish language (across more than one country), which can be observed – though not exclusively – in the language of football. Although exploratory in nature, this volume encourages readers to view the communicative dynamics inspired by football as more than merely ‘mundane’ or ‘ephemeral’. While some phenomena arise solely within the football community under specific circumstances, certain linguistic innovations shaped by football references may eventually extend to other thematic domains. In sum, this book offers readers an overview of the features and complexities that characterise the Spanish language. Like football itself, these features spark interest and foster discussion among specialists.
... Kleiber et Vassiliadou (2009 :197) montrent que cette relation de domination recouvre naturellement la relation « partie de » car on peut caractériser le tout comme dominant ses parties : « si on passe du tout aux parties, on ne sort pas du tout, on ne fait que développer une partie du tout topical introduit ». Le troisième paramètre dans la définition de la subordination concerne l'organisation du topique : Asher et Vieu (2005) montrent que dans ce cas, le topique d'un segment est un sous-topique de l'autre auquel il est relié. Ce critère a été discuté dans la section 2.2. ...
... Ce critère a été discuté dans la section 2.2. Le quatrième critère que nous empruntons à Asher et Vieu (2005) stipule que satisfaire les intentions communicatives du segment subordonné conduit à satisfaire les intentions communicatives du segment dominant. Les auteurs ne le discutent pas mais, pour le propos de notre analyse, nous considérons que la construction mirative introduit une preuve à l'appui d'une conclusion qui s'impose contextuellement. ...
La construction [il n’est pas/il n’y a pas jusqu’à SN+ relative négative] subit une spécialisation fonctionnelle dans le marquage du focus étroit, déterminée par la composante mirative associée à jusqu’à, réanalysé comme particule scalaire-additive. Nous poursuivons une modélisation du discours qui met au jour une hiérarchie des topiques à l’intérieur d’une unité discursive complexe pour montrer que la construction mirative marque la clôture du topique, ce qui reflète le rôle de clôture d’un ensemble que joue l’associé de jusqu’à. La présence en position de focus de la construction mirative d’un constituant relié par un rapport partie/tout à un ensemble contextuellement saillant explique la relation asymétrique, de subordination, qu’elle établit en tant qu’unité discursive par rapport à l’unité discursive contenant le tout.
... En esta misma línea, Asher y Vieu (2005) consideran las cláusulas, los componentes de las oraciones compuestas, como unidades de discurso elementales. Polanyi (1988) considera la unidad constituyente del discurso, o «discourse constituent unit», como la unidad de discurso elemental, o «the elementary unit of discourse», y los árboles de unidad de discurso básica que representan la estructura de discurso de la oración, es decir, «Basic Discourse Unit (BDU) trees, representing the discourse structure of the sentence» (Polanyi et al. 2004, 80). ...
... En segundo lugar, Pons Bordería se refiere a la continuación del discurso para argumentar su afirmación. De acuerdo con Polanyi (1988) y Asher y Vieu (2005), definimos la continuación en (8): ...
Para dar cuenta de la coordinación discursiva discursiva en la argumentación de la columna periodística, se propone una estructura de la oración como constituyente de una estructura más amplia del discurso. Las oraciones son unidades de discurso conectadas a otras unidades en un proceso en que su contexto discursivo proporciona la información requerida para construir una estructura de constituyentes del discurso. La coordinación con y en posición inicial tiene propiedades de subordinación a la izquierda en la estructura de constituyentes del discurso. Estas propiedades se analizan en términos de sus características de foco y tópico. Se muestra que la coordinación y subordinación discursivas constituyen un medio eficaz para construir unidades de discurso intermedias que representan movimientos argumentativos en las columnas de opinión.
... As relações de coordenação conectam segmentos do discurso no mesmo nível hierárquico, enquanto as relações de subordinação ligam um segmento do discurso a outro segmento que está um nível hierárquico abaixo. Asher;Vieu (2005) afirmam que essa distinção (no nível do discurso) possui uma motivação intuitiva, na qual certas partes do texto desempenham um papel subordinativo (menos relevante) em relação às demais. É importante ressaltar que o conjunto de relações, sejam de coordenação ou subordinação, não é fechado, pois estudos recentes já apresentam variações do conjunto original (por exemplo, (Muller et al., 2012)). ...
... Afantenos;Asher, 2014;Asher et al., 2016;Badene et al., 2019;Li et al., 2020). Portanto, a teoria SDRT possui mecanismos que podem ser aplicados ao tratamento de diálogos, tais como Question Elaborating, Correction e Question Answer Pair. ...
Capítulo intitulado "Modelos discursivos", do livro Processamento de Linguagem Natural. Nesse capítulo, apresentamos diferentes modelos discursivos que são aplicados no PLN.
... Discourse goes beyond and above the sentence in a constituent structure organized by relations of hierarchy and dependency P Rodríguez Ramalle 2023a), with discourse coordination and subordination (Asher and Vieu 2005), where sentence grammar is extended to discourse (Garrido 1998), and «the discursive context is crucial» (Rodríguez Ramalle 2023b: 18). An alternative approach has utterances as basic units in macrosyntax (Fuentes Pérez Béjar 2022, Blanche-Benveniste 1990) or hierarchical-informational structure (Borreguero Zuloaga 2021), with higher-level units such as sequences (Cortés 2011) or moves in functional discourse grammar (Alturo 2013) and pragmatic or contextual enrichment of undetermined utterances (Portolés 2004, Cortés andLoureda 2021). ...
... A discourse context is «the surrounding discourse» of the sentence including its deixis, but not the «discourse situation» in which the sentence is said or written, quoting Dorgeloh and Wanner's (2022: 11 and 19) terms. Each sentence or elementary discourse unit is linked, using the information it requires to be interpreted (Garrido 2003), to other units, building complex discourse units, by means of coordinating or subordinating (Asher and Vieu 2005), discourse rhetorical relations (Duque 2022). This required information is obtained from the discourse context of the unit, including the unit's deictic information. ...
Sentences including their deictic information are elementary discourse units linked in constituent structures. They are bound to information from their discourse contexts, and their linking produces rhetorical effects. Discourse is a sequence of linked sentences bound to their discourse contexts. Each sentence or elementary discourse unit is linked to others by means of the information it requires to be interpreted, obtained from its discourse context and its deictic information. Discourse context is the source for the additional information needed for the linking of discourse units and their interpretation in discourse constituent structures, producing the intended intentional rhetorical effects in texts. Subordination in discourse relations between units is analyzed in terms of their topics and frames. Coordination with sentence-initial and has subordination-to-the-left properties in the discourse constituent structure. These properties of discourse coordination, including focus and wider scope, are shown to be effective tools to build and organize, by means of discourse coordination, complex discourse units that represent rhetorical moves in texts.
... 3 Both approaches hold that the interpretation of a given sentence or elementary discourse unit (EDU) depends in part on that EDU's relation to other moves that have been made in the same discourse. 4 Both also hold that a discourse context must therefore keep track of not only (some subset of the) prior discourse moves but also certain structural relations between these moves. These structural relations are believed to play an integral role in discourse coherence and the relevance of individual discourse moves, and as such, to influence various semantic and pragmatic phenomena, including ellipsis of various sorts, anaphora (rhetorical theories), and prosody (QUD theories). ...
... Most economists greeted the move with skepticism (π 2 ) but were afraid to express this publicly (π 3 ). (Modified version of example (5) from [4]) ...
... The Explanation relation holds when the main eventuality described in (e β ) is a sub sort of the main eventuality described in (e α ), or the proposition associated with (e β ) defeasibly implies that associated with (e α ) (Asher, Vieu 2005). The relation Explanation is usually signalled by the connector 'because' in English, though in Sakizaya the relationship is almost always uncoded and inferred from context. ...
This volume is based on a selection of papers presented at the Second Conference on the Endangered Languages of East Asia (CELEA2), hosted by the Department of Asian and North African Studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice on 3-5 May 2022. In each chapter, the authors discuss the topic of ‘time’ in relation to different aspects of a number of East Asian languages that are rarely represented in typological studies (Nivkh, Nighvng, Chalkan, Khitan, Ainu, Sakizaya, Kaxabu, Ryukyuan languages, Hachijō, Manchurian, and Yu). The volume will appeal to scholars with an interest in endangered languages or East Asia, and more generally will serve as a reference work in descriptive, historical and comparative linguistics, sociolinguistics, discourse studies, and lexicography.
... De manera intuitiva podemos ver que algunas partes del texto parecen estar subordinadas a otras: esto lo vemos, por ejemplo, cuando, en un texto académico, un párrafo desarrolla la idea principal y comprobamos que el resto de párrafos parecen ampliar, desarrollar o elaborar esa primera idea. Asher y Vieu (2005) proponen que las oraciones se conectan en un párrafo y entre párrafos manteniendo relaciones de coordinación y subordinación establecidas a partir de los vínculos lógico-semánticos que nos ayudan a establecer las relaciones de discurso. ...
Garrido, en diferentes trabajos, (2014, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021, 2024), expone un modelo de estudio del discurso desde una propuesta dinámica y configuracional, donde las relaciones dan lugar a unidades discursivas en una estructura de constituyentes jerarquizada y que se ve modificada con la inclusión de nuevas unidades. El trabajo que ahora se presenta tiene como objetivo básico revisar las conexiones entre párrafos desde un enfoque configuracional y dinámico, siguiendo el modelo mencionado. Me centraré en el estudio de las expresiones evaluativas y evidenciales: es cierto que, es evidente que, cuando se localizan a comienzo de párrafo. Estas construcciones parten, por su propia estructura sintáctica, de una referencia previa. y expresan una valoración subjetiva por parte del autor a partir de datos presentes en el texto, por lo que no solo introducen información, sino que, además, sirven para valorarla.
... SDRT (Segmented Discourse Representation Theory) is used to fulfill the analyses, in which discourse structures are modeled into graphs made up of two types of semantic discourse units (DUs): elementary discourse units and complex discourse units [6,7,8,9]. An EDU is the most basic element as it often contains only 1 eventuality state or event [10]. ...
While many researchers have paid attention to Rabindranath Tagore's poems, few have analyzed his short stories, still less on a specific story, like The Renunciation. The fiction critiques the caste system of Hinduism and portrays a unique female character. This paper proposes that structural and coherence analysis can assist in a better appreciation of the story. The disruption of the timeline emphasizes the importance of a series of events occurred in the past. Coherence relations within them are established and analyzed so that the caste system's role as the origin of perpetuating tragedy among Hindus is explicitly revealed. The blank in the timeline along with the nightingale which appears throughout the novel indicates the plight of women in Hindu society. Analyses in this paper provide argumentation for views proposed in previous studies, namely Tagore's firm stance against the caste system and his empathy for suffering women, from a new angle. It also demonstrates the feasibility of linguistic theories appliance to the field of literary criticism.
... In (2), Lascarides and Asher posit that unit π 2 forms both a NARRATION relation and a CONTRAST relation to π 1 . SDRT also distinguishes coordinating relations, such as CONTRAST from subordinating ones, such as ELABORATION (Asher and Vieu 2005), but both can occur concurrently, as in Figure 3 for a French text from the ANNODIS corpus (Afantenos et al. 2010): The bottom complex unit (in blue) has incoming ELABORATION and CONTRAST relations, one from an EDU (in gray) and one from another complex unit. SDRT relations therefore do not reflect an RST-like notion of nuclearity or prominence. ...
In this article we present Enhanced Rhetorical Structure Theory (eRST), a new theoretical framework for computational discourse analysis, based on an expansion of Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST). The framework encompasses discourse relation graphs with tree-breaking, non-projective and concurrent relations, as well as implicit and explicit signals which give explainable rationales to our analyses. We survey shortcomings of RST and other existing frameworks, such as Segmented Discourse Representation Theory, the Penn Discourse Treebank, and Discourse Dependencies, and address these using constructs in the proposed theory. We provide annotation, search, and visualization tools for data, and present and evaluate a freely available corpus of English annotated according to our framework, encompassing 12 spoken and written genres with over 200K tokens. Finally, we discuss automatic parsing, evaluation metrics, and applications for data in our framework.
... A final point worth noting is that it has been pointed out in Abrusán (2021) that the preference for locally prominent protagonists as anchors for FID only holds if the content of the sentence in FID mode stands in a subordinating discourse relation such as explanation or elaboration (see Asher and Vieu, 2005 for an overview over subordinating and coordinating discourse relations) to the content of the preceding sentence. In general, it is very hard to interpret a sentence as FID that is linked to the preceding sentence via a discourse relation such as narration or result. ...
The choice of the perspectival center of a stretch of discourse is crucial for the interpretation of certain phenomena such as free indirect discourse. It has been argued that the protagonist that is most prominent compared to competing protagonists gets to be the perspectival center. In this paper we discuss grammatical function and referential expression as prominence-lending cues and their impact on perspective-taking. We take the anchoring of free indirect discourse as the indicator for a shift in perspective as free indirect discourse can only be processed correctly if the reader is able to ascribe the utterance or thought to a protagonist. Identifying the perspectival center is particularly crucial for the interpretation of a thought or utterance in free indirect discourse mode that can potentially be ascribed to different protagonists, since in contrast to direct or indirect discourse the respective speaker or thinker is not explicitly marked as such in free indirect discourse. In a series of acceptability rating studies, we tested if anchoring of free indirect discourse to the less prominent of two competing referents is perceived to be unnatural. Further, we take a closer look at the role of subject and object as well as the choice of referential expression (proper name compared to indefinite noun phrase). We find that a protagonist referred to with a proper name in subject position is highly preferred as the anchor for free indirect discourse compared to a protagonist referred to with an indefinite noun phrase in object position. Building on these findings, we present evidence that the prominence of the referent that is established in the sentence preceding a sentence in free indirect discourse mode can be overridden by discourse prominence. That is, a referent that is repeatedly mentioned in a short discourse is preferred as the perspectival center regardless of the prominence of a competing referent in the sentence preceding a sentence in free indirect discourse mode.
... Schilder proposed an Underspecified Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (USDRT) to address ambiguities in discourse interpretation, suggesting improvements to SDRT to handle complex linguistic phenomena [2]. Asher and Lascarides explored the logical foundations of conversation [1], while Asher and Vieu studied how subordinating and coordinating discourse relations help organize and maintain discourse coherence [3]. Lascarides and Asher described SDRT as an extension of Discourse Representation Theory (DRT), highlighting its application in dynamic semantics [4]. ...
Shirley Jackson's The Lottery is a powerful narrative widely analyzed for its social, cultural, and literary dimensions. However, the linguistic intricacies of Jackson's work remain underexplored. This study addresses this gap by applying Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT) to analyze the discourse structure of The Lottery. SDRT, a formal theory of discourse that emphasizes coherence relations, provides a systematic framework for examining how different narrative segments interact to create a cohesive and impactful story. By employing SDRT, this research uncovers the intricate ways in which Jackson's linguistic choices contribute to the story's thematic depth and emotional resonance. This analysis not only enhances our understanding of Jackson's narrative techniques but also demonstrates the applicability of SDRT in literary discourse analysis, offering new insights into the dynamic development of discourse within literary texts.
... [...] Recognizing coherence relations may thus be just one way of using very general principles for simplifying our view of the world. (Hobbs 1990) Hobbsian ideas have been made formally precise in Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT, Asher 1993, Asher and Lascarides 2003, Asher and Vieu 2005, Hunter et al. 2018, which aims to model what coherence relations mean, and how discourse structures are constructed. In particular, SDRT models discourse structure as a graph over semantic representations of pieces of discourse or discourse units (DUs), which come in two types: (i) elementary discourse units (EDUs), which are the atoms of a given discourse, and (ii) complex discourse units (CDUs), which are built out of EDUs and may include only two or three EDUs or correspond to several paragraphs or even multiple pages of text. ...
Through imaginative engagement readers of fiction become, to an extraordinary extent, the narrator’s ‘children’: they often submit themselves to the narrator’s authority without reserve. But precisely because of that, readers are deeply at a loss when their trust is betrayed. This underscores a core function of fiction, namely to evoke emotional response in the reader. In this paper, we hypothesize how a reader’s imaginative engagement can be subjected to narrative frustration due to processing or moral complexity. The types of narrative frustration we consider differ in terms of their sources, and their emotional and behavioral impacts on the reader. Here, we break down these frustrations into their component parts, in an effort to better characterize the different classes of frustrations. We propose that frustrations arise from different combinations of local uncertainty, moral clash and global uncertainty. These sources of frustration in turn explain the reader’s emotional response and their consequent reading behavior as they imaginatively engage with fiction.
... Further, two kinds of RRs have been discriminated (Asher and Vieu, 2005), i.e., Subordinating RRs and Coordinating RRs. 1) Subordinating RRs, such as Elaboration and Explanation, exist between units with unequal information packaging levels, where one is subordinate to the other. 2) Coordinating RRs, such as Narration, Parallel and Contrast, exist between units of the same information packaging level. ...
... That is to say, they make reference not merely to the events described but also to the particular structure in which they are presented. Crucially, Asher and Lascarides (2003) note that explicitly marked structuring coherence relations interact with anaphoric potential in ways that are fundamentally different (e.g., they do not always obey the Right Frontier Constraint; see Asher and Vieu (2005) and Hunter and Thompson (2022)). We may, therefore, refine our coherence generalization, as in (70). ...
This paper examines switch reference (SR) in A’ingae, an understudied isolate language from Amazonian Ecuador. We present a theoretically informed survey of SR, identifying three distinct uses of switch reference: in clause chaining, adverbial clauses, and so-called ‘bridging’ clause linkage. We describe the syntactic and semantic properties of each use in detail, the first such description for A’ingae, showing that the three constructions differ in important ways. While leaving a full syntactic analysis to future work, we argue that these disparate properties preclude a syntactic account that unifies these three constructions to the exclusion of other environments without SR. Conversely, while a full semantic account is also left to future work, we suggest that a unified semantic account in terms of discourse coherence principles appears more promising. In particular, we propose that switch reference in A’ingae occurs in all and only the constructions that are semantically restricted to non-structuring coordinating coherence relations in the sense of Segmented Discourse Representation Theory.
... Asher 1993;van Kuppevelt 1995). But seeAsher and Vieu (2005) for a discussion of complications. ...
Deictic (or pointing) gestures are traditionally known to have a simple function: to supply something as the referent of a demonstrative linguistic expression. I argue that deixis can have a more complex function. A deictic gesture can be used to say something in conversation and can thereby become a full discourse move in its own right. To capture this phenomenon, which I call rich demonstration, I present an update semantics on which deictic gestures can indicate situations from a conversation’s context and those situations coherently connect to prior discourse to generate information.
... In the examples above, the reference time is thus updated after the when clause is interpreted; perfective clauses are interpreted as taking place within the new reference time, while imperfective (or stative) clauses are interpreted as ongoing. Much subsequent work has been done on temporal sequencing in discourse within the framework of Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT), notably by Lascarides (1993, 2003) and Asher and Vieu (2005). ...
A pronominal analysis of tense goes back to Partee (1973), motivated by a series of proposed parallels between the interpretation of tenses and that of pronouns. This article revisits Partee's interpretive parallels, as well as two more identified in Kratzer (1998), in light of subsequent developments in work on both temporal relations and on pronouns. The goal of this article is not to argue for or against a pronominal analysis of tense, but instead to make clearer the syntactic and semantic space within which such an analysis is situated, especially given that pronouns have been given increasingly complex syntactic representations even as tense has remained syntactically simplex.
... There was a slight difference between explanations and consequences with more forms other than personal pronouns for I-Cons (10.1%) than I-Caus (3.6%). Although both connectives are syntactically subordinating, consequences and explanations can be taken to represent different discourse structural configurations, with explanations being subordinating and consequences being coordinating discourse relations (for discussion see, in particular Asher & Vieu, 2005). The two relations thus differ with regard to the Right-Frontier Constraint (Asher & Lascarides, 2003;Polanyi, 1988), which influences anaphora resolution and hence possibly also the choice of anaphoric forms. ...
Implicit Causality (I-Caus) and Implicit Consequentiality (I-Cons) biases (Peter annoyed Mary because/and so …) have been argued to be rooted in the argument structure properties of verbs. In particular, the mirror coreference biases displayed by stimulus-experiencer and experiencer-stimulus predicates have been considered strong evidence for this approach. We provide evidence for the Asymmetry Hypothesis, stating that I-Caus and I-Cons are derived from different mechanisms. While we also assume that I-Caus is driven by verb semantics, we contend that I-Cons follows from general discourse-structural principles. Evidence is provided by four production experiments in German investigating the coreference and coherence properties of the aforementioned verb classes in detail. Experiment 1 establishes that the classes mirror each other with respect to coreference biases. Experiments 2 and 3 show, however, that there is no such symmetry with regard to coherence biases. Finally, Experiment 4 provides fine-grained evidence for the underlying strategies for providing contingency specifications.
... Elaboration, Evidence, Explanation, Background and Purpose are subordinating relations. A coordinating relation indicates that the two arguments are on equal presentational footing and contribute in the same way to a common dominating topic (Asher and Vieu, 2005). Narration and Continuation are coordinating relations. ...
The main objective of this thesis is to improve the automatic capture of semantic information with the goal of modeling and understanding human communication. We have advanced the state of the art in discourse parsing, in particular in the retrieval of discourse structure from chat, in order to implement, at the industrial level, tools to help explore conversations. These include the production of automatic summaries, recommendations, dialogue acts detection, identification of decisions, planning and semantic relations between dialogue acts in order to understand dialogues. In multi-party conversations it is important to not only understand the meaning of a participant's utterance and to whom it is addressed, but also the semantic relations that tie it to other utterances in the conversation and give rise to different conversation threads. An answer must be recognized as an answer to a particular question; an argument, as an argument for or against a proposal under discussion; a disagreement, as the expression of a point of view contrasted with another idea already expressed. Unfortunately, capturing such information using traditional supervised machine learning methods from quality hand-annotated discourse data is costly and time-consuming, and we do not have nearly enough data to train these machine learning models, much less deep learning models. Another problem is that arguably, no amount of data will be sufficient for machine learning models to learn the semantic characteristics of discourse relations without some expert guidance; the data are simply too sparse. Long distance relations, in which an utterance is semantically connected not to the immediately preceding utterance, but to another utterance from further back in the conversation, are particularly difficult and rare, though often central to comprehension. It is therefore necessary to find a more efficient way to retrieve discourse structures from large corpora of multi-party conversations, such as meeting transcripts or chats. This is one goal this thesis achieves. In addition, we not only wanted to design a model that predicts discourse structure for multi-party conversation without requiring large amounts of hand-annotated data, but also to develop an approach that is transparent and explainable so that it can be modified and improved by experts. The method detailed in this thesis achieves this goal as well.
... Discourse units may be organized hierarchically or non-hierarchically and discourse relations have been divided into coordinating ones (such as Sequence, List or Contrast) and subordinating ones (such as Elaboration, Cause, Concession and many more), cf. Mann and Thompson (1988); for the corresponding SDRT relations see, for instance, Asher and Vieu (2005). As Behrens et al. (2012: 198-199), following Asher and Lascarides (2003), put it: "the function of d[iscourse]-subordinating constituents is to provide more detail to, or to comment on, some element present in the preceding discourse unit", whereas "discourse units connected to the preceding context by a d[iscourse]-coordinating relation continue the 'main story line' on the same level of granularity". ...
In this paper we present an analysis of the information structural properties of different types of verb and sentence modifying adjuncts under a QUD (question under discussion) approach. Our study is based on naturalistic data from English, French and German containing adjuncts such as temporal, spatial, or manner prepositional phrases, as well as different types of adverbial clauses. The analysis relies on the approach by Riester et al. (2018), which identifies the (generally implicit, sometimes overt) QUD preceding each utterance of a text by means of pragmatic principles, and derives from it the information structure of the utterance. The analysis of adjuncts within this approach shows that in certain contexts, despite conveying new information, adjuncts do not answer the QUD that is answered by the sentence they syntactically depend on. We argue that these adjuncts answer a different QUD and behave as independent discourse units. As such, they have an information structure of their own and are in a rhetorical relation with their host clause. Our analysis sheds light on the similarities between adjuncts and Potts’ (2005) supplements. Both can be accounted for as independent discourse units; however, while supplements display projective behavior, adjuncts do not. Following Venhuizen et al. (2014), we ascribe this difference to their different semantic anchor (nominal vs. verbal). Our work therefore highlights a different way for an expression to be independent at a discourse level, other than being projective content.
... One solution is to incorporate the hierarchical nature of dialogue (Asher and Vieu, 2005). Within a discussion about risk assessment, a parole commissioner may ask about various sub-factors, such as mental illness, or behavior toward other individuals in prison. ...
... Les approches pour l'étude des relations de discours se penchent traditionnellement sur la description des relations qui émergent de l'articulation de différentes unités et des marqueurs qui les signalent (cf. MANN ;THOMPSON, 1986 ;MOESCHLER, 1998MOESCHLER, , 2009FRASER, 1999FRASER, , 2006ROSSARI, 2000 ;BUSQUETS ;ASHER, 2001 ;VIEU, 2005 ;TABOADA, 2006 ;ZUFFEREY, 2012). Comme nous l'avons préalablement discuté (CUNHA, 2020a(CUNHA, , 2020b, ces approches ne s'occupent pas de l'étude du rôle que ces relations et leurs marqueurs peuvent jouer dans la dimension dramaturgique du discours, c'est-à-dire dans la construction conjointe d'images identitaires par les interactants. ...
... By contrast, the consequence relation is not veridical, i.e., it does not entail that the content of both components of the relation must be true (see Asher & Lascarides, 2003: 169). Still, according to Asher and Vieu (2005), in certain specific contexts, a result relation may be subordinating. However, when applied to this example, their four tests (Asher & Vieu, 2005: 599- In Section 3.1, we discussed the ingredients which determine the prominence status of a time point on the local level. ...
Free indirect discourse (FID) is a kind of speech or thought representation that lacks specific marking. The entity to whom the speech or thought is attributed (the perspectival center) has been shown to be a contextually available prominent protagonist (see Hinterwimmer, 2019). A shortcoming of the literature is that it ignores the problem of the temporal anchoring of FID events. The present article is dedicated to such anchors. It focuses on their prominence value and discusses their relevant properties. It shows that FID has a strong tendency to be temporally anchored to a prominent time point. Thus, the protagonist and the anchor time point share the trait of prominence.
... The new fillers all contained an embedded structure. Half of the items required or were biased toward high attachment, i.e. an attachment of the continuation to the matrix clause; for instance so in (22a) most prototypically signals a result/consequence relation, which is usually not embedded (Asher & Vieu, 2005;Hoek et al., 2017). The other half required or were biased toward low attachment, i.e. a continuation within the embedded clause, as in (22b); continuations for this prompt should provide the second segment of the embedded conditional relation. ...
Coherence relations are often assumed to hold between clauses, but restrictive relative clauses (RCs) are usually not granted discourse segment status because they are syntactically and conceptually integrated in their matrix clauses. This paper investigates whether coherence relations can be inferred between restrictive RCs and their matrix clauses. Three experiments provide converging evidence that restrictive RCs can indeed play a role at the discourse level and should not categorically be excluded from receiving discourse segment status in discourse annotation practices. At the same time, the studies provide new insights into implicit causality verb biases, specifically about next-mention biases in concessive coherence relations, and expectations about discourse structure, upcoming referents, and upcoming coherence relations.
This chapter proposes a constructional framework that includes the verbal, vocal, and gestural modalities to describe coordination in conversation. I suggest a definition for coordination that is not modality-specific, and provide a detailed analysis of two coordinate structures from a corpus of spontaneous speech in British English that illustrates this definition. To assess its implications, a series of exploratory analyses investigating a relationship between discourse sequence type and coordination was carried out. This study is the first step into a new model for coordination that contributes to the development of a cognitive-linguistic approach to multimodal and interactional features of language use.
Nuestro interés se centra en esa zona en la que la sintaxis oracional deja paso al discurso, y en el papel que en esos dos planos juegan las relaciones de subordinación (jerárquicas) y de coordinación (no jerárquicas). Aunque no se puede negar la existencia de paralelismos e interferencias entre ellos, se insiste en la necesidad de mantenerlos separados, dado que se combinan unidades distintas mediante relaciones no exactamente equivalentes.
En esta investigación se tratan las relaciones discursivas que abren un discurso. Utilizando un enfoque macrosintáctico y una perspectiva de Lingüística pragmática, se diferencian las relaciones de apertura de texto, párrafo o enunciado, propiamente de estructuración textual, de las de preparación en estos mismos niveles. Estas últimas, en las que se centra el estudio, son metadiscursivas. Anuncian el desarrollo posterior del enunciado, párrafo o texto, apuntando a las relaciones enunciativas, modales, informativas o argumentativas, y son determinantes para garantizar la coherencia textual.
The study considers the discourse functions of intonation and identifies a few problems and contradictions in the current theories of intonation functioning. Particular attention is paid to such issues as the multiple functions of nuclear tones, pitch declination in utterances and perceptual identification of spoken paragraphs. An attempt has been made to handle these problems in the context of English public speeches delivered in the format of TED talks. The purpose of the auditory analysis of discourse intonation in these talks is to check the perceptual reliability of intonation cues in processing spoken discourse and the possibility of using intonation as an on-line perception strategy. The methods applied in the research are descriptive, auditory and comparative, supported by a certain amount of quantitative data. The results obtained in the auditory analysis show that intonation cues work most effectively at the level of intonation groups and utterances but are not self-sufficient in paragraph identification. The leading function of nuclear tones in public discourse organization turns out to be the information structuring of utterances, which is occasionally interrupted by the attitudinal function. Pitch declination has been found to be one of the most important cues to the integrity and cohesion of utterances, with an average length of three-four intonation groups. Multiple declinations in spoken utterances are infrequent and are triggered by particular types of syntactic relations in elongated sentences. The study contributes to the linguistic description of discourse intonation, and its results can be beneficial for language teaching practice and automated speech synthesis.
Yazma, diğer dil becerilerine kıyasla gelişimi okul dışı ortamda en az desteklenen beceri alanıdır. Dolayısıyla yazma becerisinin gelişiminde, okulda yapılan didaktik etkinliklerin niteliği önem kazanır. Bu bağlamda didaktik süreçlere yön veren öğretmenlerin özellikle metin yapısı ve çalışma sistematiğine ilişkin yeterlilikleri öğrencilere sağlanacak girdi niteliği açısından özellikle önemlidir. Bu doğrultuda bilişsel sistemin çalışma prensiplerinden hareketle metnin işleyişini modelleyen Bölütlenmiş Söylem Temsil Kuramı temelinde öğretmen adaylarının söylem sunum yapılarını incelemek ve öğretmen adaylarının yazma süreçlerine ilişkin tespit ve önerilerde bulunmak amaçlanmıştır. Bu amaçla içerik analizi yöntemi kullanılarak öğretmen adaylarının metinleri incelenmiş ve karşılaşılan metinleştirme problemlerinin nedenleri kuram temelinde ele alınarak çözüm önerileri getirilmiştir.
This paper explores the ways in which insights from the two influential formal pragmatic theories of discourse coherence, namely, Question Under Discussion (QUD) and Rhetorical Relation (RR) models, can be integrated to build a more inclusive theory of discourse coherence. It proposes a simple and concrete procedure to derive the hierarchical structure of discourse from the subquestion relations between implicit QUDs reconstructed using informational structural principles (Riester, 2019; Reyle & Riester, 2016) and contextual entailment relations (Roberts, 2012). It applies the procedure to discourse examples involving various RRs to determine subordinating and coordinating relations and to create a parsimonious feature-based inventory of RRs with formal definitions. The resulting theory shows that establishing the QUD-RR correspondence is possible, contrary to what has been claimed (Hunter & Abrusán, 2017; Onea, 2019; Riester, 2019).
The Spanish imperfecto may be used to update time in a narrative or a report. We take this phenomenon as a core property in order to account for a set of uses of the imperfective past tense-aspect form. We delimit these uses and sub-classify them according to their roles in the more abstract temporal structure. In order to do so, we apply the prominence-based account of temporal discourse structure by Becker & Egetenmeyer (2018). The findings of our analysis of the Spanish imperfecto are tripartite. First, we show that the typical narrative imperfect is only one instantiation of the updating imperfect and that there are also other interesting uses. Second, not all uses classified as cases of the narrative imperfecto in the research literature fall into our class of updating uses. Third, although there are unquestionable parallels with respect to the French updating imparfait, the assumption that the two forms have the same usage potential needs to be dismissed. We show that, within our more fine-grained categories, there are important differences between the two languages
A highly productive debate has arisen over the past two decades concerning the division of labor between semantics and pragmatics in building meaning (Potts 2005; Kennedy and McNally 2005; Sauerland 2012; Roberts 2012; Coppock and Beaver 2014; Gutzmann 2019 i.a.). In this article we illustrate the depth of integration of context-independent and context-dependent meaning through a close analysis of the exclusive operator (EO) just. Recent accounts of the many distinct guises of EO just have proposed a unified shared function: quantification over sets of alternatives (Horn 2000; Orenstein 2015; Wiegand/Windhearn 2017, 2021; Beltrama 2021). We identify here an entirely new surface manifestation of just in the StoryListening Corpus (a set of bereavement narratives elicited during the COVID-19 pandemic), which we term ‘ineffability just’ and argue it serves as a mixed expressive (McCready 2010; Gutzmann 2012). It encodes both descriptive content as a new flavor of exclusive operator (Beltrama 2021), and simultaneously expressive content (Potts 2005, 2007) signaling that the speaker is at a loss for words in the moment to describe an experience more completely because of their affective response to its profound nature.
This study is a corpus-based investigation of the use of the V-final (VF) order in Old English conjunct (or coordinate) clauses. The aim of the analysis is to determine which of the two hypotheses formulated in earlier studies of the subject finds more convincing data support in the available corpora of Old English. According to one interpretation, conjunct clauses are a subtype of main clauses, and the VF order is used in both groups to signal continuation in discourse, especially with punctual, dynamic and relatively heavy verbs. Under the other view, VF conjunct clauses are syntactically subordinate, with the coordinating conjunction blocking verb movement like a complementiser. The present study shows that while both hypotheses are descriptively adequate, the main mechanism responsible for the use of the VF order in conjunct clauses is syntactic priming, with the VF order activated by a trigger clause (usually subordinate) and spreading to the following conjunct clause(s), which often results in long chains of subsequent VF clauses.
Individual Differences in Anaphora Resolution: Language and cognitive effects explores anaphora resolution from different perspectives, and investigates various aspects of the phenomenon, as contributions include research protocols that combine old and new experimental methodologies as well as theoretical and empirical approaches. A central theme across volume contributions are the multiple linguistic and extralinguistic factors that constrain anaphora resolution, its processing and acquisition by a variety of populations (children and adults, monolinguals, bilinguals and second language learners) as well as the mechanisms underlying anaphora resolution. Anaphora resolution constitutes an ideal environment to test the interaction between domain-general cognitive systems and domain-specific linguistic sub-routines, since variability in referential preferences is not related to binding constraints (an integral part of syntax per se) but is closely tied to processing (functional constraints) modulated by the integration of discourse-filtered information.
The demographic difference among the population also affects the prison population. Some evidence suggests that prisoners aged 50 and over typically suffer from “accelerated” aging: a typical prisoner in their fifties has the physical health status of someone at least ten years older in the community, and this difference is due to health and /or lifestyle factors (e.g. prolonged drug use) which arise both before, and during imprisonment. Mental health can be influenced by feelings of isolation in the prisons. Compared to younger prisoners, older inmates have fewer regular visitors and fewer connections and interpersonal relationships.
This study examined how older adults cope with negative life events in prison conditions. Older inmates identified the most severe negative event they faced in the last year and described how they appraised and coped with that event. The findings provide a basis for preventive interventions that may help older adults address the most prevalent stressors of aging more effectively.
Method: A systematic review of research and policy papers, articles published on coping strategies among elderly inmates in correctional facilities, also effective program outcomes were conducted. The main symptoms of the problem were measured with a special checklist and questionnaires. The Brief-COPE assessment inventory was used to measure effective and ineffective ways to cope with stressful life events.
Results: A systematic approach in psychological work with elderly prisoners, also officers allows for the transition from a symptomatic to a personality-oriented level of psychological impact. The scale determined primary coping strategy with scores on three subscale: problem-focused; emotion-focused; and avoidant coping.
Conclusion: It is necessary to focus the attention of specialists on the advisability of using psycho-educational programs in a prison environment, providing information about aging dynamically. Such programs, used at the initial stages of work with patients, contribute to the creation of motivation for personal psychotherapy and significantly increase its effectiveness.
This paper is concerned with the form and interpretation of the colon in German; for example, Ada hat zwei Äpfel gekauft: Sie hat einen Boskop und einen Elstar gekauft (‘Ada has bought two apples: she has bought a Belle de Boskoop and an Elstar’). First, I argue against the syntax-based approach by Bredel (2008, 2011), according to which the colon yields a dislocation of either the left-handed colon construction or the right-handed colon extension. Specifically, the approach cannot account for the intuition that the colon identifies the colon construction as an announcement that is satisfied by the extension. Second, I argue in favor of a lexicon-based alternative approach according to which the colon is a general lexical marker for discourse-structural subordination, namely, it marks the colon construction as subordinating the extension. This approach has the following advantages: (i) It accounts for the observation that the colon is compatible with subordinating discourse relations (e. g., elaboration and explanation), but incompatible with coordinating ones (e. g., narration, parallel, contrast). (ii) Following Jasinskaja & Karagjosova (2021), subordinating discourse units are defined by their communicative goal being incomplete without the subordinate unit. This derives the announcement effect of the colon for free. (iii) The lexicon-based approach can be implemented in terms of standard compositional semantics. This facilitates a systematic analysis of examples where the colon breaks into the incremental process of structure building; for example, Ben hat gekauft: einen Boskop und einen Elstar ‘Ben has bought: a Belle de Boskoop and an Elstar’. Two overarching results are noteworthy: the analysis suggests that formal semantics can be applied fruitfully to graphematics. In turn, semantic-pragmatic research can profit from integrating graphematics. Specifically, to date, no general lexical marker for subordination has been found; the given analysis suggests that this lexical gap is filled by the colon.
Over the past four decades, discourse coherence has been studied from linguistic, psycholinguistic, computational, and applied perspectives. This volume identifies current issues and under-researched topics in the pragmatics of discourse coherence. Nine studies from various disciplines address the realization and signalling of coherence relations in various genres and languages, their acquisition and use by first- and second-language learners and university students, the relationship between coherence relations and genre-specific discourse structure, and extensions of the coherence paradigm to multimodal discourse and visual art. This collection will be of interest to researchers from linguistics, applied linguistics, psychology, communication, and multimodal semiotics.
In seminal work, Potts (2005) claimed that the behavior of “supplements”—appositive relative clauses (ARCs) and nominals—offers a powerful argument in favor of a multidimensional semantics, one in which certain expressions fail to interact scopally with various operators because their meaning is located in a new semantic dimension. Focusing on ARCs, with data from English, French, and German (Poschmann 2018), I explore an alternative to Potts’s bidimensional account in which (a) appositives may be syntactically attached with matrix scope, despite their appearance in embedded positions, as in McCawley 1981; (b) contra McCawley, they may also be syntactically attached within the scope of other operators, in which case they semantically interact with them; (c) they are semantically conjoined with the rest of the sentence, but (d) they give rise to nontrivial projection facts when they do not have matrix scope. In effect, the proposed analysis accounts for most of the complexity of these data by positing a more articulated syntax and pragmatics, while eschewing the use of a new dimension of meaning.
The book includes work presented at the 24th National Linguistics Conference held at Middle East Technical University, Ankara, on May 17-18, 2010.
Cet article présente le processus d’annotation en Relations de Discours (RD) de textes d’élèves du corpus RésolCo (Garcia-Debanc et al. 2017) produits selon une même consigne d’écriture. Nous procédons à une segmentation en Unités de Discours Élémentaires qui sont ensuite reliées entre elles par des RD lors de l’annotation. Le jeu de RD choisi est proche de celui de la Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (Asher & Lascarides 2003) qui offre une méthode opératoire de construction de représentations de discours cohérents. Elle est mise ici à l’épreuve pour la première fois sur des textes d’apprenants et étendue pour l’annotation de l’incohérence.
This paper analyzes the position of object and adverbial clitic pronouns in coordinated affirmative verb-first declaratives introduced by e(t) “and” in Old Occitan and early Old French, a context in which clitics are variably preverbal or postverbal. An empirical study reveals that this variation is principled and reflects semantico-discursive properties in the same way in these two related and grammatically similar medieval Gallo-Romance varieties. On a theoretical level, I posit that preverbal clitics occur when conjunction occurs at the TP level, and postverbal clitics occur when conjunction occurs at the CP level, and that the choice of clause structure (TP vs. CP) for second conjunct clauses depends on illocutionary force, which in turn depends on discourse coherence relations and the semantics of verba dicendi (verbs of utterance).
This paper analyzes the position of object and adverbial clitic pronouns in coordinated affirmative verb-first declaratives introduced by e(t) “and” in Old Occitan and early Old French, a context in which clitics are variably preverbal or postverbal. An empirical study reveals that this variation is principled and reflects semantico-discursive properties in the same way in these two related and grammatically similar medieval Gallo-Romance varieties. On a theoretical level, I posit that preverbal clitics occur when conjunction occurs at the TP level, and postverbal clitics occur when conjunction occurs at the CP level, and that the choice of clause structure (TP vs. CP) for second conjunct clauses depends on illocutionary force, which in turn depends on discourse coherence relations and the semantics of verba dicendi (verbs of utterance).
Much of linguistic typology is inherently categorical. In large-scale typological surveys, grammatical constructions, distinctions, and even variables are typically classified as present, absent, or embodying one of a set of specified options. This work is valuable for a multitude of purposes, and in many cases such categorization is sufficient. In others, we can advance our understanding further if we take a more nuanced approach, considering the extent to which a particular construction, distinction, or variable is installed in the grammar. An important tool for this approach is the examination of unscripted speech in context, complete with prosody. This point is illustrated here with Mohawk, an Iroquoian language indigenous to the North American Northeast. As will be seen, the two types of construction which might be identified as relative clauses are emergent, one less integrated into the grammar than the other. Examination of spontaneous speech indicates that the earliest stages of development are prosodic, as speakers shape their messages according to their communicative purposes at each moment.
abstraction:instance whole:part process:step object:attribute 8It is also anomalous in another way: the widely used pattern of presenting a problem and its solution does not occur in this text The Conditional Schema --- 6; This second use of the Conditional schema is unusual principally because the condition (clause 7) is expressed after the consequence (clause 6) This may make the consequence more prominent or make it seem less uncertain The J u s t i f y S c h e m a --- 9; - The writer has argued his case to a conclusion, and now wants to argue for this unpopular conclusion again To gain acceptance for this tactic, and perhaps to show that a second argument is beginning, he says "Let's be clear " This is an instance of the J u s t i f y schema, shown in Figure 2 - Here the satellite is attempting to make acceptable the act of exoressinq the nuclear conceptual span The Concessive Schema - - 10; - The writer again employs the concessive schema, this time to show that favoring the NFI is consistent with voting against having CCC endorse it In clause 10, the writer concedes that he personally favors the NFI The T h e s i s / A n t i t h e s i s Schema - - 1 1 ; 12 The writer states his position by contrasting two actions: CCC endorsing the NFI, which he does not approve, and CCC acting on matters of process, which he does approve The Mechanisms of Descriptive RST In the preceding example we have seen how rhetorical schemas can be used to describe text This section describes the three basic mechanisms of descriptive RST which have been exemplified above: Schemas Relation Definitions Schema Application Conventions
Cet article décrit une approche dynamique de l'interprétation du discours qui s'intéresse plus particulièrement au calcul de la structure spatio-temporelle des textes. Le cadre théorique choisi est la Théorie des Représentations Discursives Structurées, une extension de la DRT qui rend compte à la fois de la sémantique et de la pragmatique du discours. On montre que plusieurs composants sont nécessaires au processus d'interprétation. Ces composants modélisent des informations sur : la structure (rhétorique) des discours, la sémantique grammaticale, la sémantique lexicale, l'ontologie de l'espace-temps et la connaissance extra-linguistique sur le monde. Afin d'illustrer cette approche, des textes décrivant des trajectoires en français sont analysés et leurs représentations (dénommées SDRS, pour structures de représentation du discours segmentées, en anglais) sont construites.
This paper presents a formal account of how to determine the discourse relations between propositions introduced in a text, and the relations between the events they describe. The distinct natural interpretations of texts with similar syntax are explained in terms of defeasible rules. These characterise the effects of causal knowledge and knowledge of language use on interpretation. Patterns of defeasible entailment that are supported by the logic in which the theory is expressed are shown to underly temporal interpretation.
This paper outlines a number of problems with RST's elaboration relation, and discusses a new model of text structure that results from leaving this relation out of the set of relations. In this model, trees of interclausal/intersentential relations account for the local coherence of a text, while its global coherence is accounted for by a separate device: global focus. 1 Introduction Many theories of discourse propose that a coherent text is one whose clauses, sentences and text spans (or perhaps the propositions expressed by these text units) stand in particular relations to one another. The basic motivation in these theories stems from the observation that a text is more than a sequence of independent units: whether a particular unit makes sense in a given discourse depends not only on this unit by itself, but also on its relationship with the other units in the discourse. This claim has been spelled out in many dierent ways, but there are two requirements that any such theor...
In this paper, we offer a novel analysis of presuppositions, paying particular attention to the interaction between the knowledge resources that are required to interpret them. The analysis has two main features. First, we capture an analogy between presuppositions, anaphora and scope ambiguity (cf. van der Sandt, 1992), by utilising semantic underspecification (cf. Reyle, 1993). Second, resolving this underspecification requires reasoning about how the presupposition is rhetorically connected to the discourse context. This has several consequences. First, since pragmatic information plays a role in computing the rhetorical relation, it also constrains the interpretation of presuppositions. Our account therefore provides a formal framework for analysing problematic data, which require pragmatic reasoning. Second, binding presuppositions to the context via rhetorical links replaces accommodating them, in the sense of adding them to the context (cf. Lewis, 1979). The treatment...
this paper we explore a new theory of discourse structure that stresses the role of purpose and processing in discourse. In this theory, discourse structure is composed of three separate but interrelated components: the structure of the sequence of utterances (called the linguistic structure), a struclure of purposes (called the intentional structure), and the state of focus of attention (called the attentional state). The linguistic structure consists of segments of the discourse into which the utterances naturally aggregate. The intentional structure captures the discourse-relevant purposes, expressed in each of the linguistic segments as well as relationships among them. The attentional state is an abstraction of the focus of attention of the participants as the discourse unfolds. The attentional state, being dynamic, records the objects, properties, and relations that are salient at each point of the discourse. The distinction among these components is essential to provide an adequate explanation of such discourse phenomena as cue phrases, referring expressions, and interruptions. The theory of attention, intention, and aggregation of utterances is illustrated in the paper with a number of example discourses. Various properties of discourse are described, and explanations for the behavior of cue phrases, referring expressions, and interruptions are explored. This theory provides a framework for describing the processing of utterances in a discourse. Discourse processing requires recognizing how the utterances of the discourse aggregate into segments, recognizing the intentions expressed in the discourse and the relationships among intentions, and tracking the discourse through the operation of the mechanisms associated with attentional state. This processing descrip...
Lexicalized grammars1 such as TAG (Joshi, 1987; XTAG-Group, 1998) and CCG (Steedman, 1996) have been very successful in showing how clauselevel syntax and semantics project from the lexicon. What drives the current enterprise is the hypothesis that the same can be shown true, at some level, for discourse syntax and semantics. Here we demonstrate our initial effort to
— extend a lexicalized grammar (LTAG) to discourse;
— use the same compositional semantics on syntactic structure that is used in lexicalized grammars (Steedman, 1996; Stone and Doran, 1997; Stone and Webber, 1998; Joshi and Vijay-Shanker, 1999);
— extend to discourse connectives the idea that the meaning of a lexical element can involve an anaphoric link to the previous discourse;
— exploit similar inference mechanisms for defeasible aspects of both sentence-level and discourse semantics.
This book brings together linguistics and psycholinguistics. Text representation is considered a cognitive entity: a mental construct that plays a crucial role in both text production and text understanding. The focus is on referential and relational coherence and the role of linguistic characteristics as processing instructions from a text linguistic and discourse psychology point of view. Consequently, this book presents various research methodologies: linguistic analysis, text analysis, corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, argumentation analysis, and the experimental psycholinguistic study of text processing. The authors compare, test, and evaluate linguistic and processing theories of text representation. A state of the art volume in an emerging field of interest, located at the very heart of our communicative behavior: the study of text and text representation.
The coordinating conjunction ‘and’ is best regarded not as equivalent to logical conjunction but as an autonomous linguistic conjunction whose meaning is captured by the notion of ‘semantic command’.
Preface. Introduction. 1. From Events to Propositions: a Tour of Abstract Entities, Eventualities and the Nominals that Denote them. 2. A Crash Course in DRT. 3. Attitudes and Attitude Descriptions. 4. The Semantic Representation for Sentential Nominals. 5. Problems for the Semantics of Nominals. 6. Anaphora and Abstract Entities. 7. A Theory of Discourse Structure for an Analysis of Abstract Entity Anaphora. 8. Applying the Theory of Discourse Structure to the Anaphoric Phenomena. 9. Applications of the Theory of Discourse Structure to Concept Anaphora and VP Ellipsis. 10. Model Theory for Abstract Entities and its Philosophical Implications. Conclusion. Bibliography. Index.
Research in linguistics and computational linguistics has pointed out that discourse is not just a simple sequence of sentences, but rather a highly elaborate structure. This paper presents an overview of a theory called Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT), which attempts to analyse the formal structure of discourse from the combined perspectives of the formal, i.e., truth-based, semantics tradition in the philosophy of language and the discourse analysis tradition in linguistics and computational linguistics.
This paper addresses the issue of discourse structure and describes in detail a theory of discourse structure, the Linguistic Discourse Model. This work takes as its goal development of a set of formally defined robust notions and mechanisms which will eventually be able to assign every clause in a discourse a proper semantic representation. The LDM framework takes as its initial assumption that discourse structure can be represented as resulting from the recursive sequencing and embedding of discourse units of various types. The Model consists of a set of discourse rules which specify the constituents of possible discourse units, a set of recursive rules of discourse formation which specify how units may relate to one another, and a set of semantic interpretation rules which assign a semantic and pragmatic interpretation to each clause and to the discourse as a whole. In this paper the LDM framework is sketched. Special attention is paid to describing the discourse constituent unit or dcu — the elementary unit of discourse construction in this Model — to describing recursive discourse formation in terms of dcu structures and to describing the left to right, clause by clause construction of a Discourse Parse Tree which captures structural and semantic relations among a discourse's among constituent units. The paper conludes with an consludes with an analysis of a misunderstanding sequence from a Service Encounter in terms of the LDM framework.
Thesis (M.A.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1998. Includes bibliographical references.
A formal model of the structure of discourse The semantics of ‘and’ in discourse Technical Report ILCLI-00-LIC-9, ILCLI, University of the Basque Country Main structure and side structure in discourse Multiple discourse connectives in a lexicalized grammar for discourse
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Temporal interpretation, discourse relations, and commonsense entailment Rhetorical structure theory: a theory of text organization. Reprint Series ISI/RS- 87-1190
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N. Asher, L. Vieu/Lingua 115 (2005) 591–610 609 rLascarides, A., Asher, N., 1993. Temporal interpretation, discourse relations, and commonsense entailment. Linguistics and Philosophy 165, 437–493. Mann, W., Thompson, S., 1987. Rhetorical structure theory: a theory of text organization. Reprint Series ISI/RS- 87-1190, Information Sciences Institute, Marina del Rey, CA
The semantics of 'and' in discourse Main structure and side structure in discourse
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Txurruka, I.G., 2000. The semantics of 'and' in discourse. Technical Report ILCLI-00-LIC-9, ILCLI, University
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van Kuppevelt, J., 1995. Main structure and side structure in discourse. Linguistics 33, 809–833
The semantics of ‘and’ in discourse
- I G Txurruka