An exploratory data-driven analysis for describing discourse organization

Lydia-Mai Ho-Dac (1)

1 CLLE-ERSS - Cognition, Langues, Langage, Ergonomie

This paper focuses on the role of elements placed in the initial position i.e. elements fulfilling the role of Theme in discourse organisation. The large-scale corpus study proposes a new methodology based on automatic tagging and quantitative analysis of the discourse roles of sentence-initial elements. The theoretically-based hypothesis is that initial position has an important function in discourse organisation. Initial position, defined as the starting point of the message, is composed of the first elements that the reader perceives. The analysis of the distribution and the use in discourse of these elements gives us a great overview on the textual organisation of different types of text.

Mots clés: discourse organisation; data-driven approach; Theme position; Sentence-initial elements

Domaines: Linguistique

Lydia-Mai Ho-Dac. An exploratory data-driven analysis for describing discourse organization. Almela Moisés and Aquilino Sánchez. A Mosaic of Corpus Linguistics. Selected Approaches, Frankfurt/Berlin: Peter Lang, pp.79--100, 2010, Studien zur romanischen Sprachwissenschaft und interkulturellen Kommunikation, 978-3-631-58789-8 hb. ⟨hal-00976346⟩