ABSTRACT

Ambiguity in discourse is pervasive, yet mechanisms of production and processing suggest that it tends to be compensated in context. The present study sets out to analyze the combination of discourse markers (such as but or moreover) with other discourse signals (such as semantic relations or punctuation marks) across three genres (discussion, chat, and essay). The presence of discourse signals is expected to vary with the ambiguity of the discourse marker and with the genre. This analysis complements recent approaches to discourse signalling by zooming in on the different types of discourse markers with which other signals combine. The corpus annotation study uncovered three categories of marker strength—weak, intermediate, and strong—thus refining the concept of “explicitness.” Statistical modeling reveals that weak discourse markers are more often compensated than intermediate and strong markers, and that this compensation is not affected by genre variation.

摘要

话语中的歧义无处不在，但生产和加工的机制表明它倾向于在上下文中得到补偿。本研究中提出了以分析话语标记（如组合，但还是而且）以及跨三种类型（讨论，聊天和文章）的其他话语信号（例如语义关系或标点符号）。话语信号的存在预计会随话语标记的歧义和体裁而变化。该分析通过放大其他信号与之结合的不同类型的话语标记，补充了话语信号的最新方法。语料注释研究发现了标记强度的三个类别（弱，中和强），从而完善了“显性”的概念。统计模型表明，弱语篇标记比中级和强标记更容易得到补偿，并且这种补偿不受体裁变化的影响。