This book’s aim is to explore the nature of the relations between the structure of a sentence and the way that a discourse is organised. Divided into two parts, it is concerned with the interaction and alignment between formal aspects of sentence grammar framed within the Minimalist Program and the formal organising principles of discourse framed within Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT). Part 1 (Chapters 2–6) is concerned with how the grammar can constrain the principles of discourse, and Part II (Chapters 7–12) looks at modes of discourse, particularly Free Indirect Discourse (FID), and examines how the grammatical form of sentences within a discourse are constrained. The theme that runs throughout the book is that levels of language integrate, and have a bi-directional effect on their respective formal structures.
In Chapter 1, Jacqueline Guéron introduces the theoretical landscape of the book at length. She proposes that cartographic-style embodiments of Generative Grammar are compatible with the primitives of a formal discourse structure incorporated in SDRT. Guéron points out that items relevant to syntactic structure (such as temporal adverbials) have discourse-constrained interpretations (e.g. the construal of temporal coordinates), and conversely, how discourse-relevant concepts, such as Topic, have dedicated positions in the syntax within a Minimalist architecture. Because of the importance of the left periphery as an area where syntax and discourse interact, the book focusses on left-peripheral phenomena.
Brenda Laca, in Chapter 2, investigates a range of constraints placed on the temporal orientation of intensional subjunctive clauses in Spanish. Intensional subjunctives, those selected by directive, causative (particularly implicatives), and volitional verbs, are first characterised as being distinct in grammatical behaviour from Spanish polarity subjunctives, and then shown to have a distinctive future or non-anterior temporal orientation. The behaviour of intensional subjunctives licensed by volitionals are shown to be more fine-grained, differing from the behaviour of other intensional subjunctives licensed by directives and causatives as they allow the embedding of perfect morphology with a past or simultaneous temporal orientation. The constraints placed on temporal orientation are connected to different denotations of semantic objects that are selected by subjunctive argument clauses.
In Chapter 3, Eric Corre investigates the interaction of finite and non-finite sentences with the verbal encoding of perfective and imperfective aspect in Russian. After highlighting problems with a classic distinction for Russian based on a generalised temporal event structure expressed via perfective or imperfective aspect, Corre argues for a relaxing and redefining of telicity to be more akin to a notion of terminativity. It is then argued that a distinction based on Viewpoint aspect (which is neutral in Russian) and Situational aspect (which is grammatically encoded via a syntactic aspectual head TelicP) accounts for asymmetries in Russian finite and non-finite sentences. Corpus data show that a majority of imperfective verb forms in the infinitive generally denote non-telic contexts, whereas perfective verb forms in the infinitive generally occur in terminative and telic contexts. In some cases, this overt opposition in aspect is accounted for in respect to the interactional dynamics between conversational interlocutors. This interaction with discourse structure is suggested to be compatible with a split-CP analysis. Generally, the perfective vP is argued to be able to function as Focus and the imperfective vP as Topic.
Liliane Tasmowski, in Chapter 4, also argues for an interaction of sentence grammar and information theory with an analysis of a French narrative and its Bulgarian translation. The scene is set by showing that lexico-semantic telicity is distinct from perfective tenses in French, and its construal is realised pragmatico-semantically via a measuring Direct Object. Tasmowski observes that this is in contrast to Slavic languages (which typically lack determiners) in which a perfective verb determines a telic event. Bulgarian, in addition to the Slavic-like lexically and morphologically defined perfective, has an elaborate system of tenses and determiners. By comparing the French narrative text and its Bulgarian translation, it is argued that every preverbal weak indefinite subject in French of the form des N.pl has a corresponding definite NP in Bulgarian. The contrast occurs because of pragmatic differences in determiners cross-linguistically. A Bulgarian definite determiner marks a non-topical NP whose reference is presupposed in the discourse context, telicity being construed by the perfective. It is concluded that discourse is prioritised as it determines the interpretation of the sentences that form it, and the information structure of the sentential sequences.
Chapter 5, by Maya Hickmann & Henriëtte Hendriks, examines language-specific acquisition of tense-aspect systems, and their contribution to sentence and discourse levels of linguistic organisation. Reviewing previous research, they provide data that show that children (constrained by developmental maturity concerns) use tense to mark aspect. They claim that this is a focussing on perceptible results in an immediate speech situation. Children must acquire their language-specific tense-aspect system before they are able to tell a story. Data from picture-sequence narratives are presented, which shed light on the impact of discourse structure on the acquisition of these systems, because they trigger situations that encourage the use of temporal-aspectual devices. Data from 200 participants from four languages (English, German, French, and Chinese) and from four age groups (4–5, 7 and 10 years, and adult) suggest the age at which children acquire the temporal-aspectual features of their L1. Frequencies of past versus non-past anchoring in narratives show that cognitive factors as well as language-specific constraints are determinants of the development of temporal sequencing. Discourse functions of tense–aspect appear to take time to emerge, enabling children to ground information after the age of seven. Principles of discourse grammar are active in the syntax, realised in language-specific ways, and the syntax of an expression can explain its contribution to the discourse.
Jacqueline Guéron, in Chapter 6, argues against a proposal to account for differences in Actuality Entailment (AE) whereby Epistemic modal verbs are generated above TenseP and Deontic modal verbs below AspectP. Guéron argues that such a proposal is not motivated and by using a diagnostic shows that both modals occur below a Negation projection, which merges with TenseP. It is then argued that French and English show no motivation for an AspectP node and that AE is realised independently of the syntax, with syntactic perfectivity at the root of AE but not essential to it. AE is a result of a goal-directed discourse strategy with differences in construal occurring only at the interface of syntax with semantics, pragmatics, and discourse interpretation.
Part II commences with Nicholas Asher in Chapter 7, who provides an elaboration of a research program that examines how discourse structure is central to linguistic interpretation of implicatures. A logic for defeasible inference calculates sentential implicatures on the basis of discourse structure, which links the logical forms associated with sentences. This chapter’s focus is the interpretation of implicatures in a non-cooperative Gricean context, a courtroom exchange highlighting the weakness of the Gricean account as it does not account for discourse structure or interlocutors’ self-interest in this context. The proposal is that a view based in SDRT and a perspective of Game Theory better accounts for the generation of implicatures in contexts where interlocutors have divergent goals and employ strategies (e.g. misdirection) to maximise their own interest. Asher shows that deriving embedded scalar implicatures is dependent on global discourse structure and discourse relations, rather than being a strictly local subsentential concern.
Nicholas Asher & Jacqueline Guéron, in Chapter 8, investigate why temporal adverbs do not combine well with perfect tenses in English, yet are acceptable structures in both French and German. Asher & Guéron first highlight the inadequacies of an approach that sees Perfect universally moving to Tense in the syntax, which then must rely on a stipulation of parametrisation of present Tense semantics in order to account for the English data. They argue that the data can be accounted for with the interaction of discourse relations defined in SDRT. The puzzle of the English perfectives is based not on a temporal structure encoded in Tense and Aspect, but in the temporal structure of a larger view of grammar, that includes discourse structure and allows the combination of syntax, compositional semantics, and information structure. As in previous chapters, data is accounted for by recourse to a parameter based on the presence or absence of aspect morphemes in the functional repertory of a language. Additionally, it is shown that in SDRT, a succession of two focussed constituents of the same type induces a causal link between successive sentences. A temporal overlap of adverbs is excluded because a cause must precede an effect. Asher & Guéron extend their proposal to account for other contrasts found in future perfects, simple past tenses, spatial terms and pronominal anaphora.
In Chapter 9, Patrick Caudal accounts for the strict ordering of sequence of events described by the Passé Composé (PC) tense in Old French (OF). Using a small corpus based on two medieval narrative texts, he claims that the OF PC did not have full semantic perfective force, and was morphosyntactically and semantically conservative, really behaving like a Latin-like resultative narrative (‘perfective’) present from which it was derived. Data show that it occurred in Sequence of Event (SOE) passages but did not admit a punctual past time adverb or date, unlike its Modern French counterpart. It is claimed that the OF PC showed some pragmatic innovation in that its conventional pragmatics had already developed some perfective features. Diachronically the PC exhibits a history of gradual dovetailed changes, exhibiting a layered semantics and independently acquiring a conventional pragmatic perfective content before it was morphosyntactically turned into a full tense in Modern French. As the structures historically follow a trajectory of semantic underspecification, it is argued that the burden of interpretation cannot be attributed to syntax and compositional semantics alone, but by the added grammaticalisation of discourse structural parameters defined in SDRT.
Svetlana Vogeleer, in Chapter 10, provides an account of how the Russian tense system contributes to polyphonic utterances, which represent the layering of voices of non-contradictory points of view of two people in indirect discourse and FID. This gives the impression of listening directly to the language production of the speaker or main character of a narration. Through an analysis of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment in its original Russian and three French translations, Vogeleer highlights how each tense of Russian’s three-tense system can be used for simultaneous de re and de se construals of sentences that are embedded under matrix predicates. This is in contrast to French, a Sequence of Tense (SOT) language that uses different tenses to calculate the subject’s reference time and the speaker’s speech time, modulo context, and is distinct from typically non-SOT languages like Japanese. Vogeleer claims that the use and subsequent construals of the tenses in Russian, and the sentences in which they are embedded, depend on the mode of discourse and the attitude semantics of different types of matrix verb.
Chapter 11, by Alessandra Giorgi, examines to what degree the left periphery of an enriched syntactic structure affects the expressive possibilities of a narrator in FID. The chapter follows an assumption that there is no special grammar for FID sentences, indicated by native intuitions of acceptability in this literary style. In a cross-linguistic comparison of English and Italian texts, Giorgi demonstrates that in FID sentences temporal indexical items take the character as their default interpretive anchor rather than the external narrator, in contrast to non-FID sentences. When a speaker is introduced in a sentence, their temporal and spatial coordinates determine the interpretation of spatial and temporal indexical expressions. It is hypothesised that this phenomenon has a syntactic correlate that is visible in FID sentences: a verb of speech or thought projects an information layer (INFP) in the left periphery of the root clause. The subject rises to spec of INFP and the verb moves to the head of INFP. Interpretation is based loosely on a notion of scope and c-command, and linear correspondence, although there is little testable evidence provided for motivating such an enrichment of the syntactic architecture. It is claimed that the ‘peculiar’ flavour of a literary style – such as FID – is due to slightly different settings of certain parameters (in the Universal Grammar sense), such as the choice of temporal and spatial coordinates for the interpretation of events.
Jacqueline Guéron, in Chapter 12, claims that literary texts are derived by the interaction of two different grammars: a traditional grammar found in non-literary contexts and a special literary grammar whose primitive elements constitute a subset of the former. The literary grammar is distinct because what is allowed in a non-literary context may be excluded from a literary one, and conversely the rules of the literary grammar which create formal patterns out of basic linguistic elements or which contrast segments of discourse are not acceptable in non-literary contexts. It is claimed that a literary grammar has no formal interpretive component, which reflects the lack of restrictions on semantic scope in literary texts. A non-literary text is assertive whereas a literary text, constrained by its distinct grammar, allows expression of subjectivity. FID’s use of simultaneous grammars successfully provides an environment for a Subject of Consciousness (SOC), a discourse participant who expresses personal thoughts and feelings in complete grammatical sentences. Syntactically, the discourse participant is an object identified by deictic lexical items as the egocentric centre of discourse. This is influenced by behaviour in the left-periphery of an FID sentence. A World Setting Phrase, which defines the place and time frame of the situation described by the sentence and locates a participant, is proposed to account for the differences between centres of discourse. The syntax disambiguates contrasting/distinct uses of verbs (i.e. direct or indirect discourse sentences) and thus triggers further projections in the architecture. For example, in direct discourse, an I node is projected which then licenses an Expression phrase above CP, which is not found in the architecture of FID. An FID introduces a paratactic structure in which the same world from distinct points of view are described. These are linked by means of an (overt or covert) demonstrative pronoun.
The works in this volume highlight an interesting area of research that brings together typically disparate theoretical foci. The work here leans heavily toward SDRT to account for behaviour and an overt syntactic analysis is limited, which does affect the balance of the proposal and may limit its appeal to syntacticians.
