Referring Expressions in English and Japanese: Patterns of use in dialogue processing (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series)

'It is a major challenge for linguists to explore the relations between referential choice and the discourse structure in dialogues, because, unlike written modes of discourse, dialogue as an interactional mode of discourse needs careful treatment for linguistic analysis. This book investigates how discourse entities are linked with topic chaining and discourse coherence by showing that the choice and the distribution of referring expressions is correlated with center transition patterns in the centering framework. It provides original empirical research into the use of referring expressions in English and Japanese task-based dialogues, and applies and extends theoretical frameworks which attempt to account for local and global discourse coherence. Using a discourse-based integrated approach to anaphora resolution, Yoshida proposes a unified account on the patterns of use of referring expressions. The book will be of interest to discourse analysts, computational linguists, scholars of semantics and pragmatics, and cross-linguistics researchers.' Editorial page 3 Title page 4 LCC data 5 Table of contents 6 Preface and acknowledgements 10 Abbreviations used in glosses 14 List of tables 16 List of figures 18 Chapter 1. Introduction 20 1.1 Aims 20 1.2 Referring expressions in discourse 22 1.3 Referring expressions, dialogues, and Centering Theory 28 1.4 Organisation of the book 30 Chapter 2. Approaches to referring expressions 34 2.1 Introduction 34 2.2 Referring expressions and the notion of givenness 34 2.3 Topic entity, thematic structure and discourse segment 41 2.4 Descriptive grammarian’s view of ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘it’ 43 2.5 A pragmatic approach to referring expressions 45 2.6 Reference assignment and discourse 47 2.7 A possible hypothesis 48 2.8 A case study of referring expressions in English dialogue data 49 2.9 Conclusion 52 Chapter 3. Approaches to deictic expressions 54 3.1 Introduction 54 3.2 Overview 55 3.3 Spatial deixis 56 3.4 Anaphoric demonstratives: Deictic or anaphoric? 56 3.5 Discourse deictic use 59 3.6 The Givenness Hierarchy revisited 61 3.7 Distribution of deictic expressions: An analysis 66 3.7.1 Japanese Map Task Corpus 67 3.7.2 English Map Task Corpus 69 3.8 Conclusion 71 Chapter 4. Data collection 72 4.1 Introduction 72 4.2 Aims 72 4.3 Task design 73 4.3.1 The original English and Japanese Map Task Corpus 73 4.3.2 English and Japanese Labelless Map Task Corpus 75 4.4 Subjects 76 4.5 Matching of the data 77 4.6 Possible accessibility of the data 77 4.7 Conclusion 78 Chapter 5. Centering and dialogue 80 5.1 Introduction 80 5.2 Centering theory 81 5.2.1 Overview 81 5.2.2 Discourse segmentation: The local focus and global focus in discourse 89 5.2.3 Specific questions in dialogic discourse 91 5.3 Methodology of R2: Coding of transition states 92 5.4 Centering and dialogue data 94 5.5 Sample analysis 98 5.5.1 Centering transition in the Japanese Map Task Corpus 98 5.5.2 Center transition in English Map Task Corpus 104 5.6 Initial results and discussion 106 5.6.1 No Cb 106 5.6.2 The CONTINUE transition 108 5.6.3 The SMOOTH-SHIFT transition 110 5.7 Conclusion 112 Chapter 6. Referring expressions and local coherence of discourse 114 6.1 Introduction 114 6.2 Method of analysis 115 6.3 The distribution of centering transitions in English and Japanese data 115 6.4 Distribution of Cbs in centering transitions: Types of referring expressions 121 6.5 The distribution of Cbs in transition sequence patterns 129 6.6 Conclusion 133 Chapter 7. Referring expressions and global discourse structure 136 7.1 Introduction 136 7.2 Research questions 137 7.3 The role of full NPs in the global focus of discourse 137 7.3.1 The limitation of Centering Theory 137 7.3.2 Walker’s cache model 143 7.4 Analysis and results 149 7.4.1 Result: First mentions in Japanese data 150 7.4.2 Result: Subsequent mentions in Japanese data 151 7.4.3 Result: First mentions in English data 152 7.4.4 Subsequent mentions in English data 153 7.5 Discussion 154 7.5.1 (Zero) pronouns 154 7.5.2 NPs (bare nouns) 157 7.5.3 Demonstratives 160 7.5.4 Summary of discussion 166 7.6 Resolutions: The interpretation of NPs 166 7.6.1 Resolution 1: Extended interpretation of IRUs 168 7.6.2 Resolution 2: Cue words 170 7.6.3 Resolution 3: The role of Japanese demonstratives as topic continuity 171 7.6.4 Further discussion of resolutions 1 and 3 172 7.7 Conclusion 175 Chapter 8. Collaborative nature of referring and structuring in discourse 178 8.1 Introduction 178 8.2 NPs as first mentions in an initial presentation 180 8.3 NPs as subsequent mentions in an established topic 184 8.4 Discussion: A comparison with a narrative discourse ‘Pear Stories’ 187 8.5 Discussion: Discourse entities and sentence constructions in English and Japanese Map Task Corpora 190 8.5.1 General view: Sentences as interaction 190 8.5.2 General issues and specific questions 191 8.5.3 Clause constructions in naturally occurring dialogues 191 8.5.4 A case study: Types of conditional clauses 193 8.5.5 Results 194 8.5.6 Functions of conditional clauses 195 8.5.7 Preliminary discussion: The interaction of utterance types, first mentions, and discourse development 199 8.5.8 Summary 202 8.6 Conclusion 203 Chapter 9. Conclusion 204 Appendix A. The samples of English and Japanese Map Task Dialogues 208 Appendix B. Conventions in transcripts 214 References 216 Index 224