Constraints in discourse / edited by Anton Benz, Peter Kuhnlein.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Benz, Anton, 1965-

Kühnlein, Peter.

Series:

Pragmatics & beyond ; new ser., v. 172.

Pragmatics & beyond, 0922-842X ; new ser., v. 172

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Constraints (Linguistics).

Discourse analysis.

Physical Description:

vi, 292 p. : ill.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; Philadelphia : John Benjamins Publishing Company, c2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The filling of the vorfeld (= clause-initial position in German declarative clauses) depends on information structural rather than strictly syntactic constraints. Referential phrases of one of the following three types are eligible for the vorfeld: scene-setting elements, contrastive elements and topics. The main point of this paper is to show that these types seem to be ranked: scene-setting elements are the most likely ones to appear in the vorfeld, followed by contrastive elements and finally by topics. Note that topics are thus not the preferred vorfeld-fillers even in German (see Speyer 2007; Frey 2004a). The difference in likelihood to be in the vorfeld can be modelled by an Optimality Theoretic account that is sketched out in this paper.

Contents:

Constraints in Discourse

Editorial page

Title page

LCC data

Table of contents

Acknowledgements

Constraints in discourse

An introduction

1. General remarks

2. The cognitive status of rhetorical relations

3. Topics in the analysis of discourse constraints

4. The ldm

5. Rhetorical Structure Theory

Graphical convention

6. SRDT

7. About the papers

Bibliography

Part I. The Right Frontier

Troubles on the right frontier

1. Overview

2 .An introduction to the Right Frontier Constraint and its formalisation

3. An Application of the Right Frontier to Ellipsis

4. RFC and Definites

5. Conclusions

References

The moving right frontier

1. Introduction

2. Chameleon relations in monologic discourse

2.1 Topic Insertion?

2.2 Underspecification?

3. Content relations and interrogatives

3.1 Narrationq versus Elaborationq

3.2 A solution using a question-answer topic

4. More general and methodological issues

5. Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Part II. Comparing Frameworks

Strong generative capacity of rst, sdrt and discourse dependency dagss

2. RST

2.1 Graphical representations and predicate-argument relations

2.2 Nucleus/Satellite distinction

3. SDRD

3.1 Box representations and graphs for SDRSs

3.2 Topic nodes

3.3 Right Frontier Constraint

3.4 Subordinating conjunctions and linear order

3.5 Summary on rst and sdrt, discourses in the canonical order

4. Discourse dependency dags

5. Strong generative capacity

5.1 rst trees and their equivalents in the other representations

5.2 Dependency dags without any equivalent rst tree

5.2.1 Non tree shaped dags without any equivalent rst tree

6. Summary and conclusion

Rhetorical distance revisited - A parameterized approach*.

1. Introduction

2. Background

2.1 Theories of discourse-structural accessibility

2.2 RST in a nutshell

3. A parameterized framework for rhetorical distance

3.1 Trees and paths

3.2 Parameters

4. Reconstruction of the theories within the framework

4.1 Stack Model (GS, Grosz and Sidner 1986)

4.2 Veins Theory (VT, Cristea et al. 1998)

4.3 Rhetorical distance approach (KK, Kibrik and Krasavina 2005)

4.4 Theoretical issues: summary

5. Comparative empirical evaluation

5.1 Preliminaries

5.2 Rhetorical distance and pronominalization

5.3 Effects of referential distance

5.4 Empirical evaluation: summary and related work

6. Conclusion

Underspecified discourse representation*

2. Discourse structure

3. Representing discourse structure

3.1 Underspecified and fully specified discourse representations

3.2 Formal foundations of discourse representations

3.2.1 Arranging discourse relations in CLLS

3.2.2 Specifying discourse relations in an extension of CLLS

4. Constructing and resolving discourse constraints

4.1 The syntax-discourse interface

4.2 An extended example

5. Treeness of discourse structures

5.1 Crossed dependencies

5.2 Non-continuous discourse constituents

5.3 N-ary RST trees

6. Related work

7. Conclusion

Part III. The Cognitive Perspective

Dependency precedes independence

2. The interpretation of definite DPs

3. The processing of definite DPs

3.1 Previous processing evidence

3.2 Previous ERP findings

4. The present study

4.1 Norming study

4.2 ERP study2

4.2.1 Method

4.2.2 Results: Behavioral data

4.2.3 Results: ERP data

5. Discussion

Accessing discourse referents introduced in negated phrases

1. Introduction.

2. Previous Study: Double Negation

3. Current Study: Bathroom Sentences

3.1 Experiment 1

3.1.1 Method

3.1.2 Results and Discussion

4 Experiment 2

4.1 Method

4.2 Results and Discussion

5. General Discussion

6. Conclusions

Part IV. Language Specific Phenomena

Complex anaphors in discourse1

2. Types of and constraints on complexation processes

2.1 What is 'abstractness'?

2.2 Types of anaphoric complexation

2.2.1 Maintenance by neutral anaphors

2.2.2 Maintenance by lexical anaphors

2.2.3 Ontology-changing anaphors

2.3 Constraints on ontology changing complexation

3. The resolution of complex anaphors

3.1 Disambiguation by ontological features

3.2 Disambiguation by lexical features

3.3 Disambiguation by conceptual knowledge

4. Summary and outlook

The discourse functions of the present perfect

2. Background: the semantics of the English perfect

3. Inference patterns needed to find the value of X in English

4. Discourse Functions of the English Present Perfect

Type (i) - (iia,b)

Type (i)

Type (ii-a)

Type (ii-b): Topic Negotiation QAP

Type (iii)

5. The Japanese perfect

5.1 Summary of the Japanese -te-i-ru data

5.2 The discourse functions of Japanese -te-i-

5.3 Differences between the Japanese and English samples

6. Summary

German right dislocation and afterthought in discourse

2. Right dislocation vs. afterthought: formal differences

3. The discourse relation Afterthought

4. The discourse function of right dislocation

4.1 To the left and to the right: left dislocation, right dislocation and hanging topic

4.2 Right dislocation and the 'foreground' vs. 'background' distinction

5. Summary and conclusions

References.

A discourse-relational approach to continuation

2. Relevant syntactic properties

3. Assigning communicative weight

4. A discourse structural account

5. HPSG analysis

German Vorfeld-filling as constraint -interaction*

2. Expectations about vorfeld-filling

2.1 Subject as unmarked vorfeld filler

2.2 English Topicalization: poset-elements

2.3 Topic or Theme

3. Types of vorfeld-fillers in German

3.1 Topic

3.2 Contrast

3.3 Scene-Setting

3.4 Problems for the subsequent analysis

4. The ranking of vorfeld-fillers

Index

The Pragmatics &amp

Beyond New Series.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612152108

9781282152106

1282152106

9789027291431

9027291438

OCLC:

648354233