Билет 20 I. The inter-sentence connections in the text.

The highest lingual unit which was approached by traditional grammar as liable to syntactic study was the sentence. However, further studies in this field have shown that sentences in continual speech are not used in isolation, they are interconnected both semantically and syntactically.

The first scholars who identified a succession of such sentences as a special syntactic unit were the Russian linguists N.S. Pospelov and L.A. Bulakhovsky. N.S. Pospelov called the unit in question a “complex syntactic unity”, L.A. Bulakhovsky termed it a “super-phrasal unity”. M.Y. Bloch suggested the term the “supra-sentential construction”. In the course of study it has been stated that sentences in speech come under broad grammatical arrangements and combine with each other on strictly syntactic lines in the formation of the text.

The general idea of a sequence of sentences forming a text provides its two distinguishing features: semantic (topical) unity and semantico-syntactic cohesion. Semantic unity implies that a text as a succession of sentences centers on a common informative purpose. Semantico-syntactic cohesion interprets the sentences in a succession as syntactically relevant. Sentences in a sequence can be connected either prospectively or retrospectively. Prospective connection is effected by connective elements that relate a given sentence to one that is to follow it. A prospective connector signals a continuation of speech: the sentence containing it is semantically incomplete, e.g.: And now let us switch onto the next topic. The environmental protection. Retrospective connection is effected by connective elements that relate a given sentence to the one that precedes it and is semantically complete by itself. Retrospective connection is the basic type sentence connection in ordinary speech, e.g.: The man hit the ball. The crowd cheered him on.

On the basis of the functional nature of connectors, sentence connection can be of two types: conjunctive and correlative. Conjunctive connection is effected by conjunction-like connectors: regular conjunctions (coordinative and subordinative) and adverbial or parenthetical sentence-connectors (then, yet, however, consequently, hence, besides, moreover, nevertheless). Conjunctive connection can be only retrospective, e.g.: Carter was upset and angry. But remained firm. Correlative connection is effected by a pair of elements one of which refers to the other, used in the foregoing sentence. By means of this reference the sentences in a succession are related to each other. Correlative connection can be both retrospective and prospective. Correlative connection is divided into substitutional and representative. Substitutional connection is based on the use of substitutes, e.g.: There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do. (children’s rhyme). A substitute may have as its antecedent the whole of the preceding sentence or a clausal part of it. Substitutes often go together with conjunctions, effecting the mixed type of connection, e.g.: As I saw them I thought that they seemed prosperous. But it may have been all the same just an illusion. Representative connection is based on representative elements which refer to one another without the factor of replacement, e.g.: Soon he went home. None regretted his departure. Representative correlation is achieved also by repetition: e.g.: He has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.

 

Билет 21 II. The textual linguistics. When modern linguistics began to emerge, it was customary to limit investigation to the framework of the sentence as the largest unit with an inherent structure (L. Bloomfield). All the other structures, as different from the sentence, were assigned to the field of stylistics. The reason for this lies with the fact that it is much more straightforward to decide what constitutes a grammatical or acceptable sentence than what constitutes a grammatical or acceptable sentence sequence, paragraph or text, as the text formation is characterized by lesser conformity with established rules.

Teun van Dirk stresses that “text linguistics” is in fact a designation for any linguistic investigation devoted to the text as the primary object of inquiry. There is a number of disciplines which, for various motives, share many concerns with a science of texts: rhetoric, stylistics, anthropology, discourse analysis. For example, anthropology scrutinizes texts as cultural artifacts. Special attention was devoted to myths and folktales. Discourse analysis (the study of conversation) brings into focus the mechanisms which combine texts as single contributions into a set of relevant texts directed to each other, reveal the standards of textuality (cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, situationality, intertextuality, informativity).

In the field of linguistics proper, i.e. philology, the text was generally considered a marginal entity until it became hard to ignore any longer. Thus, comparing word order in ancient and modern languages H. Weil detected another principle besides grammar: the relations of “thoughts” to each other evidently affect the arrangement of words in sentences. His investigations were renewed by Czech linguists (“Prague School”) under the notion of functional sentence perspective.

The first large-scale inquiry into text organization was performed by Harweg within the descriptive structural approach. Harweg postulated that texts are hold together by the mechanism of “substitution” (one expression following up another one of the same sense and thus forming a cohesive or coherent relationship). His notion of “substitution” is extraordinary broad and complex, subsuming relationships such as synonymy, class/instance, subclass/superclass, cause/effect, part/whole. The main tendencies of the text studies within the structural approach are as follows: the text was defined as a unit larger than the sentence, research proceeded by discovering types of text structures and classifying them in some sort of scheme.

The transformational generative grammar approach combined with the basic principles of cognitive psychology provides a process-oriented model of the text, i.e. the model of text generating. T.A. van Dirk introduced the notion of macrostructure: a statement of the content of a text, and reasoned that the generating of a text must begin with a main idea which gradually evolves into the detailed meanings that enter sentences with the help of “literary operations”. When a text is presented, there must be operations which work in the other direction to extract the main idea back out again. Thus, the main concern of van Dirk’s study is to describe cognitive processes that can render texts “literary”. A different line has been adopted in the work of Mel’cuk. He argues that the central operation of a text model should be the transition between “meaning” and text, i.e. how meaning is expressed in a text or abstracted out of a text, which is possible due to the speaker’s/hearer’s ability to express/identify one and the same idea in a number of synonymous utterances. Thus, Mel’cuk adopts the text model as that one of meaning representation in cognitive continuity. All the discussed trends of the text study illustrate the evolution in theory and method of text linguistics.

The main target of the text linguistics of the present day is to describe various text types used in discourse, explain both the shared features and the distinctions among texts of different types, i.e. to find out what standards texts must fulfill, how they might be produced or received. In modern text linguistics a text is defined as a communicative occurrence which meets particular standards (categories) of textuality. If any of these standards is not considered to have been satisfied, the text will not be communicative.

Cohesion and coherence are the most obvious categories of textuality. They indicate how the component elements of the text fit together and make sense. Cohesion concerns the ways in which the components of the surface text, i.e. the actual words we hear or see, are mutually connected within a sequence. The surface components depend upon each other according to grammatical forms and conventions, such that cohesion rests upon grammatical dependencies. The notion of cohesion includes all the functions which can be used to signal relations among surface elements, e.g.: the road sign: slow children at play w hich is more likely to be read as “slow” and “children at play”, cannot be rearranged into: Children play slow at. Coherence concerns the ways in which the semantic components of the text, i.e. the concepts and relations which underlie the surface text are mutually accessible and relevant. For example, in “children at play”, “children” is an object concept, “play” – an action concept, and the relation – “ agent of ”, because the children are the agents of the action. Coherence can be illustrated by a group of relations of causality, such as cause, reason, purpose, enablement (one action is sufficient, but not necessary for the other, as in “The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts, all on a summer day.“The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts, and took them quite away”).

These relations concern the ways in which one situation or event affects the conditions for some other one. Coherence is not a mere feature of texts, but rather the outcome of cognitive processes among text users. Coherence already illustrates the nature of texts as human activities. A text does not make sense by itself, but rather by the interaction of text-presented knowledge with people’s stored knowledge of the world. It follows that text linguistics must co-operate with cognitive psychology to explore such a basic matter as the sense of a text.

Cohesion and coherence are text-centered notions, designating operations directed at the text materials. There are also user-centered notions which are brought to bear on the activity of textual communication at large, both by producers and receivers. They are: Intentionality is the category of textuality which concerns the text producer’s attitude to constituting a coherent and cohesive text to fulfill the producer’s intentions. Acceptability as a category of textuality concerns the text receiver’s attitude that the text should have some use of relevance for the receiver. This attitude is responsive to such factors as text type, social or cultural setting. Receivers can support coherence by making their own contributions to the sense of the text, which is provided by the operation of inference (операция инференции, т.е. получения выводного знания). Text producers often speculate on the receivers’ attitude of acceptability and present texts that require important contributions in order to make sense. For example, the bell telephone company warns people: Call us before you dig. You may not be able to afterwards. People are left to infer the information on their own, which is: Call us before you dig. There might be an underground cable. If you break the cable, you won’t have phone service, and you may get a severe electric shock. Then you won’t be able to call us. Informativity as a category of textuality concerns the extent to which the presented texts are expected/unexpected or known/unknown. The texts which need inference, i.e. are implicit to a certain degree, are considered to be more informative than those which are more explicit (see the example above). Situationality concerns the factors which make a text relevant to a situation of occurrence. Thus, the road sign slow children at play can be treated in different ways, but the most probable intended use is obvious. The ease with which people can decide such an issue is due to the influence of the situation where the text is presented. Situationality even affects the means of cohesion. On the one hand, a more explicit text version, such as: Motorists should proceed slowly, because children are playing in the vicinity and might run out into the street. Vehicles can stop more readily if they are moving slowly. would remove every possible doubt about the sense. On the other hand, it would not be appropriate to a situation where receivers have only limited time and attention to devote to signs among other moving traffic. That forces the text producer toward a maximum of economy; situationality works so strongly that the minimal version is more appropriate than the clearer. Intertextuality concerns the factors which make the utilization of one text dependent on knowledge of one or previously encountered texts. Intertextuality is responsible for the evolution of text types as classes of texts with typical patterns of characteristics. Within a particular type, reliance on intertextuality may be more or less prominent. In types like parodies, critical reviews, the text producer must consult the prior text continually, and text receivers will usually need come familiarity with the latter. There was an advertisement in magazines showing a petulant young man saying to someone outside the picture: “As long as you’re up, get me a Grant’s.” A professor working on a research project cut the text out of a magazine, altered it slightly, and displayed it on his office door as: “As long as you’re up, get me a Grant.” In the original setting it was a request to be given a beverage of a particular brand. In the new setting it seems to be pointless unless the text receiver has the knowledge of the originally presented text and its intention.

To sum it all up, the discussed categories (standards) of textuality function as constitutive principles of textual communication, they create and define the form of behavior identifiable as textual communicating. There are also regulative principles that control textual communication rather than define it (they are: efficiency of a text, effectiveness of a text and appropriateness of a text). The problem of interaction of the said principles (i.e. how the constitution and use of texts are controlled by the regulative principles) is studied within the framework of cognitive linguistics.