1977. Vienna - Structuring Discourse Connectors in Dialogue.

by C. George SANDULESCU, Stockholm.

(Paper given at the Twelfth International Congress of Linguists, Vienna, 29 August to 2 September 1977, within Section Seven, entitled Textlinguistik : Dialog. )

                                                ABSTRACT

        Underlying all discourse patterning are several types of discourse connectors, either concrete or abstract in their nature. They are closely related to and dependent on discourse typology (in the Charles Morris sense).

        Dialogue is characterized by the systematic occurrence of participant boundary, as defined in Sandulescu (Oslo, April 1975). Discourse presuppositions (cf. Åbo / Turku, November 1975) and Gricean conversational   implicatures contribute to outlining a covert matrix of the abstract connector K.

        The interplay between the overt and covert matrices (cf. Texas, April 1976) provides in the last analysis the complex structuring of discourse from the viewpoint of both Form and Matter. For a correct understanding of discourse mapping in both production and perception  -- as an operation endowed with both psychological and communicative reality  --  the model must be supplemented with a subtheory of discourse heads (cf. New York, March 1976) and a subtheory of non-standard conjoiners (cf. Helsinki, October 1976).

        The model attempts to give heterogeneous information a homogeneous treatment within a semiotic frame of reference grounded on Peirce and Morris. It is advanced that the far-reaching implications of Grice's Co-operative Principle and Implicatures, and Lakoff's Conversational Postulates are far from being exhausted. Unostentatious violations of Gricean maxims are analised.

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