Controlling thematic choices in discourse: towards a specification of contextual constraints*
نویسنده
چکیده
This paper investigates the relationship between two contextual factors which contribute to the characterization of text types: the purpose and the subject matter of discourse, and the thematic structure of texts. This is done through the empirical analysis of a corpus of sixty discourses varying in these two factors together. The results of the analysis yielded statistically significant correlations between the identified factors and specific thematic choices, thus validating the hypothesis that thematic selection in discourse is not random but contextually-controlled. The paper also addresses issues of computational representation by outlining a semantic interface for Theme which mediates between high-level contextual sources of control and lexicogrammatical choices which might be useful in the application context of text generation.
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