Dialogue Games: An Approach to Discourse Analysis

ISBN-13: 9789027719515 / Angielski / Miękka / 1985 / 320 str.

Carlson; Laurie Winn Carlson; L. Carlson

Opis

This essay constitutes yet another approach to the fields of inquiry variously known as discourse analysis, discourse grammar, text grammar, functional 1 syntax, or text linguistics. An attempt is made to develop a fairly abstract unified theoretical frame work for the description of discourse which actually helps explain concrete facts of the discourse grammar of a naturallanguage.2 This plan is reflected in the division of the study into two parts. In the first part, a semiformal framework for describing conversational discourse is developed in some detail. In the second part, this framework is applied to the functional syntax of English. The relation of the discourse grammar of Part II to the descriptive frame work of Part I can be instructively compared to the relation of Tarskian semantics to model theory. Tarski's semantics defmes a concept of truth of a sentence in a model, an independently identified construct. Analogously, my rules of discourse grammar defme a concept of appropriateness of a sentence to a given context. The task of the first Part of the essay is to characterize the relevant notion of context. Although my original statement of the problem was linguistic - how to describe the meaning, or function, of certain aspects of word order and intonation - Part I is largely an application of various methods and results of philosophical logic. The justification of the interdisciplinary approach is the simplicity and naturalness of the eventual answers to specific linguistic problems in Part II.

Recenzje

`...the book belongs to the most important publications on discourse structure, since it brings an overwhelming number of important insights in the most different domains of text linguistics, many of them helping to reveal points of a deeper understanding of conversational regularities, as well as of the relationships between sentences, contexts and truth conditions.'
The Prague Bulletin of Mathematical Linguistics, 44 (1985)

Spis treści

I: Dialogue Games.- 1 / Aims of the Game.- 1. Functions of Language.- 2. Aims vs. Means.- 3. Gambling with Truth.- 4. The Maxim of Agreement.- 2 / Propositional Attitudes.- 1. Information Sets.- 2. The Problem of Logical Omniscience.- 3. Model Sets and Model Systems.- 4. Impossible Possible Worlds.- 5. Assumption Lists as ‘Small Worlds’.- 6. An Example of a Dialogue Game Situation.- 7. The Aims of the Game Revisited.- 3 / Questions.- 1. Indirect Questions.- 2. Direct Questions.- 3. Answers to Search Questions.- 4. Conclusiveness.- 5. What-questions.- 6. Who-questions.- 7. Personal Identity.- 8. Descriptive vs. Demonstrative Criteria.- 9. Relative Identification.- 4 / Dialogue Game Rules.- 1. Simplest Theory of Dialogue.- 2. Relevance.- 3. Meaning Conventions.- 4. Suggestions.- 5. Suppositions.- 6. Examples of Dialogue Strategies.- 7. Rules vs. Strategies.- 8. Derived Rules.- 9. Game Rules for Questions.- 10. Answering.- 11. Logical Moves.- 12. Arguments.- 13. Replies.- 5 / Structure of Dialogue.- 1. Structure of Dialogue.- 2. Parameters of a Move.- 3. Internal Dialogues.- 4. Playing for Others.- 5. Dialogue Games.- 6. Turn-taking and Topic Hierarchy.- 6 / Logical Game Rules.- 1. Logical Game Rules.- 2. Logical Game Rules for Questions.- 3. Game Rules for Search Questions.- 4. Which-questions.- 5. Conclusiveness.- 7 / Logic of Dialogue.- 1. Consistency.- 2. Indirect Inference.- 3. Inductive Decision.- 4. Answerhood.- 5. Implied Questions.- 6. Dialogical Entailment.- 7. Conversational Implicature.- 8. Self-transparency.- 8 / Question-Answer Dialogues.- 1. Language-games vs. Speech Acts.- 2. Pleading Ignorance.- 3. Rejection of Questions.- 4. Eliciting Questions.- 5. A Three-person Dialogue.- 6. Questions Implying Ignorance.- 7. Biased Questions.- 8. Elementary Questions.- 9. Rhetorical Questions.- 10. Tag Questions.- 11. Echo Questions.- Appendix I.- Appendix II.- II: Discourse Grammar.- 1 / Discourse Grammar.- 1. Discourse Analysis and Discourse Grammar.- 2. Appropriateness, Coherence, and Cohesion.- 3. Autonomy of Discourse Grammar.- 2 / Connectives.- 1. And.- 2. Or.- 3. Inclusive or Exclusive Or.- 4. But.- 5. Applications of (D.but).- 6. Implications of (D.but).- 7. But in Dialogue.- 8. But and the Abstract Performative Hypothesis.- 9. The Logicians’ But.- 10. Russian Adversative Conjunctions.- 3 / Old and New Information.- 1. Sentence Grammar vs. Functional Syntax.- 2. Stylistic Rules.- 3. Functional Definitions.- 4. Matching.- 5. Word Order.- 6. Topicalization.- 7. VP Preposing.- 8. Focus Topicalization.- 9. Other Uses of Topicalization.- 10. Functional Definitions Refined.- 11. Kuno’s Classification and Japanese wa vs. ga.- 4 / Given vs. Known Information.- 1. Subordination and Thematicity.- 2. Factivity.- 3. Cleft Sentences.- 4. It-Clefts.- 5 / Aboutness.- 1. A Traditional Ambiguity in the Notion of ‘Theme’.- 2. Invalid Arguments for Independence.- 3. Ab outness.- 4. Dialogue Subjects.- 5. Subject and Topic.- 6. Evidence for Dialogue Subjects: (D.subject).- 7. Evidence from Anaphora.- 8. So-called Dislocations.- 9. Right Dislocation.- 10. As for.- Notes.- Index of Names.- Index of Subjects.- Index of Rules.