Setting the background in discourse

Backgrounding relations play a crucial role in discourse and occur frequently in both written and oral corpora. These relations come in two flavors: either the background is introduced after or before the foreground (respectively Backgroundbackwardand Backgroundforward). In Segmented Discourse Repre...

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Main Authors: Nicholas Asher, Laurent Prévot, Laure Vieu
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Presses universitaires de Caen 2008-05-01
Series:Discours
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/discours/301
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author Nicholas Asher
Laurent Prévot
Laure Vieu
author_facet Nicholas Asher
Laurent Prévot
Laure Vieu
author_sort Nicholas Asher
collection DOAJ
description Backgrounding relations play a crucial role in discourse and occur frequently in both written and oral corpora. These relations come in two flavors: either the background is introduced after or before the foreground (respectively Backgroundbackwardand Backgroundforward). In Segmented Discourse Representation Theory or SDRT (Asher, Lascarides, 2003), backgrounding relations were among the first to be considered (Lascarides, Asher, 1993). However, while (Vieu, Prévot, 2004) have recently done a careful study of Backgroundbackwardon the whole much less attention has been dedicated to Backgroundforwardsituations. Our approach for Backgroundforwardbuilds on the SDRT analysis of locative adverbials in IP-adjunct position proposed in (Vieu et al., 2005). Such locative adverbials, which have the ability to locate not only the sentence but a whole segment, introduce a complex discourse structure. In a nutshell, this structure contains a new discourse topic (framing topic), which is elaborated by the constituent representing the sentence or the discourse segment falling intuitively under the scope of the adverbial. We propose in this paper to use this mechanism to treat in a uniform way a wide range of phenomena that raise difficulties for a coherent and general treatment of Backgroundforwardconfigurations.
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spelling doaj-art-bed295327cb24f40907467a1a0c996ed2025-01-30T09:52:50ZengPresses universitaires de CaenDiscours1963-17232008-05-01110.4000/discours.301Setting the background in discourseNicholas AsherLaurent PrévotLaure VieuBackgrounding relations play a crucial role in discourse and occur frequently in both written and oral corpora. These relations come in two flavors: either the background is introduced after or before the foreground (respectively Backgroundbackwardand Backgroundforward). In Segmented Discourse Representation Theory or SDRT (Asher, Lascarides, 2003), backgrounding relations were among the first to be considered (Lascarides, Asher, 1993). However, while (Vieu, Prévot, 2004) have recently done a careful study of Backgroundbackwardon the whole much less attention has been dedicated to Backgroundforwardsituations. Our approach for Backgroundforwardbuilds on the SDRT analysis of locative adverbials in IP-adjunct position proposed in (Vieu et al., 2005). Such locative adverbials, which have the ability to locate not only the sentence but a whole segment, introduce a complex discourse structure. In a nutshell, this structure contains a new discourse topic (framing topic), which is elaborated by the constituent representing the sentence or the discourse segment falling intuitively under the scope of the adverbial. We propose in this paper to use this mechanism to treat in a uniform way a wide range of phenomena that raise difficulties for a coherent and general treatment of Backgroundforwardconfigurations.https://journals.openedition.org/discours/301backgrounddiscourse relationSDRTspatio-temporal framesframing topic
spellingShingle Nicholas Asher
Laurent Prévot
Laure Vieu
Setting the background in discourse
Discours
background
discourse relation
SDRT
spatio-temporal frames
framing topic
title Setting the background in discourse
title_full Setting the background in discourse
title_fullStr Setting the background in discourse
title_full_unstemmed Setting the background in discourse
title_short Setting the background in discourse
title_sort setting the background in discourse
topic background
discourse relation
SDRT
spatio-temporal frames
framing topic
url https://journals.openedition.org/discours/301
work_keys_str_mv AT nicholasasher settingthebackgroundindiscourse
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