Text linguistics

Lecture 14
Linguists have long used the word text very informally to denote any
stretch of language they happened to be interested in.

Especially since the 1960s, however, the notion of a text has acquired a
theoretical status in several quarters, and the analysis of texts is now
seen as a major goal of linguistic investigation. However, the
conception of what constitutes a text is not everywhere the same.
A text is usually opposed to the notion of discourse.

Any discourse is language in use (language used with a certain intentionality).

Discourse studies look at the form and function of language in conversation beyond its small
grammatical pieces such as phonemes and morphemes. This field of study is interested in how larger
units of language—including lexemes, syntax, and context—contribute meaning to conversations.

The study of discourse is entirely context-dependent because conversation involves situational

knowledge beyond just the words spoken. Often, meaning cannot be extrapolated from an exchange
merely from its verbal utterances because there are many semantic factors involved in authentic
communication.

"The study of discourse...can involve matters like context, background information or knowledge shared
between a speaker and hearer," (Bloor and Bloor 2013).

All these are the object of study in pragmatics.

Pragmatics is the study of how context affects meaning, such as how sentences are interpreted
in certain situations.
Linguistic context is the information that has already been shared in the discussion, including
all antecedents, topics of conversation, and intonations. Situational (epistemic) context is
knowledge about the world.

E.g.: The kids have eaten already and surprisingly, they are hungry:
- the linguistic context helps to interpret the second sentence depending on what the first
sentence says;
- the situational context helps to interpret the second sentence because it is common
knowledge that humans are not usually hungry after eating.
Discourse parameters

Maxims of Conversation
Grice's maxims for conversation are conventions of speech such as:
- the maxim of quantity that states a speaker should be as informative as is required and neither more nor less;
- the maxim of relevance essentially states a speaker should stay on the topic;
- the maxim of manner states the speaker should be brief and orderly, and avoid ambiguity;
- the maxim of quality states that a speaker should not lie or make any unsupported claims.

(Коммуникативный кодекс — это система принципов построения диалога, которая рассматривает речевое поведение каждой из
сторон как обдуманные и осознанные речевые действия. Выступает регламентирующей системой для анализа моделей
речевого поведения, их успешной или неуспешной организации.
1. Максима качества информации:
Не говори того, что считаешь ложным;
Не говори того, в чем сомневаешься, для доказательства чего нет исчерпывающих аргументов
2. Максима количества информации:
Изложи не меньше информации, чем требуется;
Изложи не больше информации, чем требуется
3. Максима релевантности:
Не отходи от темы
4. Максима ясности:
Будь последовательным:
Избегай неясности;
Избегай двусмысленности;
Будь краток; Будь систематичен)
Performative Sentences
In these types of sentences, the speaker is the subject who, by uttering the
sentence, is accomplishing some additional action, such as daring, resigning, or
nominating. (It results in the types of sentences such as performatives,
constatives – promissives, expressives, etc. - see lecture 11 on types of
sentences, speech act theory)

Presuppositions
These are implicit assumptions required to make a sentence meaningful.
Have you stopped smoking? implies that you smoke already, and Would you like
another piece? implies that you've already had one piece.
Deixis
Deixis is reference to a person, object, or event which relies on the situational
context.
First and second person pronouns such as my, mine, you, your, yours, we, ours
and us are always deictic because their reference is entirely dependent on
context.

Demonstratives like this, that, these and those and expressions of time and
place are always deictic as well. In order to understand what specific times or
places such expressions refer to, we also need to know when or where the
utterance was said. If someone says "I'm over here!" you would need to know
who "I" referred to, as well as where "here" is. Deixis marks one of the
boundaries of semantics and pragmatics.
To appreciate the pervasiveness of pragmatic inferences, consider the following
advertisement of the American Lung Association, which was seen on a bus in Santa
Barbara, California, in February of 2002:

Asthma is on the rise. Please double your efforts. Support Christmas Seals.

Or:

Fleur shed her coat and dropped into a chair. "I'm tired. Your ears are sticking up so nicely
to-night, Michael.” – the text does not sound cohesive and coherent unless you understand
the pragmatics
 • For some linguists, a text is no different from a discourse.
• For others, a text is a physical product, the result of a discourse,
which itself is then seen as a more abstract process leading to the
construction of a text
• In text linguistics, a text is primarily defined by its possession of
Text vs an identifiable purpose, an approach which leads quickly to the
classification of texts into a number of kinds (text-types) differing
in purpose – and, consequently, often also in their linguistic
Discourse characteristics.
• Yet others see a text as an abstraction, with a discourse being the
physical realization of a text (incl. theoretical grammar).
• Finally, some linguists merely consider that a text is written while
a discourse is spoken.
In linguistics, a text is more of an abstraction, with the focus on the intrinsic
features of the text as such.

The linguistic description of the text is as follows:

Text is a speech sequence of lingual units interconnected semantically (topically)

and syntactically (structurally); in other words, it is a coherent stretch of speech,
characterized by semantic and syntactic unity.

Topical (semantic) unity (coherence) and grammatical cohesion are the basic
differential features (categories) of the text.
Theoretical grammar deals with texts as units organized from
sentences – as sentence sequences. The text is the largest
grammatically arranged language unit.
Sentence sequences in speech are divided into monologue sequences and dialogue
sequences.

In a monologue, sentences are directed from one participant in discourse to another: from a
speaker to a listener, or from an author to a reader, e.g.:
Once upon a time there lived a beautiful princess. She had many suitors from far countries.

In a dialogue, the sentences are directed from one participant to another in turn, to meet
one another, e.g.:
Roy: . . . It’s dark, how will we see what we’re eating.
Marilyn: . . . Candles.

Traditionally, a monologue sequence of sentences united by a common topic is identified

as the basic textual unit; it is called a “supra-phrasal unity” (сверхфразовое единство)
or a “complex syntactic unity” (сложно-синтаксическое целое).

A two-directed sequence of sentences is sometimes called a “dialogue unity”.

Blokh’s term for СФЕ,ССЦ is a cumuleme.

A cumuleme (cumulative supra-sentential construction) is formed

by two or more independent sentences making up a topical
syntactic unity.
The basic semantic types of cumulemes are "factual" (narrative
and descriptive), "modal" (reasoning, perceptive, etc.), and mixed
Narrative cumuleme:
Three years later, when Jane was an Army driver, she was sent one night to pick up a party of
officers who had been testing defences on the cliff. She found the place where the road ran
between a cleft almost to the beach, switched off her engine and waited, hunched in her great-
coat, half asleep, in the cold black silence. She waited for an hour and woke in a fright to a
furious voice coming out of the night (M. Dickens).

Modal cumulemes of various topical standings:

She has not gone? I thought she gave a second performance at two? (S. Maugham). (A
reasoning cumuleme)

Are you kidding? Don't underrate your influence, Mr. O'Keefe. Dodo's in. Besides, I've lined up
Sandra Straughan to work with her (A. Hailey). (A remonstrative cumuleme)

Don't worry. There will be a certain amount of unpleasantness but I will have some
photographs taken that will be very useful at the inquest. There's the testimony of the gun-
bearers and the driver too. You're perfectly all right (E. Hemingway). (A reasoning cumuleme
expressing reassurance) Etc.
 •A paragraph in a monologue speech can contain more than one cumuleme.

When he had left the house Victorina stood quite still, with hands pressed
against her chest. // She had slept less than he. Still as a mouse, she had
turned the thought: "Did I take him in? Did I?" And if not — what? // She
took out the notes which had bought — or sold — their happiness, and
counted them once more. And the sense of injustice burned within her (J.
Galsworthy).

A cumuleme vs The shown division is sustained by the succession of the forms of the verbs,
namely, the past indefinite and past perfect, precisely marking out the events
paragraph described.
•The paragraph in a monologue speech can contain only one sentence. The
regular function of the one-sentence paragraph is expressive emphasis. E.g.:
The fascists may spread over the land, blasting their way with weight of
metal brought from other countries. They may advance aided by traitors and
by cowards. They may destroy cities and villages and try to hold the people in
slavery. But you cannot hold any people in slavery.
The Spanish people will rise again as they have always risen before
against tyranny (E. Hemingway).
Demarcation of a
cumuleme. Topic
sentence
The connections between the components of a dialogue sequence can be defined
as “occursive” (from the Latin word “to meet”) and the supra-sentential
construction based on occursive connections can be called an “occurseme”
(которое у остальных называется «диалогическое единство)
Connection between sentences in a cumuleme may be of two types: prospective
(cataphoric) cumulation and retrospective (anaphoric) cumulation.

Prospective or cataphoric cumulation occurs when a word or phrase refers to something

mentioned later in the discourse:

Although I phone her every week, my mother still complains that I don’t keep in touch
often enough.

Retrospective or anaphoric cumulation occurs when a word or phrase refers to something

mentioned earlier in the discourse:

Michael went to the bank. He was annoyed because it was closed.

According to the connective means used, cumulation is divided into two
types: conjunctive (союзное присоединение) and correlative
(коррелятивное присоединение).

Conjunctive cumulation is achieved by functional or semi-functional

conjunction-like words and word combinations: pure conjunctions
(coordinative or subordinative), adverbial connectors, such as however,
thus, yet, then, etc., or parenthetical connectors, such as firstly, secondly, on
the one hand, on the other hand, in other words, as mentioned above, etc.

Conjunctive cumulation is always retrospective (anaphoric).

There was, however, more to it than that.

She slipped off the gate as if she was going to run away. Then she hesitated.
Correlative cumulation is achieved by a pair of elements, one of which, the “succeedent”
(замещающее слово), refers to the other, the “antecedent” /ˌæn.tiˈsiː.dənt/ (антецедент, что
замещается). Correlative cumulation may be either prospective or retrospective. (кореференция)

“Succedents” may be of various types:

1. All sorts of pro-forms (a type of function word or expression that stands in for another word,
phrase, clause or sentence where the meaning is recoverable from the context):
- a pronoun substitutes a noun or a noun phrase, with or without a determiner: it, this.
- a pro-adjective substitutes an adjective or a phrase that functions as an adjective: so as in "It is
less so than we had expected.“
- pro-adverb substitutes an adverb or a phrase that functions as an adverb: how or this way.
- a pro-verb substitutes a verb or a verb phrase: do, as in: "I will go to the party if you do".
- a prop-word: one, as in "the blue one"
- pro-sentence substitutes an entire sentence or subsentence: Yes, or that as in "That is true".[2]
2. Repetition (so-called “repeated nomination”): simple lexical repetition or repetition complicated
by different variations (by the use of synonyms, by certain semantic development, periphrasis,
association, etc.), e.g.:
I answered very sharply. My answer didn’t upset her.
I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War.
Semantic coherence and syntactic cohesion are supported by communicative unity of sentences, or theme-
rheme arrangement (organization) of the cumuleme.

As was mentioned, the role of actual division of the sentence in the forming of the text was first
demonstrated by the linguists of the Prague linguistic school (F. Daneč, in particular).

There are two basic types of theme-rheme arrangement of sentences in textual sequences: linear
(progressive) connection and parallel connection of sentences.

With linear connection of sentences, the rheme of the leading sentence becomes the theme of the
sequential sentence, forming what is known as a theme-rheme chain, e.g.:
There was a girl on the platform She was wearing a hat. The hat was decorated with flowers and ribbons.

With parallel connection of sentences, the component sentences share the same theme within the supra-
sentential construction (одна гипертема у предложений СФЕ), e.g.:
George was an honest man. He had graduated from Harvard. He was a member of the American
Academy of Arts.
There are some syntactic constructions intermediary between the sentence
and the sequence of sentences.

The first one is known as parcellation: in a parcellated construction, the

two parts are separated by a finalizing sentence tone in oral speech and by
a full stop in written speech, but they relate to each other as parts of one
and the same sentence, e.g.:
I am always shy. With you.
Parcellation can be treated as transposition of a sentence into a cumuleme;
it adds some topical significance to the part parcellated.

The second intermediary phenomenon is the result of transposing a

cumuleme into a sentence when two or more semantically independent
sentences are forced into one. This is characteristic of a casual manner of
speech or, on the other hand, for prolonged literary passages; in written
speech such constructions usually include semi-final punctuation marks,
such as, for example, a semi-colon or brackets.
I'm not going to disturb her and that's flat, miss (A. Christie).

The air-hostess came down the aisle then to warn passengers they
were about to land and please would everyone fasten their safety
belts (B. Hedworth).