The discourse structure of free indirect discourse reports
We investigate the discourse structure of Free Indirect Discourse passages in narratives. We argue that Free
Indirect Discourse reports consist of two separate propositional discourse units: an (explicit or implicit) frame segment and a
reported content. These segments are connected at the level of discourse structure by a non-veridical, subordinating discourse
relation of Attribution, familiar from recent SDRT analyses of indirect discourse constructions in natural conversation (Hunter, 2016). We conducted an experiment to detect the covert presence of a
subordinating frame segment based on its effects on pronoun resolution. We compared (unframed) Free Indirect Discourse with
overtly framed Indirect Discourse and a non-reportative segment. We found that the first two indeed pattern alike in terms of
pronoun resolution, which we take as evidence against the pragmatic context split approach of Schlenker (2004) and Eckardt (2014), and in favor of our discourse
structural Attribution analysis.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The pragmatic context split approach to Free Indirect Discourse
- 3.The discourse structure of reporting constructions
- 3.1Basic SDRT and discourse relations
- 3.2The discourse structure of speech and attitude reports
- 4.The discourse structure of FID reports
- 5.The experiment: Discourse relations in FID and ID
- 5.1Methods
- 5.1.1Participants
- 5.1.2Materials and design
- 5.1.3Predictions
- 5.1.4Results
- 6.Discussion
- 7.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
References
References
Abrusán, Márta
2019 “
Computing
Perspective Shift in Narrative.” To appear in:
Maier, E. and
A. Stokke (eds.)
The
Language of Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Asher, Nicholas, & Alex Lascarides
2003 Logics
of Conversation. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Banfield, Ann
1982 Unspeakable
Sentences: Narration and Representation in the Language of
Fiction. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.
Bary, Corien, & Emar Maier
2020 “
The
Landscape of Speech Reporting.” Ms. Nijmegen/Groningen.
[URL]
Christensen, R. H. B.
2019 “
Ordinal –
Regression Models for Ordinal Data. R Package Version 2019.12–10.”
[URL]
Cumming, Samuel
2019 “
Narrative
and Point of View.” To appear in:
Maier, E. and
A. Stokke (eds.)
The
Language of Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dancygier, B.
2017 “
Viewpoint
phenomena in constructions and discourse.”
Glossa: a journal of general
linguistics, 2(1): 37.
Dancygier, Barbara & Lieven Vandelanotte
2016 “
Discourse
viewpoint as network.”
Viewpoint and the fabric of meaning: Form and use of viewpoint tools
across languages and modalities 131: 40.
Eckardt, Regine
2014 The
Semantics of Free Indirect Discourse: How Texts Allow Us to Mind-Read and
Eavesdrop. Leiden: Brill.
Fludernik, Monika
2003 The
Fictions of Language and the Languages of
Fiction. London: Routledge.
Hinterwimmer, Stefan
2017 “
Prominent
Protagonists.”
Journal of
Pragmatics, 1541: 79–91.
Hobbs, Jerry R.
1979 “
Coherence and
Coreference.”
Cognitive
Science 3 (1): 67–90.
Hunter, Julie
2016 “
Reports
in Discourse.”
Dialogue &
Discourse 7 (4): 1–35.
Hunter, Julie, Nicholas Asher, Brian Reese, and Pascal Denis
2006 “
Evidentiality
and Intensionality: Two Uses of Reportative Constructions in Discourse.”
Proceedings of the
Workshop on Constraints in
Discourse: 99–106. Maynooth: National University of Ireland.
Kaiser, Elsi
2015 “
Perspective-Shifting
and Free Indirect Discourse: Experimental Investigations.”
Semantics and Linguistic
Theory 251: 346–372.
Kaplan, David
1989 Demonstratives.
Themes from Kaplan. J. Almog, J. Perry and H.
Wettstein: 481–563. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kehler, Andrew, Laura Kertz, Hannah Rohde, and Jeffrey L. Elman
2008 “
Coherence
and Coreference Revisited.”
Journal of
Semantics 25 (1): 1–44.
Kehler, Andrew and Hannah Rohde
2013 “
A
Probabilistic Reconciliation of Coherence-Driven and Centering-Driven Theories of Pronoun
Interpretation.”
Theoretical
Linguistics 39 (1–2): 1–37.
Koev, Todor
2013 Apposition
and the Structure of Discourse. Rutgers University PhD Dissertation.
Labov, William
1972 Language
in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Lascarides, Alex and Nicholas Asher
2008 “
Segmented
Discourse Representation Theory: Dynamic Semantics with Discourse Structure.”
Computing
Meaning, 87–124: Springer.
Maier, Emar
2015 “
Quotation
and Unquotation in Free Indirect Discourse.”
Mind &
Language 30 (3): 345–373.
Miltsakaki, Eleni
2001 “
Centering
in Greek.”
Proceedings of The 15th International Symposium on theoretical and applied
linguistics.
Nikiforidou, Kiki
2012 “
The
constructional underpinnings of viewpoint blends.”
Viewpoint in language: A multimodal
perspective ed. by
B. Dancygier and
E. Sweetser: 1771. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Papadopoulou, Despina, Eleni Peristeri, Evagelia Plemenou, Theodoros Marinis, and Ianthi Tsimpli
2015 “
Pronoun
Ambiguity Resolution in Greek: Evidence from Monolingual Adults and
Children.”
Lingua 1551: 98–120.
R Core Team
2019 R: A Language and
Environment for Statistical Computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria.
[URL]
Sanders, José & Gisela Redeker
1996 “
Perspective
and the representation of speech and thought in narrative discourse.”
Spaces, worlds and
grammar ed. by
G. Fauconnier and
E. Sweetser, 290–317. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Schlenker, Philippe
2004 “
Context
of Thought and Context of Utterance: A Note on Free Indirect Discourse and the Historical
Present.”
Mind &
Language 19 (3): 279–304.
Sharvit, Yael
2008 “
The
Puzzle of Free Indirect Discourse.”
Linguistics and
Philosophy 31 (3): 353–395.
Simons, Mandy
2007 “
Observations
on Embedding Verbs, Evidentiality, and
Presupposition.”
Lingua 117 (6): 1034–1056.
Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
Abrusán, Márta
2023.
Plural and Quantified Protagonists in Free Indirect Discourse and Protagonist Projection.
Journal of Semantics 40:1
► pp. 127 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.