Basic Issues systems and models

 

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1. MOTIVES FOR EFFICIENCY

  1.1 I have argued throughout that the utilization of texts in communication entails constant management of blocks of knowledge, only some of which are relevant at a given moment. The sheer volume of this knowledge usually precludes making even a majority of it explicit in an individual statement. It follows that a language should provide numerous options for compacting surface expression without damaging the connectivity of underlying knowledge. In effect, these sets of options point the participants in communication toward that portion of active knowledge which is to be currently expanded or modified. The options are clearly an important contribution to the EFFICIENCY of textuality: processing the largest amounts with the smallest expenditure of resources. In terms of CYBERNETICS, the use of formats for restatement responds to the CURRENT CONTROLS on communication (cf. I.3.4.7), regulating the flow of knowledge up to the surface.

1.2 The notion of “cohesion” has been used by some researchers for devices such as pronominalization, substitution, and ellipsis (see especially Halliday 1964; Hasan 1968; Halliday & Hasan 1976). Often, no special consideration is given to the underlying connectivity of text-knowledge and world-knowledge that makes these devices possible and useful (except in the discussion of “lexical cohesion” in Halliday & Hasan 1976: ch. 6). Many factors in linguistic outlooks were responsible for this omission: limitations to sentences, exclusion of world-knowledge, lack of interest in real communication, and a general discomfort regarding semantics. The enduring primacy of syntax in linguistics is revealed by the very terms that were proposed for the devices we are considering:. “hypersyntax” (Palek 1968), “macrosyntax” (Gülich 1970), or “suprasyntax” (Dressler 1970a). Evidently, the notion of ‘syntax” here is not that of syntax proper, but a hybrid of ‘semantics of syntax” and “syntax of semantics” as envisioned by the scheme set forth in I.2.8. Bonnie Webber (1980) remarks on the tendency to treat the cohesive devices as if they served to refer to surface words rather than to the conceptual-relational content underlying words. Jerry Morgan (1978a: 109f.) notices that tendency even in the writings of Halliday and Hasan (1976: 2), ‘who probably know better.” But Morgan may be too severe: surely we may say metaphorically that words “refer” to other words, and mean that words refer to the same referents as other words, provided we do not go on to claim that we are dealing with nothing but words.

1.3 An exception to general trends is the very broad outlook of Roland Harweg (1968a). His notion of ‘substitution’ subsumes not only the usual devices such as pronouns and articles, but a diverse range of conceptual relations like inclusions among classes, superclasses, or metaclasses, part/whole, causality, and proximity. He is one of the few linguists to make free use of world-knowledge in defining textuality. In the main, “substitution’ is any connection between two components of a text or textual world that allows the second to activate a configuration of knowledge shared with the first. Hence, a good portion of his examples would be in line with the spreading activation model of knowledge use (cf. III.3.24).

1.4   I will undertake to outline some of the most important devices of cohesion. My criteria will be their contributions to the processing efficiency. These devices are: 

1.4.1 RECURRENCE is the actual repetition of expressions. The repeated elements may have the same, different, or overlapping reference, and the extent of conceptual content they can be used to activate varies accordingly.

1.4.2 DEFINITENESS is the extent to which the text-world entity for an expression at a given point is assumed to be identifiable and recoverable, as opposed to being introduced just then.

1.4.3 CO-REFERENCE is the application of different surface expressions to the same entity in a textual world.

1.4.4 ANAPHORA is the type of co-reference where a lexical expression has is a PRO-FORM (e.g. pronoun) after it in the surface text.

1.4.5 CATAPHORA is the type of co-reference where a lexical expression has is a pro-form before it in the surface text.

1.4.6 EXOPHORA is the application of a pro-form to an entity not expressed in the text at all, but identifiable in the situational context.

1.4.7 ELLIPSIS is the omission of surface expressions whose conceptual content is nonetheless carried forward and expanded or modified by means of noticeably incomplete expressions.

1.4.8 JUNCTION subsumes the devices for connecting surface sequences together in such a way that the relations between blocks of conceptual text- world knowledge are signaled, such as: addition, alternativity, contrast, and causality. Subtypes of junction are CONJUNCTION, DISJUNCTION, CONTRAJUNCTION, and SUBORDINATION (see II.2.24ff.).

1.5 These devices offer a number of contributions to efficiency: (1) the compacting of surface expression; (2) the omission of surface elements; (3) the carrying forward of materials to be expanded, developed, modified, or repudiated; (4) the signaling of knownness, uniqueness, or identity; and (5) a workable balance between repetition and variation in surface structure as required by the considerations of informativity.

1.7 The STABILITY PRINCIPLE was proposed in I.4.4 as a major factor of systemic regulation of the kind I envision in the actualization of texts. Such a principle assigns a high priority to strategies for co-ordinating surface expressions that share common or contiguous conceptual content. The ECONOMY PRINCIPLE stipulates that, wherever expedient or doubtful, preference should be given to re-using already activated content, rather than activating new content. It follows that cohesive devices like those enumerated in V.1.4 do not make the text coherent; the prior assumption that the text is coherent makes these devices useful (cf. Morgan 1978a: I 10).

2. RECURRENCE

2.1 The recurrence of surface expressions with the same conceptual content and reference is especially common in spontaneous speaking, as opposed to formal situations. The eyewitness report of a distraught county supervisor after a flood in Arizona contained these statements (Gainesville Sun, Dec. 20, 1978):

(73) There’s water through many homes. I would say almost all of them have water in them. It’s just completely under water.]¹ [1. Throughout this chapter, I use the convention of underlining the elements I wish to address in italics.]

The rhetorical accumulated effect of this usage has something of the disastrous, disordered copiousness of the water, an entity normally in short supply in Arizona.

2.2 According to the principles of stability and economy, recurrence would entail sameness of reference. But this could lead to conflicts in texts where there seem to be no alternative expressions for different referents (Gainseville Sun, Dec. 20, 1978):

(74.1) Weapons and projectile toys have a built-in threat to eyes and cannot be made child-proof. (74.2) Consumer safety groups have also warned about stuffed animals with loose eyes and poorly sewn-on accessories. Small children can pull them off and swallow them. (74.3) “We find eyes all over the place,” one toy store clerk said.

We assume that the clerk was finding toy eyes, not children’s ‘eyes all over the place’ because in the latter case, the press treatment would be much more explicit (lack of knowledge inference, III.3.21). Ambiguity is similarly overcome for this passage of the Ohio Drivers Handbook:

(75) A restricted license may be issued to any person otherwise qualified who is subject to episodic impairment of consciousness upon a statement from a licensed physician.

None of my Ohio informants interpreted the passage such that the physician is required to have a driver’s license (though some wondered how ‘episodic impairment of consciousness’ differs from the usual state of Ohio drivers).

2.3 Deliberate violations of the stability and economy principles might increase informativity and interest. For example, a poem allegedly written by the 18-year-old conspirator Chidiock Tichborne just before his execution in 1586 contains the line (Simpson [ed.] 1967: 85L):

        (76) My glass is full, and now my glass is run.

A discrepancy (1.6.9) arises when the second ‘glass’ cannot be taken as a drinking vessel and must be processed as ‘hourglass’ instead, reverting to knowledge about the writer’s personal situation of impending execution.

2.4 Psychologically, recurrences should distribute attention away from their components, except in cases like (76). If the frequency principle of learning (IV.2.2) applies, the recurrent elements should be impressed on memory. Processing should be easy, as the point of connection in the ongoing text-world model should be obvious (cf. Kintsch 1974: 86). Whatever factors may apply, there must be a difference between the TRIVIAL recurrences required by the limited repertories of language options and MOTIVATED recurrences where repetition has some deeper justification (cf. Werth 1976; Beaugrande 1978b, 1979e, 1979g).

2.5 Consider for instance the Biblical proverb:² [2. These examples are taken from a textbook entitled Rhetoric: From Athens to Auburn, ed. Richard Graves (Auburn: Auburn University Press, 1976), pp. 33, 32, and 19 respectively).

(77) As in water face reflects face,

The two lines are very similar in surface structure, and each contains an element repeated on either side of the element ‘reflects’. This organization of expression enacts the content of the textual world: images ‘reflected’ in a mirror. Less striking is the use of recurrence for signaling repetitious events, as in Steinbeck’s passage:

(78) They work at it and work at it.

This use is similar to that of the county supervisor preoccupied with an overabundance of water in (73). Speaker outlook can be signaled with recurrences such as this one from Jeannie Morris:

(79) There are no distractions — and I mean no distractions.

This time, the surface format iconically nacts the insistence of the speaker on an attitude as unchanging as the expressions themselves. Possible objections are accordingly discouraged (cf. Beaugrande & Dressier 1980).

(80.1) to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station [...] (80.2) they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation

The shift from adjective for an attribute to noun for an action neatly signals the overall coherence while avoiding the monotony of an exact repetition. Dressier (1979) notes that this recurrence type offers the text producer the potential to create new language items, since one occurrence can provide for the comprehension of the other. Such is the case when Erich Fried entitles a story ‘Turtle-Turning’ and includes this passage (Fried 1975):

(81) Everywhere he finds a helpless turtle fallen on its back, he turns it over

The title would be highly non-determinate without this recurrence via word- class shifting.

2.7 Recurrences of lengthy expressions or whole passages can be disadvantageous, because they depress informativity unless strong motivation is present. It is strategically sound to vary expression with paraphrases or synonyms. Yet as in the case of ‘water’ (73), there may be only one readily available name for the desired concept. In scientific reports, the use of specially defined terms must be consistent, despite the repetitiousness entailed. Hearers and readers presumably adapt their expectations in response to these factors.

3. DEFINITENESS

3.1 The issue of definiteness takes on various dimensions, depending upon whether one’s outlook is logical or psychological. If meaning is identified directly with “truth value” (III.I.2), definiteness becomes a property of objects asserted in a logical world. If meaning is viewed as mental processes, then definite entities are those that are “uniquely identifiable” to participants in communication (Clark & Clark 1977: 249f.). Whether the entities are logical or real, both criteria are too strong. Definiteness applies to many entities that need not be identified at all with specific objects. Ortony and Anderson (1977) distinguish the identifiable reference as “extensional representation” and the reference to entities needed only for conceptual content as “intensional representation” (cf. I.2.8.2).

3.2 The utilization of ARTICLES,in English at least, is revealing, as the terms “definite and indefinite article” suggest. Usually, the definite article is claimed to precede the expression of entities already mentioned, and the indefinite that of newly introduced ones (cf. Firbas 1966). But the following fragment of a Thurber story (in Thurber 1948: 34), suggests that the matter is more intricate: ³ [3. James Thurber, ‘The Princess and the Tin Box’, in The Beast in Me —And Other Animals, published by Harcourt Brace Joyanovich 1948. Reprinted by permission.]

(82.1) Once upon a time, there lived a king whose daughter was the prettiest princess in the whole world. (82.2) On the day the princess was eighteen, the king sent a royal ambassador to the courts of the five neighboring kingdoms to announce that he would give his daughter’s hand in marriage to the prince whose gift she liked most. (82.3) The first prince to arrive at the palace […]

The classical distinction of new = indefinite vs. previously mentioned = definite applies here only to ‘a king’ (82. 1) and ‘the king’(82.2). The beginnings of texts are, of course, likely places for indefinite articles (Weinrich 1976: 172). Yet the first occurrence of ‘princess’ has the definite article, being a superlative. The usage in ‘the five neighboring kingdoms’ rests on the postulate of continuity in a textual world (I.6.4): a geographical region can be expected to have neighbors. ‘The prince’ in (82.2) is a projected entity not yet having any referent: any prince who meets that description (an “intensional representation’ in the sense of Ortony & R. Anderson 1977); and ‘the first prince’ in (82.3) is a member of the candidate class in which there can be only one for each number in a series. Such varied uses of articles are essential for the connectivity of the story. De Villiers (1974) found that if the definite articles in a story text are replaced by indefinite, readers don’t take the component sentences as parts of a story at all. Loftus and Zanni (1975) found that eyewitness reports could be influenced by inserting definite articles in front of strategic items: the articles impelled the eyewitnesses to accept as factual some items they hadn’t really seen to begin with. Here, the text surface actually created background knowledge while pretending to keep it active.

3.3 At least the following entities would seem to be eligible for the status of definiteness:

3.3.1 MENTIONED entities as established in a textual world (e.g. ‘the king);

3.3.3 EPISODIC entities stored in the shared knowledge of language users personally acquainted with each other (e.g. ‘the movie’ in Clark & Marshall 1978: 57; cf. also Goldman 1975: 347);

3.3.4 UNIQUE entities which every sensorially endowed member of a communicative group is assumed to know about (e.g. ‘the sun’, ‘the earth);

3.3.5 INSTITUTIONALIZED entities that social organization is presumed to require (‘the president’, ‘the fire department’, ‘the police);

3.3.6 DEFAULT entities created on demand for the continuity of a textual world (e.g. ‘the five neighboring kingdoms’ in [82.2]);

3.3.7 PROTOTYPICAL entities that function as the representative of a class (e.g. ‘the man on the street’, ‘the ugly American) (cf. III.3.27);

3.3.8 SUPERLATIVE entities that occupy the extreme position on some scale of variables (e.g. ‘the prettiest princess in the whole world’);

3.3.9 RELATIONAL ENTITIES accessible via TYPICAL and DETERMINATE links from already definite entities.

3.4 The criterion of being “uniquely identifiable” fails to cover these various uses. Often, definite entities have no more identity than is required for the particular context wherein they appear (Rieger 1975: 204). We can talk about ‘the police” ‘the ugly American’, or ‘the prettiest princess in the whole world’ without any commitment to an object, or even to a complete entity: we are addressing a conceptual configuration whose content may be no more than the properties we need at the moment. The ‘police’ are people only in their official capacity, not as private individuals. An ‘ugly American’ need by no means possess a repellent outward appearance. We can easily envision the man on the street’ not being on any street at all, but sleeping in a dumpster. And ‘the prettiest princess’ may be decidable in a children’s tale, but hardly in a reality where beauty is a matter of opinion.

3.6 No one would have trouble with entities like ‘the sun’ and ‘the moon’. These entities are not in fact unique, as the exploration of astronomers attests. But in lack of any wider setting such as a science fiction story, preference is at once given to the usual referents. Since a textual world is not committed to exact correspondence with the accepted real world, conventionally unique entities can be recontextualized into non-unique. In this view, uniqueness begins to converge with default. Consider this excerpt from a news article on prostitution (Gainesville Sun, Oct. 8, 1978):

(83) Now that the adult bookstores, formerly the vice squad’s primary target, have been closed down, the agents are able to devote more time to busting hookers.

The definiteness of ‘bookstores’, ‘vice squad’, and ‘agents’ rests on their typical or institutionalized status in American social organization. They can be assumed as defaults without any clear notion of where or who they might be in this particular town. If an unfortunate occasion arises, their uniqueness can be established. Yet communication would operate very slowly if we had to establish uniqueness merely in order to talk about these entities.

3.7 The spreading activation model of knowledge use, as frequently cited in this book, is relevant to definiteness. Although it is not decided whether spreading is consciously controlled or not (cf. M. Posner & Snyder 1975), definiteness can be one means for channelling it. The appearance of a definite entity not previously mentioned would then have the effect of singling out a point in knowledge space to which activation is assumed to have spread. DETERMINATE and TYPICAL links clearly provide the soundest basis for that assumption. Consider this news item (Florida Independent Alligator, Oct. 9, 1979):

(84) A seat belt saved a UF student when he fell asleep at the wheel of his 1977 Subaru and turned off into the path of a train.

The definiteness of ‘wheel’ arises as a determinate ‘part-of’ a ‘Subaru’, and that of ‘path’ as a typical ‘’location-of-motion-of’ a ‘train’.

3.8 Perhaps the following definition merits consideration: definiteness con spread to any text-world entity standing in a determinate or typical linkage (cf. III.3.15) to an entity whose definiteness is already establishedin the textual world. To see how this principle would work, imagine that (85.1) were a text beginning; any of the continuations in (85.2) should then’ be acceptable via the link types (from III.4.7) cited in square brackets:

(85.1)     Never before had we seen such a house.

(85.2b) The rectangular outline looked oddly lopsided. [form-of]

(85.2c) The walls were leaning inward. [part-ofi

(85.2d) The plaster was peeling off. [substance-of]

(85.2c) The furniture was awfully rickety. [containment-of]

(85.2f) The edifice seemed doomed to collapse. [motion-of]

In all of these continuations, the ‘house’is taken as a topic node and thus as a control center to which new material is preferentially connected (cf. III.4.27). This configuration is shown graphically in Figure 22, with all continuations included.

(85.2g) The canary seemed depressed. [containment-of]

The oddness of some of my school children’s ‘parts of a house’ (III.3.26) is due to accidentalness. Definiteness also seems reluctant to spread down longer pathways, so that (85.2h) is an odd continuation if the house’s inhabitant is meant:

(85.2h) The face was terribly ugly. [part-of-agent-of-possession-of?]

If a single accidental instance is taken from an otherwise accessible class, we are adding an ‘instance-of’ link. Again, definiteness is not clear in such continuations as:

(85.2i) The nail was rusty. [instance-of-part-of]

We can improve upon these continuations by providing some intermediary entities not included in numerous classes: