Coherence in Spontaneous TextMorton Ann Gernsbacher, T. Givón The main theme running through this volume is that coherence is a mental phenomenon rather than a property of the spoken or written text, or of the social situation. Coherence emerges during speech production-and-comprehension, allowing the speech receiver to form roughly the same episodic representation as the speech producer had in mind. In producing and comprehending a text, be it spoken or written, the interlocutors collaborate towards coherence. They negotiate for a common ground of shared topicality, reference and thematic structure – thus toward a similar mental representation of the text. In conversation, the negotiation takes place between the present participants. In writing or oral narrative, the negotiation takes place in the mind of the text producer, between the text producer and his/her mental representation of the mind of the absent or inactive interlocutor. The cognitive mechanisms that underlie face-to-face communication thus continue to shape text production and comprehension in non-interactive contexts.Most of the papers in this volume were originally presented at the Symposium on Coherence in Spontaneous Text, held at the University of Oregon in the spring of 1992. |
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Contents
| 1 | |
Some examples from the extreme bounds | 41 |
Coherence in text vs coherence in mind | 59 |
The negotiation of coherence within conversation | 117 |
The role of syntactic cues and causal inferences | 139 |
a psychological perspective | 161 |
Explanatory coherence in understanding and talking about events | 189 |
Improving coherence in written communication | 215 |
Some examples from conversation | 239 |
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Common terms and phrases
acceptance action activation adult analysis Betty causal Clark clause cognitive coherence collaborative communication completions comprehension con connected consider construction context continuity contribution conversation definite depends described descriptions devices dialogues discourse effects episodic evidence example experiment feedback figures Givón global goal grammatical grounding important improvement indefinite inferences initial instructions interaction interpretation introductions involves knowledge Language less linguistic listeners mean memory mental mental representation negotiated occur participants performed perspective predicted present Press problem processing produce propositions psychological question ratings readers reading received recipient reference referential relations relevant responses role Sanford selection semantic sentence session shown signal situation speakers story structure subjects successful suggest Table talk task tion topic Trabasso turn understanding University utterance writers written
Bibliographic information
| Title | Coherence in Spontaneous Text Volume 31 of Typological Studies in Language |
| Editors | Morton Ann Gernsbacher, T. Givón |
| Publisher | John Benjamins Publishing, 1995 |
| ISBN | 9027276358, 9789027276353 |
| Length | 267 pages |
| Subjects | › › Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / General |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |