Constraints in Discourse
1st Edition
Published on 10. April 2008
VII, 292 pages
978-90-272-9143-1 (ISBN)
Description
It is a commonplace to say that the meaning of text is more than the conjunction of the meaning of its constituents. But what are the rules governing its interpretation, and what are the constraints that define well-formed discourse? Answers to these questions can be given from various perspectives. In this edited volume, leading scientists in the field investigate these questions from structural, cognitive, and computational perspectives. The last decades have seen the development of numerous formal frameworks in which the structure of discourse can be analysed, the most important of them being the Linguistic Discourse Model, Rhetorical Structure Theory and Segmented Discourse Representation Theory. This volume contains an introduction to these frameworks and the fundamental topics in research about discourse constraints. Thus it should be accessible to specialists in the field as well as advanced graduate students and researchers from neighbouring areas. The volume is of interest to discourse linguists, psycholinguists, cognitive scientists, and computational linguists.
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Anton Benz | Peter Kuehnlein
Constraints in Discourse
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04/2008
John Benjamins Publishing Co
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Content
- 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
- References
- Part II. Comparing Frameworks
- Strong generative capacity of rst, sdrt and discourse dependency dagss
- 1. Introduction
- 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
- References
- 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
- References
- Underspecified discourse representation*
- 1. Introduction
- 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
- References
- Part III. The Cognitive Perspective
- Dependency precedes independence
- 1. Introduction
- 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
- Acknowledgements
- References
- 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
- References
- Part IV. Language Specific Phenomena
- Complex anaphors in discourse1
- 1. Overview
- 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
- References
- The discourse functions of the present perfect
- 1. Introduction
- 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
- References
- German right dislocation and afterthought in discourse
- 1. Introduction
- 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
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Relevant syntactic properties
- 3. Assigning communicative weight
- 4. A discourse structural account
- 5. HPSG analysis
- 6. Conclusion
- References
- German Vorfeld-filling as constraint -interaction*
- 1. Introduction
- 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
- 5. Conclusions
- References
- Index
- The Pragmatics & Beyond New Series
