Marie-Paule Péry-Woodley

Temporal and spatial dimensions of discourse organisation

Time is generally recognised as a ubiquitous component in the way discourse is organised: the discourse-level analysis of time has led to numerous studies, mostly focused on verb tense and temporal adverbials. The discourse role of space seems less obvious: not only is space not systematically marked in the sentence, but it does not lead in itself to any discourse relation. In addition to “classical” approaches, which all deal with connection between (groups of) clauses, we present another approach: Discourse Framing. A discourse frame is described as the grouping together of a number of sentences which are linked by the fact that they must be interpreted with reference to a specific criterion, realised in an initial introducing expression.

French and English passives in the construction of text

The aim of the article is to explore a small corner of the interface between micro-characteristics of texts – such as sentence syntax – and the macroproperty of textual coherence, in the context of second-language academic writing. French and English passives are analysed in terms of their information-packaging role in essays in English LI, and French LI and L2. The analysis provides insights into the role of passives in academic writing in both languages and into some specific problems for English-speaking learners of French: in particular it throws some light on the excessive – and often erroneous – use of on , regarded as a substitute for the English passive.

Découverte de configurations de traits textuels pour la caractérisation des segments d'obsolescence

Cet article presente une methodologie de decouverte de marqueurs envisages comme des configurations de traits textuels pour la description et le reperage automatique de segments contenant des informations necessitant des mises a jour (les segments d’obsolescence). La methodologie mise en œuvre est fondee sur la prise en compte de traits textuels heterogenes et a granularite variable. Nous mettons en place un systeme statistique a base de regles d’association pour faire emerger des donnees les combinaisons de traits pertinentes : traits intraphrastiques, hierarchiques, positionnels et externes. Une evaluation de leur role en termes de performance est proposee. Nous travaillons sur un corpus de textes encyclopediques annote manuellement par des redacteurs du monde de l’edition.