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Meta-informative Centering in Utterances - Between Semantics and Pragmatics
Abstract
The notion of information has nowadays become crucial both in our daily life and in many branches of science and technology. In language studies, this notion was used as a technical term for the first time about at least fifty years ago. It is argued, however, that "Old" and "New", used traditionally for characterising information, refer in fact to the meta-informative status of communicated chunks of information. They provide information about other information. Since subjects and objects, as attention-driven phrases, are also related to aboutness, the presented Meta-Informative Centering (MIC) framework includes predication theory. By applying the MIC theory to their analyses of English, German, French, Polish, Russian, Greek, Latin, and Japanese, the authors provide comprehensive explanations of the most puzzling aspects of the pragmatic use of basic universal linguistic categories. It seems clear now that canonical syntactic patterns, their permutations, and diverse transformations do indeed reflect very truly the meta-informative encapsulation of utterances. As a consequence, this book presents new and coherent theoretical solutions as well as their very efficient applications.
... Yet, since these terms are no longer common nowadays, I decided to refer directly to the terms NEW, GIVEN; Topic, Comment. Also for the sake of wide readership, I decided not to follow an even better fitting framework based on Center of Attention and Predication introduced by Helene and Andre Włodarczyk and presented, for instance, in André Włodarczyk and HélèneWłodarczyk (2008Włodarczyk ( , 2013. ...
Traditional models of language are based on the Aristotelian model of a category, and assume that linguistic symbols are correlated with senses defined by sets of necessary features (properties and relations), which allow one to identify category members. A linguistic pattern (syntax), in turn, defines the order in which the senses related to individual symbols combine to convey the sense of the linguistic constructions they form. Determining the sense of the combination of linguistic items typically involves taking the cross-section of the features indicated by each category. As we all know, neither the models of language based on Aristotle’s model of a category, nor those based on modern successors of Aristotle’s category – a prototype model of a category, or a fuzzy set model of a category – let us reflect natural language categorization, or compositionality sufficiently well. Therefore, in this paper, we propose another, more adequate model of linguistic sense categorization and compositionality.
A modern cognitive agent should be capable of handling linguistic questions about its beliefs concerning states of the external world. Properly generated linguistic responses should represent empirically-verified bits of agent’s knowledge and inferred beliefs guided by current social stance. The former is captured in a hierarchical model of categorization. The latter represents proposed extension that aside from its knowledge, the responding agent’s response-generation mechanism is guided by two social meta-dimensions, that is, by its attitude towards a content of the enquiry (or towards the interacting agent, in general) and its willingness to elaborate on an answer by providing additional insights or by strengthening its point. In addition, we highlight how the introduced stances may affect the structure and content of the response.
Użycie zaimków osobowych w j. polskim (na tle j. rosyjskiego i w kontraście z francuskim)
tak w języku fr. jak i w j. polskim zaimki osobowe posiadają formy ortotoniczne i enklityczne. Jednakże użycie tych fom w obu tych językach jest różne, a gramatyki nie uwzględniają tego faktu przy pomocy jasnych reguł. W rodzinie języków słowiańskich j. polski znacznie różni sie od j. rosyjskiego ; bowiem wytworzyły się w nim nowe formy enklityczne zaimka w 3-ej osobie (go i mu), podczas gdy w j. rosyjskim formy enklityczne odziedziczone z prasłowiańszczyzny zanikły w j. współczesnym. Jednakże na nowszym etapie rozwoju j. polskiego jesteśmy świadkami nieprawidłowego używania form ortotonicznych i enklitycznych zaimka w 1-ej osobie (mi zamiast mnie). By wyjaśnić użycie tych dwóch rodzajów form przedstawianych w gramatykach jako warianty pozycyjne, opieram się na Meta-informacyjnej teorii centrów Uwagi (MIc – Meta-Informative centering theory), w której wypowiedzi podstawowe odróźniane są od rozszerzonych na podstawie ich metainformacyjnego statusu (datum/ novum). Form ortotonicznych używa się w wypowiedziach rozszerzonych, to znaczy w ekspresywnych wypowiedziach z punktu widzenia kontrastu między informacjami „ starą” (datum) a „ nową” (novum). Wreszcie kontrast ten pozwala na zdefiniowanie różnicy między topikiem a fokusem. W ramach teorii MIc stało się możliwe) systematyczne zestawienie użyć polskich form enklitycznych (pośród których należy odróżniać zerowe formy mianownika od elipsy podmiotu istniejącej w j. rosyjskim) z użyciami form enklitycznych w językach francuskim oraz rosyjskim, uwzględniając przy tym zagadnienie miejsca podmiotu zaimkowego w szyku wyrazów : przed lub po czasowniku. ogólnie rzecz biorąc używanie zaimków świadczy o tym, że pragmatyczne treści znajdują również bezpośrednie wykładniki zarówno w morfologii jak i składni.
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...
La validation informative des énoncés et la quantification linguistique
- André Włodarczyk
Włodarczyk, André. 1999. La validation informative des énoncés et la quantification linguistique. Études cognitives/Studia kognitywne 3: 121-133. Warszawa: SOW, PAN.