FrenchLanguageStudies15(2005),173–193,(cid:1)C CambridgeUniversityPress doi:10.1017/S0959269505002073 Locating adverbials in discourse LAURE VIEU IRIT,CNRS/LOA-ISTC,CNRTrento MYRIAM BRAS ERSS,UniversityofToulouse-LeMirail NICHOLAS ASHER UniversityofTexasatAustin AND MICHEL AURNAGUE IKER,CNRSBayonne (ReceivedSeptember2004;revisedMarch2005) abstract ThisarticleanalysesLocatingAdverbials(LAs)suchasunpeuplustard,cematin,deux kilome`tres plus loin (‘a little later’, ‘this morning’, ‘two kilometers further’) when they are dislocated to the left of the sentence (IP Adjuncts cases). Although not discourse connectives, in such a position, they seem to play an important part in structuring discourse. It is this contribution of LAs to discourse that we tackle, providing a descriptive analysis and a formal account grounded on Segmented DiscourseRepresentationTheory.Inparticular,wedealwiththeframeintroducer roleoftheLAsandwithspatio-temporalinterpretationsofthesemarkersoccurring intrajectorydescriptions. introduction This article offers an analysis of the discursive role of Locating Adverbials (henceforthLA).LAsareprepositionalphrasesthatlocatetheeventualitiesintime and/or in space, such as un peu plus tard, ce matin, deux kilome`tres plus loin, pre`s de l’arbre(‘alittlelater’,‘thismorning’,‘twokilometresfurther’,‘nearthetree’). InAurnagueetal.(2001),wegaveacompositionalsemanticsfortheseadverbials togetherwiththeirsyntacticanalysis.FollowingMaienborn(1995),weconsidered twosyntacticpositionsforLAs,namelyVPAdjunctposition(VerbPhrasemodifier) and IP Adjunct position (Sentence modifier). As a matter of fact, LAs cannot be categorised as VP-Adj or IP-Adj once and for all. They do not fulfil the classical testsfordistinguishingbetweenthetwocategories,forexamplethoseofMolinier and Le´vrier (2000) for French, or those of McKercher (1996) for English, as they 173 LaureVieuetal. prove to have both types of properties for different occasions of use. For us, these twopositionsclassifytheoccurrencesofLAs,butnotLAsthemselves. We assumed that, when they are in VP-Adj position, these adverbials mainly contribute to the semantic content of the sentence, and that this position corresponds to the standard use of LAs. On the other hand, we described the roleofIP-AdjLAsasmodifyingthetruthconditionsofthewholeproposition,i.e. sayingwhenorwhereitistrue. Inthisarticle,wefocusonthelattercase,thatofIP-Adjlocatingadverbials,i.e. sentential adverbials. We limit this study to cases where they are dislocated to the left of the main IP structure of the sentence, and we assume that they are all IP Adjuncts cases, following McConnell-Ginet (1982), Johnston (1994), Maienborn (1995),DeSwart(1999).1 When left dislocated, LAs play an important part in structuring discourse, althoughtheyarenotconsideredasdiscourseconnectives(seeBorilloetal.,2004; andCharollesetal.,thisvolume).ItispreciselythisdiscursivecontributionofLAs thatwewanttotacklehere,providingbothadescriptiveandformalaccountofthis contribution.WewillusetheframeworkofSegmentedDiscourseRepresentation Theory (SDRT), a logical theory of the semantics-pragmatics interface (Asher, 1993;AsherandLascarides,2003)todevelopourformalanalysis. In previous work (Asher et al., 1995), we showed that the temporal and spatial LAs can receive a spatio-temporal interpretation, provided they appear within a trajectory description. We will account for these particular interpretations within thegeneralframeworkthatwillhavebeensetupfortheIPadjunctLAs. We will first recall what is the semantic contribution of LAs as VP-Adj at the sentencelevelinSection1.ThenwewilldescribethebehaviourofLAsasIP-Adj andtheirimpactondiscoursestructureinSection2.InSection3,wewillformalise this description in SDRT. Lastly, our account on spatio-temporal interpretations willbegiveninSection4. 1 semantic contribution of locating adverbials as vp-adj Let us first recall that, when they are in VP Adjunct position, LAs play a well- understoodroleatthesentencelevel:theylocatetheeventualitydescribedbythe restofthesentence,inspace(1)orintime(2). (1) Mariemangedesabricotsdans le jardin. (2) Marieaachete´ desabricotsce matin. InAurnagueetal.(2001),wegavethecompositionalsemanticsoftheseadverbials togetherwiththeirsyntacticanalysis.TheseadverbialsareallPrepositionalPhrases with possibly empty positions, including nouns whose lexical semantics bears a 1 Astheinitialvsfinalpositionisnotalwaysadecisivecriteriontodistinguishbetweenthe two positions and the associated functions, we used a test (in Aurnague et al., 2001: 16) thatassumesthatIP-Adjcannotfallunderthescopeofnegation,whileVP-Adjcan(see alsoJohnston,1994:141;andDeSwart,1999:339). 174 Locatingadverbialsindiscourse temporalorspatialfeature.Wewillpresentsomeexamplesofbothdescriptionsin this section (§1.2). Then we will show how the PP combines with the VP at the sentence compositional semantics level (§1.3). Before that, we will briefly point outanimportantfeatureofourapproach(§1.1). 1.1 Relationalsemantics In Aurnague et al. (2001), we defended a relational approach against the most widespreadreferentialapproaches.Insuchananalysis,thePP-LAdoesnotintroduce any new referent on top of that of its complement, but rather indicates that the eventuality and the LA complement have to stand in the relation denoted by the preposition. For example in (3), the preposition apre`s ‘after’ only compels the joiningeventtobelaterthanthemeeting,whereasinareferentialview,thewhole LAwouldintroduceanewtemporalreferentrepresentinganintervaldescribedby apre`slareunion‘afterthemeeting’.In(4),theadverbialplustard‘later’compelsthe fallingasleepeventtobelocatedafteratemporalreferentprovidedbythecontext, andtheDPdeuxheures‘twohours’givestheextensionofthedistancebetweenthe twotemporalreferents. (3) MarierejoignitLucapre`slare´union. (4) Maries’endormitdeuxheuresplustard. We cannot lay out again here all the advantages of a relational semantics (see Aurnague et al., 2001), but we will pay particular attention in this article to LAs likeapre`slare´unionordeuxheuresplustardwhentheyareinIP-Adjunctposition,as in(5): (5) Apre`slare´union,MarierejoignitLuc. 1.2 CompositionalsemanticsofLAs TheinternalsyntacticstructureoftheLAswestudiedinAurnagueetal.(2001)is that of a complex Prepositional Phrase with possibly empty positions as sketched inFigure1. In order to illustrate the way the semantics of a LA of the PP category is calculated in a compositional bottom-up fashion, we have labelled, on Figure 2, thesyntactictreeofdeuxjoursapre`sNoe¨l‘twodaysafterChristmas’withthesemantic representation of each node. In the composition process, the semantics of the P(cid:2) nodeappliestothesemanticsoftheDPinSPECposition. The same kind of composition yields for a` huit heures ‘at eight o’clock’ the followingsemanticrepresentation: λPλe∃yT∃vT(P(e)∧Day(v)∧v=?∧Hour(y)∧y⊂v∧Calendar(y,‘8h’)∧e⊆y) 175 LaureVieuetal. PP P′ DP ∅ P DP PP à DP P′ huDit NP deux jours/∅ P N après DP heures ∅/Noël Figure1.Internalsyntacticstructureofa` huitheures,deuxjoursapre`s,deuxjours apre`sNoe¨l,apre`sNoe¨l,apre`s λP λe ∃tT∃u (P(e) (cid:1) Noël(t) (cid:1) t < e (cid:1) Length (u,‘2days’) (cid:1) Dist(t,e,u)) PP DP λS λP λe ∃tT(Noël(t) (cid:1) P(e) (cid:1) t < e (cid:1) S(λy Dist(t,e,y))) deux jours P′ λR ∃u (Length(u,‘2days’) (cid:1) R(u)) P DP après NoëI λC λS λP λe C(λx (P(e) (cid:1) x < e (cid:1) S (λy Dist(x,e,y)))) λQ ∃tT (Noël(t) (cid:1) Q(t)) Figure2.Compositionalcalculusofthesemanticsofdeuxjoursapre`sNoe¨l Theformulaaboveincludesanunderspecifiedconditionv=?toberesolvedatthe discourse semantics level, i.e. when the discourse context will be available, in the waydescribedinSection2.2. More generally, the semantic representation of a LA is a formula like the following: (LA-VP) λPλe(P(e)∧φ(e)) where φ(e) is the LA contribution, e is a variable to be bound by an eventuality2 variable3 introduced and quantificationally bound by the I node, and P is the predicategivenbytheVPnode. 2 Following the DRT tradition, we assume that eventualities are reified (Davidson, 1967) andcanbeoftwotypes:eventsandstates(Kamp,1981;KampandReyle,1993). 3 OranindividualconstantwhentheLAisanN(cid:2) adjunct,e.g.lejouravantlare´union‘the daybeforethemeeting’(seeAurnagueetal.,2001:18). 176 Locatingadverbialsindiscourse IP [u, e1, yT, vT | Paul(u) (cid:1) e1: u arriver (cid:1) Day(v) (cid:1) v = ? (cid:1) Hour(y) (cid:1)y(cid:1)v(cid:1) Calendar(y, ‘8h’) (cid:1) e1(cid:2)y (cid:1) e1 < n] DP I′ λy(cid:1)x [ve 1(cid:1), CyTa,l evnTd |a erl( y: ,x‘8 ahr’r)i v(cid:1)e er 1(cid:1)(cid:2) Dya y(cid:1)( ve1) (cid:1)< vn ]= ? (cid:1) Hour(y) (cid:1) Paul λQ [u | Paul(u) (cid:1) Q(u)] VP λe λx [yT, vT | el : x arriver (cid:1) Day(v) (cid:1) v = ? (cid:1) Hour(y) (cid:1) I y(cid:1)v (cid:1) Calendar(y,‘8h’) (cid:1) e(cid:2)y] Passé Simple λP [ e | P(e) (cid:1) e < n ] VP PP V arriver λe’ λx [ | e’ : x arriver ] à huit heures λP λe [yT, vT | P(e) (cid:1) Day(v) (cid:1) v = ? (cid:1) Hour(y) (cid:1) y(cid:1)v (cid:1) Calendar(y,‘8h’) (cid:1) e(cid:2)y] Figure3.Compositionalsemanticsof(6) IP IP PP Après la réunion DP I′ Marie I … PS Figure4.LAinIP-Adjposition 1.3 Compositionalsemanticsatthesentencelevel ThelabelledtreeinFigure3showshowtheVP-AdjLA’ssemanticrepresentation described above combines with the rest of the sentence to yield the DRS representingthesentencesemanticcontentfortheexample: (6) Paularrivaa` huitheures. This representation is a Discourse Representation Structure (Kamp and Reyle, 1993), for which we adopt here a linear notation of DRSs: [U | C]. We will explaininSection2.2belowhowthisDRSwillbeintegratedintherepresentation ofthewholediscourse. 2 semantic contribution of locating adverbials as ip-adj Inthissection,wefocusonthecases whentheLA is inIP-Adj positionand thus acts as a sentence modifier, as in (5) for example, whose syntactic tree is sketched inFigure4. 177 LaureVieuetal. [Hier] Marie est allée au marché pour acheter des abricots. Elle a fait une tarte délicieuse et nous nous sommes tous régalés. Figure5.Temporaldiscourseframingin(8) Letusrecallthatweconsiderthat,followingJohnston(1994:28),thealternation betweenVP-AdjandIP-Adjpositionsdoesnotcorrespondtotwodifferentsenses oftheLA.Therefore,and sincetheVP-Adj istakentobe thestandard useofthe LA, we assume that when it is in IP-Adj position, the LA has basically the same semanticcontentandisrepresentedbythesameformula.Asaconsequence,inthe IP-Adjcase,theLAsemanticsalsoinprinciplefollowsthegeneralscheme: (LA-VP) λPλe(P(e)∧φ(e)) but this time, there are no constants available to be combined with λP and λe, as theIPnoderepresentsafullsentencewhosesemanticsisaproposition. We will show how to solve this problem in Section 3. First, we need to have a closerlookatthelinguisticbehaviouroftheLAinIP-Adjposition.Thisdescriptive studyisthepurposeofthepresentsection. 2.1 IP-AdjLAsasFrameIntroducers Classically, sentence modifiers are separated into two groups. Some sentence modifiers bear on facts, for example modal sentential adverbs (probably, certainly) that qualify the truth value of the sentence, and evaluative adverbs (unfortunately) that qualify the attitude of the speaker towards the sentence semantic content. Othersbearonspeechactslikefrankly,honestly(Bonamietal.,2004). LAsinIP-Adjpositionbehavelikemodaladverbs,astheydescribethetemporal and/orspatialconditionsinwhichthesentencesemanticsistobeevaluated: (7) Hier,Marieestalle´eaumarche´. Butthissemanticroleatthesententiallevelisnotthewholestory.LAsinIP-Adj positionhaveasemanticeffectbeyondthesentenceinwhichtheyoccur: (8) Hier,Marieestalle´eaumarche´ pouracheterdesabricots.Elleafaitunetarte de´licieuseetnousnoussommestousre´gale´s. The role of hier ‘yesterday’ in (8) is to introduce a temporal setting in which not only the first clause, but all the others are evaluated. Along the lines of the ‘discourse framing hypothesis’ of Charolles (1997), this temporal setting together with the set of clauses being grouped on the basis of this common evaluation criterion is called a ‘discourse frame’. Here more precisely, we have a temporal discourse frame, as represented in Figure 5. In (8), hier plays the role of a ‘frame introducer’.Thisdiscursivephenomenonofframingisalsocalled‘indexing’:each clauseintheframeistemporallyindexedbythetemporalinformationbroughtby 178 Locatingadverbialsindiscourse the frame introducer. Indexing is a forward-looking process. The frame provides instructionsfortheinterpretationofforthcomingtext,asopposedtothebackward- lookingprocessofconnection,wheretheconnectorintroducesarelationtosome elementintheprevioustext. StartingfromtheanalysisoftemporalframinginLeDraoulecandPe´ry-Woodley (2003),wenowturntothequestionofhowtoanalyseformallywithinSDRTthe frameintroducerroleofIP-AdjLAs. 2.2 FrameIntroducersandDiscourseTopics Framescanthusbeenseenasakindofdiscoursesegment,markedbythepresenceof anIP-AdjLAintheirfirstsentence.SegmentedDiscourseRepresentationTheory (SDRT,asinAsher,1993;LascaridesandAsher,1993;AsherandLascarides,2003)is atheoreticaltoolfortheanalysisofdiscourse,whichaddressesindepththecomplex interplay between the semantic contribution of sentences and their components and the segmentation of discourse. SDRT is therefore particularly suited to give a formal account of both the semantic contribution of the LA in IP-Adj position andthenotionofdiscourseframe,andtoexplaintheirrelationship. Analysing a discourse in SDRT amounts to building in an incremental way, fromthelogicalformulasrepresentingthesemanticsofeachsentence(obtainedby standardcompositionalsemantics),a‘segmenteddiscourserepresentationstructure’ orSDRSforthewholediscourse.AnSDRSisrecursivelydefinedasasetofspeech- actlabels,π ,...π ,relatedbydiscourserelationssuchthateachspeech-actlabelis 1 n associatedwitha‘discourseconstituent’,whichiseithersimple–thelogicalformula representing a simple clause – or complex – an SDRS representing a discourse segment. Discourse relations are either ‘coordinating’, indicating a continuation of some discourse pattern, e.g., with a ‘Narration’, or ‘subordinating’, indicating a rupture, e.g., through an ‘Elaboration’ or an ‘Explanation’, and thus induce a hierarchical structure. SDRSs are built using the ‘glue logic’ that exploits various pragmaticprinciples(includingGriceanprinciples)inanon-monotonicreasoning frameworktorecoverthediscourserelationsthatlinkthesegmentsinanycoherent discourse.Intheremainder,wewillassumethefundamentalsofSDRTareknown; foradetailedpresentationofSDRT,seeAsherandLascarides(2003)andBusquets etal.(2001)foranintroduction. SDRTmakesuseofthenotionof‘discoursetopic’4 toaccountforsomeaspects of discourse coherence. In narratives, a genre in which topics play an important 4 Discoursetopicsdifferfromsocalledsentencetopics(orthemes,orgrounds)intheoriesof informationstructure,(seeVallduv´ı,1992forexample).Wecannotexamineindetailshere howthetopic/focusinformationpartitioninteractswithdiscoursetopics,(seeTxurruka, 1999,2001),butitisworthmentioningthatthecontrastwedrawbetweenVP-Adjand IP-Adj positions is translated in De Swart (1999) as a contrast in terms of information partition:IP-Adjaretopics,VP-Adjcanbefocusortopicsaccordingtothestructureof theproposition.DeSwart’sanalysisisnotincompatiblewithours,althoughitstaysatthe sentencelevel,andpresentssometechnicaldivergences. 179 LaureVieuetal. π 1 Elaboration π* : π π π 2 3 4 Continuation Continuation Figure6.SketchySDRSfor(9) role,itcanbeshownthattemporalorderdoesnotsufficetoorganiseadiscourse:a discoursesegmentiscoherentonlyifitssub-segmentssharesomecommon‘topic’ (Asher, 2004). A discourse topic summarises the semantic contents of the whole segment. For instance, in (9), the first sentence describes the explicit topic of the wholediscourse: (9) L’e´te´ de cette anne´e-la` vit plusieurs changements dans la vie de nos he´ros (π1).Franc¸oise´pousaAde`le(π2).Jean-LouispartitpourleBre´sil(π3)etPaul s’achetaunemaisona` lacampagne(π4).(KampandRohrer,1983:261) The explicit topic is a simple constituent π1, which is elaborated by the complex segment grouping the rest of the discourse, as can be seen on the schematised structureoftheSDRSfor(9)inFigure6. We can slightly modify this example to make in (10) the same common topic implicit,asitisoftenthecase: (10) Cete´te´-la`,Franc¸oise´pousaAde`le(π1).Jean-LouispartitpourleBre´sil(π2) etPauls’achetaunemaisona` lacampagne(π3). In this case, the common topic π is built by a generalization operator from the semanticcontentsoftheclausesinthesegment(Asher,1993),recovering5 roughly thesamesemanticcontentsasthatofπ1in(9)andresultinginthesamediscourse structureascanbeseeninFigure7. OnemaynoticeatthispointthattheLAinthefirstsentence,aframeintroducer, playsanimportantroleinthecoherenceofthediscourse.Withoutit,(10(cid:2))ismuch moreawkwardasthecommon,implicit,topicismoredifficulttorecover: (10(cid:2)) Franc¸oise´pousaAde`le.Jean-LouispartitpourleBre´siletPauls’achetaune maisona` lacampagne. ThisobservationleadsustoholdthatLAsinIP-Adjpositionsignificantlyinteract with discourse topics. In fact, we propose here to reinterpret the role of ‘frame 5 LetusrecallthattopicsinSDRTarebuiltincrementally.Withthestandardtopicbuilding procedureinSDRT,thefirstrepresentationofπ’scontentincludesaneventualitywhich is a summary of π1 and π2, then this constituent is updated with the treatment of π3, eventuallyyieldingtheonewehaveinFigure7.Takingintoaccountthemeaningofthe LA,thisprocedurewillherebechanged,aswillbecomeclearinSection3. 180 Locatingadverbialsindiscourse π : t, e, X, f, a, jl, p that summer(t) e: make-a-life-change(X) X = f⊕a⊕jl⊕p e(cid:2)t Elaboration π* : π1 π2 π3 Continuation Continuation Figure7.SketchySDRSfor(10) introducer’ as that of ‘new topic introducer’ in the SDRT framework. In some sense, this means that the role of an LA in IP-Adj position is to announce ‘I’m going to describe you some (possibly complex) event, yet to be specified, which is located so’. The observation of an extended example confirms this role. Every occurrenceoftheLAsinIP-Adjpositionin(11)correspondstoachangeintopic, evenwhenthischangeisnottypographicallymarkedbyaparagraphchange: (11) EglisesetRe´sistance6 [...] Mais lorsque la Gestapo de´mantela ce re´seau de re´sistance en 1943, Bonhoefferfutarreˆte´ etde´porte´ encampdeconcentration.Ilfutpendule9 avril1945. En 1932 [In 1932] se forma un groupe protestant national-socialiste, les ‘Chre´tiens allemands’, qui re´clame`rent apre`s l’arrive´e au pouvoir de Hitler la formation d’une E´glise du Reich, structure´e selon le ‘Fu¨hrerprinzip’ et rejetantlesjuifs,cequisere´alisaquelquesmoisplustard.L’E´gliseprotestante, de´sormais dirige´e par les ‘Chre´tiens allemands’, e´tait devenue un instrument entrelesmainsdeHitler.Enseptembre1933[InSeptember1933]futorganise´ le ‘synode brun’; la majorite´ des responsables eccle´siastiques s’y rendirent en uniformenazi.Ilfutde´cide´,malgre´l’oppositiondesadversairesdes‘Chre´tiens allemands’,quelespasteursquin’e´taientpasaryensseraientexclusdel’E´glise 6 Thisandsomeofthefollowingexamplesaredrawnfromacorpusoftextsdescribingthe GermanresistanceduringWWIIgatheredfromhistorytextbooksbyDelphineBrisand Jean-Marc Dubois from the Universite´ de Haute Bretagne. We wish to thank Anne Le DraoulecandMarie-PaulePe´ry-Woodleyforgivingusaccesstothiscorpus. 181 LaureVieuetal. duReich;70responsableseccle´siastiquessuivirentl’exempledupasteurKoch etquitte`rentalorslasalleensignedeprotestation. Quelquessemainesplustard[Someweekslater],lepasteurMartinNiemo¨ller appela les pasteurs hostiles a` ces mesures antise´mites a` s’unir au sein d’une nouvelle organisation, le ‘Pfarrernotbund’, la ‘Ligue d’urgence des pasteurs’, qui respecteraitlesprincipesdetole´rancee´nonce´sparlaBibleetlaprofessionde foire´formatrice. [...] In(11),en1932marksa‘discoursepop’,i.e.,theelaborationofthestoryofthe previousresistancenetworkisclosedoff,andanewsub-topicofthemaintopicof thewholetextisintroduced,thesetting-upofthegroup‘theGermanChristians’. Similarly, en septembre 1933 also introduces a new topic, the ‘brown synod’, which maybelinkedtothepreviousonebyanarrationrelation,thusmarkingadiscourse pop. At the beginning of the last paragraph, quelques semaines plus tard closes the story of the brown synod and marks another discourse pop with the introduction ofthenewtopicofthesetting-upoftheorganization‘Pfarrernotbund’. What is clear from such observations, is that in the IP-Adj position, LAs play a prominent role at the discourse structure level, and this is not limited to the fact that the localisation extends over the sentence. The role of topic introducer is at least as important as the localisation itself. Of course, localisation still occurs, anditgenerallydistributesovertheconstituentsofthesegmentdominatedbythe topic, as observed in studies on discourse frames described above. However, as shownbyLeDraoulecandPe´ry-Woodley(2003),theboundariesofaframe,when consideredonlyinitslocalisationdimension,canbe‘fuzzy’,whiletheboundaries ofadiscoursesegmentunderagiventopicarealwaysclear.Thisisillustratedagain inexample(11)bythefactthatevenifthewholesegmentelaboratesthetopicof theformationoftheGermanChristiansgroup,notalleventualitiesdescribedthere are actually located in 1932. In fact, Hitler’s coming to power happened in 1933, thereforethecreationoftheChurchoftheReichdidnotoccurin1932.Inmany cases,localisationisfuzzyasthediscoursedoesnotmarkexplicitlywhetheragiven eventuality,althoughclearlyinthesegmentdominatedbythetopicintroducedby the LA, is located or not by the LA. Let us recall what Le Draoulec and Pe´ry- Woodley (2003: 138–139) themselves write about this phenomenon, comparing two segments elaborating the same topic, Hitler’s putsch and its consequences, whichare: reports of the same episode from separate sources (similar in terms of chronological organisation).7 They all turn out to exhibit the same kind of fuzziness,asillustratedin(12)and(13):8 7 Yahoo! Encyclope´die-Adolphe Hitler (http://fr.encyclopedia.yahoo.com/articles/ni/ ni 2367 p0.html) for (12); L’Allemagne nazie (course material) (http://perso.club- internet.fr/erra/GVIDAL/nazisme.html)for(13). 8 Wehavechangedtheoriginalexamplenumbering. 182