Coherence Theory: The Case of Russian 9783110858686, 9783110129113

Table of contents :
Preface
1. Introduction
2. Background
2.1. Reference worlds
2.2. Types of implication
2.3. Knowledge and coherence
3. Knowledge and coherence. Coherence marking adverbials
3.1. Requirements for a theory of knowledge
3.2. Knowledge and coherence marking adverbials
4. Noun phrases
4.1. Reference, definiteness, deixis, and anaphora
4.2. Definite descriptions
4.3. Anaphoric pronouns
4.4. Demonstrative pronouns
4.5. Repeating or paraphrasing an NP
5. Prosodic prominence, ellipsis, and word order
5.1. Functional sentence perspective
5.2. Ellipsis
5.3. Word order patterns
5.4. Prominence adverbials
6. Concluding remarks
Notes
References
Sources of samples
Index of names
Index of subjects
List of semantic representations

Citation preview

Coherence Theory

Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs 63

Editor

Werner Winter

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

Coherence Theory The Case of Russian

by

Jens N0rgard-S0rensen

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

1992

Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin.

® Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Nargärd-Serensen, Jens. Coherence theory : the case of Russian / by Jens N0rgardSerensen. p. cm. — (Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs ; 63) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and indexes. ISBN 3-11-012911-6 (acid-free paper) : 1. Cohesion (Linguistics) 2. Discourse analysis. 3. Speech acts (Linguistics. 4. Semantics. 5. Russian language — Discourse analysis — Case studies. I. Title. II. Series. P302.2.N6 1992 415 - dc20 92-10456 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek — Cataloging in Publication Data Nergärd-Serensen, Jens: Coherence theory : the case of Russian / by Jens NorgardScrensen. — Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter, 1992 (Trends in linguistics : Studies and monographs ; 63) ISBN 3-11-012911-6 NE: Trends in linguistics / Studies and monographs

© Copyright 1992 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-1000 Berlin 30 All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printing: Gerike, Berlin. — Binding: Lüderitz & Bauer, Berlin. Printed in Germany.

Preface

The theory presented in this book has been illustrated with samples in Russian. However, the presumably general linguistic value of the model has induced me to supply the sample material with English translations and present it in such a way that the book should be comprehensible to anyone who has an interest in questions of coherence. No previous knowledge of Russian is assumed. I wish to thank Kristine Heltberg, Gunnar Svane and L'ubomir Durovic, members of the committee appointed by the Faculty of Arts, University of Copenhagen, to evaluate the book as a doctoral thesis. Further, I should like to express my gratitude to Per Durst-Andersen, who read through the manuscript and made a number of valuable comments, and to my Russian friends and acquaintances, who patiently considered the material I presented to them. Danish and other Scandinavian colleagues listened to my talks on the subject at meetings and symposia and made a number of critical remarks. John Kendal revised the text and tried to make amends for the shortcomings of my English. The Faculty of Arts, University of Copenhagen, contributed to the preparation of the manuscript, and the Danish State Research Council for the Humanities contributed to the publication. Finally, I shall not forget to mention my appreciation of the interest shown by my students in parts of the theory presented during seminars at the University of Copenhagen.

Contents

Preface

ν

1. Introduction

1

2. Background

5

2.1. Reference worlds 2.2. Types of implication 2.2.1. Presupposition 2.2.1.1. Theory 2.2.1.2. Criticism 2.2.1.3. Beyond presupposition formalism 2.2.2. Entailment 2.2.3. Complements of implicative verbs 2.2.4. Implicature 2.2.4.1. Conversational implicature 2.2.4.2. Conventional implicature 2.2.4.3. Assertion vs. implicature 2.2.4.4. Non-cancellability of conventional implicatures? 2.2.5. Logical and pragmatic implications 2.2.6. Implication and coherence 2.2.7. Cancellability and normal readings 2.3. Knowledge and coherence 2.3.1. Macrosyntax and cohesion 2.3.2. Knowledge and text linguistics 2.3.2.1. Global patterns 2.3.2.2. Elements of knowledge sets 2.3.2.3. Activation of knowledge 2.3.2.4. Knowledge and expectations 2.3.2.5. Inferencing as a source of knowledge

6 8 9 9 11 13 17 18 19 20 21 22 24 27 28 29 31 31 32 33 33 34 35 35

3. Knowledge and coherence. Coherence marking adverbials 3.1. Requirements for a theory of knowledge 3.2. Knowledge and coherence marking adverbials 3.2.1. The notational apparatus

37 37 39 40

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Contents

3.2.2. Adverbial categories. Subsets of knowledge and expectations .... 3.2.2.1. If-then adverbiale 3.2.2.2. More on the model of knowledge 3.2.2.3. Expectation adverbials 3.2.2.4. Performative adverbials

41 41 70 71 81

4. Noun phrases 4.1. Reference, definiteness, deixis, and anaphora 4.1.1. Definiteness 4.1.2. Reference and definiteness 4.1.3. Deixis 4.1.4. Anaphora 4.1.5. Article use 4.1.6. Definiteness in non-article languages 4.1.7. Function and distribution of deictic and anaphoric terms 4.2. Definite descriptions 4.3. Anaphoric pronouns 4.4. Demonstrative pronouns 4.4.1. The attributive etot 4.4.2. The nominal έίοΐ 4.4.3. The demonstrative takoj 4.5. Repeating or paraphrasing an NP

87 87 87 88 89 89 90 90 91 95 100 117 117 123 129 135

5. Prosodic prominence, ellipsis, and word order 5.1. Functional sentence perspective 5.1.1. History 5.1.2. The intuitive foundation of FSP theory 5.1.3. Soviet theories 5.1.4. Criticism of FSP research 5.1.5. The Prague school of today 5.1.6. Prosodic prominence 5.2. Ellipsis 5.2.1. Ellipsis in Russian 5.2.2. A contrastive view on English 5.3. Word order patterns 5.4. Prominence adverbials

145 145 145 146 147 149 151 153 155 155 161 163 169

Contents

ix

6. Concluding remarks

187

Notes References Sources of samples Index of names Index of subjects List of semantic representations

191 193 211 213 217 221

1. Introduction

For a couple of decades the notion of coherence has been closely associated with a specific branch of linguistics, named text linguistics. With the introduction of text linguistics many students of traditional linguistics were left with the impression that a new science had been established, a science which was subordinated neither to linguistics in the pure sense nor to any other established human science. Text linguistics was perceived as a discipline that drew from both linguistics and several other human sciences, such as psychology, rhetoric, logic, social science and literary studies, in order to establish its theoretical and methodological basis. As a natural consequence one could have expected a new methodological framework to be developed. New methods were felt to be necessary in order to approach the specific problems considered under the heading of text linguistics. That textual coherence, the central concern of text linguistics, has been studied as closely related to questions of pragmatics has further given rise to the impression that formal linguistics of whatever direction does not offer an adequate solution to the problems. To a certain degree this is correct. Text linguistics has actually raised questions that have never been asked before in any human science and this has called for a reconsideration of the theoretical and methodological framework inherited from linguistics and other human sciences. However, if we concentrate on studies of local coherence, "a property of discourse which is defined in terms of semantic relationships between the successive sentences of the discourse" (Dijk-Kintsch 1983 : 150), it is possible to specify the methodological demands more closely, at least hypothetically. It is evident that local coherence can be distinguished from global coherence which makes up the macrostructure of the text, a structure primarily controlled by the overall topic and the speaker's communicative goals (cf. Ferrara 1985: 141). My main concern will be local coherence. As indicated above in the quotation from van Dijk and Kintsch, the study of local coherence is the study of how successive sentences are knit together in such a way that they readily constitute a fragment of a text (in the following I shall employ the term "coherence" for "local coherence" if no specification is made). More precisely: What I am going to examine in each specific case is the relation between two sentences, one succeeding the other in the frame of a text. Since I am going to consider sentences in actual usage, I shall prefer to refer to them

2

Introduction

as utterances. The term sentence will be reserved for closed syntactic structures viewed as disconnected from actual speech events. An utterance, on the other hand, is the product of a speech act, which can be defined as a communication act where the medium used to transfer the message is natural language, in either written or spoken form. There is little doubt that speech acts occupy a predominant position among the various categories of communication acts used by human beings to transmit messages. But it should not be ignored that in discourse speech acts are typically supplemented by other kinds of communication acts, e.g., gestures. This is essential to our purposes because there is no way to distinguish a proposition conveyed by an utterance from a proposition conveyed non-linguistically. Both are links in one and the same chain of messages. The relations we are to examine may include relations of an utterance to a non-linguistic communication act. As indicated above, what the speaker aims at by performing an utterance is to convey a proposition. In the present work I shall use single quotation marks ('...') for informal formulations of propositional content. These formulations will appear partly as paraphrases of the utterances examined. For reasons of transparency I shall ignore that in a representation of a proposition all deictic or other situation-dependent elements of the surface utterance should be removed. Still one should keep in mind that when we use terms \i\aeyou, he, this, now in our informal formulations of propositions, they should not be perceived as representing the lexical meaning of these words, but rather the sense of the words in the actual case examined. Single quotation marks will further be employed when quoting the translations of Russian words, phrases and sentences. In the present work I shall stick to the concept of proposition known from propositional semantics, according to which a proposition is something that has a truth-value. Nevertheless, it is essential to consider the ideal structure of a proposition in relation to the informal formulations we are going to apply. As stated above, the propositions to be considered are those conveyed when a speaker performs a communication act. This involves that an invariable element of the proposition is a performative verb with the speaker as the agent, in my informal formulation: Ί (the speaker) say that ...', Ί (the speaker) ask if ...', Ί (the speaker) demand t h a t . . . ' etc. The choice of verb depends on the illocutionary force of the speech act. As will be shown on later occasions, the recognition of the performative verb as embedding the remaining part of the proposition is essential to the description of certain cases of coherence marking. However, when the performative verb is of no specific relevance to the es-

Introduction

3

tablishment of coherence, I shall not include this element in the informal formulations of the propositions. In propositional logic and semantics it is customary to recognize two categories of propositional elements, predicates and arguments. Without further argumentation I shall adopt the traditional view that this categorization is applicable to propositions conveyed by natural language. This means that it should be possible to distinguish argument terms from predicate terms, at least in the languages to be considered in the present work: Russian and to a certain extent other European languages. It also means that propositions can be represented not only by informal paraphrases in natural language, but also by traditional constant and variable expressions inherited from propositional and predicate logic. I shall take advantage of this in establishing a formalism to represent the meaning of Russian coherence markers. A proposition occurs in a speech event with two interlocutors, speaker and hearer. A speech event is a situation where the speaker communicates a proposition by performing an utterance. In order to avoid this rather elaborate formulation I shall in the following simply speak of "the utterance communicating a proposition" as equivalent to the more exact expression above. The same freedom of formulation will be applied to certain other verbs (