{"title":"Prototypicity and textual analysis","authors":"Rosalice Pinto","doi":"10.1075/BJL.23.04PIN","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/BJL.23.04PIN","url":null,"abstract":"This paper, based on the Socio-Discursive Interactionism theoretical epistemological framework, aims at showing the importance of the notion of prototypicity to analyse texts that circulate in society. Regarding theoretical concepts, we consider, firstly, that texts are global communicative units that always interact with the social practice where they are integrated; consequently their textual linguistic materialisation depends on the language activity in which they are situated. Secondly, texts are obviously linked to a textual genre which has unique and generic aspects constantly interacting with each other. By considering these aspects, we can see how the notion of family resemblance or family airs related to that of prototypicity can give us leads to define a textual analysis methodology that takes into account the complexity of the text as our object of analysis. In order to prove the importance of the prototypicity to analyse texts we have chosen two representative texts of two textual persuasive genres: one editorial and one political poster that were circulated in Portugal in March 2002, at the time of the elections for the Portuguese Prime Minister. Our study provides evidence that a text has singular characteristics, but it also has generic ones related to genre aspects.","PeriodicalId":35124,"journal":{"name":"Belgian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"59 1","pages":"31-44"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1075/BJL.23.04PIN","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59375214","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Language/Discourse: Textual Analysis, Computer and Statistics","authors":"Jean-Marie Viprey","doi":"10.1075/BJL.23.15VIP","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/BJL.23.15VIP","url":null,"abstract":"Textual linguistics has been undergoing a continuous redefining of its internal and external boundaries after Halliday & Hasan's inaugural thesis. It notably concerns the concepts of text and discourse, and has led to the constitution of a new research field: Textual Discourse Analysis (TDA). We will start from two questions which were asked at the origin of this Congress: \"What is a text - or the text - in the digital age?\" and \"Which new methods are available for textual analysis?\" We assume that text is neither merely nor principally a linguistic object, but is at the meeting point of various fields and key-concepts: sentence, utterance, document, archive, basis and corpuses, discourse. Answers must be searched in digital philology as well as in the hermeneutic aspects of discourse analysis.","PeriodicalId":35124,"journal":{"name":"Belgian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"23 1","pages":"191-206"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1075/BJL.23.15VIP","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59375912","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Text and Hypertext. Function, Reading, Learning","authors":"Jean-Marc Defays","doi":"10.1075/BJL.23.09DEF","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/BJL.23.09DEF","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: In this article, we begin by specifying a definition of “text” that will fit our present purpose; then, we will attempt to contribute, in the light of the demands involved in its treatment and the difficulties involved in learning it, to an explanation of its complexity, particularly its double construction, which is both linear and reticulated. In order to do that, we will recall the conditions of its progression along the linear axis, where the reader establishes semantic, syntactic, thematic, logical and argumentative connections between words and propositions that follow each other; and the conditions of its organic composition, which allows the reader to incorporate the words, phrases and paragraphs so constituted into a global structure (sequences, parts of the text, its general structure) as a function of textual models he or she may have experienced. But we insist upon the fact that, in order for these two types of organisation – linear sequence and hierarchical inclusion – to constitute a text, it is necessary for them to be inscribed in an enunciative context and a communicative project that give the text its origin, its finality, and its function. In view of the development of the use of New Information and Communication Technologies, we will ask ourselves to what extent these new supports, in terms of their nature as well as their modes of functionality, require or lead toward new linguistic and cognitive strategies for treatment of text, especially in learners, children and/or non-native speakers, and how these learners can perceive and construct the local and global coherence (semantic, logical, argumentative…) of a document presented in a hypertextual form.","PeriodicalId":35124,"journal":{"name":"Belgian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"23 1","pages":"103-114"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1075/BJL.23.09DEF","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59375120","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Syntactical Motifs and Textual Structures: Considerations based on the Study of a Latin historical Corpus","authors":"Sylvie Mellet, D. Longrée","doi":"10.1075/BJL.23.13MEL","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/BJL.23.13MEL","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: A method initially developed to carry out automatic comparisons and classifications of Latin historians texts shows that some well-ordered and characteristic structures, – some syntactical motifs in particular –, can perfectly distinguish a text from the others texts making up the corpus. This paper will establish on which factors the relevance of such a reduction method can be grounded in order to give an account of affinities and distances between texts: recurrence of the chosen motifs, exhaustiveness of the counting, respect of the text linearity both on the local level and on the global level. This will lead to a reflection on the notions of texture and textuality, understood through the properties of linearity and reticularity.","PeriodicalId":35124,"journal":{"name":"Belgian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"23 1","pages":"161-174"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1075/BJL.23.13MEL","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59375656","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Passages and Path within the Intertext","authors":"F. Rastier","doi":"10.1075/BJL.23.03RAS","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/BJL.23.03RAS","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: In promoting the necessary consolidation of the discipline, text linguistics has supplanted the linguistics of languages, as well as language linguistics. For indeed, text linguistics is the branch which makes it possible to integrate the significant contribution of corpus linguistics. In addition, the text has been acknowledged as the main grounds for articulation bewteen internal descriptions – particularly syntactic descriptions –, and external descriptions – particularly pragmatic descriptions. The conception of the text as elaborated within the framework of interpretive semantics is compatible with textometric models and tools. In particular, the assisted characterization of passages enables one to portray textual activity as transformation chains, also known as metamorphisms, as much within the text as within the intertext gathered by the corpus. In order to characterize such transformations, some examples may be provided, namely passages which have been rewritten in a work’s genetic file; similar passages found within several works by a same author; text commentaries regarded as rewriting acts; to conclude, paths resorting to many works for the interpretation of a passage. All this leads us to re-consider text modelization by taking corpora into consideration. It also creates an urge to redefine textuality according to intertextuality.","PeriodicalId":35124,"journal":{"name":"Belgian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"23 1","pages":"7-29"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1075/BJL.23.03RAS","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59375148","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Contrastive Text Linguistics to Didactic Applications – and back again","authors":"L. Lundquist","doi":"10.1075/BJL.23.07LUN","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/BJL.23.07LUN","url":null,"abstract":"Results from contrastive text linguistics are used to show how systematic differences between an L1 and an L2 can be applied to foreign language didactics for teaching textual skills in a methodical and efficient way. The language pair studied consists of Danish and French, which, belonging to two different language families, Germanic and Romance languages respectively, show many systematic differences in their fundamental structure - within lexicalisation, morphology, and syntax - that turn out to have a predictable impact on text structure. Thus, differences are found between Danish and French texts at the levels of referential coherence in different types of anaphoric expressions, of temporal coherence in different means for fore- and back-grounding events, and of structural coherence in different effects of framing via pre-posed adverbials, etc. Two e-learning programs, TeXtRay and NaviLire, are presented, which exploit such systematic differences between given language pairs in offering different types of navigation and visualisation exercises aimed at teaching textual skills needed at higher university education, such as reading and writing complex academic or specialised texts in a foreign language.","PeriodicalId":35124,"journal":{"name":"Belgian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"23 1","pages":"73-90"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1075/BJL.23.07LUN","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59375493","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Commitment to an implicit aspect of meaning: a notional differentiation between concessive connectives","authors":"Mitsuko Narita Izutsu","doi":"10.1075/BJL.22.07IZU","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/BJL.22.07IZU","url":null,"abstract":"This paper argues that the notion of commitment can clarify the distinction between two Japanese concessive connectives -noni and -kedo: the former expresses a high degree and the latter a relatively low degree of speaker commitment to an assumption underlying the concessive meaning. This difference in meaning supports a satisfactory account of some syntactic differences between the two connectives. It is also shown that the difference in the degree of commitment to an assumption is attested in the lexical contrast of the concessive meanings of Russian connectives a and no. These observations, along with some examples of commitment to a presupposition or speech act, show that the notion of commitment is applicable not only to the explicit part of an utterance (statement or propositional content) but also to implicit aspects of meaning.","PeriodicalId":35124,"journal":{"name":"Belgian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"22 1","pages":"137-154"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1075/BJL.22.07IZU","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59374995","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Assertoric commitment s","authors":"M. Kissine","doi":"10.1075/BJL.22.08KIS","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/BJL.22.08KIS","url":null,"abstract":"This paper deals with the two kinds of commitment associated with assertive speech acts: the commitment to having justifications for the propositional content and the commitment to the truth of this content. It is argued that the former kind of commitment boils down to the monotonic commitment to the truth of the propositional content, and can be cancelled. The latter, by contrast, is non-monotonic, and is associated with all assertive speech acts, even those containing a reservation marker. These facts can be explained if one (a) endorses the ‘Direct Perception’ view, according to which every piece of communicated information goes, by default, into the hearer’s ‘belief box’; (b) defines the success of assertive speech acts in terms of the possibility to update the common ground with their propositional content.","PeriodicalId":35124,"journal":{"name":"Belgian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"22 1","pages":"155-177"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1075/BJL.22.08KIS","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59375050","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A question of commitment","authors":"Christine A. Gunlogson","doi":"10.1075/BJL.22.06GUN","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/BJL.22.06GUN","url":null,"abstract":"This paper addresses certain restrictions on the use of declaratives as questions in English. Declaratives are taken to express commitment by the speaker, even in a questioning use. The analysis traces the restrictions to two distinct contextual factors: (i) a general principle requiring that a commitment have a recognized source, i.e., a discourse agent who plausibly has independent evidence supporting the content committed to; (ii) specific to a questioning interpretation, the need for the context to support the inference that the speaker’s commitment depends upon the addressee’s anticipated confirmation. Rising intonation contributes a very general element of meaning, indicating that the utterance it marks is contingent upon some discourse condition obtaining; the specific conditions required for a questioning interpretation instantiate one such type of contingency. The proposals are modeled via elaboration of standard contextual structures in a possible-worlds framework.","PeriodicalId":35124,"journal":{"name":"Belgian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"22 1","pages":"101-136"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1075/BJL.22.06GUN","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59374927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Commitment: A parameter for the contrastive analysis of be going to and aller + inf.","authors":"Laure Lansari","doi":"10.1075/BJL.22.09LAN","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/BJL.22.09LAN","url":null,"abstract":"This paper aims at reexamining the notion of commitment through a case study: the comparison of the periphrases be going to and aller + inf. in contemporary English and French in a variety of texts and syntactic environments. Three cases are examined: the occurrence of the two periphrases in conditional si / if-clauses, their use in narratives and their predictive use in news texts. This study is based on authentic translated data drawn from literary and journalistic texts and relies on an enunciative definition of commitment: commitment is defined as a ‘direct mode of enunciation’ where the speaker is the subjective origin validating or contemplating the future validation of the propositional content. The three cases under scrutiny show that be going to and aller + inf. are not strictly equivalent and I argue that the absence of equivalence can be linked to the fact that they behave differently as far as commitment is concerned.","PeriodicalId":35124,"journal":{"name":"Belgian Journal of Linguistics","volume":"22 1","pages":"179-196"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1075/BJL.22.09LAN","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59375065","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}