sanderes_1997_semantic and pragmatic sources of coherence, on the categorization of coherence...
TRANSCRIPT
This article was downloaded by: [Corporacion CINCEL]On: 10 May 2012, At: 08:57Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Discourse ProcessesPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hdsp20
Semantic and pragmatic sources of coherence: On thecategorization of coherence relations in contextTed Sanders aa Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht University, Trans 10, Utrecht, NL ‐ 3512 JK, TheNetherlands E-mail:
Available online: 11 Nov 2009
To cite this article: Ted Sanders (1997): Semantic and pragmatic sources of coherence: On the categorization of coherencerelations in context, Discourse Processes, 24:1, 119-147
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01638539709545009
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematicreproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form toanyone is expressly forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contentswill be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses shouldbe independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims,proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly inconnection with or arising out of the use of this material.
Semantic and Pragmatic Sources ofCoherence: On the Categorization of
Coherence Relations in Context
TED SANDERSUtrecht University
This article discusses a distinction present in many theories of relation categorization:the Source of Coherence, which distinguishes between semantic and pragmatic rela-tions. Existing categorizations of both relations and connectives show a reasonableconsensus on prototypical examples. Still, there many ambiguous cases. How can thedistinction be clarified? And to what extent does it depend on the context in whichrelations occur?
A more precise text-linguistic definition is presented in the form of a paraphrasetest, intended to systematically check analysts' intuitions. A paraphrase experimentshows that language users recognize the difference between clear cases in context.More importantly, the type of context (descriptive, argumentative) appeared not toinfluence the interpretation of clear cases, whereas subjects' judgements of ambiguousrelations are influenced by the type of context. A corpus study further illustrates thelink between text type and relation type: Informative texts are dominated by semanticrelations, persuasive and expressive texts are dominated by pragmatic relations.
Coherence and Coherence Relations
In studies of discourse it is widely accepted that text or discourse shows some kindof connectedness which causes it to differ from a random set of utterances. Oneway to account for text connectedness is in terms of the cognitive representationpeople have or make of a discourse (i.e., in terms of coherence). A coherence rela-tion like Cause-Consequence can be inferred between the segments of sequence(1) and it allows language users to experience it as a connected discourse.
Direct all correspondence to: Ted Sanders, Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht University,Trans 10, NL - 3512 JK Utrecht, The Netherlands <[email protected]>.
Discourse Processes, 24,11<M47 (1997) ©1997 Ablex Publishing CorporationISSN 0163-853X All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
119
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
120 SANDERS
7(1) During the winter of 1963 many bam owls died, because it was very cold.
One of the benefits of a coherence relation approach is that it encompasses bothpsychological and linguistic perspectives on discourse connectedness. That is, itcan account for crucial psychological research questions regarding the cognitiverepresentation of discourse (how do language users produce and understand dis-course?) because a coherence relation is conceived of as a cognitive entity. At thesame time, the linguistic research goal of finding out how connectedness is markedin discourse can be considered. For coherence relations, from now on CRs, can bemade explicit in die discourse, for example, by means of connectives or (other)lexical markers like but, on the other hand, and because (see discourse (1)).
An Organized Set of Relations
A number of theories have made use of relations in explaining coherence (Hobbs,1990; Longacre, 1976; Mann & Thompson, 1986, 1988; Martin, 1992; Meyer,1975). Yet, there is no consensus about a single set of relations (see Hovy, 1990),and the alternative sets that have been put forward are very different. Further-more, many sets of relations are presented as plain lists, which appear unorga-nized and which can be extended endlessly. For several reasons this isunsatisfactory. An adequate (cognitive) theory of CRs will have to an explana-tion for the fact that the similarity between CRs varies. In discourse (2), forinstance, causality is also involved, but at the same time the relation is very dif-ferent from the one in (1).
7(2) The neighbours are not at home. The lights in their living room are out.
In Sanders, SpoorenandNoordman (1992,1993) we have proposed a taxonomyor classification scheme which accounts for these "relations among relations." Thecentral claim is that it is attractive to assume that the set of possible CRs that existbetween discourse segments is organized and that the whole set of CRs can bedescribed in terms of four basic notions, or primitives: Basic operation (is the rela-tion additive or causal?); Source of coherence (is the relation semantic or prag-matic?); Order of the segments (are the segments in a basic or non-basic order?);and Polarity (is the relation positive or negative?). This proposal allows for a plau-sible cognitive theory of coherence relations—language users make use of theirknowledge of the four basic concepts to infer the intended coherence relation.
The combination of the four primitives results in a classification scheme inwhich 12 classes of CRs are characterized. In mis way, the set of relations can beorganized in terms of their own "meaning characteristics." For instance, the rela-
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE 121
tions in (1) and (2) would both be considered positive and causal, and in bothcases antecedent and consequent are in basic order.
The difference between the two is in Source of Coherence: The semantic ver-sus the pragmatic character of the relations. This difference relies on the intuitionthat writers' and speakers' utterances either cohere, because readers and listenersconceive of the world they describe as coherent, or because their communicativeactions cohere. The relation in (1) is semantic because it connects two events inthe world; our knowledge allows us to relate the segments as coherent in theworld. In (2) however, the two discourse segments are related because we under-stand the second part as evidence for the claim in the first, and not because thereis a causal relation between two states of affairs in the world: It is not because thelights are out that the neighbours are not at home. This systematic differencebetween types of relations is noted by many students of discourse coherence.
Research Questions
In this article the difference in the Source of Coherence of (especially) causalrelations is further investigated. The first research question is: To what extent canthe difference between semantic and pragmatic relations be defined in such a waythat it can be used to analyze natural texts?
A main reason for examining this question is that, although the semantic-prag-matic (or a similar) distinction is present in many accounts of discourse structure,it appears hard to define exactly. Next, there is a habit in discourse theory to useconstructed examples by means of illustration. There is no harm in that, but it isimperative that theoretical notions are so explicit that they can be applied by dif-ferent analysts to all kinds of natural text In other words, the usability of con-structs like the primitives in the Sanders et al. (1992, 1993) classification is atstake: Are the definitions formulated sufficiently explicit?
And a final reason for studying this research question is that the primitiveSource of Coherence was the least agreed on factor in experiments we conductedto test our classification (Sanders et al., 1992, 1993). In these experiments, sub-jects were asked to make direct comparisons between relations, or they wereinstructed to label them. A crucial result was that the CRs that are similar in termsof the primitives were confused more often than relations that are less similar.However, in three experiments we conducted, most confusion appeared to existabout the Source of Coherence.
The second research question also rises from the relatively low agreement onSource of Coherence. In another experiment (Sanders et al., 1993) we found thatlanguage users actually could distinguish between semantic and pragmatic rela-tions if the sentence pairs to be judged were embedded in a clear linguistic con-text. This conclusion still leaves us with the question how exactly context and
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
122 SANDERS
source of coherence interact For instance, does every context clarify the semanticor pragmatic character of a relation? Or is there a systematic relationship betweencontext type and relation type? Perhaps the context even determines the semanticor pragmatic character of a relation to a certain extent.
Hence, the second research question of this paper is: How does the immediatelinguistic context influence the semantic or pragmatic character of coherencerelations?
SOURCE OF COHERENCE: SEMANTICAND PRAGMATIC RELATIONS?
Defining the Intuition
Let us start with more precise definitions (from Sanders et al., 1992,1993). A rela-tion is semantic if the discourse segments are related because of their prepositionalcontent (i.e., the locutionary meaning of the segments). For example, the sequencein (3) is coherent because it is part of our world knowledge that running causesfatigue. A relation is pragmatic if the discourse segments are related because of theillocutionary meaning of one or both of the segments. In pragmatic relations theCR concerns the speech act status of the segments. In the pragmatic relation (4) thestate of affairs in the second segment is not the cause of the state of affairs in thefirst segment, but the justification for making that utterance.
7(3) Theo was exhausted because he had run to the university.7(4) Theo was exhausted, because he was gasping for breath.
Another clear example of a pragmatic relation is (5); it concerns a relationwhich means something like—"Because I am busy I inform you that I cannot getyou a beer right now, so I invite you to take it yourself."
7(5) I'm busy. You can take your own beer out of the fridge.
Are the semanticllocutionarylpropositional and the pragmaticlillocutionarylspeech act levels strictly separable? In the examples (3) and (4), it should be notedthat the pragmatic relation in (4) is based on a "real world link" between a cause(being exhausted) and a consequence (gasping for breath). This does not mean,however, that dependency on a real world causal link between the clauses is ageneral prerequisite of pragmatic causal relations. See example (6), in which sucha link is absent
7(6) Theo was exhausted, because he told me so.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE 123
In other words, pragmatic relations can, but need not be based on a connectionin the real world. The distinction implies that in the case of a pragmatic relationthe level of connection of the CR is the illocutionary level. This connection pos-sibly exists in addition to a locutionary connection, but the relevant level of con-nection is the illocutionary one. In (7) for instance, a locutionary Generalization-Instance relation exists ("Robins belong to the class of songbirds"), but the rele-vant connection is the illocutionary Claim-Argument relation ("The fact that it isa robin leads to my claim that it is a songbird"). This is illustrated in (8), which isnot based on a real world Generalization-Instance connection, but can clearly beidentified as the same type of Claim-Argument relation.
(7) I am sure it is a songbird, because it is a robin.(8) I am sure it is a songbird, because I heard it sing.
Distinctions Similar to the Source of Coherence
There is a lot of discussion about the exact definition of a distinction like theSource of Coherence (Hovy, 1990; Knott & Dale, 1994; Knott, 1996; Moore &Pollack, 1992; Pander Maat, 1994b). At the same time, several researchers havecome up with very similar distinctions: internal versus external use of conjunc-tions and relations (Halliday & Hasan, 1976; Martin, 1992), ideational versusrhetorical discourse markers (Redeker, 1990), subject matter versus presenta-tional matter relations (Mann & Thompson, 1988), ideational versus interper-sonal and textual relations (Hovy & Maier, 1995), content versus epistemic andinteractional relations (Pander Maat, 1994ab), content versus epistemic andspeech act domains of language use (Sweetser, 1990) and semantic and prag-matic connectives (Van Dijk, 1977).
It is particularly interesting that some of these proposals explicitly concernrelations, whereas others concern connectives. One may expect that a valid clas-sification of CRs, which are considered cognitive entities, wold have some coun-terpart in language. But to what extent do the distinctions used in other proposalsactually coincide with the semantic-pragmatic distinction? To answer this ques-tion we have taken a closer look at the most elaborate classification accounts. Def-initions were compared and text examples were analyzed. Below, the proposals ofMann and Thompson (1988), Martin (1992) and Sweetser (1990) are discussed insome detail. These three present a good overview of the field.
Although Mann and Thompson (1988, p. 256) do not believe in creating tax-onomies of relations, they do suggest the possibility of dividing the set of relationsin two: subject matter and presentational. Relations such as Volitional Cause orResult, express parts of the subject matter in the text. These relations connect seg-ments, if they are understood as causally related to the subject matter. The effect
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
124 SANDERS
is that readers recognize that the situation presented in one segment could be acause of the situation presented in the other segment.
Other relations such as Justify or Evidence, are used to facilitate the presenta-tion process itself. Presentational relations are those of which the intended effectis to increase some inclination in the reader, such as the desire to act or a belief ofthe writer's claim.
Martin (1992, p. 179) distinguishes between four groups of logico-semanticrelations: addition, comparison, temporal and consequential. These four groupsare subdivided, and an important distinction within each group is that betweeninternal and external relations. Relations which organize the structure of the textare internal or rhetorical, and external or experiental relations exist in the worldthe text describes.
Sweetser (1990) discusses, among many other things, the ambiguity in the useof conjunctions. She demonstrates that her three domain-theory explains theseambiguities. Examples (9)-(l 1) illustrate that English because has three readings:a content reading, an epistemic and a speech act reading.
(9) John came back because he loved her.(10) John loved her, because he came back.(11) What are you doing tonight, because there's a good movie on.
In (9) John's love was the real-world cause of his coming back. According toSweetser (10) means that my knowledge of John's return causes the conclusionthat he loved her. A good paraphrase of (11) would be "I am asking what you aredoing tonight because I want to suggest that we should see this good movie."Sweetser repeatedly uses paraphrases to illustrate the difference betweendomains. A conjunction is used in the content-domain when one event causesanother "in the real world." The use in the epistemic domain is characterized by asequence like "The knowledge of... causes my conclusion that ...," and "the factthat... enables me to say that...."
Defining the Distinction: Similarities and Differences
In terms of definitions, Mann and Thompson consider the effect on the reader tobe the crucial issue, whereas the other authors consider the nature of the connec-tion itself as crucial. Sweetser's distinctions are similar to those of Martin andSanders et al., except that Sweetser's trifurcation is more specific than the dichot-omy; semantic/external and content seem similar, but both epistemic and speechact are treated as pragmatic and internal. Yet, do the definitions lead to the sameclassification of relations in actual text analysis? The examples of the respectiveauthors were analyzed in each others' terms. A selection was made of 42 exam-
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE 125
pies of eight different authors. Only positive causal relations were included in theanalysis. In general, there was a considerable amount of agreement. About 80%of the cases were classified as belonging to similar classes (Van Bentum, 1995).More importantly, we obtained a clear profile of the prototypical examples ofeach category, and we also gained insight into the reasons for disagreement.
The clear cases of speecA-acr/pragmatic/presentational/internal relations arethe ones in which it is impossible to construct a relation at the prepositional level:The (indirect) speech act examples in (5) and (11), repeated here, or Mann andThompson's example of Justify and Motivation relations in (12) and (13) below.
(5) I'm busy. You can take your own beer out of the fridge.(11) What are you doing tonight, because there's a good movie on.(12) I'm Officer Krupke. You're under arrest.(13) Go jogging with me this afternoon. You'll be full of energy.
Prototypical e/Jw/emfc/pragmatic/presentational/internal relations are cases inwhich the writer argues for something she claims to be true. Most of the times, thewriter is clearly present as the communicating person, and the unambiguous casesare those in which it is impossible to get a semantic/subject matter/intemal/con-tent reading, such as Sweetser's (14). They often contain linguistic elementsexpressing the evaluation from the perspective of the author.
(14) Since John isn't here, he has evidently gone home.
Prototypical content/semantic/subject matter/external relations concern eventswhich have already taken place, such as Sweetser's (15), so that there can be nodispute about the "truth" of the statement.
(15) Since John wasn't there, we decided to leave a note for him.
In conclusion, different criteria often co-occur, given the amount of agreement.An exception is Mann and Thompson's Reason relation in (16), which does notlead to agreement. Mann and Thompson consider this a subject matter relationbecause the reader only needs to recognize that one fact causes another, and theeffect is not that the reader has to feel inclined to do or believe something. InSweetser's terms this example would be epistemic (the connection holds in thewriter's head, the first segment is based on the knowledge expressed in the sec-ond, rather than that "it is the case in the real world"). In our terms, this examplewould be a pragmatic relation (That you cannot teach an old dog new tricks leadsto the conclusion rather than to the fact that I am not going to learn Dutch).
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
126 SANDERS
(16) I'm not going to start learning Dutch. You can't teach an old dog new tricks.
Toward Analytic Heuristics
So far, we have mainly discussed clear-cut examples of the semantic-pragmaticdistinction; moreover, most examples above were constructed. How does the dis-tinction behave in the analysis of everyday text? In answer to that question, a cor-pus of thirty short Dutch texts was analyzed, taken from encyclopedias,newspapers, and periodicals (Van de Vijfeyke, 1992; Sanders, 1994).
And again, we came across many clear cases of pragmatic relations, like theones in (17). They clearly express another speech act than "just description," sothey should be classified as pragmatic.
(17) Question-DirectiveYou want to know more? Write to (...)Directive-DirectrveConvince yourself and visit one of our Kitchen Centers.
However, the existing definitions did not always suffice. Therefore an analyticheuristic was developed: the basic operation paraphrase test. The development ofa paraphrase test (cf. Martin, 1992; and Sweetser's definitions in the previous sec-tion) forces the theory to be as explicit as possible. Below it is described for positivecausal relations. With the help of this heuristic, the analyst first checks whether therelation can be classified as pragmatic, and after that, whether it is semantic.
The Basic Operation Paraphrase Test
1. Isolate the two segments that are connected by a CR. Segments containinginterrogatives are excluded from the paraphrase test; they are dealt with sep-arately.1
2. Strip all connectives from the sequence of segments.3. Reconstruct the causal basic operation between the propositions P and Q,
which correspond roughly to the propositions underlying S1 en S2 (they arethe propositions in the basic operation, cf. Sanders et al., 1992, section 2.1.).Paraphrase it by making use of the formulations below and consider whichformulation is the best expression of the meaning of the CR in this context.
(i) a. the fact that P causes S. 's claim/advice/ conclusion that Q(i) b. the fact that Q causes S. 's claim / advice / conclusion that P(ii) a. the fact that P causes the fact that Q(ii) b. the fact that Q causes the fact that P
A relation is pragmatic if one of the paraphrases (i) corresponds best to the CRas it was originally expressed in the text, and it is semantic if one of the para-
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE 127
phrases (ii) corresponds best to the CR expressed in the text. In sum, the analysts'judgement is still the ultimate criterion for the distinction semantic-pragmatic; theparaphrase test makes the possible interpretations explicit and enables analysts tosystematically check their intuitions.
If we apply this to example (5), repeated below, it appears to be an exclusivepragmatic example; it is impossible to paraphrase (5) by means of (ii).
(5) I'm busy. You can take your own beer out of the fridge.(5i) The fact that I am busy causes my advice to take your own beer out of the
fridge(5ii) ? The fact that I am busy causes the fact that you can take your own beer out
of the fridge.
Similarly, if we apply the test to the examples (3) and (4), it appears that para-phrase (ii) accounts best for the CR expressed in (3), whereas paraphrase (i) cor-responds best to the CR in (4).
(3i) ? The fact that Theo had been running causes my claim that he wasexhausted.
(3ii) The fact that Theo had been running causes the fact that he was exhausted.(4i) The fact that Theo was gasping for breath causes my claim that he was
exhausted.(4ii) ? The fact that Theo was gasping for breath causes the fact that he was
exhausted.
The two examples below illustrate the use of the paraphrase test in the corpusof everyday text (18) is an adaptation from a Dutch advertisement for a laxative,and is analyzed as pragmatic.
(18) E If the bowel motion still does not function properly, Dulcolax bringsrelief.
(18i) ? The fact that the bowel motion still does not function properly, causes thefact that Dulcolax brings relief.
(18ii) The fact that the bowel motion still does not function properly, causes thewriter's claim that Dulcolax brings relief/causes the writer's advice to useDulcolax.
Although it happens that both paraphrases are possible, it seems like there isalways one most plausible interpretation. Consider example (19), based on a letterto a magazine editor.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
128 SANDERS
(19) The situation at the the candy department is unhygienic. We see the cus-tomers just groping about in the storage bins.
(19i) ? The fact that we see the customers just groping about in the storage binscauses the fact that the situation is unhygienic.
(19ii) The fact that we see the customers just groping about in the storage binscauses my claim that the situation is unhygienic.
Paraphrase (19i) does make sense (although it can be questioned whether see-ing people groping about causes an unhygienic situation), but (19ii) is a bettergloss for what is expressed in the text.
The Source of Coherence Revisited: Semantic and/or Pragmatic?
Both in the discussion of examples from literature, and in the analysis of everydaytext we have seen exclusive examples of semantic and pragmatic relations, but wehave also come across cases that were not clear representatives of either category,that is to say, that could be given both a pragmatic and a semantic reading. Yet,when placed in context, one of the readings appeared most plausible.
Let us first reconsider the clear cases. In exclusively pragmatic examples therelation can only exist at an illocutionary level; the relation at the locutionarylevel is absent, or clearly irrelevant. Two common types are shown in (20ab),which can be distinguished in Sweetser's terms: the speech act and the epistemiccases. In (20a) the speaker connects the question "Are you sure it was tonight thatwe would visit the Carsons?" with the fact that the lights are out (and the Speakeris afraid they're not at home). A causal relation between a state of affairs and thespeaker's claim or conclusion holds in (20b). The lights being out definitely doesnot cause the fact that the neighbours are not at home, but the fact that they had toleave for Albuquerque does. Therefore in (20c) a semantic relation exists; it mightbe an answer to the question: "Why were the neigbours not at home yesterdayevening?* It is prototypically semantic in the sense that it describes a situation inthe past; that is one of the reasons why (20d) is less prototypical, and is in factambiguous between a semantic and a pragmatic reading.
(20) a Are you sure we'd be here tonight! Because the lights are out. (pragmatic-speech act)
b The Carsons are not at home, because the lights are out. (pragmatic-epistemic)
c The Carsons were not at home yesterday because they were in Albuquer-que, (semantic).
d The neighbours are not at home because there is a party downtown,(semantic or pragmatic?)
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE 129
The fact that different proposals in the literature agree on these prototypicalcases is most important here, but (20ab) also raises the question of whether weshould adopt three rather than two "values" of the primitive Source of Coherence,thus following Sweetser's trifurcation: Are epistemic and speech act relationsindeed subtypes of pragmatic relations? Or should they stand on their own? Onthe one hand, Sweetser has shown that her three domains are relevant to describethe use and meaning of linguistic devices like modal verbs, if-then conditionalsand conjunctions. On the other hand, a dichotomy is plausible, because bothspeech act and epistemic relations concern a non-content connection, that is, alevel in which the speaker creates the coherence, either by reasoning or arguing,or by communicating on a meta-level. Furthermore, in establishing a classifica-tion for coherence relations, the semantic-pragmatic distinction has shown to beuseful and productive (for instance, the distinction is relevant for both positiveand negative relations, and for causal and additive relations).
What kind of arguments would decisively define to choice between the twoand the three-way distinction? Ultimately, the choice should be based on empiri-cal research, such as cross-linguistic research into the way in which languagesencode the different relational types. Or by investigating the way in which differ-ent areas of relations, like negatives or additives, are "cut up" by connectives. Ifthe epistemic-speech act distinction is often coded this would constitute an impor-tant argument for a further subdivision in the pragmatic category, thus adopting atrifurcation rather than a dichotomy.
At this moment, there is no reason to depart from the semantic-pragmatic dis-tinction. On the contrary, it can be concluded that the Basic Operation Para-phrase Test is a first step in the direction of better analytic heuristics to clarify thedistinction. Not only is it maximally explicit, it also pays attention to the contextin which the relation is expressed. If the test is used for the interpretation of theexamples (20), it shows indeed that, out of context, (20d) is ambiguous:
(20d) The fact that there is a party causes the fact that the neighbours are not athome.The fact that there is a party causes my claim that the neighbours are not athome.
In context it can be determined whether the relation concerns a Claim-Argu-ment ("What do you mean, the Carsons are at home tonight. Of course they're not.The Carsons are not at home, because there is a party downtown. And you knowvery well they go to every party, those buffoons"), or rather as a description of astate of affairs, a Consequence-Cause relation ("My wife is off to sing in thechoir, the folks at the opposite side of the street are on a holiday. The Carsons arenot at home because there is a party downtown. It is awfully quiet around here.").
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
130 SANDERS
THE ROLE OF THE CONTEXT
In the last section, it was claimed that relations which appear to be ambiguouswith respect to the semantic-pragmatic distinction turn out not to be ambiguousin context This raises the question what the relation is between the primitiveSource of Coherence and the context. Is it simply the case that the semantic orpragmatic character of a relation is clearer in context, than without? Or is theremore to this relationship: Does the type of context influence the (clarity of the)type of relation? For instance, do language users have a tendency to judge rela-tions as semantic when they occur in a descriptive context, whereas they tend tojudge relations more as pragmatic when they occur in an argumentative context?Of course, such a dependency can also exist the other way around: Argumenta-tive contexts are experienced as such because they are dominated by pragmaticrelations whereas descriptive contexts are dominated by semantic ones. The roleof the context in relation to the Source of Coherence is investigated in this sec-tion, in an experimental study and in a corpus study.
From three experiments reported in Sanders et al. (1992,1993) it appears that,of the four primitives in the classification scheme, the primitive Source of Coher-ence is least agreed upon by analysts. A possible explanation for this confusion isthat this primitive depends more strongly on context than the others do.
Is the Source of Coherence determined by Context?
In Sanders et al. (1993, Experiment 2) expert discourse analysts were asked tolabel CRs between discourse segments, which were embedded in full texts. Inevery text, there were two experimental items: One CR that was semantic andone that was pragmatic. Of each text two versions were constructed: a clearlyargumentative version and a clearly descriptive one. The experimental itemswere fully identical in both versions. Each context had a bias for either a seman-tic or a pragmatic relation: Semantic relations were hypothesized to fit best into adescriptive context, whereas pragmatic relations would fit best into an argumen-tative context.
The results showed that subjects are sensitive to a difference between semanticand pragmatic relations. Yet, there was so much agreement that it was impossibleto find an interaction in line with the hypothesis that the context influenced thelabelling. We concluded that subjects agree with our classification of CRs withrespect to the primitive Source of Coherence.
These experimental results confirm the basics of the classification, but theinteraction between context and Source of Coherence is still not clarified com-pletely. First, the results leave open the possibility that the recognition of less
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE 131
clear cases is strongly influenced by the type of context they occur in. Second, itis quite possible that the high amount of agreement is due to the fact that only veryclear instances of relations were used. For instance, all relations were marked bya connective, which always restricts the interpretation.
A new experiment aimed at getting a better hold of the way in which the con-text influences the language users' interpretation of relations as semantic or prag-matic. Given the experimental evidence so far, and given the analytical insightspresented in the previous paragraphs, the hypothesis was tested that recognition ofexclusively semantic and pragmatic relations is not determined by the (type of)context, but that in inclusive or ambiguous cases the interpretation as semantic orpragmatic is determined by the type of context
The same experimental paradigm was used, but ambiguous examples wereincluded in addition to the clearly semantic and pragmatic ones. The new experi-ment also differed in two other respects from the previous one. First, the aim wasto find out whether analysts could also distinguish between semantic and prag-matic relations if the relations were not marked by connectives. Second, a differ-ent experimental task was used, which was assumed to be less meta-linguisticand more natural. Rather than asking subjects to choose a relation name from alist of CRs, we asked them to choose the best paraphrase of the relation from anexisting list.
Again, the aim of the experiment was to find out whether other analysts wouldagree with the semantic-pragmatic classification. The discourse segments wereembedded in complete texts. The texts were almost identical to the ones used inthe earlier experiment. In every text, there were three experimental items: OneCR that was semantic, one that was pragmatic, and one so-called chameleon. Thelatter was an item that was typically ambiguous (i.e., in between a semantic and apragmatic reading) and its interpretation was thought to be strongly context-dependent. Of each text two versions were constructed: a clearly argumentativeand a clearly descriptive version. The experimental items were fully identical inboth versions.
Two hypotheses were tested:
HI: As Source of Coherence is a property of CRs, the difference betweenexclusively semantic and exclusively pragmatic relations will be re-cognized by the analysts, independent of the context in which the rela-tions occur.
H2: When relations are typically ambiguous between a semantic andpragmatic reading (the so-called chameleons) the context will deter-mine the judgement of the analysts in such a way that a chameleon
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
132 SANDERS
relation will be called pragmatic if it occurs in an argumentative con-text and semantic if it occurs in a descriptive context.
Method
Material. The material for the experiment consisted of four texts, whichwere almost identical to the texts used in the earlier study. Two versions weremade of each text: an argumentative and a descriptive version. Each version con-tained five sentence pairs the CR of which was to be judged. Three target pairswere identical in both versions. The two other pairs were fillers that varied withthe text versions. Of the three target pairs, one was exclusively semantic, oneexclusively pragmatic, and one was inclusively semantic/pragmatic, the so-calledchameleon. The target relations in the experiment were positive additive relations(semantic: List, pragmatic: Enumeration) and positive causal relations (semantic:Cause-Consequence, Consequence-Cause; pragmatic: Claim-Argument, Argu-ment-Claim). Some were marked with a connective, others were not The textswere based on non-specialist articles and on articles and essays in newspapersand magazines.
Examples of target sentence pairs from experimental texts are given in (21)-(23), from a text about a migratory bird: the (European) crane. The descriptiveversion of this text is titled "Crane Migration'. In this version information isgiven about the life of cranes, especially about their behavior during and directlyafter their voyage from the North to the South of Europe. The context directlypreceding (21) is that the birds arrive in the area where they will stay for the win-ter after a long journey across Europe. The title of the argumentative version ofthis text, which was written from the perspective of an ornithologist who con-ducted research on the behavior of cranes, is "Some misunderstandings aboutCrane Migration." The author argues that others are wrong in claiming that it isstill unclear how migration birds orient themselves and she presents conclusiveevidence for her own claims, namely that cranes orient themselves by the sun andthe stars.
In (21) a semantic relation is expressed: Cause-Consequence. The test showsthat the pragmatic paraphrase is not the intended relation in the descriptive con-text, and is highly unlikely in the argumentative context. In (22) the pragmaticrelation Claim-Argument is expressed (it is virtually impossible to get a semanticreading), and (23) is the chameleon: The relation is ambiguous between asemantic Cause-Consequence and a pragmatic Argument-Claim (Conclusion)relation. In other words, this sequence can both be interpreted as a relationbetween two states of affairs and as the writer's conclusion which is drawn froma state of affairs.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE 133
(21)1) They have to fly big distances in a short period of time.2) They are in a bad condition when they arrive.
(22) 1) It has to be the case that cranes orientate themselves by the sun and the stars.2) They never migrate further when it is foggy.
(23) 1) Cranes often make use of halting-places at the foot of the Pyrenees.2) Those areas are indispensable for the birds.
There were six experimental conditions, constituted by two experimental factors,one with two and one with three levels: type of context (argumentative-descrip-tive) and type of CR (semantic-pragmatic-cfowne/eon). Two sets of experimentaltexts were constructed. Each set consisted of four texts, two descriptive versionsand two argumentative versions. Each set contained only one version of eachtext. Each of the three levels of the factor CR type occurred once in each text.Each set of texts was presented to 18 subjects.
Procedure. The experiment started with an instruction spoken by the exper-imenter, followed by a written instruction. The texts were presented to the subjectstwice. First, subjects were asked to read the texts thoroughly. When they had fin-ished reading the texts, a paper was handed to them, containing eight paraphrases.Subjects were asked to read carefully through this paper. Then, the texts were pre-sented to the subjects anew, in a different lay-out, the target sentence pairs beingnumbered and printed in bold type. Subjects read the text and judged each sentencepair printed in bold type. To that end they were to look through the list of paraphrasesand to choose the appropriate paraphrase (i.e., the one that described best the rela-tion connecting the sentence pair). The paraphrases are presented under (24); (1)-(4) express a pragmatic relation and (5)-(8) correspond to a semantic relation. Fur-thermore, (1), (2), (5) and (6) are causal and the others are additive.
(24)(1)D Mijn argument hiervoor is: (5)D de oorzaak daarvan was/is:(1)E My argument for this is: (5)E the cause for this was/is:(2)D daarom heb ik het (6)D het gevolg daarvan was/is:
volgende standpunt:(2)E for that reason I take (6)E the consequence of this was/is:
following position:(3)D een ander standpunt is: (7)D een ander kenmerk hiervan
is/was:(3)E another position is: (7)E another characteristic of this is:(4)D een ander argument is: (8)D een ander feit was/is:(4)E another argument is: (8)E another fact was/is:
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
134 SANDERS
Participants. Thirty-six participants took part in the experiment. They werepaid for their participation. Participants were advanced students of the Faculty ofHumanities at Utrecht University, who had all taken part in the text analysis course,so that they were more or less acquainted with an "analytic" view on text fragments,and had some experience with meta-linguistic tasks. There were two experimentalsessions; 22 participants took part in a first and 14 in a second session.
Results. For the semantic-pragmatic items, replies were classified as corre-sponding or not corresponding with the original classification. In general, therewas a good deal of agreement with the theoretical classification: Only 3.8 % ofparticipant's choices was not in agreement with the original choice.
The prediction following from the first hypothesis is that the observed numberof responses corresponding to the original classification on this primitive is sig-nificantly higher than chance. The data were analyzed in two ways: subject-wiseand item-wise. (In both cases the analysis concerned the amount of agreement onthe primitive Source of Coherence. The chance proportion was based on the bino-mial distribution. According to this distribution, the probability of at least 7 out of8 items correctly classified and of at least 33 out of 36 subjects classifying cor-rectly, is less than 5 percent). In the subject-wise analysis 34 subjects agreed moreoften than chance with the original classification (X2 = 28.4, df = 1, p < .001). Inthe item-wise analysis all 8 items had agreement scores higher than expected(binomial test: p <01).
In the case of the chameleons, subjects were expected to choose semanticinterpretations in the descriptive context and pragmatic interpretations in theargumentative context. The results are summarized in Table 1. In general, sub-jects' choices for relation paraphrases were in agreement with the context inmore cases than expected at a chance level (x2 = 19.5, dfs 2,p< .001) (In thestatistical analysis, the chance proportion based on the binomial distribution wasused again: 24 participants had agreement scores higher than chance, 9 partici-pants had agreement scores that were equal to chance and the score of 3 subjectswas lower than chance.)
The interaction of type of relation with context was tested in a contrast-analysisof frequencies (in this case 62 and 38; see Van den Bergh, 1990); z=2,376, p < .01.It can be concluded that the type of paraphrase is influenced by the type of context,although this outcome is mainly due to the difference in the descriptive context.Note also that the difference between semantic and pragmatic paraphrases is muchsmaller in the argumentative context This is due to the fact that, on the whole, sub-jects tended to make more semantic than pragmatic paraphrases.
Conclusion from the Experiment. Using a different experimental task andlinguistically non-marked relations, this experiment confirms earlier findings thatlanguage users see the difference between semantic and pragmatic relations in an
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE 135
TABLE 1Subjects paraphrases of chameleon items in two different contests
Context
Paraphrase Argumentative Descriptive
Semantic 34 62Pragmatic 38 10
appropriate context. More importantly, the results support the idea that in the caseof exclusive semantic and pragmatic relations, the Source of Coherence is inde-pendent of the type of context. When analysts are asked to judge relations whichare ambiguous between a semantic and a pragmatic reading, they are influencedby the type of context in which the relation appears. Language users show a sys-tematic preference to interpret ambiguous cases as semantic in a descriptive con-text, and in addition they show a tendency to interpret them as pragmatic in anargumentative context. In sum, the difference between semantic and pragmaticrelations seems to be a relational property, but when the relation is ambiguous,context strongly determines the interpretation of a relation.
A Corpus Study: Distribution of Relations across Text Types
To get a further grip on the relationship between the type of CR and the context,a second study was undertaken (Van de Vijfeyke, 1992; Sanders, 1994). In thiscorpus study, we investigated the appearance of relations in actually occurringtexts. Special attention was paid to the question if different text types differ in thetypeofCRs.
Text Types and Text Structure. The notion of genre or text type—cf. theclassical distinction between informative, persuasive and diverting text types—is a frequently used concept, which is often not defined in articulate text-inter-nal characteristics (see Virtanen, 1992). An exception is a study by Smith andFrawley (1983), which characterized four genres by counting the conjunctionsin the texts. In this corpus study we did something similar. One difference waswe followed the coherence rather than the cohesion stance: We did not confinethe investigation to the explicitly marked relations, but added the unmarkedones as well.
Our goal was to further explore the interaction between context and relationalmeaning. Therefore, we investigated whether different text types also differ intext structure, specifically in the dominating type of CRs. The hypothesis was thatpersuasive texts are dominated by pragmatic relations and informative texts aredominated by semantic relations.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
136 SANDERS
Method. The notion of text type or genre was operationalized as the writer'scommunicative goal (Brewer, 1980). We gathered texts of three types.
1. Informative texts, in which the writer's goal is to inform the reader aboutsomething;
2. Expressive texts, in which the writer's goal is to express his feelings andattitudes;
3. Persuasive texts in which the writer's goal is to persuade the reader of some-thing.
Each type was represented by ten Dutch texts. Encyclopedic texts were chosenas typically informative, letters to the editor as typically expressive, and advertise-ments as typically persuasive. Three example texts, translated from Dutch, aregiven in (25) - (27) below.
(25) An informative text (Source: Ge'illustreerde encyclopedic [IllustratedEncyclopedia)
(l)Immanent (Latin): Staying in (la) indicating what is typical of a certain area orconcept (lb) and does not exceed i t (2) The opposite is transcendent. (3) An imma-nent conception of God (3a) in which God does not influence the world from out-side (3b) but is part of nature itself. (4) This in contrast to a transcendent conceptionof God (4a) in which there is room for a divine revelation from outside. (5) WithKant, the immanent use of Reason means (Sa) that it is restricted to the area of pos-sible experience. (6) This is contrary to speculative philosophy.
(26) An expressive text (Source: Allerhande [Magazine])
(1) As are the other ladies of the board of the Dutch Society of Housewives, I amvery pleased with the products ot Albert Heijn and with the great variety. (2) Onething, however, keeps bothering us, (3) namely the self-service when taking andweighing certain products. (4) This is an unhygienic situation, especially with thesweets. (5) We have observed, for instance, (5a) that customers use their hands togrope about in the storage bins, (5b) and children eat sweets from the supplies. (6)We also want to bring it to your attention (6a) that it happens (6aa) that mothers lettheir small children take place in the shopping cart with their shoes on. (7) This isnot very nice, either.
(27) A persuasive text (Source: Story [a tabloid magazine)
(1) Constipation, or difficult bowel motion, is unpleasant and inconvenient. (2) Soyou'd better do something about i t (3a) Fibrous food, drinking a lot of water (3)
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE 137
and much bodily movement can help. (4) But if the bowel motion still does notfunction properly, (5) Dulcolax brings relief. (6) Dulcolax is a familiar and reliablelaxative with a mild effect (7) Thanks to the special structure of the tablet, it isresistant to gastric juices. (8) Thanks to that Dulcolax works exactly (8a) where itshould work: in the large intestine. (9a) When you take Dulcolax at night beforeyou go to bed (9) it works during the night (10) without disturbing your night's rest(11) And in the morning you will be succesful. (12) Absolutely certain and soft
Text Analysis. In the text analysis, we used a combination of Mann andThompson's (1988) Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) and the classificationscheme discussed earlier, which is compatible to RST (Sanders 1992). RST-rulesfor the analysis of hierarchical text structure were used.
Relations were identified between segments, which roughly correspond toclauses. Object clauses, complement clauses and relative clauses are separatedfrom their main clauses by addition of a letter a, b, etc.. They are considered asseparate units (cf. Mann & Thompson, 1988; Sanders & Van Wijk, 1996). One
Elaboration
Ma
^Contrast \ /Contrast *
3 3b 4 4a 5-5a 6
Figure 1The three highest levels in the RST-analysis of the informative text (25)
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
138 SANDERS
Anti-thesis
Figure 2The three highest levels in the RST-analysis of the expressive text (26)
systematic exception to these rules is that the first sentence in the encyclopedictexts, which is always elliptic, is systematically considered a separate unit. Iden-tification of relations was done independently by two analysts. In 85% of thecases this led to agreement. The remaining 15% were discussed and agreementwas reached in all cases.
In the Figures 1 -3 the (most important parts of the) RST-analyses are presentedof texts (25)-(27). The Figures 1-3 represent the top level of the hierarchical textstructure. At the highest level of text (27), for instance, there is a pragmatic Prob-lem-Solution relation: This relation concerns the whole text. (See Mann &Thompson, 1988, for the rules for the analysis.)
The quantitative hypothesis is that there will be relatively more pragmaticexamples in persuasive texts than in informative texts. The qualitative hypothesis
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE 139
12Solutionhood. pragmatic
12
12
Figure 3The three highest levels in the RST-analysis of the persuasive text (27)
is that in persuasive texts, pragmatic relations will occur relatively more often inthe dominant places in the text structure than semantic relations.
Results. The quantitative results, summarized in Table 2, show that there aremore semantic that pragmatic relations across text types. (Of course, these num-bers are affected by the segmentation criterion we used. For instance, in expres-sive texts relatively many (additive) relations occur between relative clauses andtheir host clauses. However, the segmentation criterion did not affect the relativenumbers; when we excluded these relations from the text analysis the results wereroughly the same.)
To investigate whether there is an interaction of text type and relation type, aloglinear analysis was used. It appeared that the model which included theinteraction of context and relation type fitted the data significantly better thanmodels without this interaction (an improvement of %2 = 68.75, df-4,p< .001in comparison to the next best model, which only includes the semantic-pragmatic difference).2
For the qualitative results, scores were given to text-dominating relations (i.e.,the relations that occurred at the three highest levels in the RST-analysis: three to
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
140 SANDERS
TABLE2Semantic and pragmatic relations (absolute numbers and proportions) in three text types.
Relation type
Semantic
Pragmatic
Informative
85(.98)
2(.02)
Texttype
Expressive
56(.54)
48(.46)
Persuasive
69(•59)
48(.41)
TABLE3Mean scores per text of semantic and pragmatic relations
at dominant places as a function of three text types.
Text type
Relation type Informative Expressive Persuasive
Semantic 5.8 1.2 2.8
Pragmatic 0.2 4.8 3.2
the highest), two to the second and one to the third level. Scores were summed pertext and later per text type, and compared. To identify the three highest levels in thehierarchy, relations connecting a whole text or text span were considered (i.e., thosethat relate the largest amount of segments). In the case of the persuasive text (27)it concerns the two Solutionhood-relanons and the Contrast-relation in Figure 3.
Table 3 demonstrates that in informative texts, semantic relations clearly dom-inate, and that there are relatively more pragmatic than semantic relations in thedominant levels of expressive and argumentative texts. Again, the interaction wasinvestigated by means of a loglinear analysis. The model which included theinteraction next to the semantic-pragmatic and text type parameters, fitted the databest (an improvement of %2 = 87.61, df= 2, p < .001), thus showing the signi-ficance of the interaction.
Conclusion from the Corpus Study. Before presenting the conclusions, itseems appropriate to discuss some limitations of this study. First, the corpus variessystematically in three text types, but it also varies in the content of the texts. Furtherresearch on this issue should concern a bigger corpus of texts which vary in com-municative intention, but show more resemblance in content (e.g., the same topic).
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE 141
Second, we applied the semantic-pragmatic distinction in this analysis. Giventhe discussion in the previous sections, it will come as no surprise that we ran intoproblems in a minority of cases. In case of ambiguity, we choose for the pragmaticinterpretation, just as a rule of thumb for this corpus. This choice does not affectthe results of the corpus study, because they were comparative, and because weused the same text-analytic rules across the text types.
Consequently, the data suggest that there is a relationship between the typeof CR and text type: semantic relations are predominant in informative text; thepredominance holds both in absolute terms and in terms of the number of rela-tions at the highest text levels. In the non-descriptive text types there are rela-tively many pragmatic relations, both in number and in terms of relations athigher text levels. These findings seem of some importance for the discussionof text typology and the way in which text types should be defined in text-inter-nal characteristics (Virtanen, 1992).
DISCUSSION
In this paper, the categorization of CRs proposed in Sanders et al. (1992,1993) iselaborated further, with special attention to, what is perhaps the most complexprimitive, the Source of Coherence. A discussion of comparable proposals in theliterature showed that there is a remarkable similarity between cognate distinc-tions, although they originate from different (sub)disciplines. A closer analysisshowed a reasonable consensus of prototypical examples of pragmatic (speechact and epistemic) and semantic (content) relations. However, there were alsoambiguous cases. A more exact text-linguistic definition of the semantic-prag-matic distinction was presented for positive causal relations, in the form of theBasic Operation Paraphrase Test. This test is intended to systematically checkanalysts' intuitions.
These text-linguistic results were tested in a two-fold empirical investigationof language in use. From a paraphrase experiment, it appeared that language usersrecognize the difference between clear cases of semantic and pragmatic relationsin context More importantly, the interpretation of clear cases is (again) notaffected by the type of context in which the relations appear, whereas subjects'judgements are influenced by the type of context when it concerns ambiguousrelations (although this is less clear for the argumentative context than for thedescriptive one).
The role of the context was further clarified in a corpus study, which demon-strated a relation between text type and the Source of Coherence of the relation:Informative texts are dominated by semantic relations, and expressive and persua-sive texts showed a higher occurrence of pragmatic relations.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
142 SANDERS
These results indicate that the Source of Coherence is a primitive which indeedconcerns the relation itself, independent of the linguistic context (see the resultsfor the exclusive cases). In other words, the semantic or pragmatic status of a CRis a text-internal characteristic. However, in ambiguous cases, the interpretation isstrongly influenced by the type of context Note that, in purely quantitative terms,all text types are dominated by many semantic relations, so that the occurrence ofa relatively few more pragmatic relations is already characteristic for argumenta-tive and expressive texts.
What do the new results reported here imply for a cognitive theory of CRs?From a text-linguistic point of view, it is important to conclude that the BasicOperation Paraphrase Test and its application to examples and corpora hasshown that the primitive Source of Coherence is not only theoretically attractive,but that it is also relevant in the characterization of relations in real-life texts. Atthe same time, it was concluded that exclusive and inclusive (ambiguous) casesexist.
Yet, this is not the end of the semantic-pragmatic discussion. First, there is thesomewhat superficial debate on terminology. Semantic and Pragmatic are lin-guistic terms with a rich history, and their use in the context of coherence oftenleads to misunderstandings. Hopefully the definition presented in this paper willclarify the use of these labels. (And of course there are other terms available, suchas locution-dominates and illocution-dominates or X and Y).
Second, and more importantly, it would be interesting to identify the prototyp-ical semantic-pragmatic examples outside the domain of the positive causals (i.e.,in additive and negative relations). Also, a closer study of both exclusive andambiguous cases justifies reconsideration of the question what determines thenature of the distinction. To what extent does it coincide with a characterization in
. terms of perspective (as it could be derived from J. Sanders, 1994)? Can all clearpragmatic relations be characterized as subjective relations "from the speaker'sperspective" (see also Pander Maat, 1998; Pander Maat & Sanders, 1995;Spooren, 1989; Verhagen, 1995)?
The closely related discussion about a two-level (semantic-pragmatic) orthree-level (content-epistemic-speech act) distinction requires further empiricaltesting of the theory, for instance by investigating the way in which different areasof relations, like negatives or additives, are 'cut up' by connectives in differentlanguages. If the epistemic-speech act distinction is often coded this would con-stitute an important argument for a further subdivision in the pragmatic category,thus adopting a trifurcation rather than a dichotomy. A first exploration of the wayin which relations are realized in English and Dutch seems to underline the rele-vance of the semantic-pragmatic distinction, since in both languages specific "cuephrases" can be identified (Knott, 1996; Knott & Sanders, 1998). On the otherhand, it can be concluded that the semantic-pragmatic distinction is not a suffi-
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE 143
cient explanation for the distribution of many frequently used Dutch connectives(Pander Maat & Sanders, 1995; Pander Maat, 1998). These two types of resultsillustrate why this research area of linguistic coding of relational "domains" canbe of crucial importance for coherence relation theory.
Several studies are currently under way to further refine a cognitive approachto coherence relations. They concern, among others, language acquisition (chil-dren acquire connectives in an order of increasing complexity which can bedescribed in terms of the primitives: additives before causals, positives beforenegative, see Spooren, Sanders & Visser, 1994: Spooren, this volume), cross-lin-guistic studies of connectives, on-line reading experiments (do different relationslead to different representations?) and a comparison to intentional approaches todiscourse structure, as advocated by Grosz and Sidner (1986) and Moore and Pol-lack (1992) (Sanders & Spooren, 1996). So far, the results can be taken as a clueto the viability of a cognitive approach to coherence relations.
Acknowledgement: I would like to thank several colleagues and studentswho have made significant contributions to the research reported in this paper.First of all, Wilbert Spooren has repeatedly provided detailed and insightful com-ments. I have benefited greatly from discussions with him and with Alistair Knottand Henk Pander Maat. I am also grateful to Henk Pander Maat, Mima Pit, ArtGraesser, and to the anonymous reviewers of Discourse Processes for commentson earlier versions of this paper, to Huub van den Bergh for indispensable statis-tical advice, to Alette van Bentum, Petra Verschoof and Petra van de Vijfeyke,who have shared the data of their respective MA-theses with me, and to AlistairKnott and Gerard Nas for correcting my English. Needless to say, all remainingerrors are my own.
NOTES
1. An elaboration of the Basic Operation Paraphrase Test for questions can be for-mulated as follows.
In the case of questions:
(i) Does the question contain one segment? Then the relation with the preceding or fol-lowing segment is pragmatic.
(ii) Are two segments embedded in one question? Then check whether it can be para-phrased as: The fact that X leads to my question Y. If it can, then the relation is prag-matic.
(iii) If it cannot, reformulate it as declarative and follow rules 2-3 of the basic operationparaphrase test.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
144 SANDERS
Below are some motivating examples for this question test(i)a. Do you have a headache? Take an aspirin.(i)b. Do you need money? Come to the bank!(i)c. The building collapsed. Was it because of a bomb explosion?(i)d. I am looking for Mister X. Have you seen him?(i)e. Was it De Boer who scored that goal? I could not quite see.
(ii) Since you're so smart, when was George Washington born? (Sweetser, 1990).(iii) Did the building collapse because there was a bomb explosion? (Wilbert Spooren, per-
sonal communication).
* The fact that there was a bomb explosion leads to my question: did the building collapse?—> rephrase as declarative, enter general test, strip connectives (rule 2):
The building collapsed.There was a bomb explosion.
—> Semantic, according to rule 3-iia.
2. This analysis was used because it gives a precise estimate of the interaction effectThe likelihood-ratio which indicates the goodness of fit of the model with the data is G2
(Pearson's % ) has better distributional properties for small samples, because it is based onthe Poisson distribution rather than on the normal distribution. C2 is assymptotically %2
distributed (Fienberg, 1980). Table (i) below shows the fit of the four different logit-mod-els, in which the first model contains C (all cells are equal in frequency), the second SP (=all three cells of S are equal and all three cells of P are equal; there is no difference in texttype), the third C + SP + TXT (in comparison the frequency of sp is identical for all threetexts), and the fourth C + SP + TXT + SP.TXT (differences between S and P are depen-dent on the text type). The fourth model, which includes all parameters, fits perfectly. InTable (ii) the goodness of fit with the data is compared; it is computed how much onemodel fits the data better than another.
TABLE (i)
Model
1234
Model
1-22-32-4
CC+SPC+SP+txtC+SP+txt+sp.txt
G2
41.6860.4568.75
G2
110.4268.7564.29
TABLE (ii)
df
124
df
542
P<001>.O5<.001
P<05<.O5<05
Conclusion
Reject 1Do not reject 2Reject 2, accept 4
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE 145
REFERENCES
Bentum, A. van (1995). Semantische en pragmatische coherentie-relaties. Tekstanalytischen experimenteel onderzoek. [Semantic and pragmatic coherence relations. Text-analytic and experimental research]. Unpublished master's thesis, Utrecht Univer-sity, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Bergh, H. van den (1990). On the construct-validity of multiple-choice items for readingcomprehension. Applied Psychological Measurement, 14, 1-12.
Brewer, W.F. (1980). Literary theory, rhetoric, and stylistics: Implications for psychology.In RJ. Spiro, B.C. Bruce & W.F. Brewer (Eds.). Theoretical issues in reading com-prehension (pp. 221-239). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Dijk, T.A. van (1977). Text and context. New York: Longman.Fienberg, S.E. (1980). The analysis of cross-classified categorical data. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.Grosz, B J . & Sidner, C.L. (1986). Attention, intentions and the structure of discourse.
Computational Linguistics, 12, 175-204.Halliday, M.A.K. & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman.Hobbs, J.R. (1990). Literature and cognition. Menlo Park, CA: CSLI.Hovy, E.H. (1990). Parsimonious and profligate approaches to the question of discourse
structure relations. In J. Moore (Ed.), Proceedings of the 5th international work-shop on Natural Language Generation (pp. 128-136). Pittsburgh: ACL.
Hovy, E.H. & Maier, E. (1995). Parsimonious or profligate: how many and which dis-course structure relations? Manuscript, submitted for publication.
Knott, A. & Dale, R. (1994). Using linguistic phenomena to motivate a set of coherencerelations. Discourse Processes, 18, 35-62.
Knott, A. & Sanders, T. (1998). The classification of coherence relations and their linguisticmarkers: An exploration of two languages. Journal of Pragmatics, to appear.
Longacre, R.E. (1976). An anatomy of speech notions. Lisse: Peter de Ridder Press.Mann, W.C., & Thompson, S.A. (1986). Relational propositions in discourse. Discourse
Processes, 9, 57-90.. (1988). Rhetorical Structure Theory: Toward a functional theory of text organiza-
tion. Text, 8, 243-281.Martin, J.R. (1992). English text: systems and structure. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Meyer, B J.F. (1975). The organization of prose and its effect on memory. Amsterdam:
North-Holland.Moore, J.D. & Pollack, M.E. (1992). A problem for RST: The need for multi-level dis-
course analysis. Computational Linguistics, 18, 537-544.Pander Maat, H.L.W. (1994a). Tekstanalyse. Een pragmatische benadering. [Text analy-
sis. A pragmatic approach.] Groningen: Martinus Nijhoff.. (1994b). Coherentie-relaties hebben zowel semantische als pragmatische
aspecten. [Coherence relations have both semantic and pragmatic aspects]. In: A.Maes, P. van Hauwermeiren & L. van Waes (Eds.) Perspectieven in taalbeheers-ingsonderzoek (pp. 118-129). Dordrecht ICG.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
146 . SANDERS
. (1998); Classifying negative coherence relations on the basis of linguistic evi-dence. Journal of Pragmatics, to appear.
Pander Maat, H. & Sanders, T. (1995). Nederlandse causale connectieven en het onder-scheid tussen inhoudelijke en epistemische coherentie-relaties. [Dutch causal con-nectives and the difference between content and epistemic coherence relations].Leuvense Bijdragen, 349-374.
Redeker, G. (1990). Ideational and pragmatic markers of discourse structure. Journal ofPragmatics, 14, 305-319.
Sanders, J.M. (1994). Perspective in narrative discourse. Unpublished doctoral disserta-tion, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands.
Sanders, T.J.M. (1992). Discourse structure and coherence. Unpublished doctoral disser-tation, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands.
Sanders, T. (1994). Verschillende coherentie-relaties in verschillende teksttypen. [Differ-ent coherence relations in different text types.] In: A. Maes, P. van Hauwermeirenand L. van Waes (Eds.). Perspectieven in taalbeheersingsonderzoek (pp. 130-143).Dordrecht ICG.
Sanders, T. & Spooren, W. (1996). Discourse intentions and coherence relations. Manu-script, submitted for publication.
Sanders, T.J.M., Spooren, W.P.M. & Noordman, L.G.M. (1992). Towards a taxonomy ofcoherence relations. Discourse Processes, 15, 1-35.. (1993). Coherence relations in a cognitive theory of discourse representation.
Cognitive Linguistics, 4, 93-133.Sanders, TJ.M. & Wijk, C. van (1996). PISA - A procedure for analyzing the structure of
explanatory texts. Text, 16, 91-132.Smith, R.W. & Frawley, W.J. (1983). Conjunctive cohesion in four English genres. Text,
5, 347-374.Spooren, W.P.M.S. (1989). Some aspects of the form and interpretation of global contras-
tive coherence relations. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Nijmegen University,Nijmegen, The Netherlands.. (1997). The processing of underspecified coherence relations. Discourse Pro-
cesses, this volume.Spooren, W., Sanders, T. & Visser, J. (1994). Taxonomie van coherentie-relaties: Eviden-
tie uit taalverwervingsonderzoek? [Taxonomy of coherence relations: Evidencefrom language acquisition research?] Gramma/TTT, 3, 33-54.
Sweetser, E.V. (1990). From etymology to pragmatics. Metaphorical and cultural aspectsof semantic structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Verhagen, A. (1995). Meaning and the coordination of cognition. Plenary address at theconference of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association, Albuquerque,NM, July 16-21.
Verschoof, P.L. (1994). Classificatie van coherentie-relaties: op zoek naar de feiten.[Classification of coherence relations: in search of the facts]. Unpublished master'sthesis, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Vijfeyke, P. van de (1992). Ontbrekende schakels. Een onderzoek naar de samenhangtussen coherentie-relaties en teksttypen. [Missing links. An investigation of the
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2
SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE 147
relationship between coherence relations and text types.]. Unpublished master'sthesis, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands.
Virtanen, T. (1992). Issues of text typology: Narrative—a 'basic' type of text? Text, 12,293-310.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Cor
pora
cion
CIN
CE
L]
at 0
8:57
10
May
201
2