Media Discourse Syntax

Constructing Syntax from Discourse

What is functionalism? Both Silverstein (1987) and Nichols (1984) have analyzed in detail the variety of ways functionalism has been used by linguists. Silverstein made a division into four types of functions, referential and pragmatic: (a) `sense-structure', (b) the `abstract, "sentence"-internal distribution of forms,' (c) the `use of signal forms for purposive, intentional social effect' (d)...

Egocentricity in Discourse and Syntax

The Syntax-discourse Divide: Processing Ellipsis.

VP-ellipsis and sluicing are forms of ellipsis that can cross a sentence boundary. We present a series of comprehension studies on these forms of ellipsis to elucidate their processing and the relation of syntactic and discourse processing. One set of studies examines the hypothesis that the representation of elided material is syntactically structured. We present evidence supporting the hypoth...

Constructions of Intersubjectivity : Discourse , Syntax , and Cognition

Constructions of Intersubjectivity by Arie Verhagen is very much an intellectual product of our times. Combining current concerns in cognitive and evolutionary linguistics, and capitalizing—more, or less, explicitly—on a pragmatic lineage that goes back to H.P. Grice’s (1957) notion of reflexive intentions (i.e., intentions whose fulfillment consists in their recognition) and Anscombre and Ducr...

Syntax coordination: interaction of discourse and extrapositions

The model presented here for parsing spoken German o ers a way to proceed incrementally discontinuous constructions. Typical constructions in task oriented dialogs are Extrapositions to the right. These are dened as syntactical constructions where a constituent is extraposed in the Nachfeld. Basing on the assumption that the extraposed constituent is not part of the source sentence the model wo...