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прагматика и медиа дискурс / Teun A van Dijk - Text and Context

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IMPLICIT TOPIC

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SEMANTICS

world (that there is a man, that the man is walking, that the man/his walking is slow, and that the walking takes place along a beach, in the past).

Note that this textual approach to the problem of sentential topics does not always guarantee that the subject of a sentence is automatically the topic of that sentence, even in normal ordering. After the question "What happened to thejewels?", we may have

[56] They were stolen by a customer.

where the topic function is indeed assigned to the first noun phrase (subject), but we may also have a sentence like

[57] Peter has sold them to a diamond merchant from Antwerp.

where the topic is assigned to the predicate noun phrase them, although according to some theories of topic the phrase Peter would be assigned topic function. Besides syntactic ordering and stress distribution, we thus have indications from definite articles and pronouns about the topic function of certain phrases.

It should be stressed that (con-)textually identified individuals determining topic function need not be 'expressed' by the same lexical units:

[58]Now, Fairview had had its golden age (...) The little town's methods of production could not compete with the modern factories (...) [Chase, p 5].

In this passage from the same crime story taken as an earlier example, part of the complex noun phrase of the second sentence, viz the little town is topic, due to referential identity with Fairview, introduced before. In case the epistemic range of the concept of town includes the existence of factories and hence of methods of production, the whole noun phrase the little town's methods ofproduction would be assigned topic function, as is also indicated by the definite article.

In general, topical noun phrases may be used even in those cases where the referent is not an essential (necessary) part of a previously introduced referent with which it is associated. The definite noun phrase in a later passage,

[59] The more progressive businesses had transferred to Bentonville (...)

would in such a case receive topic function, although no progressive businessmen have been introduced aboye.

Theoretically speaking this is possible only if we assume that a proposition like Fairview has progressive businessmen' is introduced as a missing link. This would mean that some topics still have an LMPL[C[T COMMENT function. Conversely, we might speak of function in those cases where previously identified referents are assigned to a previously identified property or relation:

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[60] Paul stole the diamonds!

where the phrase Paul (with specific stress) has comment function if the topic is `Somebody had stolen the diamonds'. In case we should, for theoretical reasons, be reluctant to assign comment function to referring phrases, and especially to those referring to previously identified referents, sentences of the type exemplified by [60] may be considered as having a relation as comment, viz IDENTITY, according to the following logical schema (3x)(... x ...) & (x=a), as is also expressed in the natural language variants of [60]:

[61 ] It was Paul, who stole the diamonds. [62]The one who stole the diamonds was Pául.

Note that in such examples (initial) stress does not only mean that a phrase which would have topic function in normal ordering now has comment function, but also that CONTRAST and implicit DENIAL are involved. In those cases where it is assumed by the hearer that x=a, and it is asserted by the speaker that x = b, the noun phrase (viz its last main category) referring to b has marked stress. The reverse applies to explicit interna) (phrasal) negation, as in:

[63]Paul did not stéal the diamonds.

where steal has marked stress: the speaker assumes some belief in the hearer to the effect that the relationship g between Paul and the diamonds, is that of stealing: g = `steal', and it is asserted in the comment that g # `steal'. Taking natural language negation as an expression of a specific speech act, as the `converse' of assertion, namely of DENIAL, the whole sentence would have topic function and the `new' element would be a change in illocutionary force.

6.5

At this point it becomes necessary to say something more about the precise status of such categories as topic and comment. It has been shown that they cannot possibly be syntactic, but must at least have a SEMANTIC nature. It has also been shown that there are no meaning relations involved: phrases may be assigned topic function even if related to phrases with different meaning in previous sentences. The topic-comment distinction essentially is a structure relating to the REFERENTS of phrases: in general a phrase is assigned topic function if its value in some possible world has already been identified as a value of expressions in preceding implicit or explicit (con-)textual propositions.

In a more formal way we may reconstruct this hypothesis as follows. Given a discourse model <M,, M2i ... , M. _ 1, M., ... M.>, we take a set Ak as the union of alI sets of individuals which are the values of any expression of sentence S l , .... Sk , respectively, in the models M 1 , ... , Mk. In other words, Ak is the set of alI things referred to in the previous discourse. This set includes proper individuals (objects), and also properties, relations and facts.

INFORMATION IS PROPOSITIONAL,

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We then introduce a binary TOPICALIZATION FUNCTION T, taking as arguments any expression and an índex i, and having either a value 1 or a value 0. The assignment of value 1 means that the particular expression has topic function, the assignment of 0 that the particular expression has comment function. The basic conditions (to be modified for special cases) are thus as follows:

[64]T(cp, i) =1 iff V(cp, i) = 5 and 5 e A _ 1 ; T(cp, i) = 0 iff V(cp, i)=5 and 5 0 A_ 1 .

That is, any expression in a sentence which denotes something denoted before is assigned topic function, whereas the other expressions are assigned comment function.

This is the most general statement about topic-comment functions in sentences. This proposal, however, should be made more specific. First of all, it might be assumed that all (formal)

whatever the precise cognitive implications of this assumption. That is, we reconstruct knowledge as a set of propositions. A simple argument and predicate like `the book' or `is open' are not, as such, elements of information, only a proposition like `the book is open'. For the expression cp in rule [64] this means that it denotes propositions, ie an intensional object, taking FACTS as values at some index i of the discourse model. In still simpler terms: at some point i of the discourse the participante know a common set of facts, namely those denoted by the (propositions expressed by the) previous sentences. Note that such atomic propositions may be expressed simply as phrases of sentei ces. That is, the fact `that there is a girl' is expressed in the verb phrase of the sentence Peter met a girl. In a following sentence The girl is from Italy this information is also expressed, or rather embedded in the definite expression the girl (`The only x such that x is a girl'). If this proposition denotes the same fact as the one denoted in the previous sentence, then the phrase expressing this proposition is assigned topic function.

This approach to topic-comment structures, however, is clearly too rigid. First of all, it would become problematic to assign topic function to those phrases which are not likely to have underlying propositional structure, like the pronoun in She is from Italy. Secondly, the notion of (propositional) transmission of information should rather be made explicit in pragmatic terms. Here we are concerned first of all with giving a semantic characterization of topic-comment structure. Finally, it may be assumed that the assignment of topic function to a phrase, PRESUPPOSES propositional information, without expressing it as such. Thus, even in She is from Italy it is presupposed that there exists a certain female human being (or other object pronominalizable with she).

We may therefore uphold the hypothesis that all categories may be assigned topic function, where the topic is assigned to contextually bound elements of the atomic or complex proposition. These bound elements may

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denote objects, but also properties, relations, facts or possibly functions. The 'free' (comment) elements would then be assigned to the expressions denoting properties of (known) objects, relations between (known) objects, objects of (known) properties or relations, properties of facts, etc as was indicated earlier. According to these principies, any phrase with the referential character mentioned would be assigned topic function.

Note that, strictly speaking, this formal condition also holds for those examples where the surface structure phrase denoting an individual which has already been introduced (and which hence is known to the hearer) seems to have comment function, as in 1 met him, where him has heavy stress. That is, both the speaker and the referent of him have been identified, and hence are assigned topic function. Comment function, then, is assigned to that part of semantic structure which is not yet introduced, that being the fact that, given the propositions (3x)(meet(I, x)) and (3y)(Peter=y), w=y. In other words, it is the identity of Peter with the one I met which is the (asserted) comment of this sentence. English has only limited possibilities to express such comments, for instance by stressing the phrase expressing part of the relation. In this case the sense is ambiguous: the stress may either be interpreted as expressing the fact that there were severa] people I could have met, but that it actually was (the known) man, eg Peter, or else it may be interpreted as expressing the fact that the speaker denies or contradicts an assumption of the hearer, in this case (...) & x = z. The first use could be called 'contrastive' or 'selective', the second 'contradictive' or 'corrective', which means that the specific stress is semantically determined in the first usage, and pragmatically in the second. Contrastive selection is not limited to cases where the predicate (relation) is already known, as may be seen in:

Final/y 1 listened to hím, and ignored hér.

It follows that rule [64] is still theoretically correct if assumed to operate on expressions of some semantic language: topic-comment assignment is not always unambiguous for phrases in surface structure. The rule seems to apply correctly when only one such phrase is expressed:

[65]Peter is ill.

[66]Peter met a girl.

[67]That Peter met a girl was unexpected.

As soon as we have severa) phrases denoting identified individuals, the situation is less straightforward. Earlier it was suggested that in that case we might assume severa) topics, or one complex topic:

[68] The boy went with the girl to the cinema.

Here, two or possibly three referents have been identified. The simplest solution is to assume as topic the triple <'the boy', 'the girl', 'the cinema'), and to assign comment function to the predicate this triplet belongs to, viz'to go' and the past tense. This assumption is not in accordance with the intuitive way in which topics are established, eg by question tests like "What about the

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boy?", or "What did the boy do?", which would identify ¡he boy as the phrase expressing the topic function. Instead of assigning a particular relation to a pair or triplet, we then seem to assign a complex property ('going to the cinema with the girl') to a certain object, as in the classical subjectpredicate distinction. Along the same line, the pair <`the boy', `the girl'> would have topic function in [68] when it answers the question "What did the boy do with the girl?". Such questions are means of expressing a certain communicative situatíon: they indicate where the interests of the hearer are, what he wants to know or expects to be informed about, given a certain context and part of discourse. In an explicit account it should be made clear how such questions `follow from' a certain part of the discourse. Whereas the knowledge deficit of hearers, or rather the speaker's assumptions about what the hearer may want to know should be treated in pragmatic terms, this account should first of all be semantic.

Take as sentences previous to [68] the following:

[69]Mary was glad to go out that night.

[70]Peter was glad to go out that night.

It is understood that ¡he boy and ¡he giri (or their pronominal forms) are referentially identical with Peter and Mary, respectively. Given [69] as previous discourse, we could say that [68] is saying something about the girl, at least primarily. Similarly for the boy after [70]. Apparently, the topicality of 'the boy' or `the girl' depends on the topicality of referentially equivalent phrases in the previous sentence, as is also the case in the test questions establishing a certain epistemic context. If this sort of 'relative' establishment of topics held, we would have to conclude that `the boy' is assigned topic in [68] after a sentence like Peter met a giri this afternoon, in which 'a girl' is not topic but part of the comment according to rule [64]. And the same for 'the girl' after a sentence like That afternoon Mary met a boy. After such sentences, as after [70] and [69], respectively, the sentence [68] would be interpreted as being primarily about the boy or the girl, respectively.

However, apart from other difficulties, the rule of relative topic assignment (if there is more than one topical phrase in a sentence, then the phrase coreferential with the last topical phrase has topic function) meets with difficulties. That is, after the sentence Peter met a girl this afternoon we may have the sentence The giri was verypretty.. According to the rule, this would mean that `the girl' would be assigned topic function in [68], although it may be maintained that the sentence is primarily about the boy — intuitively speaking at least. This intuition may be based on the fact that the girl has been introduced after the introduction of the boy, and relative to it, viz as the 'object' of the meeting relation. This intuition is not always accurate, as shown by this simple story:

[71 ] Once upon a time there was an old king.

besi friend.
most of all
Her father was her

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He had seven daughters. One of them was called Bella.

She loved her father very much, (...)

Although the daughter Bella has been introduced relative to her father the king, we would not say that her father in the fourth sentence has (primary) topic function: the sentence is intuitively about Bella, introduced in the previous sentence. Note that the sentence He was her besi friend would be unacceptable as a fourth sentence in [71], whereas the sentence He loved her

would be acceptable, as well as the full version

The first of the acceptable sentences would re-establish the 'father' as the topic, or at least the pair <'the father', 'the daughter'>. In the second acceptable sentence the expression her father may not be pronominalized, apparently because it does not express a topic but part of the comment, where she or her best friend are topic (or derived topic).

The difficulty arising in these cases seems in part due to the fact that the establishment of topic function in individual sentences with several bound elements also depends on what could be called the topic of the passage, or the topic of discourse in general. Thus, in [71 ] we intuitively know that in the third sentence the topic of the discourse changes to the daughter. This is not the case for 'intermediary' sentences such as She was very pretty after which 'Peter' can still stay topic of the discourse taken as an earlier example. How topics of (parts of) discourse are to be defined is a problem for the next chapter. It will be provisionally assumed however that if a phrase has topic function and if a phrase in the next sentence is co-referential with it, then the topic will be 'continued'. A change of topic seems to follow automatically with reference to previously identified things referred to by commentphrases:

[72]a: I am looking for my typewriter. b: It is no longer on my desk.

Whereas the contextually identified `I' is assigned topic function in [72]a the topic is changed to the argument referring to the typewriter in [72]b. It will however bedifficult to maintain that since'I' is assigned topic in [72]athis topic remains the same in the subsequent sentence:

[72]c: I do not see it in my office.

which seems to be also about the typewriter (as is indicated by the pronominalization it). As before, we thus must assume that sets or ordered pairs may be topics in a sentence (if no further information is established about topícalíty by the whole passage/discourse).

Note, incidentally, that arguments referring to identified members of the context (eg speaker and hearer) need not be explicitly introduced into the discourse in order to be topic. With normal ordering and stress they always have topic function.

1972a, and

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Note also that not all definite noun phrases must express topic function. Definite noun phrases are also used in those cases where there is obviously only one object of the kind in the universe of the particular discourse. In order to become topic, however, such individuals must first be introduced into the set of referents:

[73] Leonard ran off with the maid.

Here the maid' may well belong to the comment.

6.6

It is not easy to draw unambiguous CONCLUSIONS from these observations about the topic-comment articulation in sentences, not even for sentences in (con-)text. We have a clear formal criterion, viz [64], possibly corresponding to a cognitive principie of information expansion, but our intuitions do not always seem to match with these rules. At the same time it is not simple to distinguish at this point between sentential topics on the one hand and sequential or discourse topics on the other hand. How discourse topics may be defined is a problem for the next chapter. Besides the referential conditions stated aboye, the assignment of sentential topic function also seems to be determined by rules of topic continuity and topic change, and further by pragmatic factors like 'interest', 'importance' or `relevance', 28 rather vague notions to be further discussed in Chapter 8. It has been clear in this last section that certain problems of discourse semantics are still very puzzling: even if there are some fairly general rules, there are many very subtle differences which seem to obey other constraints.

Notes

1 Other terms are used to denote similar concepts. Halliday and Hasan (1976) use the term COHESION, though sometimes in a broader way than we use the term `coherence'. In other writings, especially in psychology and philosopy, the term CONNECTED(NESS) is used to denote discourse coherence. From our discussion it follows that connectedness in our terminology is a very specific kind of coherence, viz the set of conditions determining the relations as pairs, ie interdependencies, between facts, as expressed by composite sentences and sequences, and relative to some possible world and some possible topic of conversation. For a philosophical discussion of coherence and truth, see Rescher ( 1973).

2For example, the relations between the following sentences, which are not connected semantically, but which have other coherence relations: They went to the zoo. Never had they been in a zoo before. Other examples will be given below.

3We merely treat some aspects of coherence. An analysis of relations of lexical

meaning, reference, etc has been given in our earlier work (eg van Dijk,

the references given there). We also refer to the inventory of coherence relations given by Halliday and Hasan (1976)

4 Thus in a discourse about a tea party in some fiat in London, say, the introduction of protons and elephants as individuals will be most unlikely (except of course in possible discourses produced during that party). Part of this kind of PRAGMATIC unexpectedness will be reconstructed in terms of SEMANTIC coherence, requiring relations between individuals and properties of individuals, on the one hand, and

a', ie
it stands for the thing
MODEL STRUCTURE

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abstract functions, viz topics of conversation, determining sets of possible facts in which these individuals and properties are involved.

5 See especially Halliday and Hasan (1976) and for some of the grammatical properties of discourse, viz syntactic structures expressing semantic coherence relations in discourse, van Dijk (1972a), Dressler (1970), and the references given in these works.

6 There should be made a methodological and theoretical distinction between the notion of determination in a grammar or a logical system (eg semantics) and determination in actual processes of language production and comprehension. As will briefly be explained in the next chapter, a reader starting to read a discourse will not have a fui] macro-structure at bis disposal, but will make hypotheses about the topic of conversation which may be gradually confirmed, changed, or rejected in further reading. In the grammar we only have to do with theoretical dependence, eg relative interpretations of expressions with respect to an (also theoretical) topic of conversation 'as if this topic were already there. In this respect the grammar more closely models the reader's'final comprehension' - still in a very abstract way - of a discourse or part of it. Further methodological intricacies involved will not be discussed here.

7 For a similar notion (text model) see eg Ballmer (1972). It should be noted though that, as yet, the notion of discourse model or other kinds of model sequences is not well-defined in logical theory (see Groenendijk and Stokhof, 1976, however, for a similar concept needed for the interpretation of certain composite performative sentences). Recall that a is an abstract semantic reconstruction of 'what there is' (sets of worlds, individuals, properties, etc). Together with a valuation function (relating expressions of a language to these various semantic

'things'), such model structures constitute MODELS (see Chapter 2). Characteristic of a discourse model would be, for instance, the fact that the respective domains of individuals would at least intersect (together defining what most literally may now be called a 'universe of discourse'). See below.

8 For this kind of'restricted quantification' or'sortal quantification', see Altham and Tennant (1975), and the references given there to earlier work on that topic. See also van Dijk (1973a) for a discussion about quantification in discourse.

9 See section 6 of Chapter 2 and for formal details on this issue also Goddard and Routley (1973).

l0 For the notion of 'dimensiorr' of meaning and similar concepts, see the references given in note 18 of Chapter 2.

11 A COMPLETE DESCRIPTION of a situation would consist of all sentences being true (or satisfied) with respect to that situation. In particular, it might be requíred that if a proposition p did not belong to the set, -p would be a member. In general such sets will be CONSISTENT: if p belongs to it, —p does not. They will be MAXIMALLY CONSISTENT if in addition any proposition were a member of the set without making it inconsistent (so, either a is a member or- a for any a).

12 The crime story from which we take several examples, here and elsewhere is James Hadley Chase, Just che way it is, 1944. We quote from the 1975 Panther Book edition.

13 Recall that the expression V(a) means 'the value of denoted by the expression a (see Chapter 2).

14 We here touch upon the difficult methodological problem of distinguishing a (formal) semantic characterization of discourse coherence on the one hand, and a specification of pragmatíc and cognitive determinants formulated in terms of worid knowledge, interpretation strategies, expectations, etc. In the passages that follow we will not always bother to make the distinction explicitly. It should be borne in mind, however, that for the semantics, expectations, world knowledge, etc are merely specific sets of propositions, relative to which sentences are (formally) interpreted. It is NOT the tasé of a formal or linguistic semantics to spell out these

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propositions, but only to formulate the more general interpretation conditions for coherent sequences involving such knowledge/expectation sets.

15 The notion of FRAME comes from recent cognitíve psychology and artificial intelligence, and has been comed by Minsky (1975). See further discussion and references in the next chapter. For the relations between frames and discourse interpretation (comprehension), see van Dijk (1976a).

16 The postulates given are one of the possible REPRESENTATIONS of (cognitive) frames. They are given here to indicate the assumption that the office-frame would not itself contain the information that offices have windows, but that this information is subsumed under the more general building-frame. Again, we see that semantic coherence, determining comprehension and hence acceptability, is based on relations between facts as they are conventionally known, and hence present in frames.

17 See the discussion about `possible individuals' in Chapter 2 and in Rescher (1975). Note that the real Clare Russell as she exists in the past actual world ís not strictly identical with the Clare Russell as conceived in some thought-world of the real, present-actual Clare Russell. The philosophical intricacies will be ignored here, the upshot of our analysis being only that 'referential identity' in a discourse may involve identity across severa) worlds, which must satisfy certain constraints (eg that these worlds are accessible from a given world).

18 Note that the interpretations involved here are those of an abstract semantic theory, viz those assigning intensions and/or extensions to expressions. We do not claim that such a theory can be translated directly into a theory of cognitive semantic information processing (comprehension), but even in such a cognitive theory it should be assumed that language users construct some form of proposicional missing link in order to connect superficially disconnected sentences (see Kintsch (1974) for empirical evidence for this assumption).

19 How compelling conventional frames can be in the coherent interpretation of discourse by language users, may be illustrated by the fact that one of the readers of the first draft of this book thought that he was a typing error for she.

20 This inference would be based on the lexical and frame-like conceptual structure of the concepts in [30]. What we do in fact is operate a certain EXPANSION, viz specify (generally known) details of certain actions at a 'lower' leve) of representation.

21 It may be argued that completeness of various kinds does not belong to discourse coherence in the strict sense, but either constitutes a different kind of semantic property of discourse or a typical pragmatic property determining appropriateness relative to some context (involving communicative intentions). We do however consider (in-)completeness as a condition of (semantic) (in-)coherence of discourse.

22 Since for any proposition a it holds that it also entails a, (self-entailment), the selfentailed proposition of an expressed (explicit) proposition is of course not implicit.

23 See Dahl (1969), Sgall, Hajicová and Benesová (1973) and the references given there.

24 One of the recent papers in psychology about the cognitive basis of the GIVEN-NEW contract is Clark (1973). See also Dahl (1976) for a linguistic point of view. In fact, most current work on semantic information processing deals with the more general problem of how incoming information is integrated into the already present conceptual structure. See the references in the next chapter, and the discussion in Chapter 8.

25 We here again touch upon the difficult problem of the precise STATUS of the notions of topic and comment, ie the leveis and tercos in which they should be described. Although our discussion is mainly framed in semantic terms (reference), pragmatic and cognitive elements are also involved (knowledge of hearers, etc). Speaking loosely, one may say however, that a syntactic phrase together with a specific stress and intonation pattern are ASSIGNED, or EXPRESS, topic and comment function.

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This means that we take these functions to be specific properties of the semantic structure of sentences, viz a property to be defined (at that level, at least) in terms of relative interpretations.

26 The epistemic range' of an object is taken to mean the set of propositions known, by someone, to be true of that object. For our purposes this might be strengthened such that only general, conventional knowledge about some individual is involved, but this would exclude the topic-comment functions that operate on the basis of ad hoc or other particular knowledge about objects as it is shared by speaker and hearer in some particular context of communication.

27 This would at least explain the use of i1 in English and the use of similar `pronouns' in other languages. For languages like Latin, Italian and Russian no such explanation would be necessary, since only a third person ending is used to express impersonal events. There is no reason, however, to assume that such morphemes would not also express topic function (as do the other person morphemes of verbendings), requiring specific personal pronouns when having comment-function (which, however, is impossible for the impersonal expressions).

28 Parallel to the notion of topic-comment articulation, the Prague School has discussed a still more elusive concept, viz that of COMMUNICATIVE DYNAMISM, required to explain the notions of 'relevance' or `importance' of certain expressions and possibly correlated phenomena as stress, intonation and word order to be explained in terms of topic-comment transformations or contrast. See Sgall, Hajicová and Benesová (1973) for a discussion of this notion.