Surface Composition as Bridging  

Oleh:

Bittner, Maria

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Journal of Semantics (Sebagian Full Text) vol. 18 no. 2 (May 2001), page 127-177.
Topik: Discourse; Composition; Bridging Theory
Fulltext: vol 18, no 2 p 127-177.pdf (288.99KB)

Isi artikel

The development of explicit theories of dynamic context change has led to a fundamentally new perspective on the interpretation of discourse. In this paper I show that this development also opens up the possibility of approaching subclausal composition along similar lines. More specifically, I propose a dynamic Bridging Theory, where type-driven rules apply directly to overt surface structures and proceed by building anaphoric bridges. I then present three arguments that this dynamic approach is more faithful to natural language semantics than static Montagovian theories. First, the Bridging Theory explains how dynamic phenomena, such as temporal anaphora, generalize across different levels—from discourse all the way down to the lexicon—in typologically distant languages. Second, it explains the shift from defeasible defaults in discourse to structural determinism lower down, in terms of the type diversity needed to support type-driven bridging. Deterministic type-driven bridging also makes detailed predictions about the exact impact of the structure on top-level anaphora, in various domains, and other presuppositional phenomena that it mediates. And last but not least, the Bridging Theory combines a strong claim that semantics is universal—bridgeable basic meanings are typically universal and type-driven bridges, all universal—with the ideal of strict surface composition.

Opini Anda

Klik untuk menuliskan opini Anda tentang koleksi ini!

Kembali