This study presents a contrastive analysis of the pronominal uses of this and that in academic written discourse. As data, the pronominal uses of this and that are retrieved from journal articles on linguistics. From these journals, 586 articles are scanned for the pronominal uses of this and that and 198 tokens are analysed. The contrastive analysis is done in terms of the kind and span of referents this and that pick out in discourse, the types of centering transitions they signal and the rhetorical relations in which they are used. In order to investigate the types of transition they signal, the version of centering theory proposed by Grosz and Sidner (1986) and Grosz, Joshi and Weinstein (1995) is used. Also, Marcu&rsquo / s version (2000) of Rhetorical Structure Theory is used to analyze the rhetorical relations in which the expressions are used. The study also investigate the possible factors that lead an addresser to select one deictic expression instead of the other. The study concludes that this and that are cue phrases rather than discourse markers that construct local and global coherence.

Pas de résumé français / Pas de résumé anglais

Submitted by William Justo Figueiro (williamjf) on 2015-07-09T22:47:34Z No. of bitstreams: 1 28b.pdf: 928828 bytes, checksum: 03bf0090fd6d0473043b76c6366d0c61 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-07-09T22:47:34Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 28b.pdf: 928828 bytes, checksum: 03bf0090fd6d0473043b76c6366d0c61 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-12-22 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / O presente estudo busca investigar as relações retóricas que emergem do encaixe de segmentos narrativos na organização macroestrutural de notícias de divulgação científica (DC) dirigidas aos públicos infantil e adulto. A organização narrativa é analisada segundo os postulados de Adam (2011) e Charaudeau (2008b); a organização retórica macroestrutural dos textos, por sua vez, é estudada de acordo com a Rhetorical Structure Theory – RST. (MANN; THOMPSON, 1988). O corpus do estudo é composto de 15 notícias de DC voltadas ao público infantil, publicadas na revista Ciência Hoje das Crianças entre dezembro de 2004 e setembro de 2010, e de 15 notícias de DC direcionadas ao público adulto, veiculadas na revista Ciência Hoje, entre agosto de 2005 e julho de 2012. A metodologia empregada consiste na análise quantitativa da emergência de relações retóricas entre os segmentos narrativos encontrados nos corpora (infantil e adulto) e as demais porções textuais, bem como na análise qualitativa de alguns textos selecionados para exemplificar cada uma das relações retóricas encontradas. Em seguida, é realizada uma análise comparativa entre os dados quantitativos provenientes das análises dos textos para crianças e dos textos para adultos. Assume-se que a esquematização de um texto é um processo de coconstrução, no qual o produtor, ao organizar seu plano textual, leva em consideração as características e conhecimentos de seu possível leitor e, a partir disso, lança mão de estratégias variadas para alcançar o fim discursivo pretendido e causar os efeitos desejados sobre o leitor. Dessa forma, conclui-se que a emergência recorrente de determinadas relações retóricas entre as narrativas encaixadas e as outras partes do texto revela estratégias do produtor textual para orientar a leitura e compreensão da notícia, tanto nos textos escritos para crianças quanto nos escritos para adultos. / This research aims to investigate the rhetorical relations which emerge from the insertion of narrative segments in the macrostructural organization of scientific popularization news directed to children and adults. The narrative organization is analyzed according to Adam’s (2011) and Charaudeau’s (2008b) postulates; the rhetorical organization of the texts, in turn, is studied according to Rhetorical Structure Theory – RST. (MANN; THOMPSON, 1988). The research corpus is composed of 15 scientific popularization news intended for children, published in the magazine Ciência Hoje das Crianças, and of 15 scientific popularization news directed to adults, issued in the magazine Ciência Hoje. The methodology consists of a quantitative analysis of the emergency of rhetorical relations between the narrative segments found in the corpora (texts for children and texts for adults) and other textual portions, as well as of a qualitative analysis of some selected texts in order to exemplify each one of the rhetorical relations found. Then, a comparative analysis is done between the quantitative data resultant from the analysis of the texts for children and of the texts for adults. We assume that the schematization of a text is a process of co-construction, in which the producer, when organizes the text plan, takes into consideration the characteristics and knowledge of his/her possible reader and, from this, resorts to different strategies in order to achieve the discursive aim intended and cause the desired effect over the reader. Thus, we conclude that the recurrent emergency of certain rhetorical relations between the inserted narratives and the other portions of the text reveals strategies of the textual producer in order to guide the reading and comprehension of the new, both in texts written forchildren and in texts written for adults.

This thesis investigates the relationship between creative potential and the rhetorical structure of children&rsquo / s narratives. 44 middle school children (aged 12-15) were given a set of paper-pen activities including one divergent thinking test, one convergent thinking test and a story to be completed. Results of the divergent and convergent thinking tests were taken as the predictors to estimate the potential for creative thinking. Children were examined in terms of how they encode rhetorical relations in their writings. Whether a creative potential made a difference in children&rsquo / s writings in terms of rhetorical relations they used, and whether children within the same creative potential group used the same rhetorical relations in common were investigated. Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) (Marcu, 2000 and Carlson and Marcu, 2001) was used in coding children&rsquo / s writings. It was found that children in the study interpreted story writing as an act of attribution. This result is contrary to Marcu et.al (1999b), who found the elaboration-additional relation as the most frequent relation in their corpora. The study also found that there was an inverse relationship between the convergent thinking scores and the number of satellites (an EDU (elementary discourse unit) playing an auxilliary role for a text in question) for the 7th graders. Finally, it was found that high quartile (highest scorers in the study, top 25%) convergent thinkers were able to construct a narrative element with few number of EDUs and few number of discourse relation types.

The present work describes coherence structure of English and Czech book introductions. The account of coherence is based on Rhetorical Structure Theory (Mann and Thompson, 1988; Mann and Taboada, 2006) which posits that majority of texts have one main effect which can be described by one of their inventory of thirty-two rhetorical relations; other relations are organized in a hierarchical structure and contribute to the main effect. Out of thirty monographs compiled for each language, four book introductions were chosen to represent the English language and four to represent the Czech language. The data were annotated in terms of rhetorical structure. The qualitative analysis showed that the genre of book introduction does not differ across languages as all texts were described by the same top-level relations; the only difference concerns the position of the goal of the monograph. The queantitative analysis showed that the difference on lower levels concerns the presentation of past research: Czech focused more on presenting elements of subject-matter. Key words: coherence, rhetorical relations, Rhetorical Structure Theory, book introductions, English, Czech, monographs, genre

La thèse porte sur le statut sémantico-pragmatique des propositions relatives appositives (PRA), étudié à travers l’examen du fonctionnement discursif des phrases complexes de la forme ‘Matrice, qui PRA’ du français. Dans beaucoup de langues, les PRA n’interagissent pas sémantiquement avec les opérateurs présents dans leurs propositions enchâssantes et tendent à s’interpréter pragmatiquement comme porteuses d’informations non-centrales ou secondaires pour la question en discussion (QUD) du discours en cours. Plusieurs analyses (Holler 2005, Arnold 2007, Koev 2012) dissocient ces deux propriétés en dérivant la projection des PRA de leur statut d’assertions indépendantes et en expliquant leur lecture pragmatique à l’aide de principes généraux de gestion du flot discursif. En effet, lorsque les PRA apparaissent en fin de phrase, elles sont susceptibles d’interagir avec la QUD tout en ayant une portée large vis-à-vis du reste de la phrase. Certains phénomènes discursifs semblent néanmoins contredire l’idée que les PRA constituent des assertions indépendantes. D’abord, les PRA peuvent interagir avec la QUD seulement si leurs matrices véhiculent également des informations pertinentes pour le sujet en discussion. Ensuite, contrairement à ce que l’on peut observer dans une séquence de deux propositions indépendantes, dans une séquence formée d’une proposition matrice et d’une PRA, quel que soit l’ordre de leur linéarisation, la matrice s’interprète toujours comme centrale pour le discours, alors que le statut pragmatique de la PRA dépend fortement du degré d’informativité du reste de la phrase vis-à-vis de la QUD. Enfin, les résultats de deux études comportementales conduites pour la thèse montrent que, suite au traitement de phrases complexes comme ‘Matrice, qui PRA’, les référents du type ‘individu’ mentionnés par la matrice restent hautement saillants pour le discours subséquent contrairement à ceux dont il est question dans la PRA, qui jouissent d’un degré d’accessibilité assez faible. Partant de ces données, nous concluons que la lecture pragmatique centrale des PRA n’est pas une conséquence de leur statut d’assertions indépendantes mais résulte de l’intégration de leur contenu dans le domaine focal de leurs matrices. Plus généralement, en nous appuyant sur les travaux d’Ander Bois & al. (2010) et Schlenker (2013, ms), nous défendons l’idée que le manque d’interaction entre les PRA et le reste de leurs phrases d’accueil ainsi que leur prédisposition à une interprétation non-centrale pour le discours proviennent du fait, qu’à la différence de leurs matrices, dont l’énonciation s’accompagne de l’introduction d’un référent propositionnel nouveau, les PRA sont des anaphores propositionnelles, dont la portée sémantique et l’interprétation pragmatique dépendent de la position discursive de l’expression important dans l’univers du discours le référent auquel s’applique le contenu qu’elles expriment. / The thesis focuses on the semantic-pragmatic status of appositive relative clauses (ARC). We address this question by examining discourse functioning of complex sentences of the form ‘Matrix, qui ARC’ in French. Crosslinguistically, ARC fail to interact semantically with scope taking operators contained in their embedding clauses and tend to be interpreted pragmatically as carrying non-central or secondary information for the question under discussion (QUD) in the ongoing discourse. Several analysis (Holler 2005, Arnold 2007, Koev 2012) dissociate these two properties, deriving the ARC projection from their status of independent assertions and explaining their pragmatic reading with independent principles of the discourse flow management. Indeed, when an ARC follows linearly its embedding clause, it can interact with the QUD while still receiving a wide scope relatively to the rest of the host sentence. Some discursive phenomena seem nevertheless contradict the idea that ARC constitute independent assertions. First, an ARC can interact with a QUD only if its matrix clause also conveys information relevant to the subject under discussion. Second, contrary to what we observe examining sequences of two independent clauses, in sequences formed of a matrix clause and an ARC, regardless of the order of their linearization, the matrix clause is always interpreted as being at-issue for the discourse, while the pragmatic status of the ARC depends to a great extent on the degree of informativeness of the rest of the sentence relatively to the QUD. And, third, the results of two psycholinguistic experiments conducted as part of this study show that after processing a sentence such as ‘Matrix, qui ARC’, the entity-type referents realized by the matrix clause are highly salient for the subsequent discourse unlike those realized by the ARC, which have a rather low accessibility degree. Based on these data, we conclude that at-issue pragmatic reading of ARC is not a consequence of their functioning as independent assertions but results from integration of their content into the focal domain of the embedding clause. More generally, building on the works of AnderBois & al. (2010) and Schlenker (2013, ms), we defend the idea that the lack of interaction between ARC and the host sentences as well as their tendency to receive a not at-issue reading in discourse arise from the fact that unlike their matrix clauses, whose utterance has the effect of introducing a new propositional referent, ARC are propositional anaphora, the semantic and pragmatic interpretation of which depends thus on the discourse position of their antecedent expression, importing into the discourse the propositional referent the ARC’s content applies to.