Coherence in Thai Students’ Essays: An Analysis using Centering Theory

The contributions of centering theory (CT) have been widely accepted in linguistics, but there has not yet been much published research applying the theory to first language (L1) interference. This study applies CT to investigate L1 interference in discourse coherence in essays written in English by Thai university students. A corpus compiled from 50 essays is analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Statistical results suggest that CT is more reliable than human raters in measuring coherence, since the data shows no influence of subjective measurement. Further analysis by CT shows that word repetition is the most common form of Cb (focus of attention) in the continuation states (56.6%), and pronouns are the second most frequent form (39.6%). These findings conflict with the predictions of CT, which assert that pronouns are usually preferred over noun phrases. Results of qualitative analysis pointed out that this discrepancy is caused by L1 interference in writing, since word repetition is commonly used in Thai discourse. The Thai students’ English-language writing abilities were at pre-intermediate levels of competence. However, this aspect is not considered negative L1 interference since the use of repetition in the students’ compositions helped the raters follow the ideas in the writing. The results also show that the students were not aware of issues of cohesion and were not confident in using pronouns. The L1 interference in discourse coherence, specifically word repetition, was recognized by Thai raters but not by native English-speaking (NES) raters.

Third person pronoun forms in Estonian in the light of centering theory

This paper explains the distinctions between the Estonian 3rd person overt pronoun and the zero person marker in spoken narratives. As both forms express the most salient entities in discourse, the saliency criterion cannot distinguish them. The Centering Theory is used to explore if the overt pronoun and zero have different effects on discourse coherence, i.e. whether there is a difference between transition types relating to zero and those signaling the overt pronoun. Additionally, factors such as grammatical role, case and clause type affecting the choice of pronominal forms are studied to supplement results from the Centering analysis. It is hypothesized that the use of the zero form connects to the CONTINUE transition, while the overt pronoun combines with other Centering- based transition types as well. Furthermore, results show that the zero form is more restricted in its usage contexts and signals mainly nominative subjects in main clauses, while the overt form can appear more widely in different linguistic environments.

Centering Theory, transitions and referent marking in the corpus of the written Serbian language

The aim of the paper is to map various types of anaphor to the centering transitions in the corpus of Serbian newspaper articles. Centering Theory (WALKER, JOSHI ET AL. 1998) is a theory of local coherence in which four types of transitions are used as parameters of coherence. As is hypothesized in the previous literature based on various languages, the CONTINUE transition is mostly characterized by a minimal form (a zero form of the topic), while the SMOOTH and ROUGH shifts are found with a full noun phrase topic. The analysis shows that the ?Ordering Rule? of Centering Theory is not fully followed in the written corpus of the Serbian language since SMOOTH SHIFT has been identified as a prevalent type of transition in the corpus. The following two reasons were identified for that: (1) the genre of the newspaper articles, and (2) the way clauses are combined within a complex sentence in the Serbian written corpus.

The inter-sentential function of Mandarin bei passives

Although the intra-sentential functions of the Mandarin bei passive construction have been well studied, its inter-sentential function has not been well understood yet. In this paper, from a Centering Theory perspective, we demonstrate that the bei passive also bears inter-sentential weights. Specifically, the function of the pre-bei semantic entity is to preserve the Cb from its preceding utterance; whereas that of the bei-object is either to introduce a new Cb or to retain the original Cb so as to step aside for a new one at the pre-bei position. This study also compares the Centering Theory approach with the Givón tradition in discourse analysis and claims that Centering Theory is a more suitable analytical tool of calculating the degree of discourse coherence and portraying the fluency of information flow, whereas the Givón tradition is better treated as a measurement for discourse relatedness.

A Centering Theory Analysis of Discrepancies on Subject Zero Anaphor in English to Thai Translation

Centering theory (CT) has been adopted in analyzing 84 zero anaphors in 50 informative texts. It is found that most zero anaphors occur in Continuation state both in English texts (source texts (ST)) and Thai translation (target texts (TT)). Zero anaphors in the TT outnumber those in ST and are found in more environments. In terms of translation, most zero anaphors in source texts remain in the same form in the target texts although some items are translated into different anaphor forms. Results indicate that zero anaphor is used to keep discourse coherence and to refer to the backward-looking center (Cb) of current utterances in both languages. Therefore, most zero anaphors in source texts are translated into zero anaphors in target texts when the CT transition state of utterances in source texts and target texts is Continuation, and are translated into other anaphors when the CT transition state in source texts is changed to another transition state in the target texts. Constraints in translation of zero anaphors can be explained in terms of anaphor interpretation, salience of entities, syntactic constraint, and naturalness of translation. However, this paper focuses only on one type of anaphor, namely subject zero anaphor; investigation of other types of anaphor will reveal other discrepancies in using and translating anaphors from this language pair.