This article was downloaded by: [Corporacion CINCEL] On: 10 May 2012, At: 08:57 Publisher: Routledge Informa

Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Discourse Processes
Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hdsp20

Semantic and pragmatic sources of coherence: On the categorization of coherence relations in context
Ted Sanders
a a

Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht University, Trans 10, Utrecht, NL 3512 JK, The Netherlands E-mail: Available online: 11 Nov 2009

To cite this article: Ted Sanders (1997): Semantic and pragmatic sources of coherence: On the categorization of coherence relations 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 systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be 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 in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

Semantic and Pragmatic Sources of Coherence: On the Categorization of Coherence Relations in Context
TED SANDERS
Utrecht University

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012

This article discusses a distinction present in many theories of relation categorization: the Source of Coherence, which distinguishes between semantic and pragmatic relations. Existing categorizations of both relations and connectives show a reasonable consensus on prototypical examples. Still, there many ambiguous cases. How can the distinction be clarified? And to what extent does it depend on the context in which relations occur? A more precise text-linguistic definition is presented in the form of a paraphrase test, intended to systematically check analysts' intuitions. A paraphrase experiment shows that language users recognize the difference between clear cases in context. More importantly, the type of context (descriptive, argumentative) appeared not to influence the interpretation of clear cases, whereas subjects' judgements of ambiguous relations are influenced by the type of context. A corpus study further illustrates the link between text type and relation type: Informative texts are dominated by semantic relations, 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 kind of connectedness which causes it to differ from a random set of utterances. One way to account for text connectedness is in terms of the cognitive representation people have or make of a discourse (i.e., in terms of coherence). A coherence relation 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 <Ted.Sanders@leLruu.nl>. Discourse Processes, 24,11<M47 (1997) ISSN 0163-853X 1997 Ablex Publishing Corporation All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 119

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 both psychological and linguistic perspectives on discourse connectedness. That is, it can account for crucial psychological research questions regarding the cognitive representation of discourse (how do language users produce and understand discourse?) because a coherence relation is conceived of as a cognitive entity. At the same time, the linguistic research goal of finding out how connectedness is marked in discourse can be considered. For coherence relations, from now on CRs, can be made 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. Furthermore, many sets of relations are presented as plain lists, which appear unorganized and which can be extended endlessly. For several reasons this is unsatisfactory. An adequate (cognitive) theory of CRs will have to an explanation for the fact that the similarity between CRs varies. In discourse (2), for instance, causality is also involved, but at the same time the relation is very different 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 taxonomy or classification scheme which accounts for these "relations among relations." The central claim is that it is attractive to assume that the set of possible CRs that exist between discourse segments is organized and that the whole set of CRs can be described in terms of four basic notions, or primitives: Basic operation (is the relation additive or causal?); Source of coherence (is the relation semantic or pragmatic?); 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 plausible cognitive theory of coherence relationslanguage users make use of their knowledge of the four basic concepts to infer the intended coherence relation. The combination of the four primitives results in a classification scheme in which 12 classes of CRs are characterized. In mis way, the set of relations can be organized in terms of their own "meaning characteristics." For instance, the rela-

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012

SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE

121

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012

tions in (1) and (2) would both be considered positive and causal, and in both cases antecedent and consequent are in basic order. The difference between the two is in Source of Coherence: The semantic versus the pragmatic character of the relations. This difference relies on the intuition that writers' and speakers' utterances either cohere, because readers and listeners conceive of the world they describe as coherent, or because their communicative actions cohere. The relation in (1) is semantic because it connects two events in the world; our knowledge allows us to relate the segments as coherent in the world. In (2) however, the two discourse segments are related because we understand the second part as evidence for the claim in the first, and not because there is a causal relation between two states of affairs in the world: It is not because the lights are out that the neighbours are not at home. This systematic difference between 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) causal relations is further investigated. The first research question is: To what extent can the difference between semantic and pragmatic relations be defined in such a way that it can be used to analyze natural texts? A main reason for examining this question is that, although the semantic-pragmatic (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 use constructed examples by means of illustration. There is no harm in that, but it is imperative that theoretical notions are so explicit that they can be applied by different analysts to all kinds of natural text In other words, the usability of constructs like the primitives in the Sanders et al. (1992, 1993) classification is at stake: Are the definitions formulated sufficiently explicit? And a final reason for studying this research question is that the primitive Source of Coherence was the least agreed on factor in experiments we conducted to test our classification (Sanders et al., 1992, 1993). In these experiments, subjects were asked to make direct comparisons between relations, or they were instructed to label them. A crucial result was that the CRs that are similar in terms of the primitives were confused more often than relations that are less similar. However, in three experiments we conducted, most confusion appeared to exist about the Source of Coherence. The second research question also rises from the relatively low agreement on Source of Coherence. In another experiment (Sanders et al., 1993) we found that language users actually could distinguish between semantic and pragmatic relations if the sentence pairs to be judged were embedded in a clear linguistic context. This conclusion still leaves us with the question how exactly context and

122

SANDERS

source of coherence interact For instance, does every context clarify the semantic or pragmatic character of a relation? Or is there a systematic relationship between context type and relation type? Perhaps the context even determines the semantic or pragmatic character of a relation to a certain extent. Hence, the second research question of this paper is: How does the immediate linguistic context influence the semantic or pragmatic character of coherence relations? SOURCE OF COHERENCE: SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC RELATIONS? Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012 Defining the Intuition Let us start with more precise definitions (from Sanders et al., 1992,1993). A relation is semantic if the discourse segments are related because of their prepositional content (i.e., the locutionary meaning of the segments). For example, the sequence in (3) is coherent because it is part of our world knowledge that running causes fatigue. A relation is pragmatic if the discourse segments are related because of the illocutionary meaning of one or both of the segments. In pragmatic relations the CR concerns the speech act status of the segments. In the pragmatic relation (4) the state of affairs in the second segment is not the cause of the state of affairs in the first 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 relation which means something like"Because I am busy I inform you that I cannot get you 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 pragmaticlillocutionaryl speech act levels strictly separable? In the examples (3) and (4), it should be noted that 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 a general prerequisite of pragmatic causal relations. See example (6), in which such a link is absent 7(6) Theo was exhausted, because he told me so.

SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE

123

In other words, pragmatic relations can, but need not be based on a connection in the real world. The distinction implies that in the case of a pragmatic relation the level of connection of the CR is the illocutionary level. This connection possibly exists in addition to a locutionary connection, but the relevant level of connection is the illocutionary one. In (7) for instance, a locutionary GeneralizationInstance relation exists ("Robins belong to the class of songbirds"), but the relevant connection is the illocutionary Claim-Argument relation ("The fact that it is a robin leads to my claim that it is a songbird"). This is illustrated in (8), which is not based on a real world Generalization-Instance connection, but can clearly be identified as the same type of Claim-Argument relation. Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012 (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 the Source of Coherence (Hovy, 1990; Knott & Dale, 1994; Knott, 1996; Moore & Pollack, 1992; Pander Maat, 1994b). At the same time, several researchers have come up with very similar distinctions: internal versus external use of conjunctions and relations (Halliday & Hasan, 1976; Martin, 1992), ideational versus rhetorical discourse markers (Redeker, 1990), subject matter versus presentational matter relations (Mann & Thompson, 1988), ideational versus interpersonal and textual relations (Hovy & Maier, 1995), content versus epistemic and interactional relations (Pander Maat, 1994ab), content versus epistemic and speech act domains of language use (Sweetser, 1990) and semantic and pragmatic connectives (Van Dijk, 1977). It is particularly interesting that some of these proposals explicitly concern relations, whereas others concern connectives. One may expect that a valid classification of CRs, which are considered cognitive entities, wold have some counterpart in language. But to what extent do the distinctions used in other proposals actually coincide with the semantic-pragmatic distinction? To answer this question we have taken a closer look at the most elaborate classification accounts. Definitions were compared and text examples were analyzed. Below, the proposals of Mann and Thompson (1988), Martin (1992) and Sweetser (1990) are discussed in some detail. These three present a good overview of the field. Although Mann and Thompson (1988, p. 256) do not believe in creating taxonomies of relations, they do suggest the possibility of dividing the set of relations in two: subject matter and presentational. Relations such as Volitional Cause or Result, express parts of the subject matter in the text. These relations connect segments, if they are understood as causally related to the subject matter. The effect

124

SANDERS

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012

is that readers recognize that the situation presented in one segment could be a cause of the situation presented in the other segment. Other relations such as Justify or Evidence, are used to facilitate the presentation process itself. Presentational relations are those of which the intended effect is to increase some inclination in the reader, such as the desire to act or a belief of the writer's claim. Martin (1992, p. 179) distinguishes between four groups of logico-semantic relations: addition, comparison, temporal and consequential. These four groups are subdivided, and an important distinction within each group is that between internal and external relations. Relations which organize the structure of the text are internal or rhetorical, and external or experiental relations exist in the world the text describes. Sweetser (1990) discusses, among many other things, the ambiguity in the use of conjunctions. She demonstrates that her three domain-theory explains these ambiguities. 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 to Sweetser (10) means that my knowledge of John's return causes the conclusion that he loved her. A good paraphrase of (11) would be "I am asking what you are doing tonight because I want to suggest that we should see this good movie." Sweetser repeatedly uses paraphrases to illustrate the difference between domains. A conjunction is used in the content-domain when one event causes another "in the real world." The use in the epistemic domain is characterized by a sequence like "The knowledge of... causes my conclusion that ...," and "the fact that... enables me to say that...." Defining the Distinction: Similarities and Differences In terms of definitions, Mann and Thompson consider the effect on the reader to be the crucial issue, whereas the other authors consider the nature of the connection itself as crucial. Sweetser's distinctions are similar to those of Martin and Sanders et al., except that Sweetser's trifurcation is more specific than the dichotomy; semantic/external and content seem similar, but both epistemic and speech act are treated as pragmatic and internal. Yet, do the definitions lead to the same classification of relations in actual text analysis? The examples of the respective authors were analyzed in each others' terms. A selection was made of 42 exam-

SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE

125

pies of eight different authors. Only positive causal relations were included in the analysis. 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 of each category, and we also gained insight into the reasons for disagreement. The clear cases of speecA-acr/pragmatic/presentational/internal relations are the 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 and Thompson's example of Justify and Motivation relations in (12) and (13) below. Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012 (5) (11) (12) (13) I'm busy. You can take your own beer out of the fridge. What are you doing tonight, because there's a good movie on. I'm Officer Krupke. You're under arrest. Go jogging with me this afternoon. You'll be full of energy.

Prototypical e/Jw/emfc/pragmatic/presentational/internal relations are cases in which the writer argues for something she claims to be true. Most of the times, the writer is clearly present as the communicating person, and the unambiguous cases are those in which it is impossible to get a semantic/subject matter/intemal/content reading, such as Sweetser's (14). They often contain linguistic elements expressing 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 events which have already taken place, such as Sweetser's (15), so that there can be no dispute 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 not lead to agreement. Mann and Thompson consider this a subject matter relation because the reader only needs to recognize that one fact causes another, and the effect is not that the reader has to feel inclined to do or believe something. In Sweetser's terms this example would be epistemic (the connection holds in the writer's head, the first segment is based on the knowledge expressed in the second, rather than that "it is the case in the real world"). In our terms, this example would be a pragmatic relation (That you cannot teach an old dog new tricks leads to the conclusion rather than to the fact that I am not going to learn Dutch).

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-pragmatic distinction; moreover, most examples above were constructed. How does the distinction behave in the analysis of everyday text? In answer to that question, a corpus 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 the ones in (17). They clearly express another speech act than "just description," so they 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 analytic heuristic was developed: the basic operation paraphrase test. The development of a paraphrase test (cf. Martin, 1992; and Sweetser's definitions in the previous section) forces the theory to be as explicit as possible. Below it is described for positive causal relations. With the help of this heuristic, the analyst first checks whether the relation 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 containing interrogatives are excluded from the paraphrase test; they are dealt with separately.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 are the propositions in the basic operation, cf. Sanders et al., 1992, section 2.1.). Paraphrase it by making use of the formulations below and consider which formulation 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 CR as it was originally expressed in the text, and it is semantic if one of the para-

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012

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; the paraphrase test makes the possible interpretations explicit and enables analysts to systematically check their intuitions. If we apply this to example (5), repeated below, it appears to be an exclusive pragmatic example; it is impossible to paraphrase (5) by means of (ii). (5) (5i) Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012 I'm busy. You can take your own beer out of the fridge. 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 paraphrase (ii) accounts best for the CR expressed in (3), whereas paraphrase (i) corresponds best to the CR in (4). (3i) ? The fact that Theo had been running causes my claim that he was exhausted. (3ii) The fact that Theo had been running causes thefact 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 corpus of 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 brings relief. (18i) ? The fact that the bowel motion still does not function properly, causes the fact that Dulcolax brings relief. (18ii) The fact that the bowel motion still does not function properly, causes the writer's claim that Dulcolax brings relief/causes the writer's advice to use Dulcolax. Although it happens that both paraphrases are possible, it seems like there is always one most plausible interpretation. Consider example (19), based on a letter to a magazine editor.

128

SANDERS

The situation at the the candy department is unhygienic. We see the customers just groping about in the storage bins. (19i) ? The fact that we see the customers just groping about in the storage bins causes the fact that the situation is unhygienic. (19ii) The fact that we see the customers just groping about in the storage bins causes my claim that the situation is unhygienic. Paraphrase (19i) does make sense (although it can be questioned whether seeing people groping about causes an unhygienic situation), but (19ii) is a better gloss 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 everyday text we have seen exclusive examples of semantic and pragmatic relations, but we have 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 the relation can only exist at an illocutionary level; the relation at the locutionary level 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 epistemic cases. In (20a) the speaker connects the question "Are you sure it was tonight that we would visit the Carsons?" with the fact that the lights are out (and the Speaker is afraid they're not at home). A causal relation between a state of affairs and the speaker's claim or conclusion holds in (20b). The lights being out definitely does not cause the fact that the neighbours are not at home, but the fact that they had to leave for Albuquerque does. Therefore in (20c) a semantic relation exists; it might be an answer to the question: "Why were the neigbours not at home yesterday evening?* It is prototypically semantic in the sense that it describes a situation in the past; that is one of the reasons why (20d) is less prototypical, and is in fact ambiguous between a semantic and a pragmatic reading. (20) a Are you sure we'd be here tonight! Because the lights are out. (pragmaticspeech act) b The Carsons are not at home, because the lights are out. (pragmaticepistemic) c The Carsons were not at home yesterday because they were in Albuquerque, (semantic). d The neighbours are not at home because there is a party downtown, (semantic or pragmatic?)

(19)

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012

SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE

129

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012

The fact that different proposals in the literature agree on these prototypical cases is most important here, but (20ab) also raises the question of whether we should adopt three rather than two "values" of the primitive Source of Coherence, thus following Sweetser's trifurcation: Are epistemic and speech act relations indeed subtypes of pragmatic relations? Or should they stand on their own? On the one hand, Sweetser has shown that her three domains are relevant to describe the use and meaning of linguistic devices like modal verbs, if-then conditionals and conjunctions. On the other hand, a dichotomy is plausible, because both speech act and epistemic relations concern a non-content connection, that is, a level in which the speaker creates the coherence, either by reasoning or arguing, or by communicating on a meta-level. Furthermore, in establishing a classification for coherence relations, the semantic-pragmatic distinction has shown to be useful and productive (for instance, the distinction is relevant for both positive and negative relations, and for causal and additive relations). What kind of arguments would decisively define to choice between the two and the three-way distinction? Ultimately, the choice should be based on empirical research, such as cross-linguistic research into the way in which languages encode the different relational types. Or by investigating the way in which different areas of relations, like negatives or additives, are "cut up" by connectives. If the epistemic-speech act distinction is often coded this would constitute an important argument for a further subdivision in the pragmatic category, thus adopting a trifurcation rather than a dichotomy. At this moment, there is no reason to depart from the semantic-pragmatic distinction. On the contrary, it can be concluded that the Basic Operation Paraphrase Test is a first step in the direction of better analytic heuristics to clarify the distinction. Not only is it maximally explicit, it also pays attention to the context in which the relation is expressed. If the test is used for the interpretation of the examples (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 at home. The fact that there is a party causes my claim that the neighbours are not at home. In context it can be determined whether the relation concerns a Claim-Argument ("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 know very well they go to every party, those buffoons"), or rather as a description of a state of affairs, a Consequence-Cause relation ("My wife is off to sing in the choir, the folks at the opposite side of the street are on a holiday. The Carsons are not at home because there is a party downtown. It is awfully quiet around here.").

130

SANDERS

THE ROLE OF THE CONTEXT In the last section, it was claimed that relations which appear to be ambiguous with respect to the semantic-pragmatic distinction turn out not to be ambiguous in context This raises the question what the relation is between the primitive Source of Coherence and the context. Is it simply the case that the semantic or pragmatic character of a relation is clearer in context, than without? Or is there more 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 relations as semantic when they occur in a descriptive context, whereas they tend to judge relations more as pragmatic when they occur in an argumentative context? Of course, such a dependency can also exist the other way around: Argumentative contexts are experienced as such because they are dominated by pragmatic relations whereas descriptive contexts are dominated by semantic ones. The role of the context in relation to the Source of Coherence is investigated in this section, 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 Coherence is least agreed upon by analysts. A possible explanation for this confusion is that 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 to label CRs between discourse segments, which were embedded in full texts. In every text, there were two experimental items: One CR that was semantic and one that was pragmatic. Of each text two versions were constructed: a clearly argumentative version and a clearly descriptive one. The experimental items were fully identical in both versions. Each context had a bias for either a semantic or a pragmatic relation: Semantic relations were hypothesized to fit best into a descriptive context, whereas pragmatic relations would fit best into an argumentative context. The results showed that subjects are sensitive to a difference between semantic and pragmatic relations. Yet, there was so much agreement that it was impossible to find an interaction in line with the hypothesis that the context influenced the labelling. We concluded that subjects agree with our classification of CRs with respect to the primitive Source of Coherence. These experimental results confirm the basics of the classification, but the interaction between context and Source of Coherence is still not clarified completely. First, the results leave open the possibility that the recognition of less

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012

SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE

131

clear cases is strongly influenced by the type of context they occur in. Second, it is quite possible that the high amount of agreement is due to the fact that only very clear instances of relations were used. For instance, all relations were marked by a connective, which always restricts the interpretation. A new experiment aimed at getting a better hold of the way in which the context influences the language users' interpretation of relations as semantic or pragmatic. Given the experimental evidence so far, and given the analytical insights presented in the previous paragraphs, the hypothesis was tested that recognition of exclusively semantic and pragmatic relations is not determined by the (type of) context, but that in inclusive or ambiguous cases the interpretation as semantic or pragmatic is determined by the type of context The same experimental paradigm was used, but ambiguous examples were included in addition to the clearly semantic and pragmatic ones. The new experiment also differed in two other respects from the previous one. First, the aim was to find out whether analysts could also distinguish between semantic and pragmatic relations if the relations were not marked by connectives. Second, a different experimental task was used, which was assumed to be less meta-linguistic and more natural. Rather than asking subjects to choose a relation name from a list of CRs, we asked them to choose the best paraphrase of the relation from an existing list. Again, the aim of the experiment was to find out whether other analysts would agree with the semantic-pragmatic classification. The discourse segments were embedded in complete texts. The texts were almost identical to the ones used in the earlier experiment. In every text, there were three experimental items: One CR that was semantic, one that was pragmatic, and one so-called chameleon. The latter was an item that was typically ambiguous (i.e., in between a semantic and a pragmatic reading) and its interpretation was thought to be strongly contextdependent. Of each text two versions were constructed: a clearly argumentative and a clearly descriptive version. The experimental items were fully identical in both versions. Two hypotheses were tested: HI: As Source of Coherence is a property of CRs, the difference between exclusively semantic and exclusively pragmatic relations will be recognized by the analysts, independent of the context in which the relations occur. H2: When relations are typically ambiguous between a semantic and pragmatic reading (the so-called chameleons) the context will determine the judgement of the analysts in such a way that a chameleon

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012

132

SANDERS

relation will be called pragmatic if it occurs in an argumentative context and semantic if it occurs in a descriptive context. Method Material. The material for the experiment consisted of four texts, which were almost identical to the texts used in the earlier study. Two versions were made of each text: an argumentative and a descriptive version. Each version contained five sentence pairs the CR of which was to be judged. Three target pairs were identical in both versions. The two other pairs were fillers that varied with the text versions. Of the three target pairs, one was exclusively semantic, one exclusively pragmatic, and one was inclusively semantic/pragmatic, the so-called chameleon. 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, Argument-Claim). Some were marked with a connective, others were not The texts were based on non-specialist articles and on articles and essays in newspapers and 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 descriptive version of this text is titled "Crane Migration'. In this version information is given about the life of cranes, especially about their behavior during and directly after their voyage from the North to the South of Europe. The context directly preceding (21) is that the birds arrive in the area where they will stay for the winter after a long journey across Europe. The title of the argumentative version of this text, which was written from the perspective of an ornithologist who conducted research on the behavior of cranes, is "Some misunderstandings about Crane Migration." The author argues that others are wrong in claiming that it is still unclear how migration birds orient themselves and she presents conclusive evidence for her own claims, namely that cranes orient themselves by the sun and the stars. In (21) a semantic relation is expressed: Cause-Consequence. The test shows that the pragmatic paraphrase is not the intended relation in the descriptive context, and is highly unlikely in the argumentative context. In (22) the pragmatic relation Claim-Argument is expressed (it is virtually impossible to get a semantic reading), and (23) is the chameleon: The relation is ambiguous between a semantic Cause-Consequence and a pragmatic Argument-Claim (Conclusion) relation. In other words, this sequence can both be interpreted as a relation between two states of affairs and as the writer's conclusion which is drawn from a state of affairs.

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012

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-descriptive) and type of CR (semantic-pragmatic-cfowne/eon). Two sets of experimental texts were constructed. Each set consisted of four texts, two descriptive versions and two argumentative versions. Each set contained only one version of each text. 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 experimenter, followed by a written instruction. The texts were presented to the subjects twice. First, subjects were asked to read the texts thoroughly. When they had finished 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 presented to the subjects anew, in a different lay-out, the target sentence pairs being numbered and printed in bold type. Subjects read the text and judged each sentence pair printed in bold type. To that end they were to look through the list of paraphrases and to choose the appropriate paraphrase (i.e., the one that described best the relation connecting the sentence pair). The paraphrases are presented under (24); (1)(4) express a pragmatic relation and (5)-(8) correspond to a semantic relation. Furthermore, (1), (2), (5) and (6) are causal and the others are additive. (24) (1)D (1)E (2)D (2)E (3)D (3)E (4)D (4)E

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012

Mijn argument hiervoor is: My argument for this is: daarom heb ik het volgende standpunt: for that reason I take following position: een ander standpunt is: another position is: een ander argument is: another argument is:

(5)D (5)E (6)D (6)E (7)D (7)E (8)D (8)E

de oorzaak daarvan was/is: the cause for this was/is: het gevolg daarvan was/is: the consequence of this was/is: een ander kenmerk hiervan is/was: another characteristic of this is: een ander feit was/is: another fact was/is:

134

SANDERS

Participants. Thirty-six participants took part in the experiment. They were paid for their participation. Participants were advanced students of the Faculty of Humanities 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 experimental sessions; 22 participants took part in a first and 14 in a second session. Results. For the semantic-pragmatic items, replies were classified as corresponding or not corresponding with the original classification. In general, there was a good deal of agreement with the theoretical classification: Only 3.8 % of participant's choices was not in agreement with the original choice. The prediction following from the first hypothesis is that the observed number of responses corresponding to the original classification on this primitive is significantly higher than chance. The data were analyzed in two ways: subject-wise and item-wise. (In both cases the analysis concerned the amount of agreement on the primitive Source of Coherence. The chance proportion was based on the binomial distribution. According to this distribution, the probability of at least 7 out of 8 items correctly classified and of at least 33 out of 36 subjects classifying correctly, is less than 5 percent). In the subject-wise analysis 34 subjects agreed more often than chance with the original classification (X2 = 28.4, df = 1, p < .001). In the 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 semantic interpretations in the descriptive context and pragmatic interpretations in the argumentative context. The results are summarized in Table 1. In general, subjects' choices for relation paraphrases were in agreement with the context in more cases than expected at a chance level (x 2 = 19.5, dfs 2,p< .001) (In the statistical analysis, the chance proportion based on the binomial distribution was used again: 24 participants had agreement scores higher than chance, 9 participants had agreement scores that were equal to chance and the score of 3 subjects was lower than chance.) The interaction of type of relation with context was tested in a contrast-analysis of 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 much smaller in the argumentative context This is due to the fact that, on the whole, subjects tended to make more semantic than pragmatic paraphrases. Conclusion from the Experiment. Using a different experimental task and linguistically non-marked relations, this experiment confirms earlier findings that language users see the difference between semantic and pragmatic relations in an

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012

SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE TABLE 1 Subjects paraphrases of chameleon items in two different contests Context Paraphrase Argumentative Descriptive

1 35

Semantic Pragmatic

34 38

62 10

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012

appropriate context. More importantly, the results support the idea that in the case of exclusive semantic and pragmatic relations, the Source of Coherence is independent of the type of context. When analysts are asked to judge relations which are ambiguous between a semantic and a pragmatic reading, they are influenced by the type of context in which the relation appears. Language users show a systematic preference to interpret ambiguous cases as semantic in a descriptive context, and in addition they show a tendency to interpret them as pragmatic in an argumentative context. In sum, the difference between semantic and pragmatic relations 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 this corpus study, we investigated the appearance of relations in actually occurring texts. Special attention was paid to the question if different text types differ in the typeofCRs. Text Types and Text Structure. The notion of genre or text typecf. the classical distinction between informative, persuasive and diverting text types is a frequently used concept, which is often not defined in articulate text-internal characteristics (see Virtanen, 1992). An exception is a study by Smith and Frawley (1983), which characterized four genres by counting the conjunctions in the texts. In this corpus study we did something similar. One difference was we followed the coherence rather than the cohesion stance: We did not confine the investigation to the explicitly marked relations, but added the unmarked ones as well. Our goal was to further explore the interaction between context and relational meaning. Therefore, we investigated whether different text types also differ in text structure, specifically in the dominating type of CRs. The hypothesis was that persuasive texts are dominated by pragmatic relations and informative texts are dominated by semantic relations.

136

SANDERS

Method. The notion of text type or genre was operationalized as the writer's communicative goal (Brewer, 1980). We gathered texts of three types. 1. 2. 3. Informative texts, in which the writer's goal is to inform the reader about something; Expressive texts, in which the writer's goal is to express his feelings and attitudes; Persuasive texts in which the writer's goal is to persuade the reader of something.

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012

Each type was represented by ten Dutch texts. Encyclopedic texts were chosen as typically informative, letters to the editor as typically expressive, and advertisements as typically persuasive. Three example texts, translated from Dutch, are given in (25) - (27) below. (25) An informative text (Source: Ge'illustreerde encyclopedic [Illustrated Encyclopedia)

(l)Immanent (Latin): Staying in (la) indicating what is typical of a certain area or concept (lb) and does not exceed i t (2) The opposite is transcendent. (3) An immanent conception of God (3a) in which God does not influence the world from outside (3b) but is part of nature itself. (4) This in contrast to a transcendent conception of God (4a) in which there is room for a divine revelation from outside. (5) With Kant, the immanent use of Reason means (Sa) that it is restricted to the area of possible 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 am very pleased with the products ot Albert Heijn and with the great variety. (2) One thing, however, keeps bothering us, (3) namely the self-service when taking and weighing certain products. (4) This is an unhygienic situation, especially with the sweets. (5) We have observed, for instance, (5a) that customers use their hands to grope 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 let their small children take place in the shopping cart with their shoes on. (7) This is not very nice, either. (27) A persuasive text (Source: Story [a tabloid magazine)

(1) Constipation, or difficult bowel motion, is unpleasant and inconvenient. (2) So you'd better do something about i t (3a) Fibrous food, drinking a lot of water (3)

SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE

137

and much bodily movement can help. (4) But if the bowel motion still does not function properly, (5) Dulcolax brings relief. (6) Dulcolax is a familiar and reliable laxative with a mild effect (7) Thanks to the special structure of the tablet, it is resistant to gastric juices. (8) Thanks to that Dulcolax works exactly (8a) where it should work: in the large intestine. (9a) When you take Dulcolax at night before you 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

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012

Text Analysis. In the text analysis, we used a combination of Mann and Thompson's (1988) Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) and the classification scheme discussed earlier, which is compatible to RST (Sanders 1992). RST-rules for the analysis of hierarchical text structure were used. Relations were identified between segments, which roughly correspond to clauses. Object clauses, complement clauses and relative clauses are separated from their main clauses by addition of a letter a, b, etc.. They are considered as separate units (cf. Mann & Thompson, 1988; Sanders & Van Wijk, 1996). One

Elaboration

^Contrast \ Ma 3 3b 4 4a

/Contrast * 5-5a 6

Figure 1 The three highest levels in the RST-analysis of the informative text (25)

138

SANDERS

Anti-thesis

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012

Figure 2 The three highest levels in the RST-analysis of the expressive text (26)

systematic exception to these rules is that the first sentence in the encyclopedic texts, which is always elliptic, is systematically considered a separate unit. Identification of relations was done independently by two analysts. In 85% of the cases this led to agreement. The remaining 15% were discussed and agreement was reached in all cases. In the Figures 1 -3 the (most important parts of the) RST-analyses are presented of texts (25)-(27). The Figures 1-3 represent the top level of the hierarchical text structure. At the highest level of text (27), for instance, there is a pragmatic Problem-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 pragmatic examples in persuasive texts than in informative texts. The qualitative hypothesis

SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE

139

12
Solutionhood. pragmatic

12

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012

12
Figure 3 The three highest levels in the RST-analysis of the persuasive text (27)

is that in persuasive texts, pragmatic relations will occur relatively more often in the dominant places in the text structure than semantic relations. Results. The quantitative results, summarized in Table 2, show that there are more semantic that pragmatic relations across text types. (Of course, these numbers are affected by the segmentation criterion we used. For instance, in expressive texts relatively many (additive) relations occur between relative clauses and their host clauses. However, the segmentation criterion did not affect the relative numbers; when we excluded these relations from the text analysis the results were roughly the same.) To investigate whether there is an interaction of text type and relation type, a loglinear analysis was used. It appeared that the model which included the interaction of context and relation type fitted the data significantly better than models without this interaction (an improvement of %2 = 68.75, df-4,p< .001 in comparison to the next best model, which only includes the semanticpragmatic 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

140

SANDERS

TABLE2 Semantic and pragmatic relations (absolute numbers and proportions) in three text types. Texttype Relation type Informative Expressive Persuasive

Semantic

85
(.98)

56
(.54)

69
(59)

Pragmatic

2
(.02)

48
(.46)

48
(.41)

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012

TABLE3 Mean scores per text of semantic and pragmatic relations at dominant places as a function of three text types. Text type Relation type Semantic Pragmatic Informative 5.8 0.2 Expressive 1.2 4.8 Persuasive 2.8 3.2

the highest), two to the second and one to the third level. Scores were summed per text and later per text type, and compared. To identify the three highest levels in the hierarchy, relations connecting a whole text or text span were considered (i.e., those that 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 dominate, and that there are relatively more pragmatic than semantic relations in the dominant levels of expressive and argumentative texts. Again, the interaction was investigated by means of a loglinear analysis. The model which included the interaction next to the semantic-pragmatic and text type parameters, fitted the data best (an improvement of %2 = 87.61, df= 2, p < .001), thus showing the significance of the interaction. Conclusion from the Corpus Study. Before presenting the conclusions, it seems appropriate to discuss some limitations of this study. First, the corpus varies systematically in three text types, but it also varies in the content of the texts. Further research on this issue should concern a bigger corpus of texts which vary in communicative intention, but show more resemblance in content (e.g., the same topic).

SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE

141

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012

Second, we applied the semantic-pragmatic distinction in this analysis. Given the discussion in the previous sections, it will come as no surprise that we ran into problems in a minority of cases. In case of ambiguity, we choose for the pragmatic interpretation, just as a rule of thumb for this corpus. This choice does not affect the results of the corpus study, because they were comparative, and because we used the same text-analytic rules across the text types. Consequently, the data suggest that there is a relationship between the type of CR and text type: semantic relations are predominant in informative text; the predominance holds both in absolute terms and in terms of the number of relations at the highest text levels. In the non-descriptive text types there are relatively many pragmatic relations, both in number and in terms of relations at higher text levels. These findings seem of some importance for the discussion of text typology and the way in which text types should be defined in text-internal characteristics (Virtanen, 1992). DISCUSSION In this paper, the categorization of CRs proposed in Sanders et al. (1992,1993) is elaborated further, with special attention to, what is perhaps the most complex primitive, the Source of Coherence. A discussion of comparable proposals in the literature showed that there is a remarkable similarity between cognate distinctions, although they originate from different (sub)disciplines. A closer analysis showed a reasonable consensus of prototypical examples of pragmatic (speech act and epistemic) and semantic (content) relations. However, there were also ambiguous cases. A more exact text-linguistic definition of the semantic-pragmatic distinction was presented for positive causal relations, in the form of the Basic Operation Paraphrase Test. This test is intended to systematically check analysts' intuitions. These text-linguistic results were tested in a two-fold empirical investigation of language in use. From a paraphrase experiment, it appeared that language users recognize the difference between clear cases of semantic and pragmatic relations in context More importantly, the interpretation of clear cases is (again) not affected by the type of context in which the relations appear, whereas subjects' judgements are influenced by the type of context when it concerns ambiguous relations (although this is less clear for the argumentative context than for the descriptive one). The role of the context was further clarified in a corpus study, which demonstrated a relation between text type and the Source of Coherence of the relation: Informative texts are dominated by semantic relations, and expressive and persuasive texts showed a higher occurrence of pragmatic relations.

142

SANDERS

These results indicate that the Source of Coherence is a primitive which indeed concerns the relation itself, independent of the linguistic context (see the results for the exclusive cases). In other words, the semantic or pragmatic status of a CR is a text-internal characteristic. However, in ambiguous cases, the interpretation is strongly 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 of a relatively few more pragmatic relations is already characteristic for argumentative 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 Basic Operation Paraphrase Test and its application to examples and corpora has shown 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. At the same time, it was concluded that exclusive and inclusive (ambiguous) cases exist. Yet, this is not the end of the semantic-pragmatic discussion. First, there is the somewhat superficial debate on terminology. Semantic and Pragmatic are linguistic terms with a rich history, and their use in the context of coherence often leads to misunderstandings. Hopefully the definition presented in this paper will clarify the use of these labels. (And of course there are other terms available, such as locution-dominates and illocution-dominates or X and Y). Second, and more importantly, it would be interesting to identify the prototypical semantic-pragmatic examples outside the domain of the positive causals (i.e., in additive and negative relations). Also, a closer study of both exclusive and ambiguous cases justifies reconsideration of the question what determines the nature 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 clear pragmatic relations be characterized as subjective relations "from the speaker's perspective" (see also Pander Maat, 1998; Pander Maat & Sanders, 1995; Spooren, 1989; Verhagen, 1995)? The closely related discussion about a two-level (semantic-pragmatic) or three-level (content-epistemic-speech act) distinction requires further empirical testing of the theory, for instance by investigating the way in which different areas of relations, like negatives or additives, are 'cut up' by connectives in different languages. If the epistemic-speech act distinction is often coded this would constitute an important argument for a further subdivision in the pragmatic category, thus adopting a trifurcation rather than a dichotomy. A first exploration of the way in which relations are realized in English and Dutch seems to underline the relevance of the semantic-pragmatic distinction, since in both languages specific "cue phrases" can be identified (Knott, 1996; Knott & Sanders, 1998). On the other hand, it can be concluded that the semantic-pragmatic distinction is not a suffi-

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012

SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE

143

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012

cient explanation for the distribution of many frequently used Dutch connectives (Pander Maat & Sanders, 1995; Pander Maat, 1998). These two types of results illustrate why this research area of linguistic coding of relational "domains" can be of crucial importance for coherence relation theory. Several studies are currently under way to further refine a cognitive approach to coherence relations. They concern, among others, language acquisition (children acquire connectives in an order of increasing complexity which can be described in terms of the primitives: additives before causals, positives before negative, see Spooren, Sanders & Visser, 1994: Spooren, this volume), cross-linguistic studies of connectives, on-line reading experiments (do different relations lead to different representations?) and a comparison to intentional approaches to discourse structure, as advocated by Grosz and Sidner (1986) and Moore and Pollack (1992) (Sanders & Spooren, 1996). So far, the results can be taken as a clue to the viability of a cognitive approach to coherence relations. Acknowledgement: I would like to thank several colleagues and students who have made significant contributions to the research reported in this paper. First of all, Wilbert Spooren has repeatedly provided detailed and insightful comments. I have benefited greatly from discussions with him and with Alistair Knott and Henk Pander Maat. I am also grateful to Henk Pander Maat, Mima Pit, Art Graesser, and to the anonymous reviewers of Discourse Processes for comments on earlier versions of this paper, to Huub van den Bergh for indispensable statistical 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 Alistair Knott and Gerard Nas for correcting my English. Needless to say, all remaining errors are my own. NOTES
1. An elaboration of the Basic Operation Paraphrase Test for questions can be formulated as follows. In the case of questions: (i) Does the question contain one segment? Then the relation with the preceding or following segment is pragmatic. (ii) Are two segments embedded in one question? Then check whether it can be paraphrased as: The fact that X leads to my question Y. If it can, then the relation is pragmatic. (iii) If it cannot, reformulate it as declarative and follow rules 2-3 of the basic operation paraphrase test.

144 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.

SANDERS

(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, personal communication).

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012

* 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 effect The likelihood-ratio which indicates the goodness of fit of the model with the data is G 2 (Pearson's % ) has better distributional properties for small samples, because it is based on the 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-models, 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 text type), the third C + SP + TXT (in comparison the frequency of sp is identical for all three texts), and the fourth C + SP + TXT + SP.TXT (differences between S and P are dependent on the text type). The fourth model, which includes all parameters, fits perfectly. In Table (ii) the goodness of fit with the data is compared; it is computed how much one model fits the data better than another.

TABLE (i) Model

G2

df 5 4 2

1 2 3 4

C C+SP C+SP+txt C+SP+txt+sp.txt

110.42 68.75 64.29

P <05 <.O5 <05

TABLE (ii) Model

df 1 2 4

1-2 2-3 2-4

41.68 60.45 68.75

P <001 >.O5 <.001

Conclusion

Reject 1 Do not reject 2 Reject 2, accept 4

SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE

145

REFERENCES
Bentum, A. van (1995). Semantische en pragmatische coherentie-relaties. Tekstanalytisch en experimenteel onderzoek. [Semantic and pragmatic coherence relations. Textanalytic and experimental research]. Unpublished master's thesis, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands. Bergh, H. van den (1990). On the construct-validity of multiple-choice items for reading comprehension. 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 comprehension (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: Cambridge 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 workshop on Natural Language Generation (pp. 128-136). Pittsburgh: ACL. Hovy, E.H. & Maier, E. (1995). Parsimonious or profligate: how many and which discourse structure relations? Manuscript, submitted for publication. Knott, A. & Dale, R. (1994). Using linguistic phenomena to motivate a set of coherence relations. Discourse Processes, 18, 35-62. Knott, A. & Sanders, T. (1998). The classification of coherence relations and their linguistic markers: 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 organization. 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 discourse analysis. Computational Linguistics, 18, 537-544. Pander Maat, H.L.W. (1994a). Tekstanalyse. Een pragmatische benadering. [Text analysis. 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 taalbeheersingsonderzoek (pp. 118-129). Dordrecht ICG.

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012

146

SANDERS

. (1998); Classifying negative coherence relations on the basis of linguistic evidence. Journal of Pragmatics, to appear. Pander Maat, H. & Sanders, T. (1995). Nederlandse causale connectieven en het onderscheid tussen inhoudelijke en epistemische coherentie-relaties. [Dutch causal connectives and the difference between content and epistemic coherence relations]. Leuvense Bijdragen, 349-374. Redeker, G. (1990). Ideational and pragmatic markers of discourse structure. Journal of Pragmatics, 14, 305-319. Sanders, J.M. (1994). Perspective in narrative discourse. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands. Sanders, T.J.M. (1992). Discourse structure and coherence. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands. Sanders, T. (1994). Verschillende coherentie-relaties in verschillende teksttypen. [Different coherence relations in different text types.] In: A. Maes, P. van Hauwermeiren and L. van Waes (Eds.). Perspectieven in taalbeheersingsonderzoek (pp. 130-143). Dordrecht ICG. Sanders, T. & Spooren, W. (1996). Discourse intentions and coherence relations. Manuscript, submitted for publication. Sanders, T.J.M., Spooren, W.P.M. & Noordman, L.G.M. (1992). Towards a taxonomy of coherence 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 contrastive coherence relations. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Nijmegen University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. . (1997). The processing of underspecified coherence relations. Discourse Processes, this volume. Spooren, W., Sanders, T. & Visser, J. (1994). Taxonomie van coherentie-relaties: Evidentie uit taalverwervingsonderzoek? [Taxonomy of coherence relations: Evidence from language acquisition research?] Gramma/TTT, 3, 33-54. Sweetser, E.V. (1990). From etymology to pragmatics. Metaphorical and cultural aspects of semantic structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Verhagen, A. (1995). Meaning and the coordination of cognition. Plenary address at the conference 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's thesis, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands. Vijfeyke, P. van de (1992). Ontbrekende schakels. Een onderzoek naar de samenhang tussen coherentie-relaties en teksttypen. [Missing links. An investigation of the

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012

SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC SOURCES OF COHERENCE

147

relationship between coherence relations and text types.]. Unpublished master's thesis, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands. Virtanen, T. (1992). Issues of text typology: Narrativea 'basic' type of text? Text, 12, 293-310.

Downloaded by [Corporacion CINCEL] at 08:57 10 May 2012