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13th International Conference
on Functional Grammar
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| FDG and the framing Contextual Component: How
does discourse anaphora fit into the picture? |
Francis Cornish,
Université de Toulouse, Toulouse,
France
In
recent proposals for the crucial internal structure of the
framing Contextual component within Functional Discourse
Grammar (Hengeveld & Mackenzie, 2006; Hengeveld &
Mackenzie, in press) — for example by Rijkhoff (2008: 88-97)
and Connolly (2007) —, what is here called text
is considered as equivalent to discourse
within an account of the NP (Rijkhoff) or of context (Connolly).
Hengeveld (2005: 58) describes the Contextual Component
as containing a record of the form and content of the
preceding discourse, as well as a description of the relevant
features of the utterance situation. Rijkhoff (2008: 88)
claims that these contents should be given separate divisions
within the component as a whole.
However, in mentioning the first sub-division, he
conflates Hengeveld’s “content
and form” of the preceding discourse into what he terms
“discourse (co-text)” (Rijkhoff, 2008: 88).
The paper will try to show that this conflation of text
and discourse is not
adequate to the task of describing and accounting
satisfactorily for discourse-anaphoric reference in actual
texts, in particular, and that a principled distinction
between the two is needed (cf. also Widdowson, 2004: ch. 1).
Discourse anaphora is a particularly good diagnostic of
context, since it clearly involves a (co-)textual dimension,
but also (and necessarily) a discourse one, relating to the
world of referents, properties and states of affairs.
Anaphoric reference may well be realised in terms of an
explicit textual reference (the “antecedent”, referred to
in my work as “antecedent-trigger”) in the surrounding
co-text to the referent intended; but it can also be made
directly to a discourse representation of an entity which may
be the result of an inference. However, by not distinguishing
“discourse” from “(co-)text” as Rijkhoff (2008) does,
it is tacitly assumed that the understanding of texts, whether
written or spoken, is a matter of simply decoding the textual
surface in order to gain access to the speaker’s or
writer’s intentions.
The context relevant for a given act of utterance is a composite of the
surrounding co-text, the domain of discourse at issue, the
genre of speech event in progress, the situation of utterance,
the discourse already constructed upstream and the wider
socio-cultural environment presupposed by the text. Moreover,
it is in constant development (cf. also Connolly, 2007: 13):
the discourse derived via the text both depends on it and at
the same time changes it as this is constructed on line. So
both the (co-)text and the discourse (which by definition is a
provisional, hence revisable, interpretation of the preceding
co-text and/or context) must be represented within the
Contextual component within an FDG representation of a given
communicative event. The paper will suggest some of the ways
in which the current utterance and the context invoked for it
as represented in the Contextual Component of an FDG interact,
and how the discourse thereby created forms the context for
the upcoming utterance.
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| References: |
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Connolly, J. H. 2007. Context in Functional
Discourse Grammar. Alfa.
Revista de Linguística 51(2): 11-33.
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Cornish, F. in preparation. Anaphora:
text-based, or discourse-dependent?
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Hengeveld, K. 2005. Dynamic expression in
Functional Discourse Grammar. In C. de Groot & K.
Hengeveld (eds.), Morphosyntactic
Expression in Functional Grammar. Berlin & New
York: Mouton de Gruyter, 53-86.
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Hengeveld, K. & Mackenzie, J.L. 2006.
Functional Discourse Grammar.
In K.
Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics Vol IV (2nd
edition). Oxford: Elsevier, 668-676.
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Hengeveld, K. & Mackenzie, J.L. in
press. Functional
Discourse Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Rijkhoff, J. 2008. Layers, levels and
contexts in Functional Discourse Grammar.
In D. García Velasco & J. Rijkhoff (eds.), The Noun Phrase in Functional Discourse Grammar. Berlin & New
York: Mouton de Gruyter, 63-116.
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Widdowson, H.G. 2004. Text, Context,
Pretext. Critical issues in Discourse Analysis. Oxford:
Blackwell Publishing.
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