French adverb d'abord and
Discourse Structure
Myriam Bras1
Université de Toulouse, CLLE-ERSS, UMR 5263 CNRS &
Université Toulouse-Le Mirail
1.
Introduction
This work is part of a broader study of linguistic units that have an
impact on Discourse Structure, such as puis (Bras et. al 2001) or and
(Gómez-Txurruka 2003), both markers of coordinating relations. To pay
homage to Isabel Gómez-Txurruka, we have chosen the adverb d’abord
which has an affinity with subordinating relations. Our first idea is that
d’abord could be a subordinator, just as and is a coordinator, as Isabel
showed in her very stimulating work.
Among the adverbs of French, d’abord is described as a conjunctive
sentence adverb, because its function is to establish a link between two
discourse units (Guimier 1996, p.125). It is part of the sub-class of
enumerative adverbs, sometimes also called ordering adverbs. Their
function is to organize and structure discourse (Molinier and Lévrier 2000,
p.57). Therefore, d’abord is often mentioned in the literature devoted to
surface markers of enumeration. It is analyzed as a ‘marker of linear
integration’ by Turco and Coltier (1988), as a ‘temporal organizer’ by
Adam and Revaz (1989), and taken into account in fine descriptions of
enumerative structures (Péry-Woodley 2000), (Luc 2001), (Porhiel 2007).
These studies on enumerations are also useful for data mining applications
(Jackiewicz 2002), (Jackiewicz and Minel 2003). These approaches take a
macroscopic point of view on texts and analyze their organization on the
basis of surface markers. D’abord is also analyzed in contrastive studies
(Dalmas 1998), (Aoki 1999) that better reveal its general semantic content.
We propose to analyze the role of d’abord in interaction with other
elements at the semantic level, in a more semantic, bottom-up fashion. For
1
Many thanks to Laurent Prévot for the discussions on the formal proposal. I’m glad to
associate him to this homage to Isabel.
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that purpose, we chose the theoretical framework of SDRT that is specially
designed to handle semantic and pragmatic information and their impact on
discourse structure.
2.
Theoretical framework to account for Discourse
Structure
2.1.
General principles of SDRT
Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (Asher 1993, Asher and
Lascarides 2003) is a formal theory of discourse. It follows on from
Discourse Representation Theory (Kamp and Reyle 1993) to which it
added the crucial notion of Discourse Structure by taking Discourse
Relations into account. SDRT makes use of semantic information, world
knowledge and pragmatic principles. It is actually a theory of the
semantics-pragmatics interface.
SDRT representations for discourses are called Segmented Discourse
Representation Structures. An SDRS is a recursive structure consisting of
labeled elementary DRSs (i.e., Discourse Representation Structures from
DRT) representing a single clause and labeled sub-SDRSs linked together
by Discourse Relations, such as Narration, Elaboration, Background,
Continuation, Result, Contrast, Explanation… These elementary DRSs and
the sub-SDRSs corresponding to complex discourse segments are the
constituents of the SDRS representing the discourse. The elementary
constituents describe eventualities, i.e. events or states.
Each constituent is associated to a label. Labels are used to distinguish
different occurrences of constituents : a given proposition or semantic
content may have many different uses in different discourse contexts, and
each occurrence of a constituent in a discourse structure will be affected
differently, at least in principle, by the discourse context. Another way to
think of these labels is as discourse referents for speech acts. To keep the
whole theory within a first order setting, discourse relations take labels as
arguments.
We’ll use Greek letters (α, β,…) as variables to represent labels, which
serve as markers for speech acts, Kα to represent the constituent with the
label α and eα (eβ,…) to represent the main eventuality they describe in our
formulation of the axioms for inferring and interpreting the various
discourse relations linking constituents.
To build an SDRS for a discourse, SDRT offers a “Glue Logic” and an
“Update Function” that together determine a new SDRS for a given SDRS
K0 representing the context (the discourse already processed) and a new
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constituent α representing the information to be integrated into that
context. The Glue Logic exploits the framework of `Commonsense
Entailment' (Asher and Morreau 1991), a logic that exploits both
monotonic (→) and non-monotonic (>) conditionals. In Commonsense
Entailment (CE), φ > ψ means “if φ then normally ψ”. From φ > ψ and φ,
CE entails ψ “by default”, that is, defeasibly, in the absence of further
information regarding the truth value of ψ2.
Asher and Lascarides (2003) develop the glue logic within the context
of a description logic that makes extensive use of underspecification.
While we will not go into details here, we will adopt their convention
where predicates like discourse relation predicates that customarily would
be understood as denoting two place relations will in the glue logic be
represented as three place predicates, the third argument being reserved for
the label of the smallest SDRS containing the formula involving the
discourse relation.
As far as the inferential tasks are concerned, the Glue Logic contains:
(i) definitions characterizing which constituents in the contextually given
SDRS are open for attaching β and (ii) axioms detailing what discourse
relations may be inferred, on the basis of a variety of linguistic and
common knowledge clues, in order to actualize the attachment of α to
some open constituent of the contextually given SDRS. SDRT also
contains axioms specifying the semantic effects of those discourse
relations, which can be considered as meaning postulates.
The Update Function is in charge of the proper hierarchization of the
structure and of the resolution of the possibly existing underspecifications
(e.g., anaphora and ellipses).
2.2. Discourse Relations
SDRT distinguishes coordinating relations from subordinating ones.
Narration and Continuation are coordinating relations, while Explanation
and Elaboration are subordinating ones. Only subordinating relations may
introduce complex SDRSs, in other words, the Update Function may
gather several SDRSs into a new complex SDRS only if these constituents
are attached to the same site with the same subordinating relation. Asher
and Vieu (2005) provide criteria within SDRT for coordinating and
2
From φ > ψ, φ and ┐ψ, CE does not entails ψ, but ┐ψ. From φ > ψ, ζ > ┐ψ, φ → ζ, φ
and ζ, ψ (and not ┐ψ) is inferred (Penguin principle). From φ > ψ, ζ > ┐ψ, φ and ζ, if φ
and ζ are logically independent, CE cannot conclude ψ nor ┐ψ (Nixon Diamond).
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subordinating relations. They also postulate that some relations like Result,
though in most cases a coordinating discourse relation, may in certain
contexts be subordinating instead.
In SDRT several discourse relations may simultaneously link the same
two constituents, thus distinguishing SDRT from other discourse
approaches, notably RST (Mann and Thompson 1988). SDRT also allows
for multiple ‘’superordinate’’ parents of a constituent, which means that
SDRSs must be graphs and cannot be represented completely faithfully as
trees.
We now describe the semantics of one discourse relation of each kind:
a coordinating one, Narration, and a subordinating one, Elaboration.
Narration
Narration encodes the principle ‘textual order matches real order’, that
is to say the Gricean pragmatic maxim of manner “be orderly”. When two
clauses are linked by Narration, they describe in sequence two successive
events `of the same story'. Narration can be non-monotonically inferred if
the predicate Occasion holds between the clauses to be related. This is
what the following axiom expresses (λ represents the smallest constituent
that will end up containing the formula that links α and β once the SDRS
for the discourse is constructed and fully specified):
Narration
(? (α, β, λ) ∧ Occasion(α, β)) > Narration (α, β, λ)
Occasion holds if the two clauses contain clues indicating that their
main eventualities are of types that may belong to ‘the same story’.
Occasion is a predicate of SDRT’s glue logic whose semantics involves
those linguistic elements available in the logical forms of the discourse
constituents that are relevant to inferring Narration. It exploits lexical
semantics and shared knowledge in terms of scripts connecting certain
event types in sequences in which one event ‘naturally’ leads to the next.
For instance, (1) is an example of Narration where Occasion holds, since
there is clearly in the shared knowledge a script in which, before entering,
people knock at the door.
(1) Pierre frappa à la porte. Il entra. (Peter knocked at the door. He
entered.)
We now turn to another way of inferring Narration, with a monotonic
inference this time. This is when a specific discourse marker is present. In
(Bras et. al 2001), it was shown that French adverb puis is such a marker.
Its role in SDRT is described by the following axiom:
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Narration_Puis
(? (α, β, λ) ∧ puis(β)) → Narration (α, β, λ)
Last, Narration can be inferred between α and β from information
relevant to subsequent constituents, one of which is linked to β. An
example motivating this sort of rule occurs with a simple discourse like
(2):
(2) Marie a ouvert la boite. Elle a pris un bonbon. Puis elle a refermé la
boite sans faire de bruit. (Mary opened the box. She took a sweet. Then
she closed the box again without a sound.)
The last two clauses are forcibly linked by Narration because of the
discourse connective puis. But this discursive link leads us to interpret the
link between the first and the second clause as one of Narration. It is this
sort of situation that the following axiom on Subsequent Relations, is
designed to address:
Subsequent Relations
(? (α, β, λ) ∧ R(β, γ , λ’) > R(α, β, λ)
where R is any discourse relation used in SDRT.
Let us now examine the two major semantics effects of Narration on
discourse content. The first one aims at capturing the fact that narratives
must cohere in the sense that the events linked together by Narration must
fit consistently and without significant spatio-temporal gaps as expressed
in (Asher et al 1995). This doesn't mean that there should be no interval of
time between the two events eα and eβ, but rather that no relevant event, i.e.
no event interfering with eα or eβ, can occur during this interval. This
constraint is formalized in (Bras et al. 2001) by the following axiom
rewritten in the notation of Asher and Lascarides (2003):
Spatio-temporal consequence of Narration
ΦNarration(α, β) ⇒ eα ⊃⊂ (post(eα) ∩ pre(eβ)) ⊃⊂ eβ
This axiom expresses a meaning constraint on Narration. It uses not
the language of glue logic itself but the base logic in which the semantics
of SDRSs is given. This language is much richer than the glue logic and
can appeal to notions that are used traditionally in semantics, including the
relation of abutment (⊃⊂) used in DRT and the functions poststate and
prestate – the poststate of eα, post(eα), is a state that begins at the end of
and persists indefinitely into the future, while the prestate of eα is the state
that terminates at the beginning of eα and extends indefinitely far back into
the past.
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The right hand side of the axiom expresses that eα abuts post(eα) ∩
pre(eβ) which in turn abuts eβ. It entails in addition that there is no
intervening event whose propositional content interferes with neither that
of post(eα) nor that of pre(eβ), i.e., no `relevant' event that ends post(eα)
before eβ starts or prevents pre(eβ) from holding right after eα has ended.
From this axiom and uncontroversial ordering assumptions on events and
their pre- and post-states (Event(e) → pre(e) ⊃⊂ e ⊃⊂ post(e)), we can
deduce a relation of temporal precedence between the events eα and eβ: eα
< eβ, which was the original temporal effect of Narration in (Lascarides
and Asher 1993).
Narration has a second semantic effect. It is motivated by the intuition
that the elements of a Narration must belong to the `same story', i.e., they
must have some common subject matter. To this effect, the axiom below
expresses that the constituents connected together by Narration must have
a common Discourse Topic. A Discourse Topic is a simple constituent
which is contingent (i.e., not vacuous, not contradictory, not tautologic),
and subsumes the constituents of a sub-SDRS, in this case, the constituents
linked by Narration.
Topic constraint on Narration
ΦNarration(α, β) ⇒ ¬ (Kα  Kβ)
where  is a merge operation defined in Asher (1993) for defining topics.
The axiom states that the topic of α and β cannot be vacuous, which we
formalize in SDRT as a necessary truth.
If the Discourse Topic is not already present in the context, the
introduction of a new Discourse Topic – actually linguistically implicit-- is
required. It has to be added to the SDRS during the update. This will be
ensured by the update function of SDRT, and more precisely by the
following constraint (Asher and Lascarides 2003, p.219) where ⇓ denotes
a ‘topic’ relation and it’s subordinating:
Narration (α, β, λ) → ∃ δ ((δ = α  β) ∧ ∃ γ (⇓ (δ, λ, γ)))
Actually, “Topic constraint on Narration” above and the rules of glue
logic imply that Narration can be non-monotonically inferred only if such a
topic exists or can be built.
To illustrate these structural effects, let us consider the simple example
(1) again. This small text clearly tells the story of Peter arriving at
someone's home or office. Such a Discourse Topic is inferred only
because the two sentences are textually linked together and in this order.
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Elaboration
Elaboration is a subordinating relation. It introduces a complex
constituent, that is, a SDRS that embeds other SDRSs. Let us illustrate this
discourse relation with a self-made example inspired by the well-known
Cervin example of (Kamp and Rohrer 1983) that we will analyse later on:
(3) (a) Mixel a escaladé le Vignemale hier matin. (b) Il est parti du refuge
des Oulettes au lever du jour. (c) Ensuite il a passé la Hourquette
d’Ossoue, (d) puis il est arrivé au sommet vers midi. (e) Il était très
heureux d’avoir enfin gravi ce sommet pyrénéen mythique.
In (3), the label for the first constituent πa representing sentence (a) is
elaborated by the labels of the constituents πb, πc, πd representing,
respectively, sentences (b), (c) and (d). In the graphical representations of
the Discourse Structure of (3) in Figure 1, πA is the label for the complex
constituent embedding the elaborating constituents. We’ll adopt the
representation on the right, which is the more standard one (the left one
actually mixes DRS like notations and trees representing the discourse
structure):
Figure 1: Graphical representations of the SDRS for (3).
As Elaboration is a subordinating relation, Elaboration(πa, πA) entails
⇓(πa, πA) which gives to πa the status of an explicit Discourse Topic. We
now explain how this SDRS is built, because it will be useful for the
analysis of examples with d’abord.
Elaboration can be non-monotonically inferred if there is a
subsumption relation between the types of the eventualities involved:
( ?(α, β, λ) ∧ Top(σ , α ) ∧ SubtypeD(σ, β,α)) >
Elaboration3
Elaboration(α, β, λ)
3
We simplify the axiom of Asher and Lascarides (2003) as we will not consider different
aspectual classes.
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SubtypeD means that the type of the second eventuality is a subtype of
the first one in the lexical semantics of the predicates or by some piece of
shared knowledge. For (3), thanks to world knowledge about mountain
climbing in the Pyrénées and lexical semantics of motion verbs escalader
and partir we can infer SubtypeD. So the Elaboration Axiom applies and
leads us to infer Elaboration(πa, πb) and build the first SDRS whose
structure is graphically represented in Figure 2 (see the first step on the left
handside). π0 is the local structure in which the Elaboration(πa, πb)
condition will be embedded and corresponds to the third argument of
Elaboration (λ) in the axiom above.
Next, the label for the third constituent of this small discourse, πc, has
to be attached, πb is an available attachment site, and we are in presence of
ensuite that triggers Narration4, following an axiom similar to
Narration_Puis above. So we infer Narration(πb, πc). Then we apply the
axiom of Distributivity, meaning “that if you attach something to a
constituent that is part of an Elaboration, what you attach should also be
part of the Elaboration” (Asher and Lascarides 2003 p.207). The axiom
Complex Constituents (ibid. p. 162) will lead us to build the complex
constituent πA which as a whole elaborates πa : Elaboration(πa, πA, π0), as
the middle graph in Figure 2 shows. Finally, we apply Narration_Puis to
infer Narration(πc, πd) and the axioms Distributivity and Complex
Constituents to build the discourse structure represented on the right of
Figure 2.
Figure 2: Steps of the construction of the SDRS for (3).
4
We have not proved it as we did for puis in (Bras et al. 2001), but we can reasonably
assume it.
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Let us analyze another typical example of Elaboration from (Kamp and
Rohrer 1983) in (4):
(4) (a) L’été de cette année-là vit plusieurs changements dans la vie de nos
héros. (b) François épousa Adèle, (c) Jean-Louis partit pour le Brésil
et (d) Paul s’acheta une maison à la campagne.
As for (3), the label for the first constituent πa representing sentence (a)
is elaborated by the labels of the constituents πb, πc, πd representing,
respectively, sentences (b), (c) and (d). The final Discourse Structure is
the same than the one represented above but the lower nodes are connected
with Continuation relations instead of Narration. First, by lexical semantics
that tells us that marrying events, leaving events and buying events are
changes, we infer SubtypeD and Elaboration (πa, πb) and Elaboration
(πa, πc).
The axiom of Distributivity says that if we have inferred
Elaboration(πa, πb, π0) we may attach πc to πb only if we can also infer
Elaboration(πa, πc, π0), which is the case. The discourse relation that holds
between πb and πc is Continuation, a coordinating relation with no
temporal consequences. The following theorem adapted from (Prévot
2004, p. 60) states this explicitly:
(?(β, δ, λ) ∧ Elaboration(α, β, λ) ∧ Elaboration(α, δ, λ)) →
Continuation(β, δ, λ)
Finally, Complex Constituents will lead us to build the complex
constituent πA which as a whole elaborates πa: Elaboration(πa, πA, π0).
Other ways of inferring Elaboration
We now turn to the original Cervin example of (Kamp and Rohrer
1983) to illustrate an other way of inferring Elaboration5.
(5) (a) L’année dernière Jean escalada le Cervin. (b) Le premier jour, (c)
il monta jusqu’à la cabane H. (d) Il y passa la nuit. (e) Ensuite il
attaqua la face nord. (f) Douze heures plus tard, il arriva au sommet.
5
There is another way of inferring Elaboration. For sentences like John promised Mary
that he would phone her or John made a promise to Mary that he would phone her, where
the promise is elaborated, by an axiom called Post Head Sentential Complements (Asher
and Lascarides 2003, p. 285). We don’t describe it here because it is not useful for the
analysis of d’abord.
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In (Vieu et. al, 2005), we analyze Temporal Locating Adverbials like
le premier jour or douze heures plus tard when they are dislocated to the
left of the sentence, i.e. when they are IP-Adj, as they stand in (5). They
play an important part in structuring discourse, by opening a temporal
frame in which not only the current sentence but also subsequent sentences
are gathered and their eventualities located, after the hypothesis of
discourse framing of M. Charolles (1997). We show that this role could be
expressed in SDRT by the introduction of a new topic. This new topic,
equivalent to “what happened on the first day” for (b) Le premier jour,
dominates all the constituents for the sentences in the scope of the frame
introducer, namely πc (il monta jusqu’à la cabane H.) and πd (Il y passa la
nuit). The temporal location contributed to this New Topic by the adverbial
distributes over each constituent subordinated to it, therefore locating the
going up event and the spending the night event in the first day.
We thus have Elaboration (πb’, πc) and Elaboration (πb’, πd).
Moreover, the semantic content of πd is a reliable clue indicating that the
temporal setting represented by πb has to be closed (the night ends up this
first day). This is the reason why the attachment of πe to πb’ is preferred.
This treatment of Temporal Locating Adverbials in IP-Adj position as New
Topic Introducers yields the following structure for (5).
Figure 3: SDRS for (5).
Spatio-temporal consequences of Elaboration
Elaboration has a semantic effect on discourse content, it implies that
the main eventuality of each elaborating constituent is part of that of the
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elaborated clause. This implies that there is a temporal inclusion between
them:
ΦElaboration(α, β) ⇒ Part-of(eβ,eα )
Part-of(eβ,eα) ⇒ eβ ⊆ eα
3.
Preliminary observations on d’abord
As mentioned in section 1, previous work on d’abord describes its role
as a conjunctive, which links its constituent with an antecedent constituent
in the previous discourse. The first intuition is that d’abord has something
to do with subordinate relations as it is a marker of the first step in a whole
process, at least in some of its uses.
To understand the role of d’abord in Elaborations, we take example (4)
and we introduce d’abord in initial position:
(6) (a) L’été de cette année-là vit plusieurs changements dans la vie de
nos héros. (b) D’abord François épousa Adèle, (c) Ensuite Jean-Louis
partit pour le Brésil, (d) puis Paul s’acheta une maison à la
campagne.
We could already infer Elaboration without d’abord, ensuite, puis in
(4), but here we have Narration instead of Continuation between the
elaborating constituents. The temporal order is not due to d’abord but to
the others temporal connectives ensuite and puis. They are necessary to
have a coherent discourse in presence of d’abord, on the other hand
d’abord could be removed. When d’abord is internal as in (7) below, it is
not useful to infer Elaboration either, and it can perfectly be removed, but
if it is present, the second marker, here puis, cannot be removed. This
observation may lead us to the conclusion that, on top of its own
constituent, d’abord waits for a second constituent to be coordinated.
(7) Laure et Maïlis se sont bien amusées cet après midi à Trento. Elles ont
d’abord fait les boutiques, puis elles sont allées manger des glaces.
Example (8) below is the Cervin example of (5) with d’abord in (b):
(8) (a) L’année dernière Jean escalada le Cervin. (b) D’abord, (c) il
monta jusqu’à la cabane H. (d) Il y passa la nuit. (e) Ensuite il attaqua
la face nord. (f) Douze heures plus tard, il arriva au sommet.
Left dislocated d’abord in (8) has a framing role, i.e. a New Topic
Introducer one: the natural interpretation is to group together the going up
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to the hut event and the spending the night event, thus getting a structure
like the one in Figure 3. But what is the semantic content of this New
Topic? D’abord does not convey a temporal location as location adverbials
do. Nevertheless, it seems to us that it says: “I’m going to explain what
happened first, be it one or more events”. It would not be the case with an
internal d’abord in (9), for which we have a linear flat structure under πA:
(9) (a) L’année dernière Jean escalada le Cervin. (c) Il monta d’abord
jusqu’à la cabane H. (d) Il y passa la nuit. (e) Ensuite il attaqua la face
nord. (f) Douze heures plus tard, il arriva au sommet.
This left dislocated position of d’abord is worth examining, in order to
understand better how discourse structure is revealed by linguistic clues. In
the following, we want to restrict ourselves to initial and left dislocated
d’abord. In the cases where the new topic introduced by a left dislocated
d’abord dominates only one constituent, we’ll consider that initial d’abord
and left dislocated d’abord are equivalent from the point of view of the
discourse structure.
A first study of the French adverb d’abord was done in the framework
of a project focusing on the discourse relation of Elaboration and its
linguistic clues (Bras and Le Draoulec 2007). We analyzed the uses of
d’abord in a corpus of short newspapers texts in order to determine
whether d’abord (without any restriction of position) was a reliable marker
of Elaboration. This led us to distinguish prototypical cases, in which a
discourse constituent is elaborated by the constituent introduced by
d’abord, from other cases, in which the d’abord constituent elaborates a
discourse topic that is not described explicitly by the preceding part of
discourse, or which is subordinated by another subordinating relation. In
this paper, we apply this first distinction to another corpus, taken from the
Frantext textual database. On the basis of the data description, we work out
a formal proposal in the SDRT framework.
4.
D’abord under Explicit Discourse Topic
4.1.
D’abord in temporal Elaborations
By ‘temporal Elaborations’, we mean ‘temporally ordered
Elaborations’ as the ones we have in (5), (8), (9), (7) or in (3), where an
event is elaborated by its sub-events, and where textual order matches
temporal order. In our corpus, that kind of example was not so frequent,
maybe because of the restriction to initial or left dislocated d’abord.
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Here is a typical example of temporal Elaboration found in our corpus:
(10) (a) Une campagne de dénigrement, trop systématique pour n'être pas
organisée, se déchaîna contre la personne même de Sélim. (b) Nos
ennemis de l'ombre, armés de la calomnie corrosive, faisaient feu de
tout bois. (c) D’abord on répandit le bruit absurde que Sélim était
alcoolique, alors qu'il était la sobriété même. (d) Puis on prétendit
partout que Sélim était stérile, c'est-à-dire maudit. (Michel de Grèce,
La nuit du sérail, 1982, p.373)
The sentence featuring d’abord elaborates the explicit topic described
in (a). We will ignore (b), which gives a background on (a). The first part
of (c) describes the spreading of an absurd rumor about Sélim, while (a)
describes the development of the smear campaign. We can reasonably
assume that subtypeD holds, then we can infer Elaboration(πa, πc). Next,
thanks to Puis, we infer Narration(πc, πd) and a structure sketched in Figure
4, thanks to Distributivity and Complex Constituents (ignoring the
complex structure under πc due to the Contrast relation introduced by alors
que).
Figure 4: Discourse Structure for (10).
Example (10) does not provide any evidence of the role of d’abord: we
could infer the same discourse structure in the absence of d’abord. Things
go differently for example (11), where the clauses (b) and (c) are
incomplete.
(11) (a) Nous marchâmes longtemps. (b) D’abord, en traversant la ville,
(c) ensuite, dans la steppe. (Andreï Makine, Le Testament français,
1995, p. 230)
It is impossible to remove d’abord from (11), and it seems that
d’abord is necessary to understand that the crossing the town event in (b)
is a proper part of the walking event in (a) that will be followed by another
proper part, that is foretold, so to say. We will not go into details to explain
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how the incomplete segments are completed and how d’abord and ensuite
take a part in that process, but we know that, to be able to solve the
ellipses, we need to attach the constituents πb and πc to πa. We hypothesize
that d’abord triggers the inference of the minimal subordinating relation:
⇓. Then, once the attachment is done and the failing material recovered, we
can rely on a subtype relation between respectively, a walking/crossing the
town event and a walking event, and a walking in the steppe event and a
walking event to infer Elaboration(πa, πb) and Elaboration(πa, πc) and then
get the same structure than for the example above.
Other cases of temporally ordered elaborations are illustrated by
example (12), where the explicit topic in (a) is an iterative event – getting
used to going out – that gets elaborated by two plural events in (b) and (c).
Here again, it is not the presence of d’abord but the presence of subtypeD
that leads us to infer Elaboration(πa, πb). But the discourse is better with
d’abord.
(12) Alors qu'à U. Bridge, pendant dix ans, Lol était si peu sortie, si peu
que son mari, parfois, l'y obligeait pour sa santé, (a) à S. Tahla elle
prit cette habitude d'elle-même. (b) D'abord, elle sortit de temps en
temps, pour faire des achats. (c) Puis elle sortit sans prétexte,
régulièrement, chaque jour. (d) Ces promenades lui devinrent très vite
indispensables. (Marguerite Duras, Le ravissement de Lol V. Stein,
1964, p.35)
To conclude concerning cases of temporally ordered elaborations, it is
not the presence of d’abord that leads to infer Elaboration, but a subtype
relation between the eventualities. Nevertheless, example (11) shows a first
evidence of the role of d’abord: it triggers, at least, the inference of ⇓ to
recover the elaborating event.
4.2.
D’abord in temporal Enumerations
We now turn to the cases of enumerations. The use of d’abord in
enumerations is very frequent, whatever the genre of the text, and this is
probably the most described use of d’abord. As we saw in section 1, there
is a rather extensive literature on enumerations and enumerative structures.
Adverbs like d’abord, puis, ensuite, premièrement, deuxièmement, d’une
part, d’autre part, etc., generally described as discourse organizers, play
the role of specific markers of the co-items of enumerative structures.
These structures start with specific starting-up segments, which are
identified not only by punctuational (:) and layout markers, but also by
their syntactic structure and their semantic features. For example,
90
quantified NP, with abstract nouns such as chose, élément, critère, aspect,
but also fait, cause, raison, etc… referring to plural entities may constitute
the starting-up segment of an enumerative structure (Péry-Woodley 2000,
Porhiel 2007). In these structures, d’abord marks the first item of the
enumeration list. The relation between the sentence featuring d’abord and
the starting-up segment may be a topic relation, or an Elaboration relation.
Let us have a closer look at this.
We start with enumerative structures whose starting-up includes an
event noun or a temporal noun. In (13) for example, we have a deverbal
event noun deux décisions in the starting-up (a). Then each decision is
described in (b) and (c) respectively, and textual order matches temporal
order:
(13) (a) Tout en roulant vers l'île Saint-Louis, il prit deux décisions. (b)
D’abord, il allait persuader sa mère de quitter Paris au moins
jusqu'au procès et de descendre dans le Midi, peut-être même en
Italie où elle ne risquerait rien. (c) Et puis, de son côté, il
abandonnerait la rue de Longchamp et louerait un studio meublé.
(Michel Droit, Le Retour, 1964, p. 298)
It is not clear whether we understand that the content of (b), deciding
his mother to leave Paris and so on, is a decision rather from lexical and
world knowledge or rather from the enumerative structure. It seems that it
is the second solution. If it is the case, it means that subtypeD doesn’t hold,
and that we cannot infer Elaboration by subtypeD. So we may want to infer
Elaboration(πa, πb) by means of the enumerative structure, but let’s
examine other cases, as (14) or (15).
(14) (a) Deux séries de découvertes ont joué, de ce point de vue, un rôle
particulièrement important. (b) D’abord, les procédés de
conservation consistant à enfermer des légumes, du poisson, des
fruits, de la viande, dans des boîtes de métal stérilisées (Nicolas
Appert, 1809). (c) Ensuite les techniques du froid (Charles Tellier,
1878) : en 1878, un navire frigorifique a pu apporter d'Argentine de
la viande […] (J.A. Lesourd, C. Gérard, Histoire économique XIXe
et XXe siècle, 1966, p. 357)
In (14), the starting-up includes both a temporal noun of period série
and an event noun découverte. The two series of discoveries are made
explicit by (b) the preservation processes of fresh food in tins and (c) the
refrigeration techniques. Human interpreters understand that both (b) and
(c) don’t describe the technique itself but its discovering: is it because the
enumerative structure makes it clear or because they know that a technique
has necessarily been discovered at a certain point? Probably both, but the
91
surface enumerative structure seems to be the stronger one, and here again,
it seems that we may want to infer Elaboration(πa, πb) and Elaboration(πa,
πc) thanks to the presence of the enumerative structure. Then if we have
this two step elaboration structure as for example (10), there seems to be a
difference between (10) and (14) considering the propositional content of
the Topic constituent. The topic of (14) is lighter than the one of (10), and
we think it should need to be enriched, as the New Topics for frame
adverbials do. Lastly, we must underline that, as for (13), the textual order
of the enumeration list matches the temporal order: ensuite marks
Narration and the semantic content, i.e. the dates in (14) confirms that
discursive temporal ordering. It is the same for example (15) below:
(15) J'ai senti d'un coup toutes sortes d'implications dormantes se
manifester, élever la voix, prendre le dessus. Or cela s'est fait en
deux temps. D'abord, marche arrière, retour à Rennes, remise de
mes pas dans leurs traces enfantines, adolescentes, etc. Cela
s'appelle communément reculer pour mieux sauter. Ensuite
identification brutale à celui de mes deux frères qui était le plus
éloigné de moi, qui était au monde l'homme auquel je me croyais le
plus étranger. (Michel Tournier, Les Météores, 1975, p. 37)
The starting-up segment includes a temporal noun, temps, meaning
phase here. Thus, with the help of d’abord we are inclined to interpret the
enumeration list as a temporally ordered one and ensuite can play its role
of Narration marker.
In the next section, we examine the difference with the cases where the
noun in the starting-up is more underspecified and has no temporal content.
We’ll see that unlike the cases we’ve just examined, the second ones don’t
imply a temporal order between the eventualities described in the
enumeration list. But let us first draw a preliminary conclusion on the
temporal enumerations:
i. it seems useful to detect the presence of enumerative structures,
relying on the form of the starting-up (quantified NP, etc.. ) and the
presence of a item introducer such as d’abord,
ii. it seems useful to detect that an enumerative structure is temporal,
relying on the semantic type of the N and its link with the verb6 in
6
Let us mention that some verbal constructions with support or “light” verbs and
quantified predicative nouns such as prendre deux décisions can be replaced by a
semantically equivalent construction with a “heavy” verb and a “light” noun such as
décider deux choses. Of course we should be able to identify both of them as temporal
starting-ups.
92
iii.
iv.
4.3.
the starting-up: in those cases, the coordinating relation under the
topic is Narration.
we need to infer a subordinating relation between the starting-up
and the enumeration items, but we’ve not chosen yet whether this
relation should be Elaboration or a weaker subordinating relation
such as ⇓ as suggested in the previous section,
the topic in the starting-up constituent has to be completed.
D’abord in non temporal Enumerations
In what we call non temporal enumerations, the starting-up segments
do not convey any temporal content, that is to say, no temporal nouns or
event nouns, nor events at all7, the nouns still are abstracts and much
lighter, in that they have a weak semantic content: critère, élément, chose,
aspect, point, etc. as in (16), (17) or (18):
(16) (a) La phrase s'y trouve définie selon deux critères. (b) D’abord, elle
est l'ensemble de mots (coïncidant éventuellement avec un seul) que
l'usager de naissance accepte comme complet, c'est-à-dire se
suffisant à lui-même et n'exigeant pas d'addition pour être
grammaticalement correct et sémantiquement interprétable. (c) Le
second critère est formel : un certain contour intonationnel indique
[…] (Claude Hagège, L'Homme de paroles : contribution linguistique
aux sciences humaines, 1985, p. 207)
(17) (a) L'hygiène dentaire […] se fonde sur plusieurs éléments. (b)
D’abord, il importe d'assurer un bon nettoyage des dents. (c) Puis il
faut savoir faire appel au dentiste dès que l’on constate quelque
chose d'anormal. (Encyclopédie médicale Quillet : nouvelle
encyclopédie pratique de médecine et d'hygiène, 1965, p. 179)
(18) Ce que j'aime dans ce jardin, c'est deux choses. D'abord, il y a la
statue; c'est dans un coin à l'écart, elle est toute pleine de vert-degris […] Après la statue, il y a l'allée sur le côté avec les branches
qui se rejoignent au-dessus des têtes, […] (Patrick Cauvin, Monsieur
Papa, 1976, p. 91)
These three examples are very different from the typical cases of
Elaboration presented in sections 2, 3, 4.1 and from the temporal
7
See previous note.
93
enumerations described in 4.2. Here, we have no temporal ordering among
the eventualities described in the subordinated constituents. In (16) and
(18) we have descriptions involving states, while in (17) we have a
prescription involving processes (plural iterative events) that may be
concomitant, and co-extensive with the state described in the topic. So we
could assume that enumerative structures trigger Elaboration and that the
temporal consequence of Elaboration holds, just because we can exploit
the possibility that the consequence of the part_of relation (eβ ⊆ eα)
includes the co-extensive case (eβ ≡t eα). Or we could assume that we have
a weaker subordinating relation, with no temporal consequences.
But, in both cases, we must account for the fact that the connective
puis in (17) does not trigger Narration, as the Narration_Puis axioms in
section 2 predicts it. In (Bras et. al. 2001) we had left enumerative puis out
of the scope of our study, that’s the reason why Narration_Puis only
accounts for narrative cases. Here the data show that the enumerative use
of puis comes when we are in a non temporal enumerative context. Let us
examine a last example, (19), for which the starting-up is not that of a
temporal enumeration: an aspect of a situation is not one of its part, but
only a point of view on it.
(19) [Il] veut que la situation de son pays soit connue en Amérique d'où
peut venir l'aide militaire décisive. (a) Cette situation, il la dépeint
sous deux aspects. (b) D’abord, il raconte l'histoire de juin 1940, du
Massilia, de son arrestation, de son procès. Non pour se disculper,
car cela, dit-il, ne concerne que lui et ses juges. Mais pour montrer
au monde, et d'abord aux Alliés américains, ce qu'est devenue la
justice française sous la férule de Vichy et de l'Allemagne nazie. (c)
Ensuite, à travers le récit de sa vie clandestine dans la France
occupée, il témoigne des sentiments profonds des français. (Pierre
Mendès-France, Oeuvres complètes, 1, S’engager, p. 341)
A first rapid reading may lead a human interpreter to infer that the
protagonist raconte (tells, in (b)) and témoigne (brings evidence, in (c)) at
the same time, by the same picture of the situation described in (a) and the
previous discourse. But if he goes into the details of the semantic content
of each segment (b) and (c), it becomes clear that what is told in (b) is
something that happen before the facts through which he brings evidences
in (c): the events of the second world war in France in june 1940 are
anterior to the occupation of France. So here, it is the semantic content,
together with world knowledge, that helps the interpreter to reorganize the
eventualities in a temporal sequence, not ensuite as a temporal connective.
94
To conclude, we can echo the item (ii) in the conclusion of 4.2 and say:
i.
ii.
iii.
it seems useful to detect that an enumerative structure is not
temporal, in those cases the coordinating relation under the topic is
Continuation, and we must block the temporal role of connectives
such as puis or ensuite,
non temporal enumerations do not provide more clues than the
temporal ones to help us determine the nature of the subordinating
relation that has to hold between the starting-up and the
enumeration items, but the minimalist assumption of ⇓ made in
section 4.1 seems to hold water,
for both kind of enumerations, d’abord is the first item in a series of
markers (d’abord, puis, ensuite …) and at least one other
constituent is expected: so d’abord requires a coordinate relation on
the right with an underspecified constituent.
Let us now come back to the question of whether the presence of an
enumerative structure should systematically trigger the inference of
Elaboration. It seems that a more exhaustive study of enumerative
structures should be necessary to conclude and we propose to leave that for
further investigations. This question of the limits of Elaboration in SDRT,
and of what exactly this discourse relation covers on top of the typical
cases of temporally ordered elaborations is discussed in the literature (see
Prévot 2004, 191-201) and this further investigation should ground on this
discussions. For now, we think that it is worth taking into account the
presence of a relation at the textual level, which does not systematically
goes with a relation at the semantic level. Asher and Lascarides (2003)
distinguish between content-level relations as Narration or Elaboration and
Text Structuring relations such as Contrast and Parallel. We propose the
introduction of a new Text Structuring Relation called Enumeration. The
inference of this relation is triggered by the identification of the beginning
of an enumerative structure, i.e. a starting-up segment and an item
introducer such as d’abord. Constraints on Enumeration should help us
control that the number of steps announced in the starting-up are well
realized in the following discourse.
4.4.
Proposal
All the partial conclusions we’ve drawn up to now in sections 3 and 4
lead to state that:
95
-
-
d’abord triggers, at least, the inference of ⇓ between an explicit
discourse topic (be it a single event that can be decomposed in
parts, a plural event, a plural abstract entity, an enumeration
starting-up),
d’abord waits for a second constituent to be coordinated, on top of
its own constituent.
So d’abord requires both subordination – above him in the discourse
structure (with a segment that lies before him in the text) – and
coordination – on its right at the same level in the structure (with a
segment that will come after it in the text). We express that by the
following axiom:
D’abord
( ?(α, β, λ) ∧ d’abord(β)) > ( ⇓(α,β,λ) ∧ ∃ γ ∃ R ∈ Coord
R (β,γ,λ))
In words, if β is to be attached to α in the local structure λ, and β
features d’abord, then we infer non monotonically that the relation
between α and β is a minimal subordinating relation ⇓ and that there
exists a constituent γ to be attached to β with a coordinating relation. As
Isabel Gómez-Txurruka showed in (Gómez-Txurruka 2003) for the
connective and, and requires a coordinating relation and the requirement of
a coordinating relation between two constituents implies the construction
of a Coordinated Discourse Topic. Our analysis of d’abord was much
inspired by her work on and. It is precisely the construction of this
coordinate discourse topic that will help us build a substantial topic for our
enumerations. We’ll have to examine precisely under which conditions the
Maximise Discourse Coherence principle of SDRT will be able to keep the
richer topic from this new CDT and α.
Now, for the enumerative structures, we can formulate the following
axiom:
Enumeration (?(α, β, λ) ∧ Enum-Starting-up(α) ∧ d’abord(β)) >
Enumeration(α,β,λ)
It expresses that in presence of an enumerative structure, signaled by a
starting-up expression (quantified NP, etc.. ) and the presence of an
introducer item such as d’abord, we infer non monotonically the text
structuring relation of Enumeration, which will also be triggered by other
markers of enumeration. Enumeration is subordinating, therefore it entails
⇓(α,β,λ).
We still have to account for the blocking of the temporal role of
96
connectives such as puis or ensuite in non temporal enumerations. But this
problem lays outside the scope of this paper devoted to d’abord, so we
leave it for further work.
With these axioms, for all the data analysed so far, where (a) describes
an Explicit Discourse Topic (be it an Enumeration starting-up or not) and
(b) is the constituent featuring d’abord, we infer either Elaboration(πa, πb)
when subtypeD holds, either Enumeration(πa, πb) when Enum-Startingup(πa) holds, either both relations. In the next section we analyze new data
bringing other subordinating discourse relations into play.
5.
D’abord requires a Discourse Topic
In the examples analyzed so far, the topic was always explicit. So we
could have inferred the right discourse relations with:
( ?(α, β, λ) ∧ d’abord(β)) > ⇓(α,β,λ)
We explained that the condition “∃γ∃R∈Coord R(β,γ,λ)” was there to
trigger the construction of a coordinated discourse topic and thus would
help us enrich the explicit topic. The usefulness of this condition will come
clearer in this section.
5.1.
D’abord with Result
Let us examine an example where the Discourse Topic is not explicit
at first sight:
(20) Elle a commencé à lui rendre visite le jour, puis elle s'est mise à
découcher. Elle dormait dans la chambre de bonne, dans un lit à une
place et tandis que la malheureuse luttait contre le sommeil, Simon
délirait sur la lutte des classes. Il lui demandait de lui raconter son
enfance et son adolescence en détail. Ça avait l'air de l'intéresser
beaucoup. (a)Une nuit, (b) il lui a demandé de faire la même chose
pour moi, (c) les récits d'enfance prolétarienne ne le lassaient jamais.
(d) D'abord, Mariella a fait une scène de jalousie, (e) puis elle a
répondu qu'il fallait qu'elle me demande l'autorisation de dévoiler
mon passé. (Evane Hanska, Les Amants foudroyés, 1984, p. 62)
If we examine the attachment of (d) Mariella exploded in a fit of
jealousy to (b) he asked her to do the same thing for me [=to tell him my
childhood], we are in the case of a Response relation along the terms of
97
Sandström (1993): the exploding in a fit of jealousy is a reaction or a
response to the asking in (b). In SDRT theses cases are treated like Result
cases as causeD(πb, πd) holds. Nevertheless, it is not the all story, in (d)
d’abord tells us that there is going to be a second reaction of the asking,
and this is what comes with (e), which can attach to (d) with Narration and
also to (b) with Result (from lexical semantics of the verb, we have
causeD(πb, πe). What we want to do intuitively is to group the two steps of
the reaction and say that this whole thing is linked to (b) by Result,
therefore we need to build this Implicit Discourse Topic. That was our idea
in (Bras and Le Draoulec 2007). With the proposal we do in this paper, this
grouping will occur under (b), and Result will be made a subordinating
relation along the lines of (Asher and Vieu 2005, p. 605). We get the
following structure, after simplification by MDC:
Figure 5: Discourse Structure for (20).
5.2.
D’abord with Explanation
We now turn to another subordinating relation: Explanation. The use
of d’abord to introduce the first argument of an explanation is very
frequent. (21) illustrates such a use:
(21) (a) Tu devrais épouser Laura, Jean-Pierre. (b) D’abord, elle est
adorable. (c) Ensuite, c'est une des plus riches héritières du Brésil.
(Romain Gary (Emile Ajar), Au-delà de cette limite votre ticket n'est
plus valable, 1975, p. 253)
Here the predicate causeD(πb, πa) holds and we infer Explanation(πa,
πb). We could also have (22) with an explicit topic grouping together the
two parts of the explanation:
98
(22) (a) Tu devrais épouser Laura, Jean-Pierre, pour au moins deux
raisons. (b) D’abord, elle est adorable. (c) Ensuite, c'est une des plus
riches héritières du Brésil.
Here the quantified NP au moins deux raisons plays the role of a
starting-up of enumeration, the semantics of the noun raison is a clue for
Explanation. It is also a clue for a non temporal enumeration. This explains
why we should block the temporal role of ensuite in (c). It is possible for
(22), but not for (21). We have Explanation(πa, πb) and Explanation(πa, πc)
and the structure is similar to the one in Figure 5 above with Explanation
instead of Result.
The examples of d’abord introducing the first explanation of a two or
three fold explanation are very frequent. D’abord often co-occurs with an
explicit marker of Explanation parce que as in (24) or in (25):
(24) Je passe seulement mon temps à enfiler des robes et à les quitter pour
en enfiler d'autres. Je suis mannequin... Il ne comprit pas le sens de ce
mot: mannequin. D’abord, parce qu'étant du masculin, il ne pouvait
s'appliquer à une femme. Ensuite, parce qu'il évoquait pour lui
quelque chose d'inerte […] (Robert Sabatier, Les Allumettes
suédoises, 1969, p. 220)
(25) La discipline essentielle est alors le latin, d’abord parce que le latin
est la langue de l' église, parce qu'aussi c'est à Rome plus qu'à
Athènes qu'on cherche ses maîtres à penser. (Encyclopédie pratique de
l'éducation en France, 1960, p. 125)
In most of the cases the eventualities in the subordinating explaining
constituents are states, and there is no temporal ordering between them. In
some cases, however, we have events, as example (26) shows. We’ll
account for that reading of ensuite in further work.
(26) Marie a beaucoup maigri. D’abord parce qu’elle a fait un régime.
Ensuite parce qu’elle a été malade.
6.
Conclusion
Our first idea was that d’abord could just be a subordinator as and is a
coordinator, but it proves to be also a coordinator: we showed that d’abord
requires both subordination with a constituent above him in the discourse
structure and coordination with a constituent on its right at the same level
in the discourse structure.
99
Analyzing the uses of d’abord led us to have a closer look at
enumerations, and to sketch how the semantic content of the starting-up
segments could give us precious clues for discourse structure, although not
considered as discourse particles. For example, nouns such as raison or
cause in the quantified NP included in the starting-up segment that we
represent as a discourse topic, could be a sign of Explanation as well as the
connective parce que does. We saw that the temporal substance of these
nouns could help us understand whether the enumeration is temporally
ordered or not. This seems crucial for the interpretation of some discourse
connectives as puis and ensuite, whose temporal role proved to be blocked
in non-temporal enumerations and explanations.
This preliminary work opens motivating perspectives:
-
-
-
extend the analysis we’ve done here to all kind of enumerations,
starting from the works we mentioned in section 1, and to analyze
how the text structuring relation of Enumeration we’ve introduced
interacts with content level subordinating relations such as
Elaboration, Explanation, Result,
examine the interactions between the connectives whose discourse
roles were already formalized in SDRT : d’abord, puis, ensuite, et :
account for their enumerative uses, account for the role of et when
it follows one of the other connectives,
account for other uses of d’abord, in particular the argumentative
ones, within the same formal proposal.
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