Anaphora and Discourse Structure

We argue in this paper that many common adverbial phrases generally taken to signal a discourse relation between syntactically connected units within discourse structure, instead work anaphorically to contribute relational meaning, with only indirect dependence on discourse structure. This allows a simpler discourse structure to provide scaffolding for compositional semantics, and reveals multiple ways in which the relational meaning conveyed by adverbial connectives can interact with that associated with discourse structure. We conclude by sketching out a lexicalised grammar for discourse that facilitates discourse interpretation as a product of compositional rules, anaphor resolution and inference.Comment: 45 pages, 17 figures. Revised resubmission to Computational Linguistic

Exploring the borderline between procedural encoding and pragmatic inference

Exploring the borderline between \ud procedural encoding and pragmatic \ud inference \ud Sperber & Wilson (1995) argue for a view of verbal communication as consisting of two in- \ud teracting processes: linguistic coding-decoding process and pragmatic inference processes. \ud This approach to verbal communication raises the question of where the borderline between \ud coding and inference should be drawn. Wilson & Sperber (1993) discussed this question and \ud pointed out that this borderline is characterized by two ways in which linguistic meaning \ud can interact with pragmatic inferences in intimate ways: one is by linguistically encoding \ud processing procedures, that is, inference patterns, and the other is by using linguistic forms \ud as catalysts for pragmatic inference processes (‘Linguistically communicated but not lin- \ud guistically encoded meaning’ in Wilson & Sperber’s terms). The phenomenon of procedural \ud encoding has received a lot of attention since Blakemore’s (1987) foundational work. Inves- \ud tigation of the phenomenon of linguistically communicated but not linguistically encoded \ud meaning has been largely confined to the study of coordination (for discussion, see Carston \ud 1993; Blakemore & Carston 2005, and Blass 1990 on a different aspect of conjunction). In this \ud paper I want to focus on some other types of linguistically communicated but not encoded \ud meanings, following leads by Gutt (2000) and Unger (2006). My hope is that this study will \ud not only enhance our view of the relation between pragmatics and semantics, but also our \ud understanding of the nature of procedural encoding. \ud Gutt discusses communicative clues, that is, properties of the stimulus (utterance) that the \ud communicator uses with the intent to guide the audience to the intended meaning. Those \ud properties may include the semantic contents of verbal expressions as well as non-linguistic \ud properties, but Gutt discusses quite a few linguistic communicative clues for unencoded \ud meaning. Unger (2006) explains the often noticed relation between tense-aspect-mood indi- \ud cators to indicate foreground events in narratives in similar terms. Since according to Unger \ud (2006) the notion of foreground and background in discourse cannot be satisfactorily de- \ud fined, this notion cannot be encoded and a purely pragmatic analysis is called for. Neverthe- \ud 1\ud less, since linguistic properties are involved in indicating foreground and background, these \ud discourse effects are linguistically communicated, although not linguistically encoded. \ud A possible objection to this analysis might be that the use of communicative clues such as us- \ud ing certain aspect forms not for their semantic value but for indicating fore- or background- \ud ing in discourse appear to be conventionalized. Would this not indicate that linguistic encod- \ud ing (presumably procedural encoding) is at work? Moreno (2007) points out that the cogni- \ud tive principle of relevance predicts that when an individual processes it the same properties \ud of stimuli in similar contexts repeatedly, the inferential steps—contextual assumptions, ad- \ud hoc concept constructions, implications—will become ever more easily accessible, a process \ud that can lead to the establishment of pragmatic routines. Pragmatic routines are still infer- \ud ential processes, they do not amount to encoded processing procedures. It is likely that the \ud conventionalization of some linguistic communicative clues for not linguistically encoded \ud meaning can be accounted for as pragmatic routines. This raises questions about the na- \ud ture of pragmatic routines and of encoded procedures. These questions will be discussed \ud recognizing that a deeper understanding of procedural encoding results not only from con- \ud trasting this phenomenon from conceptual encoding, but also with pragmatic routines, and \ud linguistically communicated but not encoded meaning in general. \ud If these observations are right, then it appears that the impact of inferential theories of prag- \ud matics on linguistics reaches beyond the recognition of the phenomenon of procedural en- \ud coding: besides linguistic encoding and pragmatic inference, the association of linguistic \ud expressions with pragmatic routines is an important factor in the use of language for com- \ud munication. \ud References \ud Blakemore, Diane. 1987. Semantic Constraints on Relevance. Oxford: Blackwell. \ud Blakemore, Diane & Robyn Carston. 2005. The pragmatics of sentential coordination with \ud and. Lingua, 115:569–589. \ud Blass, Regina. 1990. Relevance Relations in Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. \ud Carston, Robyn. 1993. Conjunction, explanation, and relevance. Lingua, 90:27–48. \ud Gutt, Ernst-August. 2000. Textual properties, communicative clues, and the translator. In \ud P. Navarro Errasti, R. Lorés Sanz, S. Murillo Ornat & C. Buesa Gómez (eds.) Transcultural \ud communication: pragmalinguistic aspects, pp. 151–60. Zaragoza: ANUBAR. \ud Moreno, Rosa E. Vega. 2007. Creativity and Convention. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. \ud Sperber, Dan & Deirdre Wilson. 1995. Relevance. Oxford: Blackwell, 2 edn. First edition 1986. \ud Unger, Christoph. 2006. Genre, Relevance and Global Coherence. Basingstoke: Palgrave. \ud Wilson, D. & D. Sperber. 1993. Linguistic form and relevance. Lingua, 90(1/2):1–25. \ud

Structural and interactional aspects of adverbial sentences in English mother-child interactions:an analysis of two dense corpora

We analysed both structural and functional aspects of sentences containing the four adverbials “after”, “before”, “because”, and “if” in two dense corpora of parent-child interactions from two British English-acquiring children (2;00–4;07). In comparing mothers’ and children's usage we separate out the effects of frequency, cognitive complexity and pragmatics in explaining the course of acquisition of adverbial sentences. We also compare these usage patterns to stimuli used in a range of experimental studies and show how differences may account for some of the difficulties that children have shown in experiments. In addition, we report descriptive data on various aspects of adverbial sentences that have not yet been studied as a resource for future investigations

Anaphora and Discourse Semantics

We argue in this paper that many common adverbial phrases generally taken to be discourse connectives signalling discourse relations between adjacent discourse units are instead anaphors. We do this by (i) demonstrating their behavioral similarity with more common anaphors (pronouns and definite NPs); (ii) presenting a general framework for understanding anaphora into which they nicely fit; (iii) showing the interpretational benefits of understanding discourse adverbials as anaphors; and (iv) sketching out a lexicalised grammar that facilitates discourse interpretation as a product of compositional rules, anaphor resolution and inference

A Corpus-Based Study of Contrastive/Concessive Linking Adverbials in Spoken English of Chinese EFL Learners

This paper reports a corpus-based study on the usage patterns of contrastive/concessive linking adverbials in Chinese EFL learners’ speech. The results suggest that: a) compared with English native speakers, the Chinese learners tend to significantly underuse contrastive/concessive adverbials in their speech; b) while both the learners and the native speakers rely heavily on a limited set of contrastive/concessive adverbials in their speech, the learners are found to overuse certain adverbials and underuse others; c) the learners prefer to use contrastive/concessive linking adverbials in initial position of a sentence. The factors underlying what is found in learners’ use of contrastive/concessive adverbials are multifold, such as mother tongue influence, teaching instructions, and semantic misuse. Pedagogical implications of the present study are drawn and research suggestions are presented at the end of the paper

An empirical approach to the signalling of enumerative structures

International audienceThis paper presents a data-intensive study of the signalling of enumerative structures. In contrast with semasiological studies of specific markers, the approach described here takes as its starting point annotated structures and cues, seeking to identify recurrent patterns in these data. To do so, it exploits a new resource for French, the ANNODIS resource, a large corpus of written texts manually annotated at discourse level. The data analysed - first quantitatively with large populations, then qualitatively on selected examples - allows the authors to illustrate how cues involved in signalling text organisation combine in complex ways metadiscourse and propositional content, or the textual and ideational metafunctions.Nous présentons dans cet article une analyse extensive sur corpus de la signalisation des structures énumératives. Notre étude diverge par rapport aux travaux antérieurs principalement caractérisés par une approche sémasiologique de marqueurs spécifiques, car elle se fonde sur une annotation manuelle systématique des structures et des indices. C'est à partir de ces données annotées que nous cherchons des motifs récurrents de signalisation. Nous exploitons une ressource récemment créée, la ressource ANNODIS, corpus de français écrit enrichi d'annotations discursives. Les données analysées - de manière quantitative d'abord pour embrasser des effectifs importants, puis de manière qualitative sur une sélection d'exemples - nous permettent de montrer que les indices qui contribuent à l'organisation textuelle peuvent associer métadiscours et contenu propositionnel, en d'autres termes les fonctions textuelle et idéationnelle

Locating adverbials in discourse

International audienceThis article analyses Locating Adverbials (LAs) such as 'un peu plus tard', 'ce matin', 'deux kilomètres plus loin' (a little later, this morning, two kilometers further) when they are dislocated to the left of the sentence (IP Adjuncts cases). Although not discourse connectives, in such a position, they seem to play an important part in structuring discourse. It is this contribution of LAs to discourse that we tackle, providing a descriptive analysis and a formal account grounded on Segmented Discourse Representation Theory. In particular, we deal with the frame introducer role of the LAs and with spatio-temporal interpretations of these markers occurring in trajectory descriptions