语篇关系的连续性

Continuity in disccourse relations

连续性和断续性(在不同语段之间保持或变换指示中心)是语篇关系的两个重要方面。过往的语篇关系研究对二者的认识截然不同,因此有必要从连续性的维度来分析具体实例中的语篇关系。为此,我们采用Givón(1993)的连续性维度(时间、空间、指示、动作、视角、情态和言语行为),从各维度的特征出发,对语篇关系的连续性维度做出一致且准确的分类。本文借此分类体系分析修辞结构理论语篇树库(RST Discourse Treebank, Carlson&Marcu 2001)中的五种典型关系(因果关系、对比关系、状态关系、详述关系和时间关系)。我们发现,语篇关系可以在某些维度上连续性更强,同时在其他维度上断续性更强。此外,语篇关系在不同的连续性维度上通常差异很大,因此无论是在整体关系类型层面上,还是在关系的特定连续性维度上,它们都不能被视为是完全连续或断续的。我们还以因果关系、状态关系和对比关系为例,说明了如何应用分析结果来验证连续性和语篇关系之间相关性的假设。

Continuity and discontinuity(maintaining or shifting deictic centres across segments)are important aspects of discourse relations.Yet they have been attributed to these relations in very different ways.This calls for an analysis of individual instances of discourse relations with respect to their continuity dimensions.To this end,we operationalise Givon's(1993)continuity dimensions(time,space,reference,action,perspective,modality,and speech act),decomposing them into distinctive features that allow a consistent and accurate classification of the continuity dimensions in discourse relation tokens.This inventory was applied to five representative relation types(causal,contrastive,conditional,elaboration,and temporal)from the RST Discourse Treebank(Carlson&Marcu 2001).We found that relations can simultaneously be more continuous for some dimensions but more discontinuous for others.What is more,discourse relations typically vary widely in different continuity dimensions and thus cannot be described as fully continuous or discontinuous,neither on the level of the entire relation type nor for one of its particular dimensions.Using examples of causal,conditional,and contrastive relations,we also illustrate how the results of our analysis can be used to verify hypotheses about correlations between continuity and discourse relations.