Adopting Berrendonner’s (1990; fc.) distinction between “micro-syntax” and “macrosyntax”, as well as the orthogonal one between foregrounded and backgrounded discourse segments (cf. Khalil, 2005), this paper aims to examine certain “noncanonical” interactions amongst these domains. In particular, I shall be looking at instances where a potential referent is evoked within a highly presupposed, d...

This paper analyzes opinion categories like Sentiment and Arguing in meetings. We first annotate the categories manually. We then develop genre-specific lexicons using interesting function word combinations for detecting the opinions. We analyze relations between dialog structure information and opinion expression in context of multiparty discourse. Finally we show that classifiers using lexica...

In this paper, I would like to propose an idea of semantics for discourse and pictorial representations. The central notion of this paper is function. A representation is a representation of something. A function determines the connection between representation and what is represented. This is true for both discourse and pictorial representations. To properly interpret a representation system m...

We examine the effect of contextual and acoustic cues in the disambiguation of three discourse-pragmatic functions of the word okay. Results of a perception study show that contextual cues are stronger predictors of discourse function than acoustic cues. However, acoustic features capturing the pitch excursion at the right edge of okay feature prominently in disambiguation, whether other contex...

Cue phrases are linguistic expressions such as now and well that function as explicit indicators of the structure of a discourse. For example, now may signal the beginning of a subtopic or a return to a previous topic, while well may mark subsequent material as a response to prior material, or as an explanatory comment. However, while cue phrases may convey discourse structure, each also has on...

Neuroimaging research is providing new types of information and insight about the cortical activity underlying discourse processing. Knowing the intensity and location of the brain activity during discourse comprehension adds significantly to the information provided by behavioral measures alone. The combination of neuroimaging data and behaviorally based discourse theories indicate that discou...