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The Structure of Discourse: a Corpus-Based Cross-Linguistic Study, Phd Series, No A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Gylling, Morten Doctoral Thesis The Structure of Discourse: A Corpus-Based Cross- Linguistic Study PhD Series, No. 38.2013 Provided in Cooperation with: Copenhagen Business School (CBS) Suggested Citation: Gylling, Morten (2013) : The Structure of Discourse: A Corpus-Based Cross-Linguistic Study, PhD Series, No. 38.2013, ISBN 9788792977892, Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Frederiksberg, http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8794 This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/208872 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. 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All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Table of contents Foreword ...................................................................................................................................... vii Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... ix Resumé .......................................................................................................................................... xi 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 13 2 A framework for the analysis of linguistic structures ........................................................... 21 2.1 Linguistic structures ....................................................................................................... 21 2.1.1 A cognitive-functional approach ............................................................................ 24 2.1.2 A rhetorical approach ............................................................................................. 28 2.1.3 Text and discourse revised ..................................................................................... 31 2.1.4 Defining information .............................................................................................. 37 2.1.5 Cohesion and coherence ......................................................................................... 38 2.1.6 Linguistic structures: an overview .......................................................................... 41 2.2 The relevance of linguistic structures to other disciplines ............................................. 42 2.3 Components of a cross-linguistic analysis of linguistic structures ................................ 44 2.4 Previous studies of linguistic structures in parliamentary discourse ............................. 45 2.5 Summing up ................................................................................................................... 49 3 Data description..................................................................................................................... 51 3.1 The texts: genre and typology ........................................................................................ 52 3.2 Data criteria .................................................................................................................... 55 3.3 Terminology and translations ........................................................................................ 60 3.4 Annotation ..................................................................................................................... 61 3.4.1 Inter-annotator agreement....................................................................................... 64 3.5 Text segmentation .......................................................................................................... 69 3.5.1 Elementary Discourse Units ................................................................................... 72 3.5.2 Text segmentation principles .................................................................................. 75 3.6 Summing up ................................................................................................................... 84 4 The text structure of parliamentary discourse ....................................................................... 87 4.1 Dependency and realisation of EDUs ............................................................................ 88 4.2 The deverbalisation scale ............................................................................................... 92 4.3 Text structure in Danish, English and Italian................................................................. 96 4.3.1 Danish versus Italian .............................................................................................. 96 4.3.2 English versus Italian ............................................................................................. 97 4.3.3 Hypotheses ............................................................................................................. 98 4.4 Dependencies of EDUs ................................................................................................. 99 4.4.1 Three examples from the corpus ............................................................................ 99 4.4.2 Overall dependency patterns in Danish, English and Italian ............................... 102 4.5 Realisations of subordinate EDUs .............................................................................. 109 4.6 Summing up ................................................................................................................ 114 5 The discourse structure of parliamentary discourse ........................................................... 117 5.1 Rhetorical Structure Theory ........................................................................................ 122 5.1.1 RST in argumentative texts.................................................................................. 128 5.2 Rhetorical relations in parliamentary discourse .......................................................... 130 5.3 The five most frequent semantic relations .................................................................. 131 5.3.1 Circumstance ....................................................................................................... 133 5.3.2 Elaboration ........................................................................................................... 134 5.3.3 Non-Volitional Cause .......................................................................................... 136 5.3.4 Purpose................................................................................................................. 137 5.3.5 Volitional Cause .................................................................................................. 138 5.4 The five most frequent pragmatic relations ................................................................ 140 5.4.1 Background .......................................................................................................... 140 5.4.2 Concession ........................................................................................................... 142 5.4.3 Evidence............................................................................................................... 143 5.4.4 Justify ..................................................................................................................
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