University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Discourse connectives and discourse structure in Mandarin Chinese

Kuo, Pin-Min

This item is only available for download by members of the University of Illinois community. Students, faculty, and staff at the U of I may log in with your NetID and password to view the item. If you are trying to access an Illinois-restricted dissertation or thesis, you can request a copy through your library's Inter-Library Loan office or purchase a copy directly from ProQuest.

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/19084

Description

Title
Discourse connectives and discourse structure in Mandarin Chinese
Author(s)
Kuo, Pin-Min
Issue Date
1994
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Cheng, Chin-Chuan
Department of Study
Linguistics
Discipline
Linguistics
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
  • Language, Linguistics
  • Literature, Asian
  • Language, General
Language
eng
Abstract
  • Discourse connectives are regarded as the main linguistic device for the writer to guide the reader's inference toward the texts. Conversely, the reader's interpretation of the logical flow of the discourse is largely based on the distribution of discourse connectives. My primary concern in this research is to explore the relationship between discourse connectives and patterns of inference in a coherent plan in order to establish the discourse structure of a text. This study performs three important tasks: an investigation of discourse connectives in Mandarin Chinese beyond the syntactic level, an investigation of relationship patterns in a coherent plan, and an analysis of the contribution of connectives to a higher level of discourse structure.
  • A significant way to study the uses and functions of connectives is to examine their correlation and distribution. Several quantitative measurements are designed to capture more specific and thorough phenomena of the distribution of discourse connectives. They are investigated from two aspects: each single discourse connective and the groups of connectives which denote the same inferential relation. The former provides us with the specific clausal (or syntactic) and macroclausal (or macrosyntactic) information, and the latter reflects a better picture of the logical linkages within discourse. These two aspects of discourse connectives are examined under three different discourse scopes: the proposition, the basic topic continuity, and the complex topic continuity.
  • By analyzing the quantitative measurements, three principles are generalized: the principle of Connectives' Scope, the Binding Principle, and the Adjacency Principle. Based on these three principles, a procedure for establishing the discourse structure in terms of logical linkage is proposed.
  • Finally, different strategies involved in the point-marking function (the function reflecting the writer's point) of discourse connectives are discussed, and the extent to which the patterning of connectives can reflect a discourse structure is investigated. This study suggests that the discourse connectives as an indicator in interpreting the logical linkages in complex topic continuities is much more limited than in a basic topic continuity.
Type of Resource
text
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/19084
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 1994 Kuo, Pin-Min

Owning Collections

Graduate Dissertations and Theses at Illinois PRIMARY
Graduate Theses and Dissertations at Illinois
Dissertations and Theses - Linguistics