Sandra A. Thompson

Rhetorical Structure Theory : Toward a Functional Theory of Text Organization

Rhetorical Structure Theory is a descriptive theory of a major aspect of the organization of natural text. It is a linguistically useful methodfor describing natural texts, characterizing their Structure primarily in terms of relations that hold between parts of the text. This paper establishes a new definitional foundation for RST. The paper also examines three Claims ofRST: the predominance of nucleus/satellite structural pattems, the functional basis of hierarchy, and the communicative role oftext Structure.

Relational propositions in discourse

In addition to the propositions represented explicitly by independent clauses in a text, there are almost as many propositions, here called relational propositions, which arise (often implicitly) out of combinations of these clauses. The predicates of these propositions are members of a small set of general, highly recurrent relational predicates, such as “cause,” “justification,” and “solutionhood.” Often unsignalled, these relational propositions can be shown to be the basis for various kinds of inferences and to function as elements of communicative acts. Examining two natural texts, we see that the relational propositions involve every clause, and that they occur in a pattern of propositions which connects all of the clauses together. This examination also shows how the relational propositions are essential to the functioning of the text.

Rhetorical Structure Theory: Description and Construction of Text Structures

Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) is a theory of text structure that is being extended to serve as a theoretical basis for computational text planning. Text structures in RST are hierarchic, built on small patterns called schemas. The schemas which compose the structural hierarchy of a text describe the functions of the parts rather than their form characteristics. Relations between text parts, comparable to conjunctive relations, are a prominent part of RST’s definitional machinery. Recent work has put RST onto a new definitional basis. This paper details the current status of descriptive RST, along with efforts to create a constructive version for use as a basis for programming a text planner.

The conversational use of reactive tokens in English, Japanese, and Mandarin

Abstract This paper investigates ‘Reactive Tokens’ in Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and English. Our definition of ‘Reactive Token’ ( = ‘RT’ ) is ‘a short utterance produced by an interlocutor who is playing a listeners role during the other interlocutors speakership’. That is, Reactive Tokens will normally not disrupt the primary speakers speakership, and do not in themselves claim the floor. Using corpora of conversational interactions from each of the three languages of our study, we distinguish among several types of RTs, and show that the three languages differ in terms of the types of RTs favored, the frequency with which RTs are used in conversation, and the way in which speakers distribute their RTs across conversational units.

The acquisition of tone in Mandarin-speaking children

Until now, although there has been research on the acquisition of intonation and stress, there has been no systematic study of the acquisition of lexical tone. Based on data collected during eight months of field work with 17 children of Mandarin-speaking families in Taipei, we have found that (1) tone acquisition is accomplished within a relatively short period of time; (2) mastery of tones occurs well in advance of mastery of seg-mentals; (3) the Mandarin high-level and falling tones are acquired before the rising and dipping tones; (4) the rising and dipping tones are substituted for each other throughout the tone acquisition process; (5) unstressed syllables are treated as if they were stressed, the tone assigned to them being an approximation of the phonetically conditioned pitch which they carry; (6) the tone sandhi phenomena associated with the dipping tone in Mandarin are acquired with very little error as soon as propositional utterances begin to be created. Explanations for these facts can be given in terms of the relative ease of learning to control glottal pitch as opposed to articulatory mechanisms, the relative difficulty of rising pitch, and the relative salience of tone in Mandarin.

The discourse conditions for the use of the complementizer that in conversational English

Abstract The complementizer that in English, as in I heard (that) you were sick , has widely been regarded as optional. Our research demonstrates that the use of that in such utterances in conversation is highly related to various other features in the discourse. First and second person subjects, the verbs think and guess , and auxiliaries, indirect objects, and adverbs in the main clause, and pronominal complement subjects are all significant in predicting the use of that . As seemingly disparate as these factors are, their influence finds a unified explanation in the acknowledgement that certain combinations of main clause subjects and verbs in English (such as I think ) are being reanalyzed as unitary epistemic phrases. As this happens, the distinction between ‘main’ and ‘complement’ clauses is being eroded, with the omission of that a strong concomitant. Our findings show that the factors most likely to contribute to this reanalysis are precisely those which relate either to the epistemicity of the main subject and verb or to the topicality of the complement at the expense of the main clause.

Responses to Wh-Questions in English Conversation

We explore the grammatical and interactional characteristics of various response-types to wh-questions in American English conversation. Our data reveal that there are two broad types of responses to type-specifying wh-questions, phrasal and clausal. We argue that each of these types of responses exhibits unique interactional properties, such that while phrasal responses to wh-questions do simple answering, clausal responses occur when there is trouble with the question or sequence. We suggest that the design of wh-questions permits a grammatically symbiotic or grammatically resonant response, and that such symbiotic phrasal responses, specifically fitted to the lexicogrammar of wh-questions, are the optimal no-trouble response for furthering the project initiated by the question. We take our study to provide further confirmation of the view of grammar that Schegloff has persuasively argued for (1996b, inter alia), namely the value, indeed the necessity, of considering grammar in terms of its real-time sequential habitat, the everyday practices through which social interaction is managed and accomplished.

Language Universals, Discourse Pragmatics, and Semantics.

Abstract Within ‘functional linguistics’, semantic explanations have often been offered for cross-linguistic grammatical generalizations. These explanations have been based on such semantic properties as animacy, volitionality, referentiality, and Fillmorean case roles. Dixon has expressed the relationship by proposing that ‘grammar is frozen semantics’. Intriguingly, examination of a range of cross-linguistic generalizations leads increasingly to the view that grammar is primarily shaped by the entire range of cognitive, social, and interactional factors involved in the actual use of language. In this paper we discuss a number of specific grammatical phenomena which support the view that grammatical regularities arise because of certain strategies people habitually use in negotiating what they have to say with their hearers, in terms of what the hearer is likely to know or be able to identify, what needs to be highlighted or presented as newsworthy, what makes a good story, and so forth. This process is known as ‘grammaticization’, and suggests that grammar is best thought of, not as ‘frozen semantics’, but as something more like ‘sedimented conversational practices’.

Bodily-Visual Practices and Turn Continuation

This article considers points in turn construction where conversation researchers have shown that talk routinely continues beyond possible turn completion, but where bodily-visual behavior doing such turn extension work is found. The bodily-visual behaviors examined share many features with verbal turn extensions, but it is argued that embodied movements have distinct properties that make them well-suited for specific kinds of social action, including stance display and by-play in relation to simultaneous verbal turns and sequences.

Iconicity and ‘indirect objects’ in English

Abstract In his justly celebrated 1983 paper, ‘Iconic and Economic Motivation’, John Haiman suggested a number of respects in which natural languages reveal iconic motivations for various grammatical patterns. As Du Bois (1985) has pointed out, the existence of iconicity in the grammars of languages is important in confirming the view that language cannot be an autonomous self-contained system. Our goal in this paper is to consider a small area of English which Haiman did not mention in his paper, ‘indirect object’ constructions, and show that iconicity is at work there as well.