Sentence Connectives Research Articles

Informativeness and explicit linking in the translation of the English V-ing free adjuncts into Catalan

This paper reports on a study designed to assess the influence of the pragmatic Principle of Informativeness on the translatorial strategy of explicitation. It replicates a previous study on the occurrence of conjunctional augmentation of English present participle free adjuncts in a monolingual corpus (Kortmann 1991), with a database of translation instances from English into Catalan. The study aims at testing the validity of Kortmann’s scale of informativeness of semantic / discourse relations (e.g. Condition, Cause, Simultaneity, etc.) as a (partial) account of explicitation by means of sentence and discourse connectives. The methodology is text-based and involves collecting a database of pairs of sequences (English source text, Catalan translation), identifying the most plausible interpretation between free adjunct and matrix clause, and classifying them into instances that have undergone explicitation vs. non-explicitation. The data are analysed quantitatively (by finding the percentages of explicitation per relationship) as well as qualitatively (by analysing the kinds of semantic shifts that occur between source texts and translations).

What are discourse markers?

This paper is an attempt to clarify the status of discourse markers. These lexical expressions have been studied under various labels, including discourse markers, discourse connectives, discourse operators, pragmatic connectives, sentence connectives, and cue phrases. Although most researchers agree that they are expressions which relate discourse segments, there is no agreement on how they are to be defined or how they function. After reviewing prior theoretical research, I define discourse markers as a class of lexical expressions drawn primarily from the syntactic classes of conjunctions, adverbs, and prepositional phrases. With certain exceptions, they signal a relationship between the interpretation of the segment they introduce, S2, and the prior segment, S1. They have a core meaning, which is procedural, not conceptual, and their more specific interpretation is ‘negotiated’ by the context, both linguistic and conceptual. There are two types: those that relate the explicit interpretation conveyed by S2 with some aspect associated with the segment, S1; and those that relate the topic of S2 to that of S1. I conclude by presenting what appears to be the major classes according to their function.

Cancellative discourse markers

3 Although neither Quirk et al. (1985) nor Halliday and Hasan (1976) use the term discourse markers, I take it as non-controversial that, for the most part, the lexical items they discuss may fairly be described as discourse markers. Whereas Quirk et al. and to a lesser extent Halliday and Hasan are more concerned with how markers function as sentence connectors, the notion of discourse marker is intended to capture how markers operate on the propositional, rhetorical and sequential structure of the discourse as a whole.

A Feature-Based Account of the Relations Signalled by Sentence and Clause Connectives

This paper describes a three-stage methodology for investigating the semantics and pragmatics of sentence and clause connective phrases. The first step in the methodology is to assemble a large corpus of connectives. The second step is to organize this corpus into a hierarchical taxonomy of synonyms and hyponyms, using a pre-theoretical substitution test. The final step, upon which we concentrate in this paper, is to impose a theoretical interpretation on the taxonomy. The taxonomy lends itself to an analysis of intersentential / interclausal relations in terms of a number of orthogonal multivalued features; connectives are then seen as signaling the values of one or more of these features.

Classes of Valuations Closed under Operations Galois-dual to Boolean Sentence Connectives

Classes of Valuations Closed under Operations Galois-dual to Boolean Sentence Connectives

Stylistic variations in science lectures: Teaching vocabulary

This paper described an empirical study of vocabulary teaching in science lectures. Twenty lectures by native speaker geology lecturers to nonnative speaker students were transcribed, and 921 instances of vocabulary elaboration were found, showing an average frequency of occurrence of one elaboration per minute. They were coded onto a computer database according to 20 linguistic features, and information was obtained on lexical density, the forms of elaboration, and the distribution of discourse markers and sentence connectors associated with them. Noticeable variation was found between lecturers in the range and technicality of their language, the patterning of vocabulary elaboration, the amount and type (verbal, prosodic, graphic) of signalling used, and their employment of analogies. The analysis also revealed aspects of contextualised vocabulary teaching that could pose problems for students, viz. ambiguity, verbal mazes, lack of explicit marking, exotic analogies and register shifts to culturally unfamiliar “everyday vocabulary.” In light of these findings, we argue for tailor-made courses in any EFL setting with a stable staff and student population, but suggest some alternatives for less fortunate EAP instructors.

Fuzzy logic in control systems: fuzzy logic controller. I

For pt.I see ibid., vol.20, no.2, p.404-18, 1990. The basic aspects of the FLC (fuzzy logic controller) decision-making logic are examined. Several issues, including the definitions of a fuzzy implication, compositional operators, the interpretations of the sentence connectives 'and' and 'also', and fuzzy inference mechanisms, are investigated. Defuzzification strategies, are discussed. Some of the representative applications of the FLC, from laboratory level to industrial process control, are briefly reported. Some unsolved problems are described, and further challenges in this field are discussed. >

Fuzzy logic in control systems: fuzzy logic controller. II

For pt.I see ibid., vol.20, no.2, p.404-18, 1990. The basic aspects of the FLC (fuzzy logic controller) decision-making logic are examined. Several issues, including the definitions of a fuzzy implication, compositional operators, the interpretations of the sentence connectives 'and' and 'also', and fuzzy inference mechanisms, are investigated. Defuzzification strategies, are discussed. Some of the representative applications of the FLC, from laboratory level to industrial process control, are briefly reported. Some unsolved problems are described, and further challenges in this field are discussed.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Sentence connectors in french children's monologue performance

Abstract Sentence connectors play a principle role in the construction of texts. Learning to use sentence connectors, then, is an important step in the acquisition of skills necessary for the production of oral monologues. This work describes six monolingual French speaking children's (ages 3;2 to 4;10) uses of high frequency oral discourse connectors in nursery school situated narrative performance. The results show that part of the developmental process involves enlarging the set of connectors in the developing lexicon. In addition it is shown that children fine-tune the uses of early acquired connectors in part by replacing existing functions with semantically more appropriate connectors. Finally, it is shown that important in learning the appropriate conditions controlling high frequency connectors is learning when not to use them.

Notes towards a Theory of Text Coherence

It is widely acknowledged in the field of text linguistics that for a text or a text segment (e.g., a paragraph) to be pragmatically wellformed, it must meet the requirement of cohesion. Of the many recent studies concerned with connectedness as a textual phenomenom that has a linguistic manifestation such as: Bellert (1970), Vuchinich (1977), Daneg (1974), Enkvist (1978), Gutwinski (1976), Halliday and Hasan (1976) Reinhart (1980) is the most comprehensive. Reinhart argues that for a text to be coherent it must meet the requirements of consistency, cohesion and relevance. For Reinhart, cohesion is viewed in terms of linear relations between pairs of sentences that are either referentially linked [...] or linked by a semantic connector (1980:168). She further specifies that for a referential link to count as a cohesive device, the linked referent in the second sentence of the pair must be part of the topic or scene-setting expression of the sentence. She adds, however, that a text fails to be referentially linked it can still be cohesive if its sentences are connected by semantic sentence connectors (p. 176). My controversy with the various theories of coherence regards the function of cohesion in the construction of a well-formed text. I will

French preschoolers' use of et pis ('and then')

This research proposes a taxonomy for evaluating children's uses of sentence connectives. It is used to examine et pis ('and then') in the speech of monolingual French children ranging in age from 3 to 5 years and participating in a classroom-based 'show and tell' session. The younger children are shown to encode a wider variety of logico- semantic relations with et pis. The older children narrow down the range of logico-semantic relations encoded by et pis and show an increase in other structures which accomplish the same tasks.

FROM LOGIC TO PHILOSOPHIES

conceptual connectedness, which they cannot discern in the usual farraginous reading lists of anthologies and journal articles. To give some indication of the scope of the book, the chapter headings are: I. 'Philosophy of logics'; 2. Validity; 3. Sentence connectives; 4. Quantifiers; 5. Singular terms; 6. Sentences, statements, propositions; 7. Theories of truth; 8. Paradoxes; 9. Logic and logics; io. Modal logic; ii. Many-valued logic; 12. Some metaphysical and epistemological questions about logic. Anyone familiar with the literature will realise how much controversy has to be condensed under each heading. The impressive bibliography alone, if blended in the way one can expect from Haack's fair and even hand, would result in only the most anodyne discussion. Haack can serve as background reading at the very best. One must, as she herself does, point the student firmly in the direction of the classical sources. Otherwise Haack's tentativeness, and way of abruptly ending a discussion just when it starts to bear the fruits of deeper disagreement, might be taken as a model of philosophical style; and the student, in learning the price of every idea, will appreciate the value of none. At several points Haack's survey style renders her discussion too superficial:

A Comparison of Sentence Connective Recall by Two Populations of Readers

This study coalesced three classes of connectives previously studied into a collective notion called "transformational sentence connectives" and arranged three types of prose to test readers in both free and probed recall of these devices and their effects on "staging" of connected discourse. Thirty subjects averaging fifteen years of age and thirty subjects averaging twenty-five years read a mix of twelve passages representing narrative, expository, and descriptive prose-six passages requiring probed recall responses and six requiring free recall and rewriting. Errors of exact recall were tallied and compared by multivariate statistical analysis to determine significant differences between the age groups as well as any possible interaction between subjects and testing instrument. Results showed significant differences between the fifteen- and twenty-five- year-olds in seven of the twelve responses, favoring the twenty-five-year-olds. Specifically, the differences were most frequent and consistent in the free recall and rewriting task, indicating that such a task would be a better predictor of mature use of transformational sentence connectives in staging syntactic structures as elements of connected discourse text bases.

Meaning-change in the development of grammatical markers

This paper develops several hypotheses concerning the semantic-pragmatic shifts that take place in the development of grammatical markers like prepositions, auxiliary verbs, or sentence connectives. It is shown that grammatical markers shift over time, from primarily referential to more pragmatic meanings, and, more specifically, that there is a potential unidirectionality in such meaning-shifts from propositional to textual to attitudinal meanings.

The Role of Fallacies in the Diachrony of Sentence Connectives

In this essay, the methodological point of departure is the assumption that the Saussurian inherited distinction between diachronic and synchronic levels of description is fictitious and arbitrary and will therefore have to be abandoned in its stringent interpretation (see Baumgärtner's convincing display of arguments (Baumgärtner 1969) and, in the same vein, Kanngießer 1972). Not only, it will be argued, is this meanwhile classical dichotomy unnecessary, and does it fail to account for similarities between semantic change and certain types of human reasoning, but it leads into blind alleys when one attempts to systematize various linguistic phenomena. The integration of catachresis, metaphor, and other figurative usage of lexical items into a theory of grammar are cases in point (Abraham 1975).

A clause-relational approach to English texts: A study of some predictive lexical items in written discourse

This paper re-examines the linguistic basis for the distinction between two kinds of word: open-system words and closed-system words. Specifically, it looks at a class of traditionally open-system words — lexical items like nouns, verbs and adjectives — and suggests that they can function as exponents of a clause relation, and as such can have a predictive effect on the organisation of written discourse. This class of words is contrasted with two other, established, means of text organisation, the subordinators and the sentence connectors. Four criteria are presented to support the delimitation of this class. Finally, the implications of this class of words are considered for a linguistic theory of reference.

The acceptability of linguistic connectives as a function of the relationship between the referent events.

An investigation of the effects of experiential and linguistic variables on the preference for within sentence connectives. 8 items were constructed, each consisting of 2 clauses describing sequential events which varied in the perceived frequency of relationship and perceived temporal order (determined by subject ratings). There were 4 conditions: the clause order was either congruent with the perceived temporal order (A-B order) or opposite to it (B-A order), and the clauses were either in the Past or the Present Tense. Subjects in each condition (n = 13) ranked connectives in order of preference for each item. Results showed that frequency of relationship between described events was most likely to be a determining factor in connective preference when the clauses were in the A-B order or they were in the Past Tense. These results were substantiated by an independent absolute judgment procedure in which each sentence was rated for acceptability. Different groups (n = 29) rated the sentences in the A-B order and the B-A order. Generally the results were in agreement with the preference task, although an adaption level effect was apparent in the judgments. These results are discussed in terms of the degrees of freedom of interpretation allowed by the various linguistic connectives.

Copeland algebras

It is well known that the laws of logic governing the sentence connectives—“and”, “or”, “not”, etc.—can be expressed by means of equations in the theory of Boolean algebras. The task of providing a similar algebraic setting for the full first-order predicate logic is the primary concern of algebraic logicians. The best-known efforts in this direction are the polyadic algebras of Halmos (cf. [2]) and the cylindric algebras of Tarski (cf. [3]), both of which may be described as Boolean algebras with infinitely many additional operations. In particular, there is a primitive operator, cκ, corresponding to each quantification, ∃υκ. In this paper we explore a version of algebraic logic conceived by A. H. Copeland, Sr., and described in [1], which has this advantage: All operators are generated from a finite set of primitive operations.Following the theory of cylindric algebras, we introduce, in the natural way, the classes of Copeland set algebras (SCpA), representable Copeland algebras (RCpA), and Copeland algebras of formulas. Playing a central role in the discussion is the set, Γ, of all equations holding in every set algebra. The reason for this is that the operations in a set algebra reflect the notion of satisfaction of a formula in a model, and hence an equation expresses the fact that two formulas are satisfied by the same sequences of objects in the model. Thus to say that an equation holds in every set algebra is to assert that a certain pair of formulas are logically equivalent.

The Semantic Role of Sentence Connectors in Extra-Sentence Logical Relationships

Sentence connectors-words or phrases like HOWEVER, ON THE OTHER HAND, TO BE SURE-deserve much more study than they have previously been given, especially by those of us interested in teaching written English. For one thing, these expressions occur frequently in writing. From a word count made by Ernest Horn some years back, I calculate that roughly 50 of the 1000 most commonly used words in written English are sentence connectors. And this count includes single words only, excluding common idioms like OF COURSE, IN ADDITION, and AS A MATTER OF FACT which may well have as high a frequency as OTHERWISE, THUS, or THEREFORE. Just the fact that such words occur frequently makes them worth studying. More important, however, is the fact that sentence connectors serve a significant semantic function in written English, a function which has been misinterpreted and thus underestimated by the few grammarians who have attempted to describe it. In all of the grammar books I have seen which make an attempt to deal with the semantics of such words and phrases as HOWEVER, ON THE OTHER HAND, or FOR EXAMPLE, the underlying assumption has been that the two sentences which are to be connected by these words already have one particular logical relationship by virtue of occurring next to one another-concessive, contrastive, illustrative, or whatever-which it is the writer's task to recognize so that he can insert an appropriate expression between the two sentences in order to emphasize or clarify this relationship. In other words, sentence connectors have been viewed as having no meaning of their own, their usage predetermined by the two sentences they are to connect. But such is not usually the case. As a matter of fact, the opposite is more often true: sentence connectors frequently determine what the logical relationship between two sentences will be; while one connector may create one set of suppositions about the truth or nature of the two sentences it connects, another connector will create quite a different set of suppositions about the same two sentences. This means, then, that two sentences will have different semantic interpretations according to the sentence connector used to connect them.

Latin Sentence Connection

Latin Sentence Connection