The semantics of French continuative rises in SDRT
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Jacques Jayez
Abstract
In this paper, we examine the status of French major continuative prosodic contours, which are mainly realised as nal rises at the boundary of sentences. We show how to substantiate the common intuition that these contours convey ‘continuation’. We report empirical evidence that indicates that native speakers cannot distinguish major continuatives and questions in isolated discourse segments. We then show how to integrate continuatives into a liberal version of Asher’s SDRT. In essence, we propose that any discourse constituent bearing a major continuative (i) has a default question interpretation when taken in isolation and (ii) constrains attachments at the point where it occurs, when considered in the context of a discourse.
Abstract
In this paper, we examine the status of French major continuative prosodic contours, which are mainly realised as nal rises at the boundary of sentences. We show how to substantiate the common intuition that these contours convey ‘continuation’. We report empirical evidence that indicates that native speakers cannot distinguish major continuatives and questions in isolated discourse segments. We then show how to integrate continuatives into a liberal version of Asher’s SDRT. In essence, we propose that any discourse constituent bearing a major continuative (i) has a default question interpretation when taken in isolation and (ii) constrains attachments at the point where it occurs, when considered in the context of a discourse.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Introduction 1
- Processing narrative texts 17
- Through narrative planning towards the preverbal message 45
- Bridges between events 77
- The semantics of French continuative rises in SDRT 109
- Coherence structure and lexical cohesion in expository and persuasive texts 137
- Complex connectives in German 165
- Differential properties of three discourse connectives in Turkish 183
- Appositive relative clauses and their competing allostructures in English 207
- Index 227
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Introduction 1
- Processing narrative texts 17
- Through narrative planning towards the preverbal message 45
- Bridges between events 77
- The semantics of French continuative rises in SDRT 109
- Coherence structure and lexical cohesion in expository and persuasive texts 137
- Complex connectives in German 165
- Differential properties of three discourse connectives in Turkish 183
- Appositive relative clauses and their competing allostructures in English 207
- Index 227
