An Introduction to Relational Network Theory - History, Principles, and Descriptive Applications - Adolfo Martín García

An Introduction to Relational Network Theory - History, Principles, and Descriptive Applications - Adolfo Martín García

7. An RNT Approach to Participants in English Texts

An Introduction to Relational Network Theory - History, Principles, and Descriptive Applications - Adolfo Martín García

Adolfo Martín García [+-]
Institute of Cognitive and Translational Neuroscience (INCYT, Argentina) and the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET, Argentina)
Adolfo M. García is Scientific Director of the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology and Neuroscience at the Institute of Cognitive and Translational Neuroscience (INCYT, Argentina) and Researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET, Argentina).

Description

This chapter offers a relational network perspective on pronoun distribution in narration. Although countless nouns can be referred to by only a few (third-person) pronouns, the latter rarely produce ambiguity in discourse, even when the actions of varied participants are described. In narrative, a participant is usually named at first appearance, while pronouns are used for subsequent appearances. Reoccurrence of a name may respond to text length, discourse considerations (e.g., providing new information, establishing a thematic participant), and semantic constraints (e.g., avoiding ambiguity). Following Gleason’s stratificational approach to pronoun occurrence in a folktale in Kâte (a Papuan language), we present a network-based description of noun, pronoun, or zero realization for participant reference in a comparable English text. The chapter shows that discourse-level phenomena in typologically different languages can be characterized using similar resources from Relational Network Theory.

Notify A Colleague

Citation

García, Adolfo. 7. An RNT Approach to Participants in English Texts. An Introduction to Relational Network Theory - History, Principles, and Descriptive Applications. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 135-155 May 2017. ISBN 9781781792612. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=26604. Date accessed: 09 Dec 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.26604. May 2017

Dublin Core Metadata