The Category ‘Event’ in Natural Discourse and Logic

Author(s):  
Paul J. Hopper
Keyword(s):  
2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aletta G. Dorst ◽  
W.Gudrun Reijnierse ◽  
Gemma Venhuizen

The manual annotation of large corpora is time-consuming and brings about issues of consistency. This paper aims to demonstrate how general rules for determining basic meanings can be formulated in large-scale projects involving multiple analysts applying MIP(VU) to authentic data. Three sets of problematic lexical units — chemical processes, colours, and sharp objects — are discussed in relation to the question of how the basic meaning of a lexical unit can be determined when human and non-human senses compete as candidates for the basic meaning; these analyses can therefore be considered a detailed case study of problems encountered during step 3.b. of MIP(VU). The analyses show how these problematic cases were tackled in a large corpus clean-up project in order to streamline the annotations and ensure a greater consistency of the corpus. In addition, this paper will point out how the formulation of general identification rules and guidelines could provide a first step towards the automatic detection of linguistic metaphors in natural discourse.


2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-391
Author(s):  
Natalia Pimenova

AbstractThe author investigates the use of proto-article with locative nouns in the Gothic Bible and shows that the choice in Gothic among the anaphoric pronoun sa (proto-article) and Ø is pragmatically/functionally motivated. The locative nouns are mostly inherently definite and unmarked because of being elements of the frame in natural discourse. However, the anaphoric pronoun is used with unexpected locative objects or locative objects in surprising situations. It also marks the change NomLoc as ground > NomLoc as figure and serves as a highlighting device and as an attention-getter. When the topic-continuity is violated, the anaphoric pronoun is used as an invitation addressed to the hearer to mobilize previous knowledge in order to retrieve the referent. The investigation sheds light on the process of language change that led to the shift from demonstrative to article and the overall spread of anaphoric article.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Nobuko Kato

<p>In recent years, the communicative approach has prevailed in second language teaching, such that model dialogues are presented in textbooks for language learners. However, there has been little research on the extent to which such exemplars reflect authentic discourse in Japanese. This thesis, therefore, explores the speech acts of Japanese language native speakers (NSs), non-native speakers who are learning Japanese (NNSs), and discourse model examples presented in Japanese language textbooks (TXs) in order to investigate their similarities and differences, and thereby enhance the contents of textbooks. In particular, this thesis focuses on the discourse structure and expressions. The study takes a quantitative approach to the data analysis, using two different scenarios in settings of apology and requests. NSs pairs and NNSs pairs were requested to perform role-plays of two different scenarios in Japanese. The conversational data of the role-plays were transcribed, and the model exemplars of apology and request presented in the selected Japanese language textbooks were also analysed. The analysis employs the framework of cross-cultural speech act realisation patterns (CCSARP) of Blum-Kulka et al. (1989) to categorise utterances based on the intentions of the speakers into two parts, namely: Head Acts (HAs) and Supportive Moves (SMs). Once the data were classified by the CCSARP, individual HAs and SMs were sorted according to Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory (1987), which divides politeness strategies into four types: bald on record, positive politeness, negative politeness, and off record. By adopting both CCSARP and politeness theory, the characteristics of the discourse strategies and expressions of the three groups analysed in this thesis can be grasped. The analysis produces several new findings by identifying various ways in which the model dialogues in Japanese language textbooks fail to reflect the natural discourse of Japanese native speakers. The thesis presents suggestions for improvement for the benefit of textbook authors in future.</p>


Synthese ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 186 (1) ◽  
pp. 411-439
Author(s):  
Aránzazu San Ginés
Keyword(s):  

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 209
Author(s):  
Bei Yang

<p>As an important yet intricate linguistic feature in English language, synonymy poses a great challenge for second language learners. Using the 100 million-word British National Corpus (BNC) as data and the software Sketch Engine (SkE) as an analyzing tool, this article compares the usage of <em>learn</em> and <em>acquire </em>used in natural discourse by conducting the analysis of concordance, collocation, word sketches and sketch difference. The results show that different functions of SkE can make different contributions to the discrimination of <em>learn</em> and <em>acquire</em>. Pedagogical implications are discussed when the results are introduced into the classroom.</p>


2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 692-704 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jérôme Prado ◽  
Nicola Spotorno ◽  
Eric Koun ◽  
Emily Hewitt ◽  
Jean-Baptiste Van der Henst ◽  
...  

Logical connectives (e.g., or, if, and not) are central to everyday conversation, and the inferences they generate are made with little effort in pragmatically sound situations. In contrast, the neural substrates of logical inference-making have been studied exclusively in abstract tasks where pragmatic concerns are minimal. Here, we used fMRI in an innovative design that employed narratives to investigate the interaction between logical reasoning and pragmatic processing in natural discourse. Each narrative contained three premises followed by a statement. In Fully-deductive stories, the statement confirmed a conclusion that followed from two steps of disjunction–elimination (e.g., Xavier considers Thursday, Friday, or Saturday for inviting his girlfriend out; he removes Thursday before he rejects Saturday and declares “I will invite her out for Friday”). In Implicated-premise stories, an otherwise identical narrative included three premises that twice removed a single option from consideration (i.e., Xavier rejects Thursday for two different reasons). The conclusion therefore necessarily prompts an implication (i.e., Xavier must have removed Saturday from consideration as well). We report two main findings. First, conclusions of Implicated-premise stories are associated with more activity than conclusions of Fully-deductive stories in a bilateral frontoparietal system, suggesting that these regions play a role in inferring an implicated premise. Second, brain connectivity between these regions increases with pragmatic abilities when reading conclusions in Implicated-premise stories. These findings suggest that pragmatic processing interacts with logical inference-making when understanding arguments in narrative discourse.


2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (10) ◽  
pp. 1568-1583 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanna Egidi ◽  
Alfonso Caramazza

This research studies the neural systems underlying two integration processes that take place during natural discourse comprehension: consistency evaluation and passive comprehension. Evaluation was operationalized with a consistency judgment task and passive comprehension with a passive listening task. Using fMRI, the experiment examined the integration of incoming sentences with more recent, local context and with more distal, global context in these two tasks. The stimuli were stories in which we manipulated the consistency of the endings with the local context and the relevance of the global context for the integration of the endings. A whole-brain analysis revealed several differences between the two tasks. Two networks previously associated with semantic processing and attention orienting showed more activation during the judgment than the passive listening task. A network previously associated with episodic memory retrieval and construction of mental scenes showed greater activity when global context was relevant, but only during the judgment task. This suggests that evaluation, more than passive listening, triggers the reinstantiation of global context and the construction of a rich mental model for the story. Finally, a network previously linked to fluent updating of a knowledge base showed greater activity for locally consistent endings than inconsistent ones, but only during passive listening, suggesting a mode of comprehension that relies on a local scope approach to language processing. Taken together, these results show that consistency evaluation and passive comprehension weigh differently on distal and local information and are implemented, in part, by different brain networks.


Gesture ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan D. Duncan

Linguistic analyses of Mandarin Chinese and English have detailed the differences between the two languages in terms of the devices each makes available for expressing distinctions in the temporal contouring of events — verb aspect and Aktionsart. In this study, adult native speakers of each language were shown a cartoon, a movie, or a series of short action sequences and then videotaped talking about what they had seen. Comparisons revealed systematic within-language covariation of choice of aspect and/or Aktionsart in speech with features of co-occurring iconic gestures. In both languages, the gestures that speakers produced in imperfective aspect-marked speech contexts were more likely to take longer to produce and were more complex than those in perfective aspect speech contexts. Further, imperfective-progressive aspect-marked spoken utterances regularly accompanied iconic gestures in which the speaker’s hands engaged in some kind of temporally-extended, repeating or‘agitated’ movements. Gestures sometimes incorporated this type of motion even when there was nothing corresponding to it in the visual stimulus; for example, when speakers described events of stasis. These facts suggest that such gestural agitation may derive from an abstract level of representation, perhaps linked to aspectual view itself. No significant between-language differences in aspect- or Aktionsart-related gesturing were observed. We conclude that gestural representations of witnessed events, when performed in conjunction with speech, are not simply derived from visual images, stored as perceived in the stimulus, and transposed as faithfully as possible to the hands and body of the speaker (cf. Hadar & Butterworth, 1997). Rather, such gestures are part of a linguistic-conceptual representation (McNeill & Duncan, 2000) in which verb aspect has a role. We further conclude that the noted differences between the systems for marking aspectual distinctions in spoken Mandarin and English are at a level of patterning that has little or no influence on speech-co-occurring imagistic thinking.


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