the main way in which development markers differ from markers of relations between propositions, which are primarily sequential. Development marking is a kind of evaluative expression, in which the
speaker indicates something in which he is particularly interested §2.1.3. Development has conceptual as well as linguistic signals—the ancient art of rhetoric dealt with them—but I am not aware of any
studies of conceptual signals of development marking, nor of any typology of conceptual reasons for development marking.
Since this is a treatment of thematicity, it naturally focuses on the high-level operations of knowledge management and especially of attention management. A few words can be said here about the sequential
local aspects of attention management, in which the speaker assists addressees by giving them step-by- step “instructions” for their construction of a mental representation Langacker 2001a:151. On can draw
a parallel with the assembly instructions that come with an unassembled piece of furniture, which are discardable once the piece is fully assembled Dooley 2005. Specifically, for each concept, the speaker
indicates whether he expects the addressee to be currently consciousness of it or not §2.4.1, what its information structure role is, and where in the addressee’s current mental representation it is intended to
connect. Attention management relates primarily to paragraph-internal micro-levels §2.6.2.
The linguistic expression of this kind of instruction is called
INFORMATION STRUCTURE
Lambrecht 1994. Its formal signals are conditioned by cognitive statuses for individual concepts, such as activation
and identification §2.4.1. This can be seen in line 06 of Churchill’s speech: Other key positions were filled yesterday. The sentence topic other key positions is in partitive contrast with its conceptual “sister”
a war cabinet of line 04, and the comment were filled yesterday contrasts with in one single day of line 05, the day before ‘yesterday’.
40
Line 06, then, is a double-contrast sentence Dooley and Levinsohn 2001:72, in which both topic and comment contrast with corresponding elements that are active.
Languages differ greatly in the frequency with which a particular marked information structure is used— that is, in the discourse conditions of its use. Koiné Greek, for example, typically has a high index for
argument focus. When Greek is translated into a language such as English with a very low index for this kind of markedness, and if the translation comes out sounding like natural English, there will be many
places where the English will leave implicit certain discourse functions that are signalled explicitly in the Greek Dooley 2005. A similar situation holds between marked topics and points of departure in German
as compared with English: the index for German is significantly higher Doherty 2005. We look at this situation again in §4.1.
2.3.3 Closure
Of the two closure functions,
SIGNALLING THE END
of a discourse unit in oral texts usually involves intonational cues, such as “a falling intonation and slowing of the speech tempo finally lapsing into
silence” Wald 1983:108. There are graphic signals as well, such a line of text which goes only part of the way across the page. Formal linguistic signals might include a summary or other element that
typically occurs in final position in a unit. Signals of the end are often inferred from signals of consolidation, hence become general signals of closure.
As a rule, the
CONSOLIDATION
of the content of a discourse unit takes place after its development is complete, although add-ons can prolong a unit after a potential close. As already noted, this happens in
Matthew 27:61 of Example text 6: “Mary Magdalene was there, and the other Mary, sitting opposite the grave.”
Consolidation can have different formal signals. A common one, nominalizing a discourse unit, is direct evidence of the conceptual operation of
REIFICATION
, which refers to “chunking” the unit as a referent as a step in its storage and its possible use as a component in other structures §2.2.1. In
40
The chronology that this speech refers to is evidently: line 01: on Friday evening: Friday, 10 May 1940
line 05: in one single day: Saturday, 11 May 1940 line 06: yesterday:
Sunday, 12
May 1940
line 12: today: Monday,
13 May
1940.
Churchill’s speech Appendix A, the nominal expression the steps taken in line 14 reifies the entire first part of the speech and signals its consolidation. The speech as a whole is consolidated in the short final
section, lines 33–35, using the reifying mention of my task line 33. Line 52 of “The train ride” Appendix C uses reification to close the episode of the journey to Omaha: it was an experience that we
will not soon forget. The following examples of reification are from Mozambican Bantu languages:
•
This is how the story of Mister Lion with his daughter and Hare ended Ekoti;
•
Then this story runs out here. I don’t take it any further. I end it here Lolo;
•
Here it’s the end of our story Makonde;
•
The story ended. It was short Makua;
•
Because of this, this happening teaches us that when we want to get anything we have to begin by asking questions. This happened in the Village of Mahari, District of Namuno in this Province of
Cabo Delgado Meeto; •
His story ends there Sena.
These are all summary comments at the end of discourse units Dooley and Levinsohn 2001:19. The expression my task from Churchill’s speech illustrates another consolidation mechanism: the
REPETITION
of elements at the end that were mentioned in the beginning. The expression my task line 33 harks back to the mission to form a new administration that Churchill received from his sovereign
line 01. Similarly, his appeal Come then, let us go forward together line 35 corresponds to the initially-mentioned requirement that this [new government; RAD] should be conceived on the broadest
possible basis and that it should include all parties line 02.
Lincoln uses repetition in the closure of the Gettysburg Address Example text 10. In his last sentence, cited here, he returned to several concepts that he mentioned in the beginning: It is rather for us
to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here
highly resolve that these dead have not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from
the earth. The repetition of initial elements at the end of the text can generally be taken simply as a closure mechanism; probably less often do they specifically reflect chiasmus as a literary device.
41
Narratives of Bantu languages of Mozambique give us a fuller list of formal signals of consolidation: •
reification of large sections of preceding text •
a summary of preceding text •
repetition of elements that occurred near the beginning of the text •
words which anounce the end: ‘finish’, ‘end’, ‘all’ •
a comment whose topic was the entire text: ‘this teaches us’, ‘this happened’
• a conclusion, moral, or appeal which is based on the text as a whole
• the removal of a topic participant from the scene
• a return to the encoding situation: ‘I don’t tell any more’, ‘this was told by Y’
The removal of a topic participant from the scene is illustrated in line 60b of Example text 6, where it is said that Joseph of Arimathea “went away” after closing the tomb. By means of this, Matthew apparently
closes the schema, then gives an add-on about the women line 61. Other illustrations of consolidation and closure are discussed in relation to Example text 10.
Consolidation is a discourse-level realization of pragmatic
PRESUPPOSING
: the speaker assumes that the addressee will accept certain information without challenge, without a specific assertion, since it is
already stored in her mental representation Givón 1984:256; 1989:135. Consolidated or presupposed
41
Cf. Deibler’s 1998:35 comment on the structure of Romans: “Although many have said, or assumed, that coherence within the epistle is mainly shown by the concept of righteousness by faith, this is hardly true. This topic
occurs only in certain places in the expository section. Rather, it is the overall chiastic structure that best demonstrates coherence.”
head: XXX steps: YYY
head: ZZZ consolidation
- step 2 - step 1
material is thus what is already in conceptual storage, rather than being under conceptual development Lambrecht 1994:52, 77. Material can generally be taken as consolidated and presupposed when its
development is complete for current purposes. Reifying a discourse unit is a limiting case of consolidation, in the sense that definite reference is a limiting case of presupposing cf. Lambrecht
1994:77f., Givón 1989:206. Subordination is another common signal of presupposing, so that tail-head linkage in discourse Dooley and Levinsohn 2001:7 is a signal that the content of the previous micro-
level step has been presupposed and consolidated and is now available as supporting the assertion of something else.
42
Similarly, once a discourse unit has been consolidated, it is then available for use in a presuppositional role in subsequent discourse, such as topic, point of departure, or discourse theme ‘this
happening teaches us that when we want to get anything we have to begin by asking questions’, from a text in Meeto, Bantu, Mozambique. Consolidation is thus linked to topicality: via consolidation the
discourse unit becomes available for subsequent use as a higher-level topic.
Commonly, an apparently complete text turns out to function as a step in the production of a higher- level unit. This happens in fables when a moral is “tacked on” at the end of a narrative. If the moral is not
elaborated as a further structure, it can simply be an add-on to the schema of the narrative §2.2.4. But if it is elaborated structurally, then the narrative space the story is recast, via consolidation, as a step in an
argumentational or hortatory space whose head is the moral. Diagrammatically, as shown in Figure 10, we have:
Figure 10: Recasting a space, via consolidation, as a step in a higher-level schema
A nonfictional example is “The train ride” Appendix C: the major part of the text has a provisional goal theme for the family to reach Omaha by train; its final macropredication is that the goal was reached but
unexpectedly difficult. The narrative space, once consolidated as pragmatically presupposed, is then used as a reason to support a further proposition: railway travel is unacceptable for me line 65. Consolidating
and recasting the space of a “whole” text as a step in a subsequently manifest schema appears to be quite common in actual language use. In the two examples just cited, a narrative space is embedded in a
subsequent hortatory space fable with a moral and argumentational space the narrator’s decision not to ride a train in the US again. Fables with a “tacked-on” moral and “The train ride” are examples of what
will be called “just-in-time” coherence in §3.5.4.
2.4 Cognitive statuses and coding of referents
